FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference: Sir Martin Sorrell on online ad spend, social media and Google

Speaking at today’s FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference, WPP’s CEO Sir Martin Sorrell said that clients were “missing a trick” by not investing more of their marketing budget in digital, but “the pace of change is so fast it makes it difficult.”

“Our clients worldwide are investing at 13% -14% in digital, but research tells us consumers spend anything between 20% -33% of their time in digital.”  Some of the disconnect he put down to CEOs – partly age, partly that “CEOs want their last five years in the role to feature relative calm” not change.

Digital is a highly measurable world, Sorrell stated, “but we haven’t cracked it yet, and WPP does not have enough software engineers”.  On the Right Media acquisition, Sorrell said it is “growing like topsy”.

He feels that social media has brought new opportunities for his PR companies (10% of WPP Worldwide).

Sir Martin also had plenty to say on Google – still a “frienemy” in his view.  “Google describes itself as a technology company (Matt Britten did exactly that later in the morning) but it is a media owner,” he said.

“Google is more of a threat now than a year ago… our view a while ago was that Google would focus on mobile search and it has… and it is also focused on how it can use [the reams of] predictive behaviour information it has.”

When asked about developments in Brussels last week, Sorrell said that WPP had not considered making a complaint, “but our clients have, as they want to see more balance and competition in search.”

If there was transparency (in search rankings) everything would be “hunkydory”, said Sorrell. When pushed by the chairman, it was clear he felt things were far from hunkydory right now.