• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, July 18, 2024

It was really nice to see the announcement yesterday from WPP that Brian Lesser, a longtime ad and ad-tech exec, and a former 10-year veteran and senior leader of its Group M media buying unit, was returning to the world’s largest marketing services company as the global CEO of Group M.

It’s back to the future for WPP, and that’s a good thing in my mind.

Brian joined WPP the first time as part of its acquisition of 24/7 Real Media, a business very close to my heart. He helped played a big role in the digital ad industry’s shift to digital advertising, performance and data, driving audience-based buying in his previous stint at the company, launching its Media Innovation Group and its Xaxis buying business -- outgrowths of the products and tech that he helped lead at 24/7 Real Media with some of our industry’s top pioneers, innovators and leaders, legends like Dave Moore, Jon Hsu, Nicolle Pangis, Paul Dolan and so many more.

Most recently, he led InfoSum, one of the world leaders in automated data clean rooms, enabling first-party data for targeting, measurement and optimization for many top brands. Before that, Brian helped telecom behemoth AT&T assemble a $3 billion digital ad-buying and selling platform, Xandr, now part of Microsoft.

Brian saw and was part of the digital ad world’s 1.0 and 2.0. But now we’re at 3.0, and it’s clear large marketing service companies like WPP need some real help driving the innovation and technology needed to win in this era.

The good news is that digital is now firmly established at the top of the ad industry food chain. But we as an industry face so many challenges to ensure its long-term growth and value for advertisers and consumers alike.

Linear TV is fast giving way to digital streaming; complexity in digital ad systems is increasing; data now enables and fuels everything; protecting privacy and proprietary data has become paramount. And growing walled-garden dominance means firms like WPP find themselves doing a lot of “dancing with elephants,” while attracting and retaining the best creative and tech talent is only getting harder and more expensive.

Winning in this market will require strong, real innovation, and not just in the use of technology and in advertising creative -- leveraging AI in everything from scaled video ad creation to market analysis and customer segmentation, for example -- but also in the business models and roles that a company like WPP plays in the market.

How do WPP and GroupM continue to hold a special place with clients and partners as companies like Google and Amazon grow as direct-to-brand provisioners of marketing and advertising services themselves, not just commodity suppliers of media delivery or data to Group M and its peers?

How should marketing services companies best participate in the customer and commerce data market? Do they own their own data? Do they manage others’ data? Do they operate their own retail media networks? Do they power others’ retail media networks? Do they do all of the above?

Will it be an easy job to reignite innovation and business development growth at WPP? No, it won’t. That’s a big task at any company of Group M’s scale in this environment.

But would I bet on Brian Lesser’s ability to pull it off? Yes, I would.