The lawsuit between former GroupM executive Richard Foster and WPP is full of competing allegations. But buried in the court filings is a set of numbers — drawn largely from GroupM’s own internal documents — that tell a story worth understanding on its own terms.

Here’s what the data actually shows, broken down by what it refers to.

How big GroupM was (and how it allegedly made money)

At its peak, GroupM controlled roughly $60 billion in annual client advertising spend, giving it between 20% and 50% market share in key global markets. That scale was the source of its power: the more client money it aggregated, the better the deals it could extract from media vendors.

• $60 billion — GroupM’s annual client ad spend at peak
• 20-50% — GroupM’s market share range across global markets
• $3-4 billion — Foster’s estimate of rebate-driven deals generated over five years
• $1.5-2 billion — amount Foster alleges GroupM improperly retained
• $1 billion — GroupM’s annual net sales from non-product related income (rebates, services, purchase risk inventory), per the Project Claridges deck
• 15% — internal year-on-year growth target for that non-product income

Client opt-in data (top 30 U.S. billing clients, 2023)

According to internal documents now in the public court record, a significant portion of GroupM’s income came not from client fees but from what it recorded as “non-product related income” — a line item that bundled rebates, services, and proprietary inventory deals.

• $13.4 billion —...

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