Beginning Monday, GroupM will offer a solution called LIVE Panel, designed to connect WPP’s data assets (mostly those owned by Kantar and the consumer-surveying company Lightspeed) with the GroupM media-buying agencies.
It’s connectivity created by formalized workflow – essentially, LIVE Panel standardizes global data sets. So the biggest beneficiaries are GroupM’s multinational clients.
GroupM Analytics CEO Harvey Goldhersz said that though the different groups worked together regularly before, LIVE Panel reflects the next step in “the natural evolution of the agency business from pure services to a combination of data, tech and services.”
GroupM hopes to make it easier and cheaper to leverage different core functions within the holding company. For instance, a large CPG company might employ an optimization specialist, a purchase behavior firm, measurement and consumer surveying, but WPP wants to be in a position where it can offer all those services in-house.
Essentially, WPP is gearing up to offer services that connect media-buying data and tech in the planning portion of the stage with surveying and consumer data at the end, Goldhersz said. He called these services “horizontal capabilities.”
“If you’re working on a brand, and one consumer segment is buying a lot of the product, we can go back and survey those people,” said Goldhersz.
LIVE Panel is available in the 30 markets where Lightspeed operates.
