In the world of marketing, artificial intelligence tends to get the most attention when it is featured prominently in splashy creative advertising campaigns from big brands like Coca-Cola and Nike.
But at WPP—whose client roster includes Google, L’Oréal, LVMH, and Mastercard—Chief Technology Officer Stephan Pretorius says the advertising giant’s big “mic drop” moment has been the soaring adoption of WPP Open, an AI-enabled operating system that’s used by marketers to plan, create, and run campaigns. More than 85,000 of the agency’s 108,000 employees are using WPP Open on a monthly basis today, up sharply from 30,000 in February 2024.
“Getting that balance right and making sure that humans are in control of the output and that they evaluate and apply taste and judgment, but also that the thought process is expanded and augmented—so you don’t become like a passive passenger in the process—is really critical,” says Pretorius.
Pretorius says WPP has embraced three levels of AI training to get the workforce ready for these AI tools. At the entry level, WPP runs a creative technology apprenticeship program, which it recently expanded under the company’s five-year, $400 million partnership with Google. The program aims to train 1,000 creative technology apprentices over the next three years, helping college graduates learn about AI and other technologies before they join one of WPP’s agencies.
WPP also offers AI learning programs for more senior staff, including courses that teach the basics of generative AI and the appropriate use of AI in media planning and creative ideation. At the senior level, executives are expected to take “AI and business diploma” courses.
“You’ve got to do it continuously and you have to do it very purposely,” says Pretorius of the AI upskilling programs that he says need to be conducted on an ongoing basis. “I think it’s a tall order to expect people to know how to work with AI. Everyone’s still figuring it out.”
Ad agencies like WPP have increasingly embraced generative AI capabilities to support creative ideation, research, and to develop of content for their clients, with the hopes that the technology will both speed up production and ultimately lower costs. Three out of four ad industry executives say that their companies are using these tools in 2025, up from from 61% the prior year, according to a survey conducted by research firm Forrester.
But, like most other industries, these AI investments are for now a net cost for agencies. The cost of business—which Forrester defines as generative AI capabilities funded by a creative agency without passing those costs on to clients—grew 83% in 2025. Only 7% were able to sell generative AI capabilities as a separate service outside what these agencies have traditionally offered.
WPP has been making the pitch that its AI tools can generate meaningful savings. WPP Open, which uses technology from multiple providers including OpenAI’s GPT and DALL-E, Google’s Gemini family, and Anthropic’s Claude, gives teams of four 14 hours “back,” meaning time saved on the work being done by creatives. That would translate to roughly 90 days of saved “capacity” every year. WPP is also hoping to make WPP Open more alluring to external customers through the October launch of WPP Open Pro, a version of the platform that allows brands to plan, create, and publish their own creative campaigns independently.
The company’s workforce has also created more than 75,000 AI agents by the end of 2025. Pretorius says he’s encouraged experimentation on that front, rather than a top-down mandate dictating which agents should be used across the various business units. That’s allowed teams to build AI agents that even Pretorius says he couldn’t have predicted.
“I think one does have to take a kind of expansive view of this,” says Pretorius. “Empower as many people in the business with general-purpose tools that you teach them how to use. And then, let the collective intelligence flourish.”
The pressure to get AI right comes as major agencies have been shedding jobs. Omnicom cut 4,000 jobs in December, while WPP’s Ogilvy shed 5% of its workforce in June. When WPP reported third-quarter revenue softness and revised its full-year organic growth target to a more bearish outlook, forecasting a decline of 5.5% to 6%, CEO Cindy Rose, called the performance “unacceptable.” The agency has said it would implement a restructuring to make the WPP more streamlined. Investments in technology are expected to be central to help return the business to growth.
Pretorius is an optimist when it comes to the changes AI will bring to advertising. These tools can help marketers generate more content, with greater personalization for different consumer groups, and do so at the same level of investment that was made without AI, he claims.
“If you shy away from it, pretend it’s not existing, and pretend you can work the way you used to work…you will lose the business,” says Pretorius. “And other people will eat your lunch.”
John Kell
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