February 2015 Publicis buys Sapient
Click the plus sign for more information
2015
2016
2017
September 2015 Innocean Worldwide and Horizon Media launch Canvas Worldwide
2018
July 2018
S4 acquires MediaMonks
August 2018
Omnicom takes majority stake in Credera
September 2018
WPP merges legacy creative and digital shops Y&R and VML
October 2018
IPG acquires Acxiom
May 2019
Accenture buys Droga5
July 2019
Publicis buys Epsilon
December 2019
WPP sells majority stake in Kantar
November 2018
WPP merges J. Walter Thompson and Wunderman
2019
2020
October 2020
Serviceplan Group buys stake in Pereira O’Dell
August 2021
MDC Partners and Stagwell merge
WPP buys AI tech firm Satalia
September 2021
Publicis buys CitrusAd
Plus Company launches
May 2022
Publicis buys Profitero
June 2023
Dentsu buys Tag Worldwide
October 2023
Stagwell buys AI-focused Left Field Labs
Burrell Communications is acquired by PE firm, breaking from Publicis
June 2022
Dentsu consolidates creative shops under one network
October 2022
Interpublic buys 84% stake in RafterOne
January 2023
WPP merges media agencies MediaCom and Essence
May 2023
Adam&eveNYC and DDB New York merge
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
January 2024
Omnicom buys Flywheel
Three iconic agency brands disappear in VML merger
IPG sells Deutsch New York and Hill Holliday
Stagwell buys Team Epiphany
March 2024
Barkley and OKRP merge
July 2024
Publicis buys Influential
November 2023
Globant invests in Gut
Stagwell buys Movers+Shakers
September 2016 Dentsu takes majority stake in Merkle
September 2024
Publicis buys Mars United Commerce
December 2024
IPG sells Huge to PE firm
Omnicom and IPG announce proposed merger
January 2025
Publicis merges Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide to form Leo
Publicis buys Sapient
Price: $3.7 billion
Publicis’ $3.7 billion acquisition of Boston-based digital network Sapient, completed on Feb. 6, 2015, was a landmark deal that has set the French holding company up for success today, even if it wasn’t necessarily appreciated in its time.
Publicis first announced its plans to acquire Sapient in 2014, with former CEO Maurice Levy calling it at the time “a ‘crown jewel,’ a one-of-a-kind company born in the technology space with strengths in marketing, communications, consulting and omni-channel commerce, all of which are equally important to best help clients achieve their digital transformation.”
The company did endure considerable growing pains in integrating Sapient, which some in the industry were quick to criticize at the time. Jay Pattisall, Forrester principal analyst and VP, said learning those lessons early, and implementing the integration no matter how messy, was necessary and helped Publicis more seamlessly integrate later acquisitions including Epsilon in 2019, its big bet on data.
“It took longer than anticipated and there were complications along the way,” Pattisall said, “some of them about technologies and systems, some of them about internal structure and remit. [But] that experience was very good for people, in that when it came to the Epsilon acquisition, [Publicis] had learned from those lessons.”
The deal set the stage for the rest of the industry, as other holding companies followed suit with similar acquisitions.
“The Publicis-Sapient deal set the tone for holding companies to move beyond content and media. It was an important reference point for the need for diversification,” said Greg Paull, principal and co-founder of consultancy R3. “Others have since followed, whether it is Publicis’ investment in Epsilon, Interpublic’s Acxiom or Omnicom’s Flywheel.”
Sapient also has a massive presence in India, with production and engineering capabilities, which has afforded Publicis offshoring opportunities and cost savings. Pattisall said there are around 20,000 technologists and engineers that sit within Sapient in India.
“As they say, hindsight is 20/20,” Pattisall said. “And we now see that Sapient was a key Publicis Groupe acquisition, giving Publicis much-needed and critical engineering, systems integration and technology consulting capabilities that have benefited the holding company immensely.”
Innocean Worldwide and Horizon Media launch Canvas Worldwide
Horizon Media’s joint venture with Hyundai-backed agency Innocean, forming Canvas Worldwide, a separate standalone media shop, brought in a massive new automotive client and helped expand the independent media agency’s global footprint in 2015.
Following the deal, Canvas accrued the media business for Hyundai Motor Group's U.S. brands, valued at the time at $700 million.
Innocean was the majority stakeholder, with an initial 51% stake in Canvas Worldwide. Innocean would eventually buy Horizon’s stake out in April 2022, giving it complete ownership of the media agency that continues to service Hyundai, but also other clients including Starz, MGM Studios, McDonald’s, Dolby Laboratories and Zillow, per the agency’s LinkedIn.
Dentsu takes majority stake in Merkle
Price: $869 million
Dentsu’s investment in performance marketing firm Merkle in 2016 was the next significant move for a holding company deepening its digital and technology chops. Dentsu initially bought a 68% stake for $869 million. Under the deal, the Japanese holding company was given the ability to boost its stake down the road—which it did in April 2020, buying the rest of Merkle and taking 100% ownership.
At the time of the initial deal, Dentsu was on a mission to become a "100% digital economy business by 2020." Merkle is primarily focused in data and analytics, but Pattisall said the company is very similar to Sapient in that they both have technology implementation and engineering capabilities.
Dentsu’s investment in Merkle was “an important turning point in the last 10 years,” R3’s Paull said. “This move showed the industry the value of a data-first approach when it comes to media best practice.”
July 2017 Vivendi buys majority stake in Havas
Vivendi buys majority stake in Havas
Vivendi, a French entertainment and media group, in July 2017 bought a 59% stake in Havas. Vivendi and Havas already were connected through France's Bolloré family and its web of shareholdings. Vivendi increased its stake later in 2017, owning 100% of Havas as of December 2017.
Vivendi later shifted strategies, spinning off Havas as a standalone publicly traded company in December 2024. Havas debuted on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange that month under the ticker HAVAS.
Havas Chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré said in a statement at the time that the Havas spinoff marked "a pivotal step towards the realization of our long-term vision. It gives us additional flexibility to accelerate our growth across our key business lines and strengthens our unique position within the dynamic marketing and communications industry."
S4 acquires MediaMonks
Price: 262 million pounds ($348 million)
S4 Capital’s first and biggest deal since Martin Sorrell left WPP and started his digital advertising and marketing services company in May 2018 was the acquisition of MediaMonks two months later. That deal set the tone for the rest to come (which included MightyHive in December 2018, Circus Marketing and Decoded Advertising in 2020 and Cashmere in 2021).
S4’s purchase of the Dutch firm marked Sorrell’s return to advertising, and its co-founder, Wesley ter Haar, who is now executive director of S4, quickly became an influential leader in the company.
MediaMonks gave S4 key digital production capabilities to produce content at scale. It merged with MightyHive, S4’s data and digital arm, in 2021. The two now operate as simply Monks as of July 2024.
S4 got praise early on for its digital-first marketing approach, attracting clients such as Google and Meta, but it’s since been underperforming. The company’s shares on Nov. 13, 2024, hit an all-time low of 29 pence (37 cents) in trading on the London Stock Exchange, down 97% from their September 2021 all-time high. S4’s performance has been uneven, but Forrester’s Pattisall said the company’s recent General Motors win could be a “game changer”—Monks will support the automaker’s new agency roster in content development.
WPP merges legacy creative and digital shops Y&R and VML
WPP shocked the industry when its then-newly appointed CEO, Mark Read, merged legacy creative shop Y&R and digital agency VML in 2018. The merger, which formed VMLY&R, aimed to create a "contemporary, fully integrated digital and creative offering to clients on a global scale,” according to the company at the time.
The merger ignited what would become a trend of holding companies mashing together oftentimes traditional creative agencies, that had begun to see their performance dwindle, with more digital marketing players. As a result, countless iconic agency brands have disappeared, including Y&R (but more on that later).
Omnicom takes majority stake in Credera
Omnicom Precision Marketing—which houses Omnicom Group’s digital, data and CRM capabilities—took a majority stake in digital and customer relationship management firm Credera in August 2018. It’s a full-service provider of management and technology consulting services.
Credera’s focus on martech and e-commerce platforms gave Omnicom Precision Marketing a key edge in helping clients drive digital transformation, customer engagement and online sales growth. With the deal, Omnicom Precision Marketing added 300 consultants to its workforce.
IPG acquires Acxiom
Price: $2.3 billion
Interpublic Group of Cos.’ acquisition of Acxiom Corp.’s Marketing Solutions business in October 2018 entered the holding company into the industry’s digital and data race alongside Publicis with Sapient and Dentsu with Merkle.
In the deal, IPG acquired a 2,100-person data analytics and management group, and beat out other vying holding companies including Omnicom. Industry analyst Brian Wieser, principal of Madison and Wall, called the acquisition at the time “arguably the most significant M&A activity within the agency space since Publicis bought Sapient.”
While IPG agencies have benefitted from being able to lean on Acxiom as a resource for client business, Pattisall, the Forrester analyst, argued the holding company failed to properly integrate it “across the entire breadth of the holding company,” as Publicis did with Sapient.
Acxiom “was a massive turning point for IPG to embrace a technology strategy more at a company level,” Pattisall said, “but they chose at the time to leave Acxiom as a standalone P&L inside IPG. There were financial mechanisms to allow for Acxiom and the other IPG companies to work together, but they typically translated into pass-through costs to clients and that came across to clients as an upsell.”
WPP merges J. Walter Thompson and Wunderman
On the heels of the VMLY&R merger, WPP continued its consolidation of agency brands with the merger of legacy creative shop J. Walter Thompson and marketing services group Wunderman.
Wunderman Thompson emerged as a “creative, data and technology agency built to inspire growth for its clients,” as then-newly appointed CEO Mark Read called it at the time. It was another move by Read to simplify the holding company’s offerings for clients. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely shocking given the VMLY&R merger just two months before, but it still marked another move to dismantle a historic agency name.
Accenture buys Droga5
Price: estimated $475 million
Accenture Song (at the time known as Accenture Interactive) buying Droga5 for an estimated $475 million in May 2019 rocked the industry for several reasons. For one, it continued and perhaps accelerated the trend of consultancies encroaching on ad agencies’ turf. It also shocked an ad community that revered Droga5 as one of, if not the top independent agency darlings. Accenture has made other considerable ad agency acquisitions, before and after the Droga5 deal, including buying Australian shop The Monkeys in 2017 and purchasing Work&Co, a leading design and tech agency, in 2024.
Shock value aside, the deal reaped some early rewards. Accenture Song and Droga5 picked up the lucrative Kimberly-Clark Corp. baby-care business shortly after going to market together that same year. (Kimberly-Clark recently concluded a massive creative and media review, splitting its business among the four top holding companies: IPG, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP).
Forrester’s Pattisall said the fact that Droga5 founder David Droga became CEO of Accenture Song in 2021 underscores the consultancy’s desire to have “creative problem solving” at the helm.
“It marked a real turn in which the consultancy started to become more like agencies,” he said. “This was a real swing towards being like an agency and replicating the agency offering.”
Accenture Song has become an industry force, ranking as the world’s second-biggest agency company (behind WPP) in Ad Age Agency Report 2024.
Accenture buys Droga5
Accenture Song (at the time known as Accenture Interactive) buying Droga5 for an estimated $475 million in May 2019 rocked the industry for several reasons. For one, it continued and perhaps accelerated the trend of consultancies encroaching on ad agencies’ turf. It also shocked an ad community that revered Droga5 as one of, if not the top independent agency darlings. Accenture has made other considerable ad agency acquisitions, before and after the Droga5 deal, including buying Australian shop The Monkeys in 2017 and purchasing Work&Co, a leading design and tech agency, in 2024.
Shock value aside, the deal reaped some early rewards. Accenture Song and Droga5 picked up the lucrative Kimberly-Clark Corp. baby-care business shortly after going to market together that same year. (Kimberly-Clark recently concluded a massive creative and media review, splitting its business among the four top holding companies: IPG, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP).
Forrester’s Pattisall said the fact that Droga5 founder David Droga became CEO of Accenture Song in 2021 underscores the consultancy’s desire to have “creative problem solving” at the helm.
“It marked a real turn in which the consultancy started to become more like agencies,” he said. “This was a real swing towards being like an agency and replicating the agency offering.”
Accenture Song has become an industry force, ranking as the world’s second-biggest agency company (behind WPP) in Ad Age Agency Report 2024.
Publicis buys Epsilon
Price: $4.5 billion
Publicis continued its digital and tech investment with its roughly $4.5 billion acquisition of data-marketing giant Epsilon in 2019. Thanks to its experience with Sapient, the integration also went much smoother, and Publicis began rolling out Epsilon’s services to clients at the time of the closing of the deal in July 2019.
Pattisall, the Forrester analyst, said both the Sapient and Epsilon deal would have been monumental for Publicis as standalones, and together “they are part of the reasoning behind Publicis Groupe's success in the market the last 24 months,” which have been marked by “stellar new business [wins], particularly in media … [they are] directly connected to Sapient and Epsilon’s contributions to Publicis Core ID and media management capabilities.”
WPP sells majority stake in Kantar
Price: $3.1 billion
WPP sold 60% of Kantar, its research unit, to Bain Capital Private Equity in December 2019. WPP CEO Mark Read at the time said the move would strengthen WPP’s balance sheet and was “a major step in simplifying and focusing WPP.”
Kantar since then has done its own streamlining—selling Vivvix, its North American advertising intelligence business, to MediaRadar in November 2023 and agreeing in January 2025 to sell Kantar Media to H.I.G. Capital.
Serviceplan Group buys stake in Pereira O'Dell
Munich, Germany-based Serviceplan Group, one of Europe’s largest independent agency networks, acquired a 30% stake in indie creative shop Pereira O’Dell in October 2020.
The deal marked Serviceplan’s entry into the U.S. and would lead to later deals including the group taking a minority stake in indie shop L&C NYC in June 2023. L&C was only two years old at the time and was known for award-winning campaigns such as “Piñatex” for Dole. The company officially started operations in the U.S. through the establishment of Serviceplan Americas in 2023.
MDC Partners and Stagwell merge
MDC Partners and Stagwell officially merged in August 2021, after quite a bit of back and forth and contested deal terms between the companies’ shareholders.
The merger, which was first proposed in December 2020, was approved following a special shareholders meeting in July 2021. Mark Penn, who was the CEO of MDC Partners and is now chairman and CEO of the combined Stagwell entity, said on an MDC earnings call at the time that the merger would help his agency group become a top 10 marketing services company with state-of-the-art capabilities in digital and data.
Forrester’s Pattisall said in terms of that merger’s success, the agencies that are now part of Stagwell, including top creative shops 72andSunny and Anomaly, “are thriving.” 72andSunny recently debuted its first campaign for Cadillac after winning the auto brand last year as part of a bigger GM agency review. Anomaly has notched big wins recently including Visa, Chevrolet, Starbucks and a large portion of Ferrero Group’s North America creative business.
WPP buys AI tech firm Satalia
WPP’s acquisition of AI tech firm Satalia flew somewhat under the radar in 2021. That would not be the case today, given the industry’s obsession with AI. It seems the ad giant was ahead of its time in making such a purchase, and it has paid off.
Satalia was integral in WPP’s ability to invest heavily in AI. In January 2024, the holding company said that it would be investing $318 million in AI annually, for an unspecified number of years, and a few months later launched Open, its AI brand hub. At its start, Open was being used by more than 35,000 employees in service of blue-chip clients including Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Nestlé and Ford.
“Satalia was a very quiet, unnoticed, but significant acquisition for WPP to power their AI capabilities,” Forrester’s Pattisall said.
Publicis buys CitrusAd
Price: 130 million euros ($153 million)
Publicis smartly capitalized on the boom in retail media and consumers’ increasing drive to purchase online during the COVID-19 pandemic in its purchase of retail media platform CitrusAd in September 2021.
The Australia-based software-as-a-service platform helps brands market directly within retailer websites, operating across 70 retailers in 22 countries and six industries serving more than 4,000 brands.
Retail media has continued to surge. U.S. omnichannel retail media ad spend is expected to account for nearly a quarter of total media ad spend by 2028, reaching about $130 billion, according to eMarketer estimates.
Publicis Chairman-CEO Arthur Sadoun said in a statement at the time that the deal gave his company “a strong competitive advantage in a channel that by 2025 should surpass traditional TV spend.”
Plus Company launches
The agency company with headquarters in New York and Québec City launched in September 2021.
At its launch, Plus Company reported more than 3,000 employees across 12 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Plus Company formerly operated as BlueFocus International, the non-China operation of China-based BlueFocus Communication Group.
BlueFocus Communication Group in 2021 sold a majority stake in BlueFocus International to buyout firm CVC Capital Partners and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a global investment group, setting the stage for the launch of Plus Company.
The deal signaled the end of a Chinese company’s ambitions beyond China. BlueFocus, as a China-focused venture, ranked as the world’s eighth-largest agency company in Ad Age Agency Report 2024.
Private equity firms have had a certain level of interest in agencies and agency companies going back decades. But that interest has only increased, as we can see from more recent deals including Chicago-based PE firm Svoboda Capital making a “significant” investment in independent agency Highdive in May 2024.
Omnicom buys Flywheel
Price: $845 million
Omnicom’s $845 million acquisition of Flywheel, the digital commerce business of Ascential, marked its first largest deal in history (only to be overshadowed by its proposed purchase of IPG in coming months).
Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren said at the time that the deal gave the holding company a competitive edge in e-commerce, one of the biggest drivers of the agency business, by combining its existing Omni data platform with what he called the “power of the [Flywheel] platform to handle millions and millions of transactions in real-time.”
At the time, Flywheel handled work for many of the largest consumer packaged goods brands including L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson and Mars, according to an Omnicom presentation deck announcing the deal previously obtained by Ad Age.
“As an acquisition, Flywheel is an absolute blockbuster … definitely for its price point,” Forrester’s Pattisall said.
He said Omnicom’s ability with this deal to now connect media, upper funnel awareness and purchase consideration, connect that with Flywheel, and gain insight into why consumers made the transactions they did, and what marketing drove activity, is “pretty powerful.”
Three iconic agency brands disappear in VML merger
The industry saw the disappearance of three historic agency brands when WPP announced the merger of VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson in October 2023, which formed simply VML.
The new agency network, which officially began in January 2024, brought 30,000 employees together in 64 markets. (VML had 200 employees when WPP bought it in 2001.)
Jon Cook, global CEO of the new VML, told Ad Age at the time that the combination of the two agencies would create a stronger offering in commerce, loyalty and technology with creativity at the forefront to better compete with consultancies and other agencies.
Of course, the merger meant the loss of 159-year-old J. Walter Thompson, century-old Young & Rubicam and 65-year-old Wunderman.
IPG sells Deutsch New York and Hill Holliday
IPG sold two of its longtime creative agencies, Deutsch New York (now DNY) and Hill Holliday, in January 2024 to a relatively unknown Auckland, New Zealand-based global marketing services company, Attivo Group.
Attivo was launched in 2020 and previously acquired IPG-owned 303 MullenLowe Australia in 2021. Attivo is also invested in IPG’s Mediahub Australia. The purchase of Deutsch New York and Hill Holliday marked Attivo’s first investment in the U.S.
IPG retained Deutsch LA (later rebranded as simply Deutsch) and Hill Holliday Health in the deal.
Stagwell buys Team Epiphany
Price: $16 million
Stagwell continued its buying spree after the MDC Partners merger with the January 2024 purchase of Team Epiphany, an agency specializing in cultural relevance, experiential and multicultural marketing—all areas of increasing importance and investment for marketers. Stagwell paid $15.8 million plus future contingent payments valued at up to $17 million based on the agency hitting earnings targets.
The agency was founded by husband-and-wife duo Coltrane Curtis and Lisa Chu in 2004. The two transitioned to co-CEOs from managing partners as part of the move. At the time, Team Epiphany brought in 100 employees across New York, Los Angeles and Miami, plus 35 clients such as American Express, HBO Max and Lego.
Barkley and OKRP merge
As the industry continued to consolidate, two major independent shops merged in March 2024: Barkley and OKRP.
The merged agency BarkleyOKRP launched with OKRP clients including Burger King and Metro by T-Mobile and Barkley clients such as AMC, Motel 6, Papa Murphy’s, Planet Fitness, Premier Protein, Red Lobster and Smoothie King.
Jeff King, who became CEO of BarkleyOKRP, said Chicago-based private equity firm Keystone Capital brought the idea to the two agencies and took a “slight majority” of the new company.
The deal was monumental in that most mergers had previously been done within holding companies. But the rise in independents had those shops competing for larger accounts against holding company agencies, and merging with another indie became an option to scale.
Publicis buys Influential
Publicis bought Influential, the world’s largest influencer marketing shop by revenue at the time, in July 2024. The deal bolstered the holding company’s influencer marketing capabilities in response to increasing client demand for those services.
Publicis Chairman and CEO Arthur Sadoun told Ad Age at the time that the deal was in response to “clients’ need to have more expertise and more scale in influencer marketing.”
Influential was founded in 2013 by CEO Ryan Detert, former President Daniel Steele and former Chief Technology Officer Piotr Tomasik. The agency, which was named Ad Age’s 2024 social media/influencer agency of the year, had previously partnered with Publicis on campaigns.
Publicis buys Mars United Commerce
Just a few months after buying the world’s largest influencer marketing shop by revenue, Publicis acquired the world’s largest independent commerce marketing company, Mars United Commerce. The deal allowed the holding company to integrate Mars’ commerce data and offerings with its media and performance capabilities, as well as its Epsilon data, to help clients better understand a consumer’s full path to purchase.
Mars United Commerce’s clients included Mars Wrigley, Samsung and Walmart, whose U.S. media was handled by Publicis. The agency was founded in 1973 and grew to more than 1,000 employees in 15 global offices at the time of the acquisition.
IPG sells Huge to PE firm
IPG continued its purging of agency brands, selling digital shop Huge to global PE firm AEA Investors in December 2024.
AEA Investors said it had planned to merge Huge with one of its other agencies, Hero Digital. Before the sale was made public, it had been an open secret that IPG had been shopping around Huge, along with fellow digital shop R/GA (which still had not found a permanent home at the time of publication). IPG had noted in multiple earnings reports prior to the sale that its digital assets had been struggling.
Omnicom and IPG announce proposed merger
Omnicom and IPG announced their proposed merger in December 2024, which, pending approvals, will become the largest-ever agency deal. The target completion date is the second half of 2025.
IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky began considering a sale of the holding company in July 2023, and began talks with potential suitors including Omnicom. The transaction would make Omnicom the biggest agency company on the planet, with more than 100,000 employees.
Under the deal, Omnicom agreed to acquire IPG in an all-stock transaction. The combined company would retain the Omnicom name and trade under the OMC ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.
That would mark the end of IPG, which was formed in 1961 as the first major agency holding company.
Publicis merges Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide to form Leo
In the latest holding company consolidation effort, Publicis Groupe merged Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide to create Leo, a creative unit of more than 15,000 employees in 90 countries.
The merger will see yet another iconic agency name disappear. The agency has carried the “Burnett” name since Leo Noble Burnett opened Leo Burnett Co. in Chicago in 1935.
The industry had mixed reactions to the move at the time. Some industry experts and executives, including former Leo Burnett employees, lauded Publicis’ move as a savvy branding update, while others criticized the holding company for further consolidation and stripping away of the agency’s identity.
Stagwell buys Movers+Shakers
Price: $15 million
Stagwell acquired creative social agency Movers+Shakers in November 2023, as brands started to place more importance on social campaigns.
Before the deal, Movers+Shakers had made a name for itself with viral TikTok campaigns, including the crossover of Chipotle and e.l.f. cosmetics that featured stars from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and using TikTok dupe culture to boost awareness of haircare brand Olaplex.
Stagwell said at the time that it paid about $15 million for Movers+Shakers. Also, the previous owners were “entitled to contingent consideration up to a maximum value of $35 million, subject to meeting certain future earnings targets,” Stagwell stated.
Globant invests in Gut
Five years after its founding, Gut, which had become a hot creative shop in the industry, sold a majority stake to global tech and digital consultancy Globant.
The deal gave Gut, a 500-person agency, scale and increased capabilities in an industry that is increasingly digital and tech-focused. Globant meanwhile added key creative expertise as consultants continued to compete for ad dollars.
Burrell Communications is acquired by PE firm, breaking from Publicis
Burrell Communications Group, one of the country’s most renowned Black-owned agencies, was acquired in October 2023 by a consortium led by Black-owned private equity firm FVLCRUM Partners and Channing Johnson, a Los Angeles attorney at Loeb & Loeb, through his investment company View Park Capital.
The deal included the sale of the majority stake owned by Burrell Co-CEOs McGhee Osse and Fay Ferguson since 2004 and the 49% owned by Publicis since 1999. Tara DeVeaux emerged with a stake and became CEO of the Chicago agency.
The shop was founded by industry trailblazer Tom Burrell in 1971.
Stagwell buys AI-focused Left Field Labs
Price: $13 million
Looking to deepen its AI capabilities, Stagwell bought Left Field Labs in October 2023 for about $13 million plus potential future payments of up to $51 million contingent on meeting profit goals. The specialist firm providing digital solutions via AI was incorporated into the Stagwell portfolio of agencies.
At the time, Stagwell said in a statement Left Field Labs would help clients tackle key challenges around AI including implementing AI systems that also come with responsible design. Left Field was founded in 2008, is based out of Los Angeles and brought more than 100 employees to Stagwell. It has worked with blue-chip clients including Google, Meta, Uber and Hasbro.
Dentsu buys Tag Worldwide
Dentsu bought Tag Worldwide, a global digital marketing production company, in June 2023 from PE investor Advent International. The deal bolstered the holding company’s creative production capabilities, integrated, full-service offerings and end-to-end capabilities across all media channels, Dentsu said in a statement at the time.
At the time of the acquisition, Tag had 2,800 employees across 29 countries.
Like many other deals, Forrester’s Pattisall said “rumor has it” that Dentsu beat out other suitors in its acquisition of Tag.
“It’s a global production powerhouse that, combined with either physical production hubs across global regions or virtual production capabilities, enabled Dentsu to scale their media and creative campaigns,” he said. “Not every holding company has an entity like that.”
Adam&eveNYC and DDB New York merge
DDB Worldwide merged creative shops Adam&eveNYC and DDB New York, forming a new agency operating under the Adam&eveDDB name, in May 2023.
DDB Global CEO Alex Lubar, who at the time was global president and chief operating officer of the worldwide network, had said the deal aimed to “bring some of the startup creative dynamism that is Adam&Eve and partner it with the scale of the operations of DDB in New York.”
It set the stage for later restructuring—in January 2025, DDB placed its North American agencies under a new leadership team, a move that aimed to further integrate DDB Chicago, Alma and Adam&eveDDB. That move reflected marketers’ shifting priorities, executives said at the time.
WPP merges media agencies MediaCom and Essence
EssenceMediacom officially launched in January 2023, via the merger of WPP’s GroupM media agencies Essence and MediaCom, which was announced in April 2022. As part of that consolidation, GroupM also merged performance marketing shop Neo with Mindshare.
The consolidated entity became the largest media agency network in the world, with 10,000 employees across 120 offices globally at its launch.
Prior to the merger, MediaCom was already the world's largest media agency network based on 2021 worldwide revenue, according to the Ad Age Datacenter. Essence—in which WPP purchased a majority stake in 2015, strengthening its relationship with that shop’s top client, Google—was ranked No. 14 on that list and gave the combined entity an estimated revenue of more than $2.1 billion based on 2021 revenue, according to Ad Age Datacenter.
The move was meant to simplify GroupM’s offerings for clients—as part of those efforts, the group also underwent a massive restructuring and installed new Global CEO Brian Lesser in 2024.
Interpublic buys 84% stake in RafterOne
Price: $232 million
IPG scaled up in the commerce space with its October 2022 purchase of RafterOne, a New Hampshire-based firm offering cloud commerce services on the Salesforce platform. IPG clients benefitted from getting access to RafterOne’s services to help them leverage the CRM platform.
RafterOne gave IPG more than 500 commerce specialists. IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky said at the time that Salesforce had “become a priority platform for marketers to thrive in the digital economy.” The firm aligned with MRM, IPG’s digital customer experience and commerce agency.
Dentsu consolidates creative shops under one network
In a massive reorganization in June 2022, Dentsu consolidated all of its creative agencies under the network it dubbed Dentsu Creative. It continued the industry trend of purging creative agency brands—360i, Isobar and DentsuMB, which was formed in May 2020 with the integration of McGarryBowen, disappeared in the move.
Dentsu Creative launched with 9,000 creative employees in 46 markets, connected to 37,000 media and customer experience management employees across Dentsu International, which at the time was the company’s network of operations outside of Japan.
The move was not embraced by everyone in the industry, as was the case with similar holding company consolidations. Two former leaders of 360i, Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter, criticized it at the time as further unnecessary disruption. “At a time of continuous change that’s disrupting the consumer-brand dynamic, it’s hard to understand how there isn’t room for this differentiated proposition in a portfolio,” they said in a joint statement to Ad Age at the time.
Publicis buys Profitero
Price: 199 million euros ($216 million)
Publicis continued its buying spree in May 2022 with the purchase of Profitero, a global e-commerce intelligence platform that helps brands analyze and optimize sales, marketing and operations performance on retail websites.
The holding company once again deepened its investment in the retail space with this deal. Profitero, complementing CitrusAd, provided insights and product visibility to more than 4,000 brands and 70 million products across more than 700 retail websites in over 50 countries, according to a statement from Publicis at the time. Profitero’s products, technology and 300 employees added scale to the holding company’s existing commerce capabilities.
February 2015 Publicis buys Sapient
2015
February Publicis buys Sapient
September Innocean Worldwide and Horizon Media launch Canvas Worldwide
2015
September Dentsu takes majority stake in Merkle
2016
July Vivendi buys majority stake in Havas
2017
July S4 acquires MediaMonks
August Omnicom takes majority stake in Credera
September WPP merges legacy creative and digital shops Y&R and VML
October IPG acquires Acxiom
November WPP merges J. Walter Thompson and Wunderman
2018
May
Accenture buys Droga5
July Publicis buys Epsilon
December WPP sells majority stake in Kantar
READ MORE
2019
October
Serviceplan Group buys stake in Pereira O’Dell
READ MORE
2020
August MDC Partners and Stagwell merge
WPP buys AI tech firm Satalia
September
Publicis buys CitrusAd
Plus Company launches
READ MORE
2021
May Publicis buys Profitero
June
Dentsu consolidates creative shops under one network
October Interpublic buys 84% stake in RafterOne
READ MORE
2022
January
WPP merges media agencies MediaCom and Essence
May
Adam&eveNYC and DDB New York merge
June Dentsu buys Tag Worldwide
October Stagwell buys AI-focused Left Field Labs
Burrell Communications is acquired by PE firm, breaking from Publicis
November
Globant invests in Gut
Stagwell buys Movers+Shakers
READ MORE
2023
January
Omnicom buys Flywheel
Three iconic agency brands disappear in VML merger
IPG sells Deutsch New York and Hill Holliday
Stagwell buys Team Epiphany
March Barkley and OKRP merge
July Publicis buys Influential
September
Publicis buys Mars United Commerce
December
IPG sells Huge to PE firm
Omnicom and IPG announce proposed merger
READ MORE
2024
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top
Return to top