GLOBAL — As artificial intelligence reshapes how consumers discover products, make purchase decisions, and interact with brands, marketers face a fundamental question: How best to evaluate the platform capabilities necessary to effectively connect advertisers with audiences in the AI era?
WPP Media addresses this question with the release of its Advertising Intelligence Framework, a comprehensive evaluation model designed to assess which global platforms are best positioned to deliver personalized, proactive, and pervasive advertising intelligence by 2030.
A common language for a transforming industry
The framework establishes five key capability categories that WPP Media believes will determine which players become primary sources of intelligence for businesses and consumers:
- Data Assets
- AI/Technical Capability
- Distribution
- Transaction/Commerce Capability
- Content/Media
Together, these five pillars provide a structured lens through which advertisers, agencies, and media owners can evaluate long-term competitive positioning in a rapidly evolving AI-powered ecosystem.
The report emphasizes that the future of advertising will increasingly involve not only human consumers making purchase decisions, but AI agents and bots acting on behalf of users to research, compare, and transact. Understanding which platforms are positioned to facilitate those interactions is critical for multi-year strategic planning.
Importantly, WPP Media clarifies that this framework does not argue for a purely programmatic, performance-obsessed world. Mass media, sponsorships, experiential marketing, and brand-building creative remain essential. Brand salience and emotional connection will continue to shape which options AI agents consider and which recommendations consumers ultimately accept.
Framework overview
The framework evaluates the capabilities necessary to own the future of “search” and intelligence — interpreted broadly as becoming the primary source of intelligence for the world’s businesses and consumers by 2030.
Category Weighting:
- Data Assets: 40 points (22.2%)
- AI/Technical Capability: 40 points (22.2%)
- Distribution: 40 points (22.2%)
- Transaction/Commerce Capability: 30 points (16.7%)
- Content/Media: 30 points (16.7%)
Total Possible Score: 180
Time Horizon: Five years out (2030), using current state to theorize future strengths and opportunities.
Analysis Date: February 2026, with quarterly updates planned.
Data assets: The foundational layer
Data Assets represent the foundational inputs that enable intelligence capabilities. This category measures the volume, quality, and variety of proprietary data companies possess about users, businesses, the physical world, and individual identities.
Scores in this category range from 15 to 35 out of 40, revealing significant capability gaps. While many companies have achieved baseline competency in data collection, few have built the comprehensive, multi-dimensional assets required for 2030.
Current Leaders:
- Behavioral leaders: Alphabet, Meta, ByteDance, Tencent
- Real-world leader: Alphabet
- Identity leaders: Apple, Tencent, Alibaba, Google, Microsoft
WPP Media advises advertisers to favor partners with persistent multi-modal signals and verified identity, prioritize transaction visibility for lower-funnel programs, and combine deep behavioral platforms with shoppable pilots for upper- and mid-funnel initiatives.
AI/Technical Capability: A compressed competitive field
AI/Technical Capability evaluates model development, infrastructure, and specialized algorithms that power personalized, proactive intelligence.
Scores range from 18 to 37 out of 40, signaling a compressed field and the rapid commoditization of foundation models.
Current Leaders:
- Frontier model development: Alphabet (Gemini 3), OpenAI (GPT + Sora 2), Meta (Llama 4 MoE), xAI (Grok 4.1)
- Infrastructure: Amazon (Trainium 3), Alphabet (TPU), Microsoft (Azure scale), Apple (device-side inference)
- Recommendation systems: ByteDance, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Tencent
Advertisers are encouraged to build multi-platform measurement frameworks, demand transparency into AI systems, and judge partners on real-world performance rather than benchmark claims.
Distribution: The widest capability spread
Distribution measures how companies reach users and provide access points for intelligence services — including hardware control, ecosystem leverage, and trust.
With scores ranging from 11 to 35 out of 40, Distribution shows the widest dispersion across all categories. Reaching billions of daily users requires decade-long ecosystem development that cannot be quickly replicated.
Google, Apple, and Meta emerge as globally scaled leaders, with Apple uniquely maintaining a presence in China among global giants.
For advertisers, hardware control and sensor ecosystems may become increasingly relevant, particularly in health, wellness, and location-based sectors.
Transaction/Commerce: Business model choices matter
Transaction Capability measures how companies monetize intelligence through commerce and advertising infrastructure.
Scores range from 10 to 28 out of 30, revealing a bifurcation between commerce-native platforms, advertising-native platforms, and others.
Only four companies score above 24, demonstrating the difficulty of excelling simultaneously in commerce infrastructure and advertising systems.
Advertisers are urged to focus on transaction visibility, closed-loop attribution, clean rooms, and AI-powered automation — while preparing for emerging on-device targeting and AI integration.
Content/Media: Table stakes, but few leaders
The Content/Media capability assesses how entertainment ecosystems create advertising opportunities and commerce integration.
Scores range from 7 to 26 out of 30. While most platforms now offer content, few have achieved exclusive IP-driven ecosystem lock-in combined with seamless shoppable advertising integration.
Alphabet/YouTube leads in engagement scale. ByteDance combines content scale with algorithmic recommendation. Amazon stands out for content-commerce integration.
Low-churn content environments, the report notes, create opportunities for repeated messaging and brand priming.
Strategic groups and marketplace positioning
The report categorizes major players into four strategic groups:
- Ecosystem Builders – Broad consumer reach and diversified monetization across at least three pillars (Alphabet, Amazon)
- Specialists – Deep strength in one or two pillars (Alibaba, Meta, Microsoft, Tencent, SpaceX/xAI)
- Challengers – Frontier or fast-moving players building toward full-stack capability (Apple, ByteDance, OpenAI)
- Hardware Heavyweights – Companies with significant device footprints but evolving services and monetization (Samsung, Xiaomi)
A fluid marketplace with multiple paths to success
WPP Media stresses that current rankings reflect February 2026 capabilities and are not destiny.
Two scenarios highlighted as potentially transformative:
- Tesla merging with SpaceX/xAI
- Meta acquiring Shopify
By 2030, WPP Media anticipates:
- 3–4 companies scoring 135+ with comprehensive intelligence capabilities
- 6–8 specialized platforms scoring 95–125
- Others unable to close fundamental gaps
The competition will be defined by strategic clarity, disciplined capital deployment, and execution excellence.
5 key questions for advertisers entering the AI era
- Do we own our customer intelligence, or are we renting it?
- Can our partners demonstrate incrementality and trustworthy off-platform conversion without direct commerce capability?
- Are our targeting strategies built to withstand shifts in privacy regulation through 2030?
- Do we have contingency plans if distribution drops suddenly among top partners?
- When AI bots make purchase decisions for consumers, will they recommend our products or services?
