India the only market among WPP's top five to post growth in the first half of 2025

Overall revenue for the network was down by 7.8%.

Manifest Media Staff

Aug 7, 2025, 3:40 pm

Mark Read will be stepping down from his CEO position on 31 August.

India was the only market among WPP's top five to have witnessed growth in the first half of the year.

While overall revenue for the network was down by 7.8%, India saw growth of 0.1%. In the first of 2024, WPP's India business grew by 8.1%. However, its second quarter revenue dipped by 3.9%.

China declined by 16.6%, with WPP attributing that to client assignment losses and macroeconomic pressures.
Latin America (-2.7%), Middle East and Africa (-2.6%) also declined, while Central and Eastern Europe grew by 2.2%.  

Its biggest market, the USA, saw a decline of 2.3%. The UK saw revenue dipping by 6%. 

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Its overall revenue in the first half of the year was 6,663 million pounds.

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Mark Read, CEO, WPP, said, “It has been a challenging first half given pressures on client spending and a slower new business environment. We have, however, made significant progress on the repositioning of WPP Media, simplifying its organisational model to increase effectiveness and reduce costs. Meanwhile, the acquisition of InfoSum, the launch of Open Intelligence and the continued adoption of WPP Open all strengthen our data and technology capabilities."

He added, "The board is declaring an interim dividend of 7.5p ahead of a review of the strategy and future capital allocation policy which will be led by Cindy Rose, who succeeds me as CEO on 1 September. The priority is to drive sustainable growth supported by an appropriate level of financial flexibility while balancing returns to shareholders. WPP is a company with enormous strengths in creativity and media, technology and AI, talented people, deep client relationships and unmatched global reach. Throughout my seven years as CEO, technological innovation has been a constant and I believe that thanks to our investment in AI we can look to the future with confidence. I would like to thank our clients for their partnership and our people for their dedication and I wish them, and Cindy, every success in the future.”

 

Source: MANIFEST MEDIA

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