These days, advertising flourishes on acquisitions and so the state of the acquisitions and agency mergers can reveal details about the wider industry. A new report has been published by JEGI and Clarity, the investment banks that are based in New York City and London respectively. The companies have worked together for four years on media deals and look at how things were changing.
The study shows the trends. First, there is an increasing range of buyers beyond the big six advertising holding groups. Next, the sellers are varied as there is a broad spread of the marketing disciplines. Also, the lines that exist between the disciplines are blurring. The M&A market is globalizing as it is fueled by technology and the buoyant economic conditions.
A partner at Clarity, Marcus Anselm, who worked on Walker Media sale to Publicis Groupe and also for Adam & Eve to Omnicom stated that the list of buyers would be X number of names that many people would have heard of before give years. Now, the list of names is bigger with the consulting firms, software companies, accountancy giants, and so on. Most of them are in many locations.
The Big Six ad holding groups still drive takeover activity and purchased 116 agencies in the last year, as per the report. This number of deals dropped from 132 in the year 2014.
The biggest group in Big Six, WPP, maintained its position at the top acquiring 44 agencies in the last year. This includes Exchange Lab, and Essence, but the number was 64 in the year 2014.
Dentsu surpassed Publicis becoming the second most active player. It is also the fifth biggest ad group in the world. In the past eight years, WPP, Dentsu and Publicis stood out as the most acquisitive besides Interpublic, Omnicom, and Havas.
