For brands to thrive in an era of overwhelming complexity, they must move beyond the myth of the single mega-database of IDs and embrace a new, collaborative model for intelligence
The explosion of possibility in modern marketing has created an equal and opposite explosion in complexity. The opportunities for brands to connect with people are more varied, interesting and ever-present than ever before. But with this comes a daunting challenge: how do we transform an overwhelming volume of complex signals into intelligent, sustainable growth?
It’s easy to say we must be “data-driven,” but the reality is that making intelligent decisions is now almost impossible without help. Consider the landscape: across the major media and commerce platforms, there are 50,000 ways to define a target audience and 200 possible outcomes to optimise towards, which means that across the media ecosystem, brands may be having to make 120 million yes or no decision per second. Drowning in data, marketers are struggling to find the simplicity on the other side of this complexity. The answer is artificial intelligence, but even the most advanced AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. This philosophy is the driving force behind WPP Open, our end-to-end platform for marketing and its AI-powered data layer, Open Intelligence.
The data paradox
For years, the industry has chased the dream of a single, centralised database – one giant file in the sky containing everything we need to know. That world is dead. The most valuable data signals today are held behind the high walls of the world’s biggest media and commerce platforms. Last year, 71% of the $990bn global media spend went into digital and 78% of that went into these “walled gardens.”
In response, many brands have focused on building their own first-party data reserves. This is intensely valuable but it creates a difficult choice. If you share all your customer data directly with platforms to improve campaign performance, you are also teaching them which customers you’re willing to pay more for, eroding any sustainable competitive advantage. If you hold it back, you risk buying the same generic audiences as your competitors. This is the data paradox and it proves we need a new approach.
The collaboration imperative
To deliver growth, we must resolve the trade-off between complexity and possibility. The future isn’t about centralising data; it’s about collaborating on intelligence. This is made possible by modern secure data collaboration technology, a capability WPP has invested in heavily through our partnership with and acquisition of InfoSum.
The InfoSum platform sits at the heart of Open Intelligence, allowing data to remain in individual, secure “data bunkers.” I can’t see your data and you can’t see mine. But we can run queries across them to find patterns, make predictions and learn things together that neither of us could see separately. By combining a client’s knowledge of their customers, WPP’s understanding of markets and a streaming platform’s insight into viewing habits, we can uncover genuinely counterintuitive findings that lead to an information advantage.
From fragmented data to a digital twin
This collaborative infrastructure is the foundation of Open Intelligence but its true power is unlocked when connected to a diverse network of data partners. The real breakthrough comes from using AI for universal translation.
Just as a generative AI model understands the relationship between the text prompt ‘a happy frog’ and the resulting image, the same principle can be applied to audience data. Within Open Intelligence, AI translates and connects disparate signals – identity, geography, context, interest, behaviour – into a common language. This allows us to move beyond a fuzzy, one-dimensional view of the consumer. By layering different signals, we build a rich, rounded view of who people are, what they care about and what will motivate them. This creates a mathematical representation of consumers and markets – a digital twin – that allows us to see the connections between a business question and the specific media and creative tactics that will answer it.
This is how, within WPP Open, our teams turn a simple brief like “find audiences to drive traffic to the IKEA in Cardiff,” into multiple, nuanced opportunities. It’s how we inform not just media planning but the creative itself – one of the biggest levers for driving ROI.
Four principles to grow your data intelligently
To navigate the future brands must adopt a new intelligence model. Here are four principles to guide the way:
The old models for using data are no longer fit for purpose. The path to intelligent growth isn’t about having more data, but about having more intelligence. By embracing a more collaborative, flexible and AI-powered approach, we can finally find the opportunity on the other side of complexity and build better futures for our brands.