In the advertising business, as in the rideshare business, the phrase "renewed relationship" can mean many things. Sometimes it means the client looked around, considered the alternatives, and decided the devil it knew was preferable. Sometimes it means genuine satisfaction. And sometimes it means the pitch process was simply too exhausting to result in wholesale change.

Whatever the calculus, Uber has elected to remain with Omnicom Media as its global agency of record across most of the planet, ending a review that took place during the second quarter of this year. PHD, the Omnicom unit that has handled the account, will continue in that role across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America — a geographic spread that sounds impressive until you remember that the world also contains Asia.

That region remains with WPP, which spends roughly $136 million annually on Uber's behalf there, according to COMvergence data. (The holding companies, it seems, have agreed to a kind of continental détente.)

The renewed arrangement does bring Omnicom some new territory: an expanded role in Brazil and, perhaps more intriguingly, responsibility for Uber's sports marketing business. The company did not specify what that entails, though one imagines it involves getting people to stadiums and then, several hours later, getting them home again.

The account is valued at approximately $800 million globally, a figure large enough to make the review worth WPP's time, if not ultimately worth its trouble.

For Omnicom, the retention adds a measure of stability during a period when the holding company has other matters on its mind — not least its pending merger with Interpublic Group, which would create the largest advertising conglomerate in the world, assuming regulators find that prospect unobjectionable.

Uber, for its part, continues doing what it has always done: going places, and paying handsomely for the privilege of telling people about it.

Original story published in adweek.com: "Omnicom Media Retains Uber’s $800M Account and Expands Brazil Remit"