Japanese advertising giant, Dentsu leads the list of acquisitions in the marketing services and technology space with 10 acquisitions across both marketing services and technology in the first nine months of this year. However, the "big six holding companies are on course to acquire fewer than half the number of agencies they bought last year," says a recent report by Results International.
There were 1,057 global deals in total in the first three quarters of 2019 up 16 percent compared to the same period in 2018.
Private Equity took three of the top five buyers positions, continuing to focus on ‘buy and build’ strategies, adding new capabilities to existing portfolio companies. Ranking third was Accenture, which leads the charge by some margin when it comes to management consultancies expanding their footprint in the marketing space.
With trade buyers continuing to seek to leverage data to know and engage with their customers at a hyper personalised level, and a continued flow of new entrants and new capital into the markets, there is likely to be continued interest within the marketing services and technology space in the foreseeable future, the report said.
Data-driven personalisation continues to attract more buyers beyond advertising holding companies, from apparel, to restaurants, through life science (Nike acquired AI-powered analytics company, Celect; McDonald’s acquired conversational AI, Apprente, its second acquisition in the space after Dynamic Yield in Q1 and Veeva Systems acquired healthcare marketing data & analytics rm, Crossix Solutions, for $430 million.
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