WPP expands AI capabilities to boost brand performance with Sightly partnership
By Michael Bürgi • November 4, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
WPP, Digiday has learned, has partnered with analytics firm Sightly to tap its trace mentality platform that suggests say material targets in accordance to what marketers need their manufacturers to be connected with.
The pass indicators a technology of agencies striking AI to make exhaust of helping manufacturers abet themselves is upon us. And both preserving firms and unprejudiced agencies are going within the recreation. And similarly, in other breaking recordsdata, unprejudiced full carrier company Zambezi has launched an trace performance hole tool that helps manufacturers assess ways to reinforce trace-driven promoting to reach a $1 billion valuation threshold.
Each instruments utilize AI instruments to abet elevate out the requisite digging on behalf of manufacturers to take into account gaps and harness alternatives of their campaign work.
Sightly has evolved since its originate over a decade ago as a YouTube win firm of forms, and developed the Impress Mentality platform as a technique for manufacturers to align with social and recordsdata say material that parallel their trace identity. The take care of WPP represents a enhance in Sightly’s fortunes as it’s the first preserving company to register this ability. But publishers might perhaps per chance also exhaust the Impress Mentality platform to contrivance seemingly advertisers to their say material as neatly.
Adam Katz, CEO of Sightly, described the Impress Mentality providing, which he conceived, as a technique for a trace to input all its luxuriate in traits to attain a in fact thorough trace profile.
“We’re coming in with cultural exact-time recordsdata that might perhaps per chance be customized to a trace, might perhaps per chance be customized to a category, and strikes on the velocity of on the original time’s recordsdata,” mentioned Katz. “While you marry what a consumer believes — that deep rooted realizing — with our cultural inclinations and recordsdata, you might perhaps per chance luxuriate in magic. No company or trace anymore wants an insight that can’t be taken to motion.”
What makes this varied is the velocity with which it would possibly per chance be performed, to boot to the exhaust of an MCP server — model context protocol, which lets two AI brokers consult with every other, in simplest phrases.
WPP’s ardour is to inject Impress Mentality into the “cultural reflex machine” that the holdco has built, under the auspices of David Roth, a WPP exec with many titles, at the side of CEO of The Retailer — WPP, Europe, Center East, Africa & Asia, chairman of BrandZ and the BAV Team. The BAV Team is a storied see platform in WPP that, with Sightly’s skill to navigate the social and recordsdata spheres with detailed trace knowledge, has made for what Roth calls a first of its model solution. “This isn’t a technology legend, nonetheless it is some distance the enviornment’s first MCP integration of trace analytics and social recordsdata at scale,” he mentioned.
“I was continuously on the lookout in an effort to fuse trace recordsdata with what’s occurring within the social enviornment, and in an effort to place those two things collectively,” mentioned Roth. “So as to deliver, ‘OK, so here’s what trace appears to be address from a trace analytics level of view, and here’s what’s taking place on TikTok on YouTube, blooming in this second.’”
Janet Levine, head of invention at Mindshare and global approach lead for the company’s purchasers, mentioned she was drawn to Sightly’s providing in consequence of it’s the most fundamental solution within the marketplace that can achieve all these parts collectively. “To possess it multi functional region is functional,” mentioned Levine, whose purchasers consist of Unilever. “As an different of appropriate pulling at about a levers, we possess a full suite which is diagram extra compelling and competitive. Fusing the BAV, in consequence of whenever you possess it collectively, that’s the actual distinction maker, in assert that we can glimpse what’s taking place from a social level of view, nonetheless linking it to the trace attitudes and trace health, the general key dimensions of notify.”
Albert Thompson, head of digital innovation at Walton Isaacson, was an early advocate of Sightly, having dilapidated its knowledge of YouTube to make investments accurately for purchasers at the side of Lexus. Though the company doesn’t but exhaust Impress Mentality, he’s conversant in it and believes it takes marketing past its roots into enterprise-constructing. “Even though it feeds marketing as a self-discipline inherently and potentially can supercharge promoting, it’s a enterprise tool,” he mentioned. “There’s rather a lot of vitality in trace mentality, nonetheless no longer each person understands that, in consequence of planning is address, neatly, occupy in some gaps in my pondering, in consequence of I’m in planning mode.”
Speaking of enterprise constructing, Zambezi is making exhaust of AI to its original proprietary Zambezi Impress Performance Gap tool. The platform targets to place collectively a holistic trace health rating — all the diagram in which through product, enterprise, media, culture, and consumer — for client manufacturers against their high competitors, with the final unprejudiced to abet them reach a $1 billion enterprise threshold. It’s being applied to purchasers at the side of Traeger Grills, TaylorMade and others, to boot to a original enterprise tool in attracting original purchasers, mentioned Jean Freeman, Zambezi’s founder and CEO.
“We abet high-notify firms reach that next billion greenback house, and the promoting mix in fact changes from that standpoint as neatly,” mentioned Freeman. “They pass from no longer simplest acquisition, or a performance mindset and ROAs being the accurate barometer of marketing health to extra of constructing a trace, constructing that relationship with with your consumer. We abet them in fact notify a legend of why you’re [poised] for that next phase of notify, for that company evolution.”
Though the Impress Performance Gap isn’t but actively being dilapidated, Zambezi is rolling it out now and making exhaust of it to original enterprise pitches to stable original enterprise.
