From 1975-1984 the advertising industry experienced the greatest boom it has ever known. Expenditures on advertising rose on average of 13 percent a year.
Conglomeration began during this time and most of the larger agencies continued to increase their market share at the expense of medium-sized agencies. The majority of large budgets came from multination clients, who sought multinational agencies. As a result, agencies continued to expand across the globe with offices popping up in Europe, Asia and all over.
The advertising industry became accustomed to double-digit growth, but from 1985-1990 industry growth fell to around 8 percent. As a result of these shaky times, agencies were set up as targets for a plethora of mergers and takeovers.
In 1987, the WPP Group purchased J. Walter Thompson for $566 million dollars. Two years later they acquired the Ogilvy group for $864 million. The holding company Omnicom was formed in 1987, which combined DDB and BBDO among other notable agencies. By the end of the decade, Omicron, WPP, or Interpublic owned many of the