The short answer: Treat a holding company as a portfolio of agencies and client teams, not one buyer. Pick two agencies that fit, start with planners and practice leads rather than chiefs, enter through a warm path tied to a real trigger, then earn sister-agency introductions.

Every media seller wants a foothold inside the global holding companies. They still run a large share of enterprise media buying, and getting into one, then scaling across it, can define a seller's year.

It is also one of the hardest sells in the industry, because a holdco is not one buyer. It is many buyers with overlapping ownership, shared tools, and reporting lines that change often. This guide helps you work a holdco as an account, not a logo.

Why holdcos are worth the effort now

The budget is moving toward the channels holdco teams are busiest in. The IAB's September 2026 outlook raised its forecast for US ad spend growth in 2026 to 12.3 percent, with social (16.5 percent), CTV (15.6 percent), and commerce media (13.6 percent) leading the way. Agencies plan and buy a meaningful part of that money for their clients. If you cannot get into the agency conversation, you will often learn about plans after they are set.

Map by agency and client team, not by holdco

From the outside a holdco looks like one company. On the inside, each one is a portfolio: media investment agencies, specialist shops, data and technology units, and practice teams for channels such as commerce, CTV, and AI. Ownership and branding change regularly through mergers and restructuring, so check current structure before each planning cycle rather than relying on last year's org chart.

The useful unit is the client team. A planning group working on one consumer goods client at one agency is a buyer. The holdco is not. Two practical rules follow:

  • Sell each agency, and often each client team, as its own account. Use holdco-level relationships as connective tissue, not as the target.
  • Choose your entry point by what you sell. If you sell data, identity, or measurement, the holdco's data and technology teams and the analytics leads are usually the first conversation. If you sell inventory or packages, start with planning and investment.

If you need a method for laying out the people across brand and agency, our guide to how to map the buying committee gives you a template.

Roles that matter

Ignore anyone with "Chief" in their title until you have a warm path. Break into the layer below.

Table graphic listing holding company agency roles such as planners, investment leads, strategy, data and analytics, new business, and practice leads, with what each owns and the right way to approach them.

Planners are the entry point for most seller relationships. They read briefs, influence plans, and take meetings. Practice leads are often underused even though they are under pressure to prove results in new channels.

Where holdco sellers usually fail

  • They pitch to logos, not accounts. "Selling to the holdco" is not a plan. Selling to the planning team on a specific client at a specific agency is.
  • They ignore practice leads. Channel practices are newer and are often hungrier for partners than the core planning teams.
  • They over-index on inbound. Large agencies route unsolicited vendor contact through vendor management and procurement. A warm path to a person who has a reason to talk to you skips that queue.

Timing signals for holdcos

Watch for public events that change what an agency team needs:

  • Client wins and losses. A newly won client usually means the plan and partner list get rebuilt.
  • Practice launches and reorganizations. New practices need partners and early proof.
  • Leadership changes. A new managing director or practice head often revisits the roster.
  • Planning windows. Upfront and NewFront season, and each client's fiscal planning cycle, open the door to new ideas.
  • Holdco partnership announcements. When a holdco announces a new measurement or data partnership, adjacent categories often get reconsidered.
  • Industry events. Major conferences concentrate the people you want to meet into a few days.

A signal on its own is not a reason to email. A signal tied to what your product helps that team do is.

The warm path is everything

At holdcos, relationships compound more than almost anywhere else in the industry. Planners move between agencies. Investment leads move within the holdco. Strategy leaders sit on the same industry panels. If your company has any history in the ecosystem, your team almost certainly has a warmer network than your CRM shows: former agency colleagues, partners on other clients, and people you met on past campaigns.

Before any outreach, check the whole team for a real, recent relationship with the person or their manager. Our guide to warm introductions covers how to test path strength and write a request that gets forwarded.

A 90-day holdco entry plan

If you have no warm paths inside a holdco today, this is a reasonable sprint.

  1. Days 1 to 15: Pick two agencies inside the holdco that match your ideal customer profile. Map the org and list ten priority names across planning, investment, strategy, analytics, and practice leadership.
  2. Days 16 to 30: Check your whole team's relationships. Find every colleague with a real tie to any of the ten names or their peers, and request three introductions.
  3. Days 31 to 60: Build one specific point of view for each agency, tied to a client or category they work on. Get on three planner calendars.
  4. Days 61 to 90: Bring planners something they can use with their client, then ask each for an introduction to their investment or analytics counterpart, or to a sister agency.
Framework card showing a four-phase 90-day plan for breaking into a holding company agency, from mapping two agencies to asking for sister-agency introductions.

By day 90, two live conversations and a point of view that got shared internally means you are in.

A hypothetical example

The following is a hypothetical scenario for illustration. It does not describe a real customer, agency, or company.

Sam sells a retail media measurement product. Instead of emailing the holdco's head of commerce, Sam picks two agencies in the group that run commerce budgets for consumer goods clients. The map surfaces ten names. A colleague on Sam's team worked with one of the commerce planners at a previous agency and has emailed with them this year. Sam asks for that introduction and ties it to the agency's recent win of a snack brand.

The planner takes the meeting, likes a short note on how the product handles incrementality, and forwards it to an analytics lead on another client team. By day 75, Sam has two active conversations and has not yet spoken to a single "Chief."

Scaling across the holdco

Once you have traction in one agency, do not stop. Holdcos share tools, leadership, and talent across sister agencies.

  • Ask for the sister-agency introduction. Once a planner trusts you, ask directly who their counterpart is on the sister agency side.
  • Follow people. When a leader moves from one agency to another, your relationship moves with them. Reconnect within their first month.
  • Make your point of view portable. A category-specific insight (auto, consumer goods, pharma) travels across teams without being re-sold each time.

Handling procurement

Once a deal is real, procurement enters. Settle business terms with the practice or planning lead first, and ask for the procurement process early: timing, terms, and master agreement requirements. Finding out at the end is how deals slip a quarter.

Checklist: before you work a holdco account

  • You have chosen two agencies, not the whole holdco.
  • You have named the client teams you want to reach.
  • You have ten priority names across planning, investment, strategy, analytics, and practice.
  • You have checked your entire team for warm paths to those names.
  • Each outreach is tied to a dated, public trigger.
  • You have a specific point of view per agency.
  • You know the procurement steps before the proposal goes out.

Common mistakes

  • Pitching the parent company. Corporate parents rarely buy media directly.
  • Starting at the top. Senior leaders delegate vendor conversations down the chain, so start where the work happens.
  • Treating every agency in the group the same. Teams in the same holdco can have different clients, tools, and priorities.
  • Losing track of people. The planner you met last year may now run a different client. Track people, not just accounts.
  • Waiting for inbound. Inbound tends to land with vendor management, not the team you want.

From one seller to another

Holdcos reward patience and specificity. Two agencies, ten names, real warm paths, and something useful to say to each team will get you further than a thousand cold emails to a logo. If you sell into CTV, our guide to selling CTV to brands and agencies pairs well with this one.

For a structured way to pick where to focus first, the free Media Territory System course walks through fit, timing, and access. And Elo can help with access: inside Gmail and LinkedIn it shows who on your team has emailed, worked with, or is connected to a planner or practice lead, how recently, and dated signals like job changes and agency changes.

Sources: IAB, IAB Raises 2026 U.S. Ad Spend Forecast to +12.3% YoY Growth, Sept 10, 2026 (checked Oct 24, 2026).