• by Joe Mandese , June 3, 2025

I poked a little fun at WPP Media this morning, describing its new "Open Intelligence" platform as "achieving the media Singularity," but in fairness, it's becoming increasingly impossible for a trade journalist like me to vet the black box claims made by any AI developer, even if they are one of the world's biggest media agencies.

Kudos to WPP Media for breaking it down into a one-minute sizzle reel, but the truth is I prefer stories that show/not tell how media agencies are innovating the marketplace.

It's one of the reasons we've named Omnicom our holding company of the year so many times. They have brought us in to see their developments from the earliest stages -- often just on background and all off-the-record -- until they were ready for prime-time. If you ask me, it's the best kind of story, because it's based on substance, not sizzle. But it's hard to do -- for both the source and the journalist -- and it requires patience.

In the meantime, we'll continue to cover what people say about what they can do, and show what they actually do whenever we can. Right now, WPP Media's YouTube hype man videos are the best we can do.

That said, the timing of WPP Media's Open Intelligence, and its "Large Marketing Model" framework, likely is no coincidence heading into the ad industry's biggest tent in a couple of weeks, and I'm sure "Open Intelligence" will be the talk of the Cannes Croisette.

It will be interesting to see what other big marketing- and media-related AI news gets broken there, but I'm already seeing that news cycle accelerating.

This morning I got a press release from startup Augmented AI announcing the launch of "Media AI," which it describes as "a breakthrough, agent-based marketing platform that reimagines how B2B marketers turn passive leads into long-term, high-value customer relationships."

Augmented AI had no sizzle reel, it had at least one testimonial proof point: “Media AI is a game changer,” stated Caitlin Reed, Chief Commercial Officer at Arc Network. “After working together with Augmented AI in the events space, expanding our partnership into Media has been incredibly rewarding. It’s helping us move beyond basic lead generation by delivering deep, actionable audience insights. It’s transformed us from being a data provider into a true full-funnel partner. We’re especially excited about how fast the agents learn and adapt, giving us the best recommendations for next steps which we can immediately use with clients.”

The rest of the announcement focused on the emergence of "agent-based marketing" as a new media services category that will offload "the heavy lifting onto the agents, so you can focus on your craft, stated Augmented AI Co-Founder Max Gabriel.

But perhaps the most interesting marketing-related AI news I received this morning, was a new report from Accenture that was more about consumer -- than industry -- adoption of AI.

The report, "Me, My Brand and AI," surveyed more than 18,000 consumers in 14 countries and found consumers increasingly are forming emotional bonds with AI chat assistants and other tools.

It found that more than a third (36%) of active users of AI platforms consider them to be a "good friend."

In fact, the study found that 93% of active gen AI users "have or would consider asking gen AI for help with personal development goals."

Can't wait to see what next year's Accenture study finds.