WPP is a London-listed company that owns advertising, media buying, public relations, production and consulting businesses, and sells their services to large advertisers. It does not make ads itself. It owns the firms that do, and it pools their clients' media spending so the group negotiates with Google, Meta, Amazon and television broadcasters as a single buyer rather than as several dozen separate agencies. That pooling is the commercial logic of a holding company. An agency bidding alone has little leverage over a platform selling billions of impressions a day; an agency bringing tens of billions of dollars in annual billings has some.

For most of this century WPP was the largest such company by revenue. Publicis Groupe overtook it in 2024, and Omnicom's absorption of Interpublic Group, completed on 26 November 2025, created a second larger rival. WPP was removed from the FTSE 100 in December 2025 after 27 years in the index.

How the group is put together

Since 26 February 2026 WPP has reported as one company rather than a portfolio. Four operating units sit under the parent: WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions, each running across four regions, North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. Financial reporting collapsed into a single segment, Global Integrated Agencies, replacing the previous split between Global Integrated, Public Relations and Specialist Agencies.

WPP Media is the media planning and buying arm, renamed from GroupM on 27 May 2025. It contains Mindshare, Wavemaker, EssenceMediacom, the data unit Choreograph and the clean room provider InfoSum, acquired in April 2025 and folded into the business. In the first half of 2026 it produced 46% of group revenue less pass-through costs. WPP Creative, which combines VML, Ogilvy and AKQA under VML chief executive Jon Cook and currently includes Enterprise Solutions, produced 49%. WPP Production accounted for 5% and was the only unit growing, up 1.6% like-for-like.

Two revenue lines matter when reading any holding company's results. Reported revenue includes money that passes straight through to media owners and third-party suppliers. Revenue less pass-through costs strips that out and approximates what the group actually keeps. In the first half of 2026 the gap was large: reported revenue of £6,373m against £4,745m of revenue less pass-through costs.

Connecting the units is WPP Open, described by the company as an agentic marketing platform. Mark Read said in 2025 that it received annual investment above $400m and that Gemini 1.5 Pro had been integrated into it through Google Cloud. Its data layer, Open Intelligence, was launched in 2025 with a claimed reach of 5 billion consumers, a vendor figure that has not been independently verified. WPP expanded technology partnerships with Google, Meta and AWS during the second quarter of 2026, including a predictive Cultural Intelligence Engine built with Google Cloud.

Where the money actually moves

WPP sits on the buy side. Planners set budgets and channel mixes, buyers execute through demand-side platforms such as Display & Video 360, Amazon DSP and The Trade Desk, through self-serve interfaces at Google and Meta, and through direct deals with broadcasters, publishers and retail media networks.

Alongside that agency work runs principal media, in which the group buys inventory for its own account and resells it to clients at a margin rather than charging a disclosed fee on transparent pricing. The practice is legal, contested and rarely quantified. A WPP counter-filing in a wrongful termination case brought by former agency leader Richard Foster put a 2024 internal memo on the public record showing GroupM principal media revenue exceeding $1 billion globally. Chinese authorities raided GroupM offices and detained employees in October 2023 over rebate practices.

Buy-side leverage cuts both ways. WPP and Dentsu quietly withdrew from The Trade Desk's OpenPath direct-supply program in February 2026, citing insufficient transparency about where ads ran and fees they described as hidden, one of three holding company ruptures with the platform in a matter of months.

From wire baskets to Madison Avenue

The company was incorporated in 1971 as Wire and Plastic Products, a manufacturer of wire shopping baskets. In 1985 Martin Sorrell, then finance director of Saatchi & Saatchi, and Preston Rabl bought a controlling stake, looking for a listed shell through which to build a marketing services group.

Acquisitions followed at pace. WPP bought J. Walter Thompson, which brought JWT, Hill & Knowlton and the MRB research group, for $566m in 1987, then sold JWT's Tokyo office building at the peak of the Japanese property market for a record $205m, recovering more than a third of the purchase price. Ogilvy Group followed in 1989 for $864m. The Young & Rubicam takeover in May 2000, at $5.7bn, was the largest in the sector's history at the time and made WPP the biggest advertising group in the world. GroupM was formed in 2003 to unite Mediaedge:CIA and Mindshare. Taylor Nelson Sofres was acquired for £1.6bn in October 2008.

The direction reversed after Sorrell left in April 2018, ending a 33-year tenure, following allegations of personal misconduct and misuse of company assets that he denied. Mark Read took over that September and began simplifying: 3,500 job cuts in a £300m restructuring, JWT merged into Wunderman, Y&R merged into VML, and a 60% stake in Kantar sold to Bain Capital for roughly $3.1bn in December 2019. The stake in FGS Global went to KKR for $767m in December 2024.

Read announced his departure on 9 June 2025 after Coca-Cola moved its $700m North American media account to Publicis and WPP's share price fell roughly 50% during his tenure. Cindy Rose, previously chief operating officer of Microsoft's global enterprise business, was named on 10 July and started on 1 September 2025.

Why the marketing community watches it

WPP Media's This Year Next Year forecasts function as planning inputs across the industry. The June 2025 edition cut projected 2025 growth to 6.0% and sized the market at $1.08 trillion, citing trade disruption. December 2025 revised upward to $1.14 trillion, with commerce advertising at $178.2 billion overtaking television for the first time. The midyear 2026 report, authored by global business intelligence president Kate Scott-Dawkins, projected 4.4% growth to $1.3 trillion, with United States growth at 11.9% driven by AI infrastructure spending.

The group also shapes how agentic buying gets standardized. WPP Media announced on 18 June 2026 that it was working with Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount and Comcast's FreeWheel, alongside IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org, on how buyer and seller agents communicate, while building a video-buying agent inside WPP Open. WPP Media also tested PubMatic's AgenticOS through the Open Intelligence framework.

Contested ground

The decline is the first dispute. Market capitalization fell from roughly £24bn in 2017 to £3.1bn by December 2025, with two profit warnings during 2025 and a share price down around 62% over the year. Full-year 2025 revenue was £13,550m, down 8.1% reported, with revenue less pass-through costs down 5.4% like-for-like to £10.2bn and pre-tax profit down 87% to £131m. Headcount fell to 98,655 from 108,044.

Rose's diagnosis was structural complexity. Whether four divisions and one platform address the underlying economics, or reorganize the chart around the same questions, is unresolved. BCG research ranked holding company agencies last in each of four growth areas, and Rose has told analysts that outcome-based pay remains years away.

Legal exposure is live. The Federal Trade Commission and eight state attorneys general sued WPP, operating as GroupM Worldwide LLC, alongside Publicis and Dentsu on 15 April 2026, alleging a conspiracy to apply uniform brand safety standards that demonetized conservative publishers. The case, 4:26-cv-469 in the Northern District of Texas, charges violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act. WPP has also faced greenwashing allegations over fossil fuel campaigns and declined a Reuters request to disclose its client list.

What WPP is not

WPP Media is one unit inside WPP, not a synonym for the group. It was GroupM until May 2025.

WPP Open is the technology platform. Open X is the bespoke client team built for Coca-Cola in 2021, staffed by roughly 5,000 people. Open Intelligence is the data layer inside WPP Open. The three are distinct.

A holding company owns agencies; an agency network such as Ogilvy or Mindshare is one of the owned brands. WPP now rejects the holding company label for itself, though the corporate structure remains a parent owning subsidiaries.

The initialism WPP also denotes unrelated entities, including a plant protein domain and a video coding technique. In advertising contexts it means WPP plc.

Recent developments

Interim results published on 6 August 2026 showed revenue less pass-through costs of £4,745m, down 4.7% like-for-like, with the second quarter improving to a 2.8% decline from 6.7% in the first. Headline operating margin edged up to 8.4%. Shares rose sharply on the day, lifting market capitalization back above £4bn and making WPP the second-largest constituent of the FTSE 250. WPP Enterprise Solutions formally launched on 1 July 2026. The company expects £100m of in-year Elevate28 savings during 2026 against a £500m gross annualized target by 2028, and more than £200m in disposal proceeds.

The largest open question is Coca-Cola. The advertiser launched a global media, data science and technology review in June 2026, run by consultancy MediaSense, pitting incumbent WPP Open X against Publicis across most major markets outside North America, Japan and Korea. Global creative and public relations remain with WPP. A decision is expected before the end of 2026.

Timeline

  • 1971: Wire and Plastic Products incorporated as a manufacturer of wire shopping baskets
  • 1985: Martin Sorrell and Preston Rabl acquire a controlling stake
  • 1987: J. Walter Thompson acquired for $566m
  • 1988: Shares listed on NASDAQ, later switched to the NYSE
  • 1989: Ogilvy Group acquired for $864m
  • 1998: WPP enters the FTSE 100
  • May 2000: Young & Rubicam acquired for $5.7bn
  • 2003: GroupM formed from Mediaedge:CIA and Mindshare
  • October 2008: Taylor Nelson Sofres acquired for £1.6bn
  • April 2018: Martin Sorrell leaves after 33 years
  • September 2018: Mark Read appointed chief executive
  • December 2019: 60% of Kantar sold to Bain Capital for about $3.1bn
  • October 2023: Chinese authorities raid GroupM offices over rebate practices
  • 2024: Publicis Groupe overtakes WPP by revenue
  • March 2025: Coca-Cola moves its $700m North American media account to Publicis
  • 27 May 2025: GroupM rebranded WPP Media
  • 9 June 2025: Mark Read announces departure
  • 1 September 2025: Cindy Rose becomes chief executive
  • 22 December 2025: WPP leaves the FTSE 100 for the FTSE 250
  • 26 February 2026: Elevate28 announced alongside 2025 results
  • 15 April 2026: FTC and eight states file suit against WPP, Publicis and Dentsu
  • June 2026: Coca-Cola opens a global media review pitting WPP against Publicis
  • 1 July 2026: WPP Enterprise Solutions launches
  • 6 August 2026: 2026 interim results published

Summary

Who: WPP plc, a London-headquartered marketing and communications group led by chief executive Cindy Rose and chairman Philip Jansen, employing 98,655 people at the end of 2025 across WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions.

What: A parent company that owns advertising, media buying, public relations, production and consulting businesses, aggregates client media spending for negotiating leverage with platforms and broadcasters, and since February 2026 has been restructuring itself into a single integrated company under the Elevate28 plan.

When: Incorporated in 1971 as Wire and Plastic Products, converted into an advertising vehicle by Martin Sorrell in 1985, built by acquisition through 2008, restructured after Sorrell's 2018 departure, and restructured again from February 2026 following a collapse in revenue and market value.

Where: Listed in London and New York, headquartered in London, operating across North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, with WPP Media based in New York.

Why: Holding companies exist to pool advertiser spending into buying leverage and to package creative, media, data and production under one contract. That proposition is under strain as platforms sell directly through self-serve interfaces, as AI compresses production costs, and as clients question fee structures including principal media. Whether WPP's four-unit model restores growth remains the open question for buyers whose budgets it plans and places.