McKinsey & Co acquires India's ETML

McKinsey & Company has acquired ET Medialabs (ETML), a performance marketing and analytics agency based in India. The acquisition is expected to strengthen McKinsey’s digital marketing operations and technology (DMOT) capabilities, optimising performance and return on investment (RoI). With ETML on board, McKinsey will have over 200 digital marketing analysts, performance marketers, and data scientists across two global hubs—Asia and Latin America.

“The ETML acquisition will help us enhance a critical strategic muscle in performance marketing that blends digital marketing expertise, tech-enabled capabilities, and a new operating model. For McKinsey’s India office, this is another step towards building high performance teams and growth platforms of the future,” said Rajat Dhawan, McKinsey’s India managing partner.

McKinsey partnered with ETML two years ago. Since then, the duo has conducted 20 pilot tests for over 15 clients from India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Japan. Commenting on his experience of working with ETML on client projects, Eunjo Chon, a McKinsey senior partner in Seoul, said, “Typically, it takes at least six to 12 months to see impact from digital marketing. We are seeing it immediately.”

ETML’s proprietary tool draws from over 100 analytics frameworks, machine learning models, and ad experiments conducted over ten years that enable monitoring across multiple data sets and various platforms. The company drives growth for scale-ups, unicorns, and multinationals, offering capabilities such as reducing ad waste and optimising budgets and campaign impact time. Its diagnostic-to-insight approach aims to slash down digital ad spend optimisation time by 66% and campaign impact time by 62%.

CMOs and marketing leaders who prioritise understanding their customers’ needs are seeing remarkable results—growing 28 percent faster than their peers. By gaining an in-depth understanding of what their customers want at every stage of the journey, they can better deliver on their promises. Succeeding in this arena demands a new digital marketing muscle that blends digital marketing expertise, tech-enabled capabilities, and a new operating model, stated the company in a press release.

“Rigorous performance management is a critical lever to drive any growth transformation and to deliver rapid impact for clients. That is where ETML, with its technical expertise in digital marketing-led scale-up and optimizing marketing spend, comes in,” said Vincent Cremers, a McKinsey senior partner and a leader of McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice.”

According to Sudipto Paul, partner and leader of McKinsey’s growth, marketing and sales practice in India, the combined entity will be better equipped to help clients maximise their digital investments, drive personalised customer engagement, and unlock sustainable growth.