e4m@Cannes:  User-made content set to rule ad revenues this year: Kate Scott-Dawkins, WPP Media

As global uncertainties continue to weigh on business decisions, WPP Media’s Global President – Business Intelligence, Kate Scott-Dawkins, speaks with Neeta Nair of IMPACT at Cannes Lions 2025 about the revised global ad growth forecast, the evolving content economy, and how markets like India continue to stand out amid a shifting media landscape.

In this wide-ranging conversation, she unpacks the broader impact of the GroupM-to-WPP Media transition, the increasing role of AI in shaping agency decision-making, and why brand investment remains essential despite economic volatility.

Notably, Dawkins highlights a key industry turning point: for the first time, user-generated platforms are projected to overtake professionally produced content in ad revenue, a signal of how deeply decentralised content creation is now reshaping global media strategies.

Excerpts:

You've just revised the growth forecast for 2025 to 6% from 7.7%. What are the factors that led to it?

There’s been a lot happening on the geopolitical and economic stage recently. We last released our forecast in December, which is when we called for 7.7%. For the most part, large advertisers are maintaining their plans and budgets. But we felt that the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs has created a sense of instability in the market, and that has limited how much businesses and consumers are willing to invest in the future. Leading to a downgrade for the year, although we're still expecting mid-single-digit growth.

According to you, the content economy is going to be contributing to a fair bit of the media spend this year. Elaborate on that.

Content-driven ad revenue is the largest category we report on, including social, TV, audio, print, and more. It lets brands benefit from the equity of the content they advertise within. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a shift from professionally produced to user-generated content. This is the first year, by our estimate, where ad revenue from user-generated platforms will outpace that of professionally produced content. We’re seeing continued decentralization of content across these platforms.

To what extent will this revised forecast really impact India? Is India a silver lining for WPP Media?

India is one of our top 10 markets and the second fastest-growing after Brazil. It’s exciting given the population size, its youth demographics, and how deeply technology is embedded in daily life. So, we’re expecting continued high single-digit growth there. India and Brazil remain the fastest-growing among the top 10.

I remember, India to be the only market among your top five that actually registered a 5.5% growth rate last quarter. What were some of the factors behind this performance?

Last year was a bumper year. Several cyclical events lined up, the Olympics, and elections across the world. For our global forecast, we usually strip out US political spending, since it's such a large number, roughly the size of Australia in a major election year. But overall, most markets, including India, benefited from that in 2024. Our revised figure for last year is 9.7%.

We have seen some recent accounts being lost by WPP Media, like Mars and Coca-Cola in North America. What’s the strategy going forward?

My work is really focused on the industry as a whole, and we look at how categories like CPG are behaving overall. Many of them have applied lessons from the COVID period on what to do when input prices rise or inflation hits. They’ve learned the importance of continuing to communicate with customers to maintain brand loyalty. So even in a year like this, with ongoing uncertainty, which isn’t new for many advertisers, I think there’s a stronger understanding of why brand investment remains critical, just as it has been over the past few years.

While going through one of Mark Read’s speeches in India, I noticed him speaking on AI being a transformative force across agencies. How is it influencing behaviour and decision-making at WPP Media?

I’ve said this before, advertising was probably the most AI-integrated industry even before this wave. We've been using natural language processing, machine learning, and algorithms in tools from Google, Meta, and within WPP for nearly a decade. Now, we’re at an inflection point with generative AI like ChatGPT and Gemini. That’s the next wave of innovation that clients and agencies are watching closely. What’s important now is being conscientious in how we implement AI, ensuring explainability, transparency, and alignment between human goals and what AI delivers.

The transition from GroupM to WPP Media is a big shift. As this integration progresses, how do you see the roles of media agencies evolving? Will they be repurposed to fit into this new structure?

There will always be a need for advisors — people who deeply understand and care about a client’s business. That role becomes even more critical as the world grows more complex, with trends like potential de-globalization. Whether clients have loads of first-party data or none at all, the tools and technologies WPP is building will be crucial. They’ll help transact in a more fluid, privacy-first way, which is becoming essential everywhere.