WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell has said the emergence of data has significantly changed the world of advertising.

Speaking at the IAB’s MIXX conference in New York yesterday, an event that saw Australia sweep the board, Sorrell said he doesn’t want his company referred to as an “advertising” one.  

“I don’t like the word advertising,” Sorrell said at the IAB’s MIXX conference. “It suggests the legacy approach of media and art, not science. We want to be as aggressive in the science part of the business as we can possibly be. We’ve moved on from the days of Mad Men.”

Sorrell also took another swipe at rivals Publicis and Omnicom over their planned merger next year, something he said has less to do with data and more to do with legacy media.

 “They quote big data without really knowing what they’re talking about,”said Sorrell .