To compete in a media landscape that is ‘more and more global’, Stagwell last week centralised media investment across all of its 70+ agencies with a new AI-powered platform.
The Stagwell Media Platform (SMP), launched on 9 July, is led by Matt Adams, who retains his role as global COO of Assembly, and Marissa Jimenez, who joins as global chief trading and solutions officer from Dentsu US.
The challenger holding group believes SMP will create ‘client advantage through a smarter use of scale in a fully addressable world.’ That means supporting agencies with trading strategy, audience and data modelling, global partner relationships and digital transformation tools. It does not, the group insists, taking over local decision-making.
‘The SMP is not executional on individual client plans,’ said Adams. ‘The SMP team is leading the global strategic partnerships required for the plans to be enriched and deeper for all clients. Every Stagwell agency has access to the SMP.’
SMP will work behind the scenes to help agencies secure better deals, access richer data and use the group’s scale more effectively. The press release describes it as being guided by ‘agentic principles’.
‘In the near future, we will see AI agents connect to publishers directly and remove some of the tech tax and manual work,’ Adams said. ‘This immediate audience and inventory available through agent-to-agent connection is where we are headed.’
The promise is faster optimisation, fewer intermediaries and ultimately a better return on investment, though it’s a vision that remains more aspirational than widely implemented. Many in the industry still see AI-powered media buying as a long-term bet, not a short-term fix.
Crucially, SMP will also have to prove it can deliver global consistency without flattening local nuance. A balancing act made more difficult by privacy laws, shifting identity frameworks and growing client expectations around transparency and control.
‘SMP is designed to create client advantage through a smarter use of scale,’ Adams said. ‘How we go about this in a “smarter” way is in how we work within the privacy framework of each country worldwide and provide benefit to our clients.’
‘We live in a world where media is more and more global with big tech companies dominating ad spend,’ Adams added. ‘We are better off working with these global partners through one lens.’
The launch represents something of a coming-of-age moment for Stagwell. Formed through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the group has often emphasised agility over centralisation. SMP is one of the clearest signs yet that Stagwell is maturing its infrastructure, but Adams insists it’s not a cultural U-turn.
‘It’s not a philosophical shift,’ he said. ‘This is not taking away from the brands and moving into a homogeneous mass. We believe in the power of many, we just believe that “many” is better together, and that is where this team helps all the agencies.’
