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agencies & AI

GroupM flipped into a new name on Wednesday – WPP Media (website) – as the agency buying machine with over “$60 billion in annual media investment” attempts to prepare for the AI future.

“Wire and Plastic Products” has come a long way. Will the latest changes be enough in the age of AI?

Reuniting GroupM with Brian Lesser as CEO and bringing aboard his company, InfoSum, as well as other investment appears to have been part of the AI strategy at GroupM/WPP Media -as have recent layoffs.

Lesser said in a press release yesterday (read it) on the new name, “By investing in our AI-powered product, integrating our offer with data and technology, and equipping our people with future-facing skills, we’re helping our clients to stay ahead…”

agency & AI – tech partners

Specifically, the agency group’s AI-powered product WPP Open is described as the agency’s “AI-enabled marketing system” that connects various, listed technology partners including AWS, Google and Microsoft’s Azure – see more on the WPP Open website.

Unlisted ad tech co’s touting AI bells and whistles will no doubt continue to line up for inclusion in the media buying behemoth’s marketing system, too.

WPP Media Chief Operating Officer Emily Del Greco – whose own arrival at WPP in February signals change considering her ad tech background – proclaims a new type of agency has arrived in a LinkedIn post, “3 months in and so much transformative change in the works it can be hard to keep up!…”

related:

• Inside an AI-Native Ad Agency (February 2025) – Microsoft

• Sam Altman: AI Will Replace 95% of Creative Marketing Work (March 13, 2024) – CMS Wire

use case: apartment marketers

In trade publication Multi-Housing News, experts offer advice on appropriate prompts for marketing apartments in competitive markets using generative AI.

Prompt tips include: “Define its role. Instruct the AI first about its angle and point of view. If you are asking it to generate keywords for a Google Ads campaign, for example, start with: ‘You are an expert at SEO and apartment marketing.’” Read more.

But, as one marketer warns, “You can’t just use what ChatGPT spits out—you have to make sure it’s correct.”

21% of staff

From today (May 29): “scoop: Business Insider is cutting 21 percent of its staff as it looks to reduce its exposure to ‘traffic-sensitive businesses’ and focus on ‘fully embracing AI.’” Read more from the NY Times’ Ben Mullin on Linkedin here.

It was just over a week ago that BI bumped up Julia Hood to “Newsroom AI” lead. Read that one.

Is the open web ad model experiencing a re-org brought about by AI?

Or is this inevitable change due too much undifferentiated content alongside the social channel’s firehose?

more news

• To Create Value with AI, Improve the Quality of Your Unstructured Data (May 28) – Harvard Business Review

• Marketing’s New Middleman: AI Agents (April 2025) – Bain & Company

• CMOs Refocus Investments to Maximize Technology, Teams (May 9) – Deloitte