WPP CEO Offers Outlook on Advertising's Future

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WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell identified three areas where the company is placing its bets for growth in coming years: a geographic shift in power, the rise in new media, and an increased focus on marketing information and insights.

"There's a shift in power, which I still don't think we fully understand here standing in New York, from the West to the East -- and modify that to the South," said Sorrell, keynote speaker at ad:tech New York, referring to China and India in the East and Latin America in the South. "Every single client we deal with is focusing on these parts of the world for growth."

Sorrell said he also expects online marketing budgets to catch up with consumer use of new media. Currently, clients spend about 12 percent of their marketing budgets online, he said. Yet consumers spend 20 to 28 percent of their time online.

Why isn't more money invested in online marketing? It's generational, he said. "People who run media agencies tend to be an older vintage. They tend to be resistant to change," he said. Executives approaching retirement age don't want to spend the last three or four years of their careers dealing with massive change, he said.

A third area of growth, he predicted, involves marketing information services. With that in mind, WPP last year acquired TNS.