Dive Brief:
- In an active year for acquisitions in the digital, media, marketing and technology sector, Dentsu and WPP lead the way with 13 deals each so far in 2015.
- The report analyzing the M&A activity didn't disclose what the total value of the companies' deals are, but the more than 500 overall deals in the first half of the year have an estimated value of $18 billion.
- Dentsu is more active this year than last, although WPP is slowing down its M&A activity.
Dive Insight:
The data comes from a report conducted by Ciesco and Experian analyzing 542 deals in the digital, media, marketing and technology sector over the first half of this year. While Dentsu's deal-making shows no signs of a slowdown, WPP appears to be cutting back on transactions. The 13 deals each company has closed compares to 10 deals by Dentsu over the same time-frame last year and 39 by WPP. The report projects full-year deal volume in media, marketing and technology for 2015 to exceed that of 2014, though transaction volume in the first two quarters was less than the year prior.
In other media M&A news, Japanese publisher Nikkei last week bought the Financial Times from Pearson for $1.32 billion.
Marketing technology has been a particularly active sector the last few years with mega deals from Oracle, IBM and Salesforce, as well as ongoing consolidation of smaller companies combining related products and services.
