Following InfoSum deal, WPP says its alternative to ID-backed big data is complete

In short, some want to own robust data sets that resolve into identity-matched profiles of real people. Some want to build platforms to connect others’ data sources as quickly and safely as possible.

British holdco WPP, firmly in the latter camp, solidified its position by acquiring fellow London-founded InfoSum last week. The latter is a specialist in data clean room technology – a category that Lauren Wetzel, chief executive of InfoSum, tells The Drum the company “created and defined” with its “different way of doing data collaboration,” which prioritizes data safety.

Reports of the price WPP paid for InfoSum have not been confirmed, but former owners, investment group Chrysalis, posted reports of $63m in cash gains on the day of the sale.

The move follows WPP’s acquisition of Stability AI, the generative AI developer of Stable Diffusion, last month and the gradual folding-in of agency T&Pm last year, all in service of a much-vaunted $300m investment in its AI platform WPP Open this year.

InfoSum will become a part of Choreograph, the global data company that itself sits within GroupM, WPP’s media investment business. It’s the final keystone in that approach to data that diverges markedly from WPP’s competitors, Evan Hanlon, global chief executive of Choreograph, tells The Drum. “Now, we have all the pieces.”

The war on identity: A primer

Many commentators have been quick to point out how unsurprising the move is: GroupM chief executive Brian Lesser spent four years at the helm of InfoSum from 2020 to 2024. And beyond any personal ties, Lesser has been loudly beating a drum for an approach to big data that he has called “a shift from ID to AI,” under which “we believe that data connectivity is more important than simply owning a database… No matter how many traditional IDs you own, it will never be enough.”

The line was a jab at WPP’s competitors, which are investing heavily in the ‘identity-based’ approach to big data that prizes owning vast supplies of data sources that can resolve the identities of internet users to deliver personalized messaging. WPP shares that final goal but not the method. Its divergent approach instead prizes connecting disparate data sources and providing an environment that is not reliant on any particular set of the ‘profiles’ that identity-based approaches yield.

Almost on cue after Lesser’s identity-bashing speech, WPP’s biggest competitor, Publicis Groupe (which had recently leapfrogged it to become the world’s biggest ad company), went public with its acquisition of data shop Lotame, adding 1.6bn profiles to its sack and doubling down, hard, on identity. Scott Hagedorn, chief solutions architect for the group, told The Drum at the time: “Without an identity footprint, marketers can’t really do modern marketing.”

He added: “The problem is, when you become dependent on syndicating identity, you’re going to get charged every time you use that identity. That’s why we’ve been able to make identity and AI work for our clients: because we’ve made investments to own it and not rent it.”

In the rarefied air of marketing’s holding company world, this is the equivalent of a flame war. On one side, WPP is rejecting identity as the center of any sensible data approach, while on the other, Publicis (alongside newly merged Omnicom and IPG with their equivalent to Epsilon, Omni) is insisting that identity is modern marketing’s very core.

“The pattern is clear,” says Jay Pattisall, principal analyst at Forrester: “Omnicom acquires IPG in part for Acxiom to power Omni. Publicis acquires Lotame to bolster CoreAI. WPP acquires InfoSum to power WPP Open. In the near future, clients will no longer buy the agency, but rather the agency’s algorithm for advertising, media and experience activation.”

‘Intelligence beyond identity’

Choreograph’s Hanlon acknowledges an element of “intellectual sparring” in the air as the two approaches butt heads. But InfoSum-bolstered WPP is doubly bullish on its ‘intelligence beyond identity’ strategy.

The argument is two-fold: that acquiring data to develop understandings of identity alone is insufficient for the marketing environment and that what WPP is building – capped off by the InfoSum acquisition – helps marketers plug the gaps of identity with whatever their most salient data sources are at the time.

First, the negative element. Identity alone, Hanlon says, is a “very good data set – but it’s not the only one and it’s less and less useable today,” with increases in privacy protection, cookie opt-outs and untrackable browsers. Worse, he says, identity alone is inherently backward-looking. “If you’re only focused on the data that you can acquire, you’re going to miss-serve your clients because you’re looking at a very narrow slice of the world – one that is frequently archaic, using antiquated technologies, that gives you a really great look back at what has happened but doesn’t give you a lot of predictive power about what is going to happen in the future.”

The answer, Hanlon says, is AI, data connectivity and building an environment to do that data connection quickly and securely – enter InfoSum. “Look at the challenge and the opportunity of what AI lets us do – which is to associate lots of different data domains, data types and data models for apples-to-apples comparisons in ways that we couldn’t before (fast and slow data; big and small data; panel and census data; US data and UK data), in ways that are privacy safe, leaving the data where it sits. It was clear to us that we needed a technology like InfoSum to help us move to the speed at the speed that we need to.”

Amid all the talk of identity, this reintroduces a pair of concepts, not long ago dominant, that are talked about less when providers are looking to amass as many identity-resolved ‘profiles’ of real people as possible: data privacy and safety. For InfoSum’s Wetzel, this is the true core of her company. “The mission we’ve been on is acknowledging and calling out the way data has been used to power, generically speaking, data-driven advertising. It has just never been the right method. Handing data over, moving data, leakage of data: it’s not good for privacy. It’s awful for security. And it needs to be rearchitected. Forget whether you own data or not, asking your clients to ‘please send me your data’ – it just has to stop. And being closed about the value has to stop.”

She adds: “It needs to be open and transparent. The tenets of privacy protection are critical because it’s just not going to go away. It doesn’t matter if there’s regulation or not. Consumers care. Brands take a long time to build trust with their consumer and they can lose it in a second. I find our agenda being warmly embraced by CMOs who just don’t want to take any of that risk on.”

As for Publicis’s comments about the inefficiencies of renting over owning data: “I would check the receipts,” says Wetzel. “[Publicis] is going to prove the value of acquiring Lotame and Epsilon and it absolutely is passing that charge back. It is packaging it with media and the data that it owns and probably some consulting services and a handful of other things, but it is absolutely passing that cost and pocketing the money for it”.

So, the respectful disagreement between the identity school and the intelligence school doesn’t look likely to end soon. And as Nicole Greene, vice-president and analyst specializing in AI at Gartner, tells The Drum, AI’s still-early-days spread into every corner of the marketing ecosystem will only intensify the great data debate: “AI requires quality data, so it’s no surprise that holding companies are racing to position themselves for the AI-enabled advertising future. The battle lines are drawn around privacy, security and the depth of consumer insights, with each company tooling up to meet the demands of an increasingly data-driven, privacy-centric advertising landscape.”