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WPP Media, the rebranded media arm of the world’s largest advertising and media business, has undergone seismic change in the first six months of 2025. Global agency CEOs are no more, the Group M brand has been axed, and the business is undergoing a restructure that is putting roles globally at risk of redundancy. 

All of the changes are part of WPP’s renewed focus on centralisation, and the need to “be simpler” – an effort spearheaded by WPP Media chief executive Brian Lesser since he joined in September last year.

The news of the restructure has trickled out in a series of announcements, with more details still to be announced, so questions remain about the business. However, the differentiation Toby Jenner, global chief business officer of WPP Media, makes between Group M and the new WPP Media is: “Group M was a corporate entity. WPP Media is a client facing identity.”

Jenner spoke to Campaign alongside Kate Rowlinson, UK CEO of WPP Media, following the official rebrand of WPP Media, the launch of Lesser’s “Vision 30” strategy for where the business is headed by 2030 and the release of its new AI-powered tech platform Open Intelligence. The conversation took place before WPP chief executive Mark Read announced his departure.

In the interview, Jenner and Rowlinson outlined how WPP Media is moving away from “legacy ID-based solutions” in its tech in favour of connecting various sources of data (including IDs) using AI, powered by the acquisition of InfoSum. The approach contrasts with rival Publicis Media’s approach through Epsilon, which is built around the CORE ID identity solution.

Both agreed that the restructure of the media arm was necessary, and reinforced the ways in which they believe it will help them stay competitive in a market that is wholesale moving towards integration.

WPP Media, which faces losing its crown as the biggest agency buyer to Omnicom after its takeover of IPG, has had mixed fortunes in the last 12 months. WPP’s media division won Amazon outside the Americas and retained Unilever in many key markets, but lost Sky in much of Europe, L’Oréal in the UK, Coca-Cola in North America and, most recently, Mars – all to arch-rival Publicis Groupe.

Listen to further discussion of What is WPP Media? on the Campaign Podcast here.

Campaign: Put simply, what is WPP Media?

Rowlinson: The short answer to “what is WPP Media?” is that it’s a global media collective that brings together the best platform, people and partners to create solutions that deliver growth for our clients. The platform in that context is WPP Open. WPP Media is part of the internal “Vision 30” strategy which outlines how it will be working to continue transforming itself as an AI-focused business by 2030.

[On the strategy’s four pillars of data and technology, innovation, collaboration, and people] The first is data and technology – this is the platform bit, so WPP Open. It uses principle of Open Intelligence, so using AI to pull together multiple data sources, because we believe that it’s the diversity of data [that] gives you a better answer, and we have tools and products that draw on multiple data sets to create audiences, audience Insights, strategic insights, category insights in an instant. Really this is about enabling our people to go faster, be more precise in their work and their targeting, and then activate in all channels, not just display.The next is innovation. Group M has been a market innovator, in my opinion, for many, many years, but isn’t known for that. 

The innovation bit sits within Open Intelligence – a new approach to data strategy essentially, which is not wedded in what we believe to be legacy ID-based solutions. It does draw on ID, but not only ID. We’ve invested in the technology, not the database, and that allows us to connect clients’ data and our data with more and more diverse partner data in a privacy safe way. 

InfoSum technology allows you to connect data sets instantaneously. When you put data into a ID-based database, you have to move data which takes much longer and has lots of legal complications in it as well. [Instead] we connect data quickly and easily. 

Jenner: The only build on that is the integration of the wider WPP capabilities within Open to bring owned, earned, shared and paid [together] because we’re still, as an industry, quite paid-centric. So this is bringing together, what I think is our huge competitive advantage – our globally-leading production capabilities, through one end to end process which we call DPAM (discover, ideate, activate and measure). Within that we’ve got owned capabilities from commerce, we’ve got earned capabilities through influencer marketing, we’ve got production capabilities to activate and build content out as well as core paid-for media. So that platform [Open] is really our competitive advantage and Open Intelligence is the AI fuel that brings it together through one connected audience from end to end.

Rowlinson:The third area is collaboration – allowing our teams to move more freely across the business, so there’s loads of career opportunities, but also the ability to bring teams together, to collaborate and integrate around clients, is a significant strategic priority as part of Vision 30.

The next area is people so making sure that we invest in the right technical skills and capabilities. We have a huge investment planned in training and development. We’re kicking off a significant project right now around new components of Open Media Studio. You’ll also hear us talk about Open Media Assistant, which is our incredible AI technology and that’s a really important part of Open Media Studio.

Jenner: So data and tech – WPP Open which brings together the best of WPP. 

Innovation – the best example of that is Open Intelligence. The only build I’d make on what Kate said is that it accesses walled gardens – access to Google, access to TikTok, access to Meta, etc. So you know, Legacy ID platforms can’t access walled gardens, so straight away, it discounts kind of 60-70% of the market. So bringing wall gardens actively without moving data is really a huge innovation that we’re taking to the market. 

People – everyone is going to get access to AI learning. That’s something that we committed to last week and there’s a huge sum going behind that. And then the point around collaboration – this idea of media being everywhere and in everything, and if that’s the case, then we need to collaborate much more effectively, not only as WPP Media, but across WPP and out to our partners, and working more effectively with partners is another key tenant within that collaboration. So, [for example] If we look at our commerce offer as WPP, it’s number one with Forrester – so looking at how we collaborate more effectively across the group as a whole is really driving huge benefits, and that’s one of the reasons for winning the Unilever business in North America and consolidating with commerce capabilities. 

So collaboration, data and technology, innovation and investing in our people – those four pillars are the strategies that we’ll be driving to deliver on Vision 30 across the next four/five years, to continue our market leadership – let’s not forget that – and continue it within the AI era. So very focused on what it looks like in AI, looking forward, not looking at legacy platforms, looking back. As part of that, the name change is super important because if we’re going to be more collaborative and more connected to WPP we wanted a name that would reflect that – so that increased collaboration and integration, we believe, will help fuel growth in the AI era for our clients and that that was really the genesis of the name change.

Further integration, driven by client need, is one of the core messages of WPP Media’s restructure. Is providing a more integrated offer a trend that has been experienced market-wide, irrespective of the holding company in question?

Rowlinson: I think so because when you get a brief or a pitch, it’s usually a question that’s being asked, or one of the key questions is: what’s the right operating model for how we work together? How can I access the best of the best of your group?

Jenner: I would say absolutely. If you look at the amount of pitches, I’ve got the numbers, it’s 24% in the first six months of 2024 and 56% in the back six months were integrated pitches. And if you think about media and addressability, you can only do that if you’ve got the right content to mirror the right addressable channels. Whether it’s asked for or not every pitch we would offer production, and for the most part, people are asking for it. You can’t deliver addressability unless you’ve got the production capabilities that we’ve got. That’s why everyone talks about personalisation at scale, but no-one really is delivering it in a codified, systematic way, which is what we’re doing through that connected platform.

If it’s a cross-industry trend then – does it make it more challenging to be competitive? 

Jenner: No, I think it’s an opportunity for us, because I think we’ve got better, more global capabilities than the competition. Some competitors might be good in certain markets, some competitors may be good in certain capabilities, but if you look at, broadly, WPP as a whole – we’ve got the best global production business in Hogarth; we’ve got the best, largest media business in WPP Media; we’re ranked number one for our commerce capabilities through Forrester; we’ve got an amazing influencer business across Goat and Village that we are increasingly pitching as as one. So it’s now through the technology – AI and WPP Open have allowed us to pull it all together for the benefit of our clients. 

There’s a feeling among the industry that a restructure of media was necessary at WPP. Why do you think restructuring in this way is necessary?

Rowlinson: I think it helps us simplify our own organisation so we are better equipped to give clients what they need – enabled by enterprise level technology that has AI at the heart of it.

Jenner: And [it removes] silos to create more career opportunities for our amazing talent.

One of the notable changes in the messaging is that WPP Media is being dubbed an “AI-driven media company” and that’s not how Group M was talked about before.

Jenner: So I would look at it this way – Group M was a corporate entity. WPP Media is a client-facing identity, and it has been made to lead in the AI era and everything we’re doing is with that in mind.

This story originally appeared on Campaign UK.