Google and world’s largest ad group announce landmark AI collaboration

The world’s biggest advertising group announced a major collaboration with Google that will see it utilize Gemini AI to help produce its ads, including:

• Ad narration.
• Voiceover script generation.
• Product image creation.

The landmark partnership with WPP means that Google’s robots could potentially end up creating ads for some of the biggest brands in the world, such as the Coca-Cola Company, L’Oréal and Nestlé.

Why we care. PPC experts have consistently emphasized the importance of leveraging AI to stay ahead in marketing. With the world’s biggest ad group actively incorporating Google’s Gemini into their strategy, it’s a pivotal moment and advertisers should pay attention as this integration holds the promise of transforming the industry landscape.

What is WPP? WPP is the parent company of renowned ad firms like Ogilvy, Wunderman Thompson, and VMLY&R. The UK-based ad company reported a global revenue of $18.9 billion in 2023, and employs approximately 114,000 members of staff worldwide, according to Statistica.

Why now? WPP is hoping the collaboration will “drive a step-change in marketing efficiency and effectiveness” by merging Google’s expertise in data analytics, generative AI (gen AI) technology, and cybersecurity with its marketing capabilities, global creative reach, and deep understanding of its clients’ brands.

How it will work. Google Cloud’s advanced gen AI tools will be integrated with WPP’s proprietary marketing and advertising data. This integration will enable WPP’s clients to create brand and product-specific content using gen AI. The merger is also set to provide WPP clients with deeper insights into their target audiences, accurately predict and explain content effectiveness, and optimize campaigns.

Details. The partnership with Google focuses on “four innovative use cases”:

• Enhanced creativity with WPP Open Creative Studio: Developing richer and dynamic user interfaces and gaining a deeper understanding of the brand enables the creation of more creative and on-brand content.
• Smarter content optimisation: To enhance the system’s predictive capabilities for marketing content success, even before campaign activation.
• AI narration: The narration system utilizes Gemini 1.5 Pro to produce customizable video narration scripts. These scripts are then sent to London startup Eleven Labs to generate the voice for narrating videos.
• Hyper-realistic product representation: This system uses Gemini 1.5 Pro and Universal Scene Description 3D file formats to create detailed 3D product images aligned with a brand’s style guidelines

What WPP is saying. Stephan Pretorius, Chief Technology Officer at WPP, said:

• “This collaboration marks a pivotal moment in marketing innovation. Our integration of Gemini 1.5 Pro into WPP Open has significantly accelerated our gen AI innovation and enables us to do things we could only dream of a few months ago.”
• “With Gemini models, we’re not only able to enhance traditional marketing tasks but also to integrate the end-to-end marketing process for continuous, adaptive optimisation. I believe this will be a game-changer for our clients and the marketing industry at large.”

What Google is saying. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said:

• “AI has the potential to unlock new levels of effectiveness for marketers, whether it is optimising campaigns, automating repetitive tasks like brand descriptions, or sparking entirely new ideas.”
• “This partnership brings the power of Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities together with WPP’s deep marketing domain expertise to help our mutual customers create better campaigns that resonate with consumers in a deeper way.”

Deep dive. Read WPP’s announcement in full for more information.