WPP and Google have announced a five-year partnership to integrate Google products, like Gemini and Veo, across the holding group’s numerous agencies.
The deal, which is the first to be outlined by the company’s new CEO Cindy Rose, is worth at least $400m, and will involve the widespread deployment of Google tech and AI across the company.
The move signals ambitions from Rose to make WPP an AI-first business. In her first company-wide town hall, Rose famously said WPP employees must become “AI superusers”.
There’s no doubt AI has shaken up the advertising industry, with all major holding groups wanting to be ahead of the curve when it comes to AI-use. WPP has committed to spending £300m overall per year on AI deployment.
Most of the major advertising holding companies have reported weak revenue reports, with many analysts citing the impact of AI as a leading cause.
This includes WPP, with the company reporting a 7.8 percent revenue drop in the first half of the year. Publicis Groupe has been an obvious outlier amongst holding companies, reporting 5.5 percent organic growth for the first nine months of 2025.
The Partnership
As part of the deal, WPP will be given exclusive first access to Google’s model updates, such as from the tech giant’s video and image creation tools Veo and Imagen.
This has enabled the company to achieve 70 percent efficiency gains and create campaign-ready assets in days instead of weeks.
WPP said the partnership will use Google’s LLM Gemini to create bespoke AI solutions for clients, which has so far included a Gemini-powered luxury e-commerce platform developed for WPP’s design and comms agency AKQA.
The holding giant also said that Google DeepMind now powers WPP Media’s AI data system Open Intelligence.
“By enabling WPP to innovate on our AI-optimised technology stack, we are helping create the future of marketing technology for brands today,” commented Google Cloud’s CEO Thomas Kurian.
