GroupM

GroupM is a U.S. based media investment group of the multinational Holding company WPP plc. GroupM is the world's largest media buying agency, as of 2023.

GroupM's headquarters are located at 3 World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan, and the company has subsidiaries in Asia, Australia, North America, and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Businesses associated with GroupM include Essence Global, Mindshare, Wavemaker, as well as the defunct media agency Maxus. GroupM's EssenceMediacom is the world's largest media agency network.

GroupM was highlighted in a US House Judiciary investigation in which documents show that GroupM has colluded behind the scenes to use its ad buying power to force advertisements be pulled from social media. Their email signatures include a rainbow GroupM logo and Black Lives Matter.

History
WPP plc formed GroupM in 2003 to unite Mediaedge:CIA and MindShare Worldwide.

In 2015, GroupM began requiring all media partners to acquire anti-piracy certification from the Trustworthy Accountability Group. In 2019, GroupM formed a coalition to help brands reach multicultural audiences. The company has a diverse media advertisement investment goal of five percent; an initial goal of two percent Black-owned media, set in 2021, was expanded in 2023 to include AAPI, Hispanic, and LGBT media.

Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in 2022, GroupM deemed Twitter a "high risk" platform. GroupM removed the classification in 2023, when Linda Yaccarino was named Twitter's chief executive officer (CEO) and the two companies collaborated on a brand safety project.

In 2022, GroupM debuted a carbon calculator to determine an advertisement's carbon output. The company also partnered with Good-Loop to launch an initiative to reduce the environmental impact of advertising spending. GroupM was the first agency holding group in Australia to offer carbon offsetting. The company formed a decarbonization coalition with 20 clients in 2022, and improved the calculator's accuracy in 2023.

In 2023, GroupM removed made-for-advertising sites (MFAs) from its programmatic businesses. The move "[set] a precedent" for the advertising industry, according to Digiday, and was an expansion of work by the company's team in the U.K., which maintained a list of approximately 6,000 domain names that were not MFAs. GroupM has also launched an initiative to help brands invest in quality journalism.

Operations and organizational structure
GroupM's 15-floor, 700,000-square-foot headquarters are located at 3 World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan. Prior to consolidation, GroupM had offices at multiple locations in Midtown, for various brands.

Irwin Gotlieb was CEO from GroupM's founding until 2012, when he became global chairperson until 2018. Subsequent CEOs included Dominic Proctor and Kelly Clark. Christian Juhl was appointed global CEO in 2019.

Subsidiaries
GroupM has subsidiaries in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, North America, and the U.K. In 2017, GroupM acquired a majority stake in MediaCom India, a joint venture established in 2007 by GroupM India and the Madison Media group's principal shareholder Sam Balsara. GroupM North America has approximately 6,000 employees and $17.6 billion in media investment billings in the U.S. and Canada, as of 2020–2022.

GroupM restructured management in 2016, in an attempt to consolidate media investment and platform services. In 2017, a reorganization eliminated the agency Maxus, transferring operations to Essence and MEC (now known as Wavemaker). GroupM continued with five media agencies, until 2022, when the company merged some of them to streamline operations. Essence and Mediacom merged to form EssenceMediacom, and Mindshare absorbed Neo. EssenceMediacom is GroupM's largest agency and the world's largest media agency network, with approximately 10,000 employees in 120 offices. The business manages advertisement billings of approximately $21 billion annually.

GroupM Entertainment was established in 2009 and later became Motion Content Group. It expanded into the U.S., and was rebranded as GroupM Motion Entertainment in North America in 2023. The business partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to support GroupM's Diverse Voices Accelerator.

WPP had merged 24/7 Media into Xaxis in 2013. In 2023, WPP acquired the London-based agency Goat, which was merged with GroupM's influence unit Inca to operate under GroupM Nexus.

Criticism
On November 28, 2023, WPP was fined for the third time for illegal advertising when the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information issued a Decision on administrative sanctions against WPP MEDIA LIMITED (GroupM).

The reason is that this business continues to have violations in its cross-border advertising service business activities. GroupM has committed the act of placing advertising products of PROCTER & GAMBLE VIETNAM COMPANY LIMITED and UNILEVER VIETNAM INTERNATIONAL COMPANY LIMITED on the YouTube social network channel with content that violates the law as prescribed in Clause 01, Article 8 of the Network security Law.

The total fine for GroupM is 35 million VND. Thus, in 2023, GroupM has been sanctioned 3 times by state management agencies for administrative violations for the same acts (2 previous times, GroupM was sanctioned for administrative violations for placing advertising products of Bayer Vietnam Co., Ltd. and Friesland Campina Vietnam Co., Ltd. into illegal content on the social network channel YouTube).

With repeated offenses, state management agencies also warn that in the coming time, there will be more drastic forms of handling if GroupM continues to have violations.