Simon Thomas is a Strategic Analytics & Insight Systems Director for GroupM in EMEA, the world's leading media investment management company. Simon pursues and advances GroupM's investments in data & information, new technologies & systems, both driving innovation and playing the role of industry shaper. He manages GroupM's use of syndicated industry data sources & tools as well as many proprietary research data & analysis systems in EMEA.

Simon has spent over 30 years in the media industry, not just in the UK but in wider European contexts. This included a lot of time in Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic in the mid-1990s. His experience ranges across both the traditional and the emerging digital communication channels, with a focus on client ROI & commercial trading, especially for the measurement of audiences and aspects & impacts of consumer behaviours.

GroupM is the leading global communications & media investment management organisation of WPP’s media agencies including MAXUS , MediaCom , Mediaedge:cia , and Mindshare . With a 31% share of global media network business by billing, and 14,000 staff in 402 offices in 81 countries, we are industry leaders, working alongside WPP research companies such as Millward Brown & Kantar Media (TNS), and a host of leading companies in the emerging digital space. GroupM maximises the performance of our media agencies on behalf of our clients by operating as a parent / collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as research, trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, and proprietary tool development.   The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit our trading, innovation, and new communication services, bringing unfair competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.