WPP is expanding its long-time collaboration with Optimizely, a privately-held tech vendor that sells SaaS applications for marketers.

WPP, the world’s largest advertising firm, has been using Optimizely’s software for close to two decades. The software supports the work of multiple large marketing agencies within the WPP corporate structure.

Optimizely’s suite of products includes a CMS that companies can use to store the product offers and other marketing assets displayed on their websites. Additionally, Optimizely’s software can be used to build checkout pages and search bars for online stores.

But the capability for which Optimizely is perhaps best known is A/B testing. An A/B test is an experiment in which a marketer creates multiple variations of a webpage, monitors them to see which one drives the most sales and then uses the winner as the new default version.

Optimizely’s A/B software is at the heart of its newly expanded partnership with WPP. Another major factor in the collaboration is Google Analytics, Google’s popular free service for monitoring website traffic. 

Google Analytics is currently being upgraded to a new version, dubbed GA4, that offers numerous feature enhancements. But while GA4 adds a large number of features, it removes an existing capability called Google Optimize that marketers can use to run A/B tests.

WPP plans to use Optimizely to fill the gap for clients. It will give them access to Optimizely’s A/B software, which is integrated with the new GA4 release of Google Analytics and can therefore replace Google Optimize.

The partnership also goes beyond A/B testing. WPP will give its clients access to all the key features in Optimizely’s SaaS portfolio, including its CMS.

The deal is a major win for Optimizely. 

As the world’s largest ad agency, WPP works with many Fortune 500 companies and numerous other deep-pocketed ad buyers. WPP’s plan to give its clients access to Optimizely’s software could open significant sales opportunities for the tech firm.

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