WPP ramps up data wars with InfoSum acquisition
WPP has bought data platform InfoSum for an undisclosed sum, reuniting the claimed privacy-compliant platform with Brian Lesser who returned to WPP’s GroupM from InfoSum late last year. InfoSum was valued at $300m in a fundraising round a couple of years ago so this may be the WPP’s biggest acquisition to date in the data wars consuming the ad holding companies.
InfoSum will rolled into WPP’s GroupM media operation alongside its Open system. Lesser is now the global CEO of GroupM.
WPP CEO Mark Read says: “(InfoSum) allows clients to stay in complete control of their first-party data, while also giving them access to vastly greater quantities of high-quality, privacy-compliant data and pioneering technology that is not available anywhere else in the market today.”
Anyone on the end of the barrage of press releases from adtech companies will know that a supposedly better mousetrap seems to appear on a daily basis. WPP says Infosum sidesteps the need for data derived from cookies and email addresses.
Data-fuelled personalisation (with all its attendant privacy issues) is the current battleground for the ad holding companies and WPP now looks increasingly like the Read and Lesser show as they try to erode Publicis’ perceived lead in data. GroupM has recently lost out to Publicis in a number of big media pitches, most spectacularly Coca-Cola. Read and Lesser will be hoping infoSum has been its missing link.
