WPP launches analytics offshoot

WPP has bolstered its data offering once again by launching a marketing analytics company to help brands harness big data to boost their marketing campaigns.
The company, which is understood to be one of the front runners to buy a stake in Tesco-owned DunnHumby, has a rich history of launching and buying data-driven businesses. Data revenues account for well over £10bn of WPP’s revenues, equivalent to 25% of income.
However, last year, WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell admitted that the rise of big data was having a negative effect on group profits after revealing its so-called “data investment management unit” had struggled to match the UK growth rates across the rest of the business.
The firm said the performance of the UK data division, made up of companies such as KBM Group, GroupM, Kantar and WPP Digital, was “difficult”. It attributed the relatively poor performance to companies using their own data, as opposed to being reliant on third-party information.
The new venture, called Gain Theory, will sit within GroupM. It opens with 200 staff and 46 clients and is being promoted as a “marketing foresight consultancy”, offering brands an overview of their marketing through advanced analytics to help them to work out what channels they should use for future activity.
Gain Theory worldwide chief executive Jason Harrison (pictured with Sorrell) – a former Johnson & Johnson data chief who joins from WPP-owned Maxus – told the Wall Street Journal: “There’s so much more information available about business performance, consumers, what’s happening with marketing campaigns. The expectation is that [marketers] would be able to digest all that and be able to know what to do next and do that very quickly. That is incredibly complicated.”

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