Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, has hinted that the industry's impending consolidation will be led by major moves in the media sphere.
Disney's reported merger with 21st Century Fox opens up possibilities of a new super advertiser that would in Sorrell's opinion attract more spend than Facebook, WPP's second largest platform behind Google.
Sorrell speculated that while these moves are not in the ad industry, they will have an effect.
"Disney has one sale organisation, if the Fox merger goes through, ourselves and clients will have a new opportunity with a new, much more powerful global player. If they acquired Sky too would have a direct consumer platform and control of Hulu, it would open up choice to us and our clients that we never had before."
He underlined that ad market consolidation will "continue to be inextricably, driven by the media side of the equation."
The consolidations that are rocking WPP and its rivals are likely to favour "the larger" players he predicted. He will look to get his house in order, to do this he said he will across the group: "Simplify the company and its the verticals, with greater emphasis on organising around clients with consumers at the centre of what we do."
Sorrell also reflected on the company’s gender pay gap, which sat at 14.6%. Within the group, JWT, AKQA and Grey showed biggest discrepancies.
He said: "The gender pay report showed we are not good enough, in three of four quartiles, we hold our own, in the most senior quartile we don’t. On average we are 50 50 but at the very senior levels we area not."
He underlined efforts to correct the imbalance and pointed to recent senior hires such as Karen Blackett, WPP’s first UK country manager and Lindsay Pattison, chief transformation officer.
When pushed on whether the next chief executive officer of WPP is "likely to be a woman" Sorrell answered: "It is possible, not likely, but possible."
