Bankers and M&A advisors say advertising and marketing acquisition deal flow picked up in the second half of 2024 after a slow start, and they’re expecting a flurry of activity in the new year.
“It feels like the tide has turned,” said William Ritchie, managing director of M&A advisory firm WY Partners.
Some in the industry told BI they think Omnicom’s planned $13.25 billion deal to buy Interpublic Group will be a lightning rod for further ad industry M&A in 2025.
Key areas of buyer interest include the fast-growing retail media and streaming TV sectors, influencer marketing, and the implementation of data and AI. Private-equity buyers will also likely remain active in the space, industry insiders said.
“Everyone is looking for the glue that ties together some of the components,” said Charles Ping, managing director of the Winterberry Group management consultancy.
Business Insider spoke with around a dozen advertising, marketing, and adtech industry executives, investors, bankers, and advisors, who speculated about the deals they think could happen in 2025 and beyond. Some of the people were granted anonymity to protect business relationships; their identities are known to BI.
Accenture could go revenge shopping
Matt Lacey, partner at M&A advisory group Waypoint Partners, said the combination of Omnicom and IPG may leave Accenture feeling “vulnerable.” Its Accenture Song creative marketing group could look to acquire a new asset in areas like data and media, “where it has limited capabilities,” he said.
Brian Wieser, analyst at Madison and Wall, wrote in a recent note to clients that Accenture Song is arguably the “world’s largest marketing services business” — at least until Omnicom and IPG come together. It marked “high single-digit growth” during its most recent quarter, faster than its agency holding company peers, Wieser noted.
Accenture has been a consistently active acquirer of advertising and marketing businesses in recent years. In April, it acquired the customer-engagement agency Unlimited to boost its customer-relationship management offering. In June, it bought the Brazilian creative agency Soko.
Another area of interest for Accenture Song is the experiential marketing space, a person familiar with its strategy told BI.
“Experiential is going to be hot in 2025,” this person said. “The sheer fact that people are coming out and younger generations don’t just want to be in a digital world, they want social connections. You can do a significant amount of innovation in the integration between tech and real-world settings.”
AppLovin could swoop for deals while its stock is riding high
“Everyone is looking at AppLovin,” said Alex Iosilevich, partner at Alignment Growth, which invests in media and entertainment companies. “The expectation is they’ll be acquisitive.”
As BI reported this month, AppLovin’s stock has been soaring, and it’s been trading at a market value above $100 billion. Investors have been wowed by its move into e-commerce, which has opened up a new and lucrative pool of advertisers beyond its mobile gaming roots.
While AppLovin’s executives have said M&A isn’t part of the company’s near-term growth strategy, that hasn’t stopped industry insiders from speculating about its next move.
“I think they should buy someone like Snapchat and get a foothold in the social space,” said Alex Merutka, a former early AppLovin employee and now CEO of the adtech company Craftsman+.
Other ad industry insiders said AppLovin could further expand into connected TV, adding to its 2022 acquisition of Wurl, a company that helps publishers distribute and monetize their video content on TV screens.
Connected TV presents a “massive area to unlock SMB budgets to play in TV ads,” said Tom Triscari, CEO of programmatic advertising advisory firm Lemonade Projects.
Criteo could be bought or go shopping itself — or both
Criteo has long been the subject of takeover speculation. Reuters reported in early 2023 that the company had appointed investment bank Evercore to explore its strategic options.
News that Criteo’s CEO Megan Clarken is planning to exit the company next year also fueled rumors that a sale could be in the cards. Digiday listed The Trade Desk, Microsoft, Walmart, Publicis Groupe, and WPP’s GroupM as logical suitors.
Triscari of Lemonade Projects said it could be equally possible that Criteo itself makes a transformative acquisition.
“Criteo has retail media, the second best shopper dataset to Amazon, and better adtech than Amazon,” Triscari said. “All they need is an access point to CTV inventory. Very doable with some creative options out there.”
It’s also possible that Criteo might want to double down on retail media tech. Digiday reported this summer that Criteo had been in talks to acquire Skai, a marketing platform that specializes in retail search advertising, among other things. Skai recently laid off 80 employees, Israeli news site Calcalist reported this month, which could signal the company is preparing for a sale.
Havas listing could spur deals
French advertising group Havas listed on the Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam this month, separating from its parent company Vivendi.
The company has said it will continue a “disciplined approach to acquisitions,” with a plan to target high-growth markets and areas like data analytics, digital transformation, and AI.
“They look at everything right now,” Ritchie of WY Partners said.
Havas had a busy 2024 with the acquisitions of the data firm DMPG, the B2B marketing company Ledger Bennett, the Australian media agency Hotglue, and the social-media agency Wilderness, among others.
IAS could get taken private
As BI reported earlier this year, KKR and other private-equity buyers are weighing a deal to acquire the publicly traded ad-verification firm Integral Ad Science. KKR and IAS declined to comment at the time.
Bloomberg first reported that IAS had appointed the investment bank Jefferies to explore its options after receiving inbound takeover interest.
A take-private deal could help IAS grow further without the quarterly Wall Street scrutiny.
Speaking generally about the adtech industry, Winterberry’s Ping said, “There are many companies that don’t have access to the capital that they imagined they would when they listed, and it’s hampering their growth, particularly if they have a global outlook.”
Take-private deals can unlock new capital while also offering some value back to shareholders, he added. Ping pointed to Mediaocean’s $500 million acquisition of the CTV advertising and analytics firm Innovid, and advanced-TV ad company Cadent’s $324 million acquisition of performance marketing company AdTheorent, as recent examples of this trend.
PE-backed independent agency groups could make big moves
The consolidation of Omnicom-IPG could open up more opportunities for private-equity-backed independent ad agencies like DEPT, Horizon Media, PMG, Tinuiti, and Wpromote, according to Forrester VP and principal analyst Jay Pattisall.
“Anticipate more growth in independents’ innovation investments and more focus in their proposition to compete with the global consolidation of marketing scale at Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP,” Pattisall wrote in a recent blog post.
Private equity and private-equity-backed transactions were responsible for about a third of deal volume in the agencies, consultancies, and technology service provider sectors in the year to mid-November, according to the advisory firm SI Partners.
Some might seek new investors, given where they are in their private equity investment lifecycles.
DEPT, which sold a majority stake to Carlyle Group in 2020, is expected to be in the market for a new investor next year, multiple industry sources told BI.
US media agency Horizon Media could also be in play, since Temasek, the investment firm that bought a minority share in 2021, will want an exit at some point, said David Morgan, executive chairman of TV-ad-buying company Simulmedia. Last month, the company added a full-service creative agency to its ranks, hinting at ambitions to become a bigger global network.
Talent agencies like CAA, Wasserman, and UTA will be jockeying for influencer experts
M&A insiders said talent agencies are gearing up to make deals in order to broaden their offerings beyond traditional talent management.
Influencer specialists are top of the shopping list, these people said.
“You have this melding — where does influencer live in the context of things like TikTok Shop, or Instagram?” said Bob Morris, managing partner of the M&A advisory firm Bravery Group. “We hear over and over that talent agencies are looking for different models and sets of mechanics.”
Talent agencies are also looking to become more data-centric to identify which influencers drive sales, Morris said. Influencers and other affiliate marketers drove 20% of US Cyber Monday e-commerce revenue this year, according to Adobe Analytics.
There are plenty of interesting targets on the market. In 2024, 17 creator-focused startups raised at least $10 million in new funding, totaling over $900 million.
Could The Trade Desk buy Roku?
The Trade Desk this year announced a forthcoming connected-TV operating system called Ventura, which it said is designed to make the buying and selling of streaming TV ads more efficient.
Ahead of the launch, The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green had batted off speculation that it planned to rival Roku — saying that it wanted to continue to partner, not compete with the TV platform.
In separate notes to investors, analysts at Guggenheim and Needham both wrote that they thought it likely that The Trade Desk could eventually acquire Roku to advance its TV ambitions.
“It’s almost impossible to build these” TV platforms now, Needham analyst Laura Martin said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. Roku has 85 million homes watching four hours of TV a day on average, which would open up a large engaged audience and lots of first-party data to The Trade Desk’s advertisers.
All eyes are on WPP’s next move
WPP was already licking its wounds after rival Publicis Groupe hired Snoop Dogg to help promote that it had become the world’s largest advertising holding company. The coming together of the third and fourth biggest firms, Omnicom and IPG, is set to push WPP further down the pile.
“It will put even more pressure on Mark Read,” WPP’s CEO, said David Jones, CEO of rival ad firm BrandTech Group. “And, it will bring renewed interest from the investor community.”
WPP insiders and observers had already speculated for more than a year that the company might be taken private by a private-equity firm or that it might announce its own merger with another holding company.
But some industry insiders now think it’s more likely that divestitures are on the cards.
“I think WPP is too big of a buy to go private, but I think they will have a divestiture plan that they are going to execute on in areas that are not high performing, and not sexy enough for the public markets,” said Andreas Roell, the CEO of Evros Group, which advises on media deals. Case in point: WPP in August sold its majority stake in FGS Global to the private equity firm KKR in a deal that valued the public affairs and communications group at $1.7 billion.
In a recent memo to employees, Read said the Omnicom-IPG deal was “good news” for WPP, AdAge reported. He said WPP would double down on its strategy around creativity, data, AI, and tech, “while our peers are distracted and turning inward.”
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