LLM vs. LMM: What’s all the Buzz About?

Media Minute is WPP Media's series, specifically crafted to empower our clients and marketers for their intelligence era.

You might have heard us talking a lot lately about something pretty exciting: Open Intelligence, our new AI-powered data solution.  And along with that, we've been dropping the term the world’s first Large Marketing Model (LMM), not to be confused with Large Language Models (LLM). 

Now, if your brain immediately went, "Wait, are those the same thing? Did the WPP Media Marketing team just make a typo?” - Good question. Let’s break it down. 

We know that LLMs process vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like language. While traditional LLMs are text centric, multi-modal models involve AI systems that process and understand multiple types of data, such as text, images, audio, and video. In the context of marketing, this can extend to understanding customers, audiences, channels, and creative. 

What Exactly Is a LLM?

Imagine a foundational Large Language Model (LLM), trained on literally trillions of data signals from across the global ecosystem. This profound intelligence then powers bespoke models specifically designed for your brand: insight, audience, activation, and measurement. Dynamically tailored to your strategic goals and then deeply trained on your own first-party customer data – without moving any data.

An LLM continuously compares all consumer signals (not just IDs) – including content, identity, geography, interest, behavior and context. This deepens your understanding from what people are searching for, how they interact with content, to what they say on social media, and even their physical world behaviors.

AI finds hidden consistencies in diverse data sets, sharing information without sharing data, and activating in each channel based on the predicted recipe for success. This translates your growth audiences and objectives into feature combinations that you’ll be able to optimize toward different platforms and channels – across broadcast & CTV, publishers, platforms, commerce and exchanges.

From LLM to LMM: Marketing Grade Intelligence 

Now think of an LMM as your brand's very own, super-intelligent marketing guru. LMMs create highly optimized and personalized marketing insights tailored for specific audiences, channels, and campaign goals.  

Start with a massive, AI-driven knowledge graph organized to show relationships, representing real-world knowledge in a structured way. This graph is trained specifically for marketing, not random web content, and powered by a vast network of 350+ premium data and media partners. It processes trillions of signals to optimize audience campaigns and drive business outcomes at speed and scale. It’s not enough to just say you’re using AI. In order for you to truly harness the power of AI, you need to be working with data that will provide intelligence around your business goals - hence the LMM. 

More than generating just insights, LMMs help you understand the “why” behind your audiences actions, fueling performance. Bespoke marketing models are generated specifically for your brand. They dynamically tailor your strategic goals and trained using your own first-party customer data – again, without moving any data.  

Open Intelligence is Different 

This isn't just about better data; it's about actionable intelligence. Use that intelligence to seamlessly activate across all channels – earned, owned, paid, and shared, including those crucial walled gardens – in hours, not weeks. Imagine the agility this brings to your campaigns, allowing you to react to market shifts and consumer trends almost instantly – allowing your data to stay secure, and your insights become richer. 

This isn't just an incremental improvement; it's a fundamental shift. We are redefining what's possible in marketing, moving beyond the limitations of the past to a future of intelligent, privacy-preserving, and highly effective consumer engagement.