GroupM reorganises around central data platform

[m]Platform connects WPP data sources including Kantar, Wunderman and Millward Brown; third-party data providers; GroupM’s data from agreements with global media partners; and clients’ own data as they choose.

The platform will give planners and advertisers audience insights from hundreds of data sources across all media by bringing together search, social, mobile, digital ad and programmatic into one team. It is supported by a team of data scientists, technologists and digital experts from across GroupM specialist companies and its programmatic digital media platform, Xaxis.

Brian Gleason, most recently global CEO of Xaxis, will be CEO of [m]Platform.

Kelly Clark, CEO GroupM global, said: "Marketers are under tremendous pressure to deliver results from media investments. This flexible platform approach enables us to focus $7 billion worth of investments we’ve made in data and technology over 10 years to help them realise a marketplace advantage.”

The company said the platform would create of the most complete consumer profiles within a brand’s target audience, including rich demographics, technology use, behavioural insights, purchase history and location data.

Its products will include: [m]Core – audience intelligence platform combining cross-platform data (display, mobile, video, offline CRM, apps,) for a singular consumer identifier, [m]ID; [m]Insights –audience-centric media planning tool with cross-channel planning, creative workflow management, unified audience frequency capping and location-based and in-demo reach management; [m]Analytics – marrying online and offline campaign-level data to [m]ID to enable analytics, attribution and optimisation; and [m]Report – merging data into a single, visualisation dashboard.

GroupM is reorganising globally to support [m]Platform. Four regional presidents will report to Gleason: Phil Cowdell for North America; Lucas Mentasti for Latin America; with the EMEA and APAC presidents to be named shortly.