By Michael Kokalari CFA, chief economist, and Thai Thi Viet Trinh, senior economist.

IP Group hosted a capital markets day on 26 June 2025, which included presentations on the group’s investment strategy, pipeline, major themes and portfolio companies.

Sometimes it is worth taking a step back. That way, it is possible to gain perspectives that are not necessarily clear when you are down in the weeds. But the process of stepping back does not always lead to the same viewpoint. This thematic piece takes some fairly basic questions about the role of advertising and the transformation of the advertising market and appraises them from different standpoints: the agency, the publisher, the platform and the brand. We have done this in the form of short video interviews with relevant individuals from some of the key quoted companies in the sector. As might be expected, there is plenty of commonality in responses, and the divergencies of opinion mostly reflect the perspectives, rather than anything more fundamental, but are interesting, nonetheless. As the landscape shifts further and faster, investors need to keep asking whether the ecosystem is fit for purpose and check in on what that purpose is.