As recently speculated in Adweek, WPP Group has struck a strategic partnership with Twitter in the wake of rival Publicis Groupe’s own initiative with the online social networking and microblogging service.
WPP said the global alliance includes several of the holding company’s units, including media agency umbrella GroupM; consumer insights business Kantar and digital agencies including Wunderman. As part of the deal, which was led by WPP’s internal Data Alliance agency partnership, WPP said the companies will increasingly use Twitter data to “deliver more effective campaigns, enhanced marketing and more real-time insights to clients.”
In addition, the WPP alliance with Twitter will launch new data products and services, integrate Twitter data into WPP media and analytics platforms and train staff in the application of the new capabilities.
The joint efforts will help develop GroupM client investments on Twitter’s platform, particularly in markets where the service has seen rapid user growth in recent years, including Western Europe, Japan, Turkey, Mexico and Brazil in addition to the U.S.
In April, Publicis’s Starcom MediaVest Group signed a large advertising deal with Twitter, which public reports said was worth hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over multiple years. (The tech service and SMG declined to discuss financial details.) The Financial Times, which broke that news, said the deal includes special perks for SMG when buying ads on Twitter and using the tech platform’s data and audience for research purposes.
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