At a glance
- Company
- WPPAdvertising and communications group
- Size
- Enterprise (1,000+ employees) 108,044 people at the end of 2024, according to its annual report.
- Industry
- Agencies
- Where and when
- United Kingdom, operating worldwide. 2024–2025.
- Who produced the figures
- The company itselfAll figures come from WPP’s annual report filed with the US securities regulator and its own trading update. The financial figures are reported under stock-market rules. The count of AI users is WPP’s own.
What they did
WPP built its own AI platform, called WPP Open. Staff use it to plan media, develop ideas and produce advertising. WPP described it as its “AI-powered marketing operating system” and made it a central part of its strategy.
The numbers
From WPP’s annual report for 2024:
- Investment: £250 million in 2024, rising to £300 million in 2025.
- Use: 33,000 staff were active users.
- Staff: 108,044 people at the end of 2024. So about three in ten were active users.
From WPP’s trading update of 30 October 2025:
- Third-quarter income down 5.9% on a like-for-like basis. That means compared with the same businesses a year earlier. The measure is revenue less pass-through costs: what WPP keeps after paying for media and other costs it passes on to clients.
- Down 4.8% for the first nine months of 2025.
- Forecast cut: WPP said it expected a fall of 5.5% to 6.0% for the full year.
WPP put the decline down to its media business, lost client assignments and weaker spending by consumer-goods, car and government clients.
What happened next
A new chief executive took over on 1 September 2025. In the October update she called the company’s recent performance “unacceptable” and announced a review of strategy. WPP said its offer would become simpler, more integrated and “powered by data and AI”.
What the case shows
- Spending on AI did not protect revenue. WPP invested more than most agencies could, and income still fell. It has not published a return on the platform.
- WPP itself named the risk. Its annual report warned that clients “are increasingly able to purchase and use licences to such tools and technologies themselves”, and that AI vendors could contract directly with clients.
- Adoption takes time even with money behind it. After heavy investment, about three in ten staff were active users.