In this week's Media Buying Briefing, available exclusively to Digiday+ members, senior media buying and planning editor Michael Bürgi explores why private equity firms are the new buyers of agencies as the M&A market heats up.

In a recent Marketing Briefing, another member exclusive, senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos reveals how marketers feel about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover. 

You can get a taste of these member-only features below and subscribe to Digiday+ to stay ahead with exclusive briefings, original research, reports and guides, tutorials, unlimited stories and much more.

Media Buying Briefing: Private equity firms are the new buyers of agencies as M&A market heats up

By Michael Bürgi 

Given that 2021 was a pretty active year for mergers and acquisitions (and minority investments) across the advertising landscape, the media agency world had its share of wheeling and dealing). Stagwell and S4 continued their search for shops to fold into their growing holding companies, while non-traditional groups like Jellyfish and Brandtech Group found their own way to accomplish the same.

But there’s an interesting twist to activity in 2022: it’s not the holding companies that are necessarily doing most of the buying or investing. Nor is it the consultancies, which picked up several agencies over the last decade — enter private equity.

PE shop money has been hunting for agencies, particularly in the performance marketing space, to either acquire or fold into other agencies in order to broaden services that are in demand from marketers today. 

Subscribe to Digiday+ below to access the full briefing. 

Marketing Briefing: ‘Marketers are wary’ of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

By Kristina Monllos

Last week, Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter seemed unlikely to come to fruition after Twitter’s board reportedly adopted a poison pill following his initial bid. This week, Musk has somehow won over that same board and will buy Twitter for $44 billion or, as New York Magazine aptly put it, “Elon Musk is really doing it.”

While it’s unclear what Twitter will look like under Musk — the deal was just struck Monday; ink likely hasn’t even dried yet — some marketers and agency executives expect concerns about brand safety to bubble up given Musk’s comments about free speech and likely push to roll back some of the platform’s content moderation efforts. Musk has previously stated that “Twitter serves as the de facto public town square” and that “failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.” 

Advertisers have voiced “concern over his public statements and what approach he might take on posts that could be seen as incendiary or hate speech,” said Noah Mallin, chief strategy officer at IMGN Media. “Twitter has wrestled with how to manage relative freedom while recognizing the hazards of allowing bad actors to say anything and Musk appears ready to undo even the initial steps they’ve taken. Marketers are wary of that.”

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Further reading

• Why CTV ad fatigue is real — and why overlay ads may be a solution, study
  Netflix’s recent capitulation to adding advertising to its revenue stream means yet more marketing that consumers will be exposed to.

• Why Grey Goose is partnering with performers, designers to beef up its experiential as it returns to in-person events
  As awards shows and festivals return to be in-person, brands are showing up and increasing their experiential marketing efforts and Grey Goose is among the myriad brands in the mix.

• ‘It changed the way people perceived digital advertising’: Advertisers reflect on iOS 14 changes a year later
  In this last year, Apple’s crackdown on in-app tracking upended the digital advertising industry and crippled advertisers’ ability to know whether their mobile ads were working. It forced them to look elsewhere to spend their dollars.