India rises on four pillars in WPP’s global growth architecture

Mumbai: Mark Read, CEO, WPP, highlighted four key pillars central to the conglomerate’s synergy with India. Speaking at the inauguration of WAVES 2025, Read reinforced WPP’s long-term commitment to India, detailing investments across four verticals - “collaboration with world-class campuses, expansion of global development centres, supporting enterprise tech, and boosting creative technology capabilities” - in the country.

Concretising India’s role in the group’s future ambitions, Read said, “It is a confluence of creativity and technology. Over the coming years, I'm sure you will see a lot of tremendous AI-driven work.” 

Globally, advertising is a trillion-dollar industry, growing at a consistent pace of 6-7%. “It has recovered strongly since COVID-19,” Read stated. The WPP CEO attributed a significant part of this growth to the small and medium enterprises, “particularly in India.” 

He called attention to the accessibility of advertising platforms like Google and Meta have provided to the “new generation of entrepreneurs”, empowering them to launch businesses and directly engage with consumers, leading to economic inclusion. 

“The new advertising tools and technologies offered by companies like Google and Meta are empowering small and medium-sized enterprises. These platforms have enabled a new generation of entrepreneurs to launch ventures, reach broader audiences, and scale more efficiently—ultimately contributing to a more dynamic and inclusive economy,” Read said. 

Read also said that these avenues have fostered new advertising models such as search and social media, democratising the very craft. “It is much more available to small firms,” Read noted. 

Beyond economics, Read emphasised advertising’s indirect contributions—chiefly its critical role in sustaining the media ecosystem. “It pays for people to write, shoot, edit, analyse and create,” he said, acknowledging how the industry fuels visual storytelling and digital creativity.

At the core of his address, during the inaugural WAVES 2025, was WPP’s showcase of its AI-powered platform, WPP Open. Read described it as a game-changing tool driving transformation across the company’s operations. “It is not going to change just how we work, it is going to change how we produce work,” Read stated. 

WPP Open also integrates with VO2, Google’s latest generative video model, which Read claimed can generate near-professional quality videos with minimal input, though he was quick to add that “prompting it still requires specialised skill and creativity.”

Despite a few technical hiccups during the presentation, Read’s message was unequivocal: advertising is not just alive and well—it is smarter, faster, and more inclusive than ever before.