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WPP Launches a Self-Serve Version of Its AI Platform To Court Small Biz Dollars

November 18, 2025 No Comments

WPP Open Pro is a new push from the holdco to expand vertical and horizontal integration of its flagship AI platform.

British advertising titan WPP is rolling out a self-serve version of WPP Open, its AI-powered marketing platform.

Unveiled Thursday, WPP Open Pro is a platform marketers can use to build campaigns, develop creative assets, and activate on their own, with the help of AI.

The platform is designed to streamline the entire marketing process, from ideation to execution, with the help of automated tools.

Users can craft campaign strategies with the help of AI agents that pull from a well of proprietary WPP data, partner data, and broader industry insights. Then, the platform can help marketers generate branded content for various channels.

To deploy campaigns created within the system, users can publish directly to major ad platforms. WPP Media clients can also connect to WPP’s Open Media Studio, which offers more advanced audience identification, bid optimization, and programmatic management.

Image- and video-generating features in WPP Open Pro are powered by a range of generative AI models, including Google’s Imagen and Veo platforms, OpenAI’s DALL-E, Sora, and GPT Image, Adobe Firefly, and others. Text generation, meanwhile, relies on Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Courting Small Business

WPP expects the tool to meet the needs of smaller enterprises and performance marketers who don’t need the high-touch managed service version of the program—and might also find uses in the organizations of existing WPP clients.

“We often don’t service the entirety of a client’s business, so it gives us reach into business units and areas that we might not service already,” said Matt McNeany, who helms the Open Pro project at WPP.

He added that smaller businesses open up a new market for WPP beyond its typical slate of Fortune 500 clients. “Now they can get access to professional-grade tools and AI capabilities, and do that in a pretty straightforward way.”

Users pay a fee to access the tool and are charged by usage, though WPP declined to share specific pricing details.

WPP Open Pro will be piloted by Google and some other undisclosed WPP clients. Initial feedback from clients has been “tremendous,” according to McNeany.

Google and WPP earlier this month announced a five-year extension of their ongoing partnership focused on advancing AI and cloud technologies for marketing. As part of that arrangement, WPP has pledged $400 million to bake Google AI tools into WPP Open.

Google declined to comment.

AI push

WPP Open Pro comes as the holding company aims to further align itself with AI to turn around its sinking fortunes.

Since it launched last year, WPP Open got a shiny upgrade in June with the launch of Open Intelligence, a foundational LLM trained specifically for marketing use cases. The platform has also added an integration with TikTok’s generative AI tools. Today, it’s used by brands including L’Oréal, LVMH, and Nestlé.

The launch of WPP Open Pro is among the first major announcements under new WPP CEO Cindy Rose, the Microsoft and Disney alum who succeeded Mark Read on September 1.

Rose’s appointment came after a grueling few years under Read’s leadership in which WPP suffered significant profit losses, client departures, and felt the squeeze of Trump-era tariffs—all while battling rivals over AI promises.

The rollout of WPP Open Pro, she hopes, will give the holdco the opportunity to expand into new markets.

In a statement shared with ADWEEK, Rose said WPP Open Pro’s low barrier to entry will put the company’s AI marketing capabilities “directly into the hands of a much wider array of brands and businesses.” If successful, the shift could drive revenues and bolster WPP’s business more broadly.

A marketing leader at a global brand, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ADWEEK this week that WPP has been pushing the brand aggressively to do more with WPP Open.

McNeany, for his part, is confident in the positioning; he suggested that the tool surpasses rival agencies’ AI-powered marketing offerings today.

“[We’re] taking our data assets, our partner data assets, our agentic capability, the generative partnerships that we’ve got with Google, OpenAI and so on…content automation, media activation, and bundling that up into one solution,” he said.

By Kendra Barnett

Kendra Barnett is Adweek’s senior tech reporter. @KendraEBarnett|[email protected]

Sourced from ADWEEK

WPP dismissive of Deloitte and Accenture’s ‘creative’ aspirations

November 16, 2017 No Comments

By Stephen Lepitak

The world’s largest agency group, WPP, has dismissed the apparent threat from consultancies such as Accenture and Deloitte which have begun to acquire creative shops to grow into the advertising and design sectors to service their clients.

While releasing its latest financial results, the WPP statement addressed the changing nature of the advertising market, highlighting three ways in which the industry is changing. On the rise of tech and search platforms such as Google (understood to now be WPP’s largest partner), Facebook and Amazon, it said that the former two companies had, in recent times, become “friendlier” as they have become key media partners for the network that is an important client to each entity. Another change the report spotlighted was client consolidation by major companies such as Unilever and P&G, probably the most important change taking place at the moment, forcing consolidation within the networks and cost cutting to match the lower budget spend from each FMCG conglomerate.

The third change was with the consultancies moving into the space by acquiring “small agencies” and talent. The report stated that only “two or three” such businesses were currently capable of competing.

It continued: “Most agencies report, including ourselves, that even when they do compete directly with the consultancies on digital projects, the win/loss records are consistently strong, particularly given the continuing importance of the creative dimension for success.”

It then continued to question whether such companies were capable of buying a culture of creativity and claimed that the press had “wildly” overestimated their digital marketing revenue in comparison to the holding companies and agencies.

“Where the consultancies may have made some inroads is their focus not so much on the digital area, but more importantly on client concerns about cost. Very few CEOs will resist the suggestion that they may be overspending and the promise of an audit or review that will only cost a proportion of any cost savings generated or a contingency fee,” the report said. “So, it may well be, that consultant activity is having some impact, not so much in the digital area, but more because of an emphasis on cost containment.”

WPP consultancy graph comparison

WPP reported an increase in revenue of 1.1% at £3.649bn for its third quarter and reported revenue up 8.9% at £11.053bn for the nine month period overall.

By Stephen Lepitak

Sourced from THEDRUM

WPP to cut Sir Martin Sorrell’s pay in bid to calm investors

May 16, 2017 No Comments

By Mark Sweney

UK’s best-paid chief executive could receive smaller package of about £15m after earning more than £200m in four years.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Britain’s best-paid chief executive, is to take a pay cut in an effort to avert a clash with investors over the scale of his remuneration. WPP will confirm on Friday that Sorrell was awarded almost £50m last year, taking the total payout to the founder of the world’s largest advertising company to more than £200m over the past five years.

The latest payout will be the last from WPP’s controversial Leap scheme, which has sparked investor revolts at the company’s annual meetings, and is to be replaced with a less generous deal that is expected to pay out under £20m annually.

However, WPP – which saw a third of shareholders oppose Sorrell’s £70m payout for 2015 at last year’s AGM, one of the biggest pay deals in UK corporate history – is set to announce that it will cut Sorrell’s maximum pay package to closer to £15m.

The company has moved to stem further potential run-ins with investors at a time of renewed scrutiny of corporate Britain since the vote for Brexit and the warning by Theresa May that she would curb boardroom excess. This year’s annual meeting, to be held in June, will include a binding vote on WPP’s pay policy over the next three years.

In December, the chair of WPP’s pay committee told MPs that Sorrell was not on a “superstar” salary but that he has been “rewarded very highly” for driving the WPP business.

Sorrell’s pay has been a flashpoint in the past. In 2012, during what became known as the shareholder spring, nearly 60% of investors rejected his annual package for the previous year.

Last year, Sorrell defended his pay package, arguing that he had put three decades of his life into building WPP from a maker of wire baskets into a £22bn global marketing business.

“I’m not a johnny-come-lately who picked a company up and turned it round [for a big payday],” he said. “If it was one five-year plan and we buggered off, fine [to criticise my pay]. Over those 31 years … I have taken a significant degree of risk. [WPP] is where my wealth is. It is long effort over a long period of time.”

Photograph: WPA/Getty Images