• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 13, 2017

Writing in The Telegraph over the weekend, Sorrell pointed out that the sector is going through some very tough times, but even so, The New York Times and Washington Post have managed to increase their subscriber numbers. The fact that Jeff Bezos has bought the latter is a sure sign that print's days are far from numbered, Sorrell suggests. He also points to research from Newsworks, the UK's newspaper trade body, which claims the success of a campaign can be trebled if print is used. Reading a newspaper, he affirms, is far more engaging than flicking through a social media feed. Interestingly, he points to Group M, WPP's media agency, as being platform agnostic and always determined to highlight the importance of print in any campaign.

The love for print is underscored by Sorrell referring to Google and Facebook "gobbling up" ad revenue, despite Facebook not counting video views accurately and Google doing little to provide a safe environment for brands to advertise in. A lack of action on ad fraud is also laid firmly at the doors of the American tech giants.

It does leave you wondering -- if the most powerful man in advertising is so in love with print, why is it having such a hard time? If his media-buying arm is so dedicated to extolling the virtue of newspapers, why are their numbers not looking wonderful? Has the message not got through? Is that why Sorrell is choosing now to pen an opinion article in The Telegraph to redress the channel's slide in revenue and circulation figures?

There is a lot of truth in what Sorrell says. Of course there is -- it would be hard to imagine a room where he isn't the smartest representative of adland. The accusations are accurately fired off at Facebook and Google, yet still they dominate the ad landscape.

I attended The Festival Of Marketing last Autumn in London where Sorrell spoke candidly about the rise of Google and Facebook. There was time in his conversation to fire off his well-repeated line that he didn't trust Facebook being both player and referee on video metrics. The underlying feeling I came away with was that he was talking about witnessing the rise of these tech giants that are so dominating the digital media landscape as two massive machines hoovering up all revenue before them. For anyone who wants competition and choice in where they buy their media from, that cannot be a good thing. Without explicitly saying it, this appeared to be what was on Sorrell's mind. 

So it would be very easy to see what the highest-paid man in advertising -- and any boardroom in Britain -- has written over the weekend as an opportune pop at Google and Facebook. There certainly is a big part of what he is saying that could be explained away at Sorrell -- always a fan of a headline -- getting in the limelight to point out some home truths about the two dominant digital forces. However, there is also, I think a seismic shift here for a return to advertisers being able to spend money, safe in the knowledge that it would actually appear in front of human beings and not next to an extremist video. Sorrell take time in his opinion piece to reference Keith Weed from Unilever recently reiterating the need for transparency and safety in digital advertising.

What better place for this than well-established newspapers with whom you can strike direct deals at scale, who offer reliable metrics and won't be carrying hate videos for your brand name to be seen as supporting?

Love or leverage? I reckon it's both. If you read his weekend column in isolation, leverage would be the first thing that comes to mind. Here he is telling Google and Facebook there is another game in town. Combine it with knowing what he has been saying repeatedly over the past couple of years -- only this time much more vociferously -- and you can see Sorrell is tapping into a change in mentality at clients who realise too much budget has gone the way of Google and Facebook without advertisers being convinced on fraud and brand safety. 

Let's look at the figures in a year or so to see whether his words have been backed up by action and newspapers are enjoying a financial revival. That will be the test of whether the WPP boss truly means more advertisers should be putting more budget in to newspapers, in print and digital, or whether this weekend was nothing more than a dig at the big guys in digital to remind them a holding company has other options.