Holdco agencies further investments into AI
TBWA Australia, part of Omnicom Group, and WPP’s recently rebranded media arm WPP Media are among the holdco agencies furthering their investments into AI this week.
TBWA has launched a new strategic service called ‘Rise’, aimed to ensuring brands remain discoverable and recommended within AI-driven platforms.
Its purpose is to “help clients optimise their brand’s visibility” inside large language models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. The agency likened it to how SEO helps in traditional search results.
According to the agency, traditional search engine usage is experiencing a “notable” decline due to the rise of these generative AI tools. A Gartner study predicts that by 2026, it will decrease by 25%.
Rise will provide brands with a “360° audit” and LLM optimisation roadmap, to elevate their presence across earned and owned channels. It will identify gaps in brand representation and reputation, implement bespoke tactics to improve discoverability, and provide ongoing performance monitoring to measure AI visibility improvements.
The offering is led by TBWA’s PR and social media sister agency Eleven. Kiefer Casamore, executive general manager of Eleven and TBWA Melbourne, said marketers and corporate affairs have “no idea” how they are showing up in an AI environment, because of how much it has reshaped discovery online.
“Traditional SEO no longer guarantees brand visibility. If a brand isn’t mentioned by an AI assistant, it’s invisible in that interaction,” he said in a media release.
Lucio Ribeiro, TBWA’s recently appointed chief AI and innovation officer, said an offering like this is necessary to make brands future-fit, especially when competing with LLMs like Google’s AI Overviews. According to Ribeiro, Google has “publicly buried the web alive” and “brands that move now will have a true first-mover advantage”.
Meanwhile, WPP Media has globally launched Open Intelligence — its own marketing-specific LLM.
Described to “drive real business outcomes and fuel fast, smarter marketing performance for the AI era”, Open Intelligence will generate content from human language and imagery, just like other LLMs. It has been trained to understand and predict audience behaviours and marketing performance, based on patterns from real-time data.
WPP Media will use Open Intelligence to build bespoke models for clients to continuously optimise audience segmentation, creative development, and media activation to maximise ROI.
Tony Braybrook, ANZ managing director of WPP’s data company Choreograph, said it represents a “fundamental shift” in how the holdco will “think about what’s possible” in data and marketing.
“For our Australian clients, we’ve seen rapid adoption of composable data architectures and a strong preference towards zero movement of data,” he said in a media release.
“Unlike traditional data matching and identity solutions, Open Intelligence enables marketers to secure insights across diverse datasets without moving or exposing the raw data, using InfoSum’s patented technology.”
Braybrook said he’s excited to introduce Open Intelligence to the local market.
“Most importantly, Open Intelligence will enable brands to move beyond reactive strategies and optimise media, creative, and targeting by using AI to reveal hidden relationships in consumer behaviour,” he said in the release.
Open Intelligence is the universal model supporting WPP Open, the holdco’s AI-enabled marketing platform.
According to the release, the model will power “every part” of its offering, including insight and audience generation, campaign planning, activation, and measurement. Further, marketing strategy, campaign performance, and media supply will all be “enhanced and optimised” by AI-native tools and scaled, safe, and secure data.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
Linkedin
topics
ai
Eleven
Kiefer Casamore
LLM
Lucio Ribeiro
Open Intelligence
Rise
TBWA
TBWA RIse
Tony Braybrook
WPP
WPP Media
Breaking news: Holdco does what independent agencies have been doing for 2+ years
User ID not verified.
Have your say