WPP Bets On AI To Save Its Future As Read Departs

Mark Read championed artificial intelligence at WPP. But with the agency’s shares languishing and rivals gaining ground, his successor faces a defining test: can AI remake WPP before it renders the traditional ad model obsolete?

Earlier this year, WPP recreated a client’s Super Bowl ad using generative AI. The result was quick, convincing, and, crucially, cost a fraction of the original. Viewers reportedly couldn’t tell the difference.

The project captured both sides of WPP’s AI experiment: the potential and the peril. AI could help WPP stay relevant in a fast-changing market. But it also threatens to upend the agency’s long-standing business model, one still partly tied to billable hours and legacy production.

It was a dilemma Read understood better than most. As chief executive since 2018, he pushed hard to integrate AI into WPP’s sprawling network of agencies. The company acquired startups such as Satalia and committed hundreds of millions to developing internal tools. More than 50,000 staff now use WPP Open, a proprietary AI platform capable of turning basic prompts into ready-made social media campaigns.

Yet the transformation has come at a cost. WPP’s shares have halved since Read took over, dropping to levels last seen in the wake of the global financial crisis. Critics say Read failed to deliver clear financial gains from the company’s tech push. Staff have grumbled about an endless series of restructurings, while investors remain uneasy about the longer-term economics.

“The unit economics of AI are deflationary,” one adviser to major shareholders said. “Investors struggle to see how this ends well for a business that charges for time.”

For many clients, the threat comes not from WPP but from the tech platforms themselves. Meta, Amazon and Google now offer advertisers tools that automate everything from scriptwriting to media planning, often in real time and without agency input. Meta has said it will soon allow brands to generate full campaigns using AI. Amazon’s tools already let sellers design, budget and deploy ads across TV and digital from a single dashboard.

The shift is already affecting budgets. Klarna, the Swedish fintech, recently said it had cut spending on external marketing agencies by 25 per cent thanks to AI tools. At next week’s Cannes Lions, the annual advertising summit, tech firms are expected to showcase AI-generated videos that replace actors with avatars and tailor content to precise demographic segments. One presenter is reportedly planning to create a campaign from scratch live on stage, from prompt to final cut, in less than half an hour.

WPP has tried to respond with its own ‘agents’, digital AIs trained to replicate the behaviour of human strategists, media planners and creatives. The company says it has more than 29,000 of these agents running, some of them bespoke to individual client brands. Even Read had a virtual “CEO agent” that could write and respond in his tone of voice. Other models simulate customer responses and test campaign impact before a single ad goes live.

But many question whether that will be enough to compete with the scale and immediacy of the tech giants. Jonathan Miller, chief executive of digital media investor Integrated on Media, said AI was “putting powerful creative tools in everyone’s hands” and challenging the relevance of traditional agencies. “The future will be very tough for those that can’t adapt fast,” he said.

It’s not just AI that has unsettled WPP. The group has lost its crown as the world’s largest agency by revenue to France’s Publicis. It is still digesting a multi-year restructuring that saw several legacy brands folded into new consolidated units. And it is dealing with the fallout from a corruption investigation in China. Some insiders say the pace of internal change has left parts of the business disjointed and demoralised.

Read’s departure, confirmed this week, comes amid a broader shake-up at the top. The company’s new chair, former BT chief Philip Jansen, is widely expected to drive a more commercially focused approach to AI and accelerate decisions on pricing and deployment. One insider said Jansen had “his own ambitions” for what the next stage should look like.

Another source suggested he would prioritise finding “a viable, scalable model” that better aligns WPP’s cost base with its AI offerings.

For Read, the changes reflect unfinished business. In a farewell note to staff, he said AI would have “a bigger impact on WPP than even the internet”, and that preparing the company for that future had been his top priority over the past two years. He has long argued that simplifying the business was a necessary step in deploying AI effectively across teams and disciplines.

Analysts broadly agree. AI could destroy parts of WPP’s traditional revenue base, but it could also help the company work faster, smarter and at far greater scale. The key question now is how to commercialise those gains before the competition, or the clients themselves, do it first.

David Herro, deputy chair and CIO at Harris Associates, one of WPP’s biggest shareholders, said the company’s immediate priority should be to rebuild its media business, which has lagged behind rivals. But over the longer term, he said, “they have to show how these AI investments turn into money. The market isn’t convinced yet.”

WPP’s competitors are not standing still. Publicis has quietly expanded its AI capabilities and recently unveiled its own virtual assistant for account teams. Omnicom is experimenting with generative tools to cut production timelines by up to 80 per cent. Smaller independents, meanwhile, are using off-the-shelf AI to deliver content at scale for a fraction of agency fees.

Yet agency veterans argue there is still room for human insight. While AI can churn out content quickly, it often lacks originality, subtlety, or a sense of cultural timing. “Clients still want breakthrough ideas,” one senior creative director said. “AI can help you get there faster, but it can’t tell you what matters.”

The next few years will be decisive. If WPP can use AI to improve outcomes for clients and drive operational efficiencies, it may yet re-establish its relevance. If not, it risks becoming another casualty of a creative revolution it helped to spark.

Either way, the agency once known for its dominance in television and print now finds itself playing for survival in a world shaped by algorithms and avatars. Read may have lit the fuse, a but someone else will have to steer WPP through the blast.