WPP Media MENA concluded its inaugural, groundbreaking NextM event in Dubai on Thursday. “The Canopy Effect” left the audience of senior clients and business leaders amazed and inspired by a tangible vision of a fully integrated, AI-driven media future. The event was widely praised for its exceptional production quality, the world-class calibre of its speakers, and its challenging, forward-thinking content that has shaken up the regional media landscape.
NextM: The Canopy Effct was crafted to explore the vast, interconnected media and marketing ecosystem, moving beyond conversation to demonstrate how to architect channels for success. The agenda featured globally leading futurists, AI experts from Satalia and WPP, behavioural specialists, and a live demonstration with a humanoid robot, showcasing a future that WPP Media is already building.
The day delivered a series of powerful sessions that mapped the future of marketing. Ted Lappas, a leading Data Scientist, demonstrated how Generative AI is becoming the central nervous system of modern marketing, unifying creative, media, and strategy. The call to action to NextM’s guests was to look inside your organization and identify one data source that could enrich the memory and contextual understanding of a foundational model like Open Intelligence.
Joseph Bradley, Fmr. CEO of TONOMUS, offered a look into the predictive environments of cognitive cities, challenging brands to move from reacting to behaviours to proactively shaping experiences. Bradley prepared us for a predictive future and emphasized that the next era of customer engagement embraces mutual learning and shared decision-making rather than control. Brands that give customers shared agency will win the battle for trust. He suggested brands and marketers should pick one moment in your customer journey and ask: “What would this look like if my customer, or their AI, had a real say?”. Redesign that step, as if you were building with them, not for them.
Damian Thompson, Global Head of Insight at choreograph and Marie Abiad, Regional Strategy Director MENA at Wavemaker, a WPP Media Brand co-presented how humans decide. Featuring cutting-edge research from WPP Media and Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Thompson and Abiad said effective brand growth requires abandoning generic media equations and embracing a nuanced, influence-first approach. This means prioritizing long-term brand priming by investing consistently in building consumer bias towards your brand. Their advice before entering 2026 is to review your media budget. Challenge your team to reallocate performance marketing spend to an upper-funnel activity designed to shape preference, not just capture existing demand.
Amazon’s Global Head of Display, Video, and Audio, Morgan Evans, architected a new framework for integrated multi-platform strategy. Media consumption isn’t linear anymore. When touchpoints are connected across the canvas, audiences engage more deeply. Evans advised to take your highest-performing video ad and brainstorm one simple interactive element you could add—like a poll or a clickable overlay—to invite your audience to participate in the brand story.
A dynamic panel on the New Currencies of Media featured moderator Laura Gleadhill, GM at Keyade, a WPP Media Brand and panelists, Terry Kane, MD at Trade Desk, Ramy El Kassisi Regional Business Director at DMS, and Salmeh Vakilian, Head of Endemic MENA at Amazon Ads. The learning was the health of the entire media canopy is more important than the performance of a single branch, but teams remain siloed. Collectively the panellists had a calling to the audience to urge them to identify one data source that could enrich the memory and contextual understanding of a foundational model like Open Intelligence.
Next, Snapchat’s EMEA Head of Science, Youmna Borghol lead a talk on the Roots of Effectiveness: Measurement for a Connected Future. . In today’s evolving landscape, no single measurement methodology can capture the full picture of performance. Real impact comes from combining execution, experimentation, and evaluation to understand what truly drives growth. Borghol said brands should embrace a holistic measurement approach – leveraging incrementality, advanced attribution, and marketing mix modeling to guide smarter budget decisions and evaluate long-term business outcomes.
The morning’s headline session provided a stunning finale. Perry Nightingale, SVP of Creative AI at WPP, took the stage with his humanoid robot, Oracle, for a live demonstration. The session revealed how WPP is integrating creative vision with robotic engineering to radically compress the media supply chain, proving that production costs can plummet while creative potential soars. The media supply chain is being radically compressed by new technology, making production faster and more cost-effective. Nightingale suggested the next step for the marketer is to identify the single most expensive or time-consuming element in your creative production workflow. Research one AI or automation tool that could reduce that friction by just 10% on your next project.
NextM firmly established WPP Media as the region’s essential partner for navigating the AI era. The event was a powerful, real-world demonstration of their new identity, launched in May 2025, which unites media, data, and production, all connected by our AI-powered marketing system, WPP Open.
NextM 2025 was made possible by our esteemed partners: Amazon Ads, Snap Inc., The Trade Desk, DMS, and DV.
