Market Sites

GroupM Investment

We design responsible, at-scale, and innovative investment solutions that make advertising work better for people.

If an ad can’t be seen, it has no value. GroupM’s media investments—guided by brand safety, leading privacy principles, and premium relationships—represent 1 out of 3 ads in the global marketplace. Through modern investment services, we put money against goals that move businesses forward.

Partnerships

As the #1 global buyer of all media, including being the biggest purchaser across Google, Meta, Amazon, TenCent, Alibaba, and others, we invest more than $60 billion a year on behalf of our clients, according to COMvergence. We have a unique partnership approach with key global, regional, and local media vendors, which allows us to bridge the gap between their data and ours to drive stronger planning activation and create disproportionate deal value. As a result, our clients gain benefits across Pricing, Innovation, Data and Research, and Consulting.

Process

We set the bar higher. Our scale and leverage allow us to build and deploy the best products and services, and we have access to transparent, high-quality media supply via our Trusted Marketplace. We help educate and enforce marketplace integrity, maintaining clear communication with clients and assuring compliance through regular audits.

 

 

People

We have more expertise and training than any other holding company. With 5,000 specialists around the world, we are the #1 most accredited agency for Google, Meta, Amazon, and more. Our people have exclusive and early access to platform and program training that give our teams a competitive advantage, and with offices in major global cities, teams share best practices and insights that make the entire community stronger and smarter.

Investing for future 

The five pillars of our Responsible Investment Framework—Brand Safety, Data Ethics, DE&I, Responsible Journalism and Sustainability—signal a new media era where scale serves clients through a commitment to make advertising work better for people.

​Ads seen in a brand-safe environment are critical for the credibility of connections with people. GroupM has long acted as an industry leader in managing brand safety across new and established media partners via collaborative shared technology solutions, and the establishment of measurement frameworks and standardized definitions. Some of those moments include the establishment of GroupM’s Display, Video, and Native & Outstream Viewability Standards, the launching of the RADAR Viewability & Brand Safety Benchmarking tool, and the creation of GroupM Premium Supply in the U.S.

For advertising to work better for people, brands must dedicate media dollars to supplier diversity that improves the ecosystem and drives positive societal change. GroupM supports publishers that reach more diverse audiences with sustainable initiatives supporting and reaching underrepresented voices and communities. GroupM has taken a critical stand over the last few years in support of the changing demographics around the world, especially inside the United States, in the form of various initiatives including The New Majority Ready Coalition, Multicultural Marketplace, and the Media Inclusion Initiative. 

Ethical and responsible media investment is the tip of the spear for our communities. We’re already seeing medium-sized and local news organizations close at alarming rates, leaving communities underserved and/or unserved by reliable, local news sources. Investing strategically in the right vehicles and placements helps rebuild credible news and publication ecosystems. In 2020, GroupM launched or helped to create the Global Local News Marketplace with local outlets across 31 countries and the Help Journalism PMP in partnership with TripleLift to curate a brand-safe environment to buy ads next to hard news content.

With ethics ranking three times more important to company trust than competence, binary decisions on whether or not data is “opted in” are no longer sustainable in our industry. GroupM’s data ethics philosophy is “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” and has long put consumers at the center of its data decisioning.​

As the calls grow louder to define the line between good and bad use of data, in February 2021, GroupM created the industry’s first-ever tool to provide a consistent approach to ethical decision-making concerning data-driven media tactics—The Data Ethics Compass. This global web app allows agencies to quickly and consistently evaluate data assets’ ethical risk levels across verticals and geographies.

In 2021, WPP announced a new commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions in its operations by 2025, and across its entire supply chain by 2030. Media placements have a carbon footprint and reducing a campaign’s carbon emissions is critical in creating a more sustainable ecosystem, advertising and otherwise. GroupM’s ambition is to assess and reduce media-related emissions through its footprint analysis and offset-approach tool.