WPP acquires Infosum, boosting client data capabilities

WPP has acquired InfoSum, one of the top data collaboration companies in the industry, in a move meant to bolster the holding company’s data solution for clients. The tech company will now sit under GroupM, but continue to operate as its own entity and brand. GroupM CEO Brian Lesser was CEO and chairman of InfoSum before he rejoined the WPP media company last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but InfoSum, which has 65 employees, was valued at around $300 million in 2021 before it raised $65 million in a Series B funding round. Lesser said that InfoSum will continue to work with other holding companies as well, noting that the acquisition allows WPP to offer a clean data solution for clients embedded within WPP rather than simply partnering with InfoSum as a tech provider. Lesser said his intention initially was to continue to use InfoSum as a data partner for GroupM, but the relationship grew organically to the point where an acquisition made the most sense. “This is not about selling data, which some of our competitors do,” Lesser said. “This is about giving our clients tools to amplify their data and to give them access to AI so that they can drive performance in their business.” Data-Driven Marketing Playbook Join us May 22 in NYC to explore how data powers marketing Learn more here The acquisition will also provide WPP with revenue streams outside of traditional advertising services, such as helping brands set up and manage their retail media and commerce data. Lauren Wetzel will remain CEO of InfoSum and will take on an additional role as chief solutions officer for GroupM. Why it matters for brands The acquisition is significant as brands increasingly want better data measurement capabilities while ensuring their data strategy remains privacy-compliant and transparent. One of InfoSum’s biggest selling points is its ability to provide a safe and private way for brands, publishers, and agencies to cross-analyze data. One of the ways it does this is by helping clients build data clean rooms, which enable brands equipped with troves of data on consumers to sift through, organize and analyze that data without leaking or revealing personally identifiable information. InfoSum offers the ability to set up a data clean room within a client’s ecosystem, whereas other providers might require a brand to aggregate its data to a separate location. Such movement could prompt concerns for brands that their data may not remain private, an issue that is especially crucial for highly regulated industries such as health care. Further complicating matters for global advertisers, different markets typically have different data privacy laws. Moving data can also raise the risk that a data broker may hold onto a brand’s consumer data even after the brand moves on to a different data partner. Ad Age’s Jack Neff found examples of this when he went on a personal data journey last year. Why it matters for WPP The move marks the latest parry in a data battle among top holding companies. In March, Publicis Groupe announced its plan to acquire data management platform Lotame, which CEO Arthur Sadoun touted as strengthening Publicis’ ability to identify and target consumers globally. WPP emphasized that the InfoSum acquisition is part of a continued plan to move away from relying solely on ID graphs, which link email, phone, cookies and other identity data to create customer profiles that brands can then target. CEO Mark Read said WPP is moving to a more federated learning model, which focuses on keeping consumer data anonymous and in one location while still providing insights. “The way that’s traditionally been done in the past is CRM companies will ask clients to send data into a central database and then in that central database, they’ll use traditional identifiers to effectively attach that data to what they know about consumers through their third party databases,” Lesser said. “That methodology is not very effective, and it’s fraught with challenges, including it’s slow, it’s not privacy safe, and typically you only have match rates that are in the 50%-60% range.” Lesser said the goal is to move from “ID to AI,” meaning a more AI-focused predictive model, which he feels is distinctive from WPP’s competitors. “The notion of traditional identity that’s grounded in cookies or email addresses is waning in importance because a traditional ID is not useful in the vast majority of the media that we buy for our clients,” Lesser said. “A cookie is not going to be helpful in Instagram buys or TikTok or many parts of Google and other media providers.” Besides its privacy capabilities, InfoSum also has access to data from large media platforms such as Channel 4, DirecTV, ITV, Netflix, News Corp. and Samsung Ads, as well as major retailers and 5 billion identifiers through identity and data partners such as Circana, Experian Dynata, NCSolutions and TransUnion. This data will be combined with WPP’s existing data stack to strengthen WPP Open, the holding company’s AI solution. One example is WPP’s ability to build more informed AI models and tools for its clients, which WPP declined to name. InfoSum will not only be able to provide more data for these AI models to learn from but will also allow clients to control which of their data is used within these AI models, Lesser said. Strengthening WPP Open will help the holding company in terms of new business and client relationships, he said. “InfoSum is well established and has a sizable presence in the U.K. Their main differentiator is the flexibility to work with multiple identity providers, whereas most other marketing-oriented data clean rooms lock you into one identity provider,” said Stephanie Liu, senior analyst at Forrester. ”But they are losing differentiation as hyperscalers introduce clean rooms (e.g., Snowflake, AWS) with a similar identity-agnostic go-to-market.” WPP declined to comment. Several consultants and analysts who spoke to Ad Age anonymously said they had concerns with the sophistication of WPP’s data solution. One consultant said some clients have expressed those same concerns. Lesser pushed back on that notion. “We don’t get that feedback from our clients,” he said in response. “Over the last 18 months, Choreograph has retooled its approach as a part of a broader integration into WPP Open. We are seeing significant impact and momentum as a result, evidenced by major global wins last year with Amazon and Unilever. “The team is building the industry’s first large marketing model driven by thousands of sources of data, including from our media partners, data partners and clients,” he continued. “This model underpins how we are delivering industry-leading, data-driven work for our clients and is far more predictive of performance than a model solely grounded in cookies or email addresses. InfoSum accelerates the build of this model and gives clients immediate access to it.” While WPP had some big wins last year, it ranked behind Omnicom and Publicis in overall media new business gains, according to COMvergence. WPP also reported poor earnings in 2024 and predicted flat or negative like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs for 2025, duein part to economic uncertainty and evolving client needs. However, Read said he isn’t slowing down WPP’s investments in tech and data. “We have to look through the current economic uncertainty to invest in the right areas of the business and that’s why we’re doing this,” he said. Read said it’s inevitable that holding companies begin to resemble tech and SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. “Every professional services firm in the world is going to become much more of a SaaS and technology company,” Read said. “I don’t think the advertising and marketing business will be any different … clients should think about who they partner with in the same way they think about who they partner with in technology.”

WPP acquires Infosum, boosting client data capabilities

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