Agency M&A in 2026 is still active — but buyers are asking harder questions

SI Global Partner, Tristan Rice delivers the latest M&A Update for H1 2026 

The odd thing about agency M&A at the moment is that the market has plenty of reasons to pause — and yet it hasn’t.

Iran has pushed energy prices and inflation risk back up the agenda. Clients are still cautious. Public markets look increasingly bubbly. None of that is helpful.

And yet we’re still seeing a busy market. SI Global closed 14 deals last year across Europe, North America, The Middle East and Asia, and we’ve already completed half a dozen more in 2026.

That may be a significant indicator: buyers are no longer waiting for a clean macro environment. They’ve accepted that those days may be over for the foreseeable future.

Strategic Pressure Is Outweighing Macro Uncertainty 

The more interesting distinction now is between the risks buyers can live with and the risks they feel they have to act on.

Geopolitics sits in the first bucket. It affects confidence, timing and valuation, but buyers can’t do very much about it.

Capability gaps sit in the second. If a group lacks AI-enabled delivery, first-party data, retail media, commerce, creator, CRM or performance capability, that problem gets worse the longer they wait.

That, combined with the volume of capital in private markets, is why activity has been surprisingly robust. Buyers are looking through the noise because their internal strategic pressures are more immediate than the external macro uncertainty.

AI Has Changed the Buyer Diligence Question

For sellers, that creates a better market than the headlines might suggest. But it’s also an increasingly unforgiving one.

Buyers still want growth, margin and good clients – and in a world full of unknowns, they will spend even more time trying to pin down every risk they can diligence. But they are primarily asking a sharper question: does this business help us adapt to where the market is going, or does it give us more exposure to the bits of the model that are coming under pressure?

The New M&A Question for Agencies:  Why Will Your Business Still Exist in Three Years?  

And that leads directly into the AI issue, because the question has moved very quickly from “how are you using AI?” to something much more fundamental: “why will your business still exist in three years’ time?” Buyers want to understand where AI genuinely changes the economics of delivery, where it improves client outcomes, and where it creates something harder to replicate.

Publicis buying AdgeAI is a good signpost. Generating more content is the easy part now. The really valuable bit is predictive measurement: working out which creative elements drive engagement, conversion and ROI, then feeding that intelligence back into future campaigns.

 What Agency Sellers Need to Prove in an AI-Enabled Market 

For sellers, this raises the bar on preparation. A good growth story still matters. Clean numbers still matter. Strong client relationships still matter. But buyers will now test whether AI makes your business more defensible, or simply makes your services easier to price down.

So the challenge is to prepare a very clear answer to a much tougher question.

Where, exactly, do you become more valuable in an AI-enabled market?

The agencies that can answer that with evidence – as many can – are commanding strong interest and multiples.

The ones that can only answer it with enthusiasm may find diligence a less forgiving place than they expected.