Media Decoder Blog: New Year Begins With Flurry of Ad Industry Deals

4:25 p.m. | Updated The new year has barely begun, but it looks as if it may be a busy one for deal-making on Madison Avenue.

Several acquisitions and transactions have already been made this week, on the heels of others last week. The deals are predominantly in the faster-growing specialty areas of the business like shopper marketing, digital advertising and public relations.

Take, for instance, a deal that is to be announced on Wednesday afternoon by the Match Marketing Group, a Toronto agency that specializes in shopper marketing — that is, all the aspects of advertising related to “the path of purchase,” turning consumers to customers at a point of purchase, whether a store or, increasingly, a mobile device.

Match, which is backed by a private equity firm, Beringer Capital, also based in Toronto, is acquiring Marketing Drive, a shopper marketing agency in Norwalk, Conn., with the Weld Media division of Marketing Drive, which has a digital focus.

Match is making the acquisition from the River North Group in Chicago; financial terms are not being disclosed.

The acquisition of Marketing Drive and Weld is the fifth deal in the last 12 months for Match; others included agencies like the Action Marketing Group and Ignite Activation. Like those, Marketing Drive and Weld will be absorbed into Match, which seeks to offer marketers a so-called end-to-end solution – that is, a complete, integrated suite of services in a one-stop-shopping way.

The formation of Match and the deals it is making “came out of talking to our friends, senior clients, C.E.O.s and C.M.O.s,” said Perry Miele, chairman of Match and Beringer, who beefed about how, “when it came to shopper marketing and consumer engagement, they had to deal with five or six agencies that handle analytics, strategy, experiential marketing, events and merchandising.”

According to Michael Harris, president at Marketing Drive, being part of “an end-to-end solution was very attractive to us.”

Mr. Harris will become president of what will be known, for the time being, as Match Marketing Drive. Brett Farren, president and chief executive at Match, said the name would probably later become Match Drive, echoing how the Action Marketing Group became Match Action.

Mr. Harris and Mr. Farren said that all the 160 employees of Marketing Drive and Weld would join Match. Marketing Drive and Weld also have offices in Boston, Chicago and Bentonville, Ark.

Clients of Marketing Drive include Absolut vodka, Dunkin’ Donuts, Exxon Mobil, Philips and Welch’s. Clients of Weld include CVS, Dannon and Mars. Mars is also a client of Match, along with, among others, Adidas, Ford Motor, Progressive, Samsung and Yum Brands.

In another deal involving a digital agency, Mercury Media in Santa Monica, Calif., which specializes in direct response television media, is acquiring iMarketing in Princeton, N.J., which specializes in tasks like search marketing, online planning and buying, social media and mobile marketing. Here, too, financial terms were not disclosed.

Plans call for iMarketing and its 30 employees to be absorbed into Mercury Media, which has 130 employees, and become the Mercury iMarketing unit of Mercury Media.

Keith Kochberg, chief executive at iMarketing, becomes president at Mercury iMarketing, which is to continue to work with iMarketing clients that include eDiets, the Dow Jones Company division of News Corporation and Yahoo.

Here is a look at two additional deals that are being announced on Wednesday, for which financial terms are also not disclosed:

*Capstrat, a public relations and public affairs agency based in Raleigh, N.C., that specializes in areas like energy, healthcare and technology, is being acquired by Ketchum, a public relations and corporate communications agency that is owned by the Omnicom Group.

The deal is meant to beef up Ketchum’s presence in the Southern states, which now includes offices in cities like Atlanta, Dallas and Miami. Capstrat will operate autonomously as part of the Ketchum North American operations and Ken Eudy, chief executive at Capstrat, will remain in that post.

*Gibraltar Associates, a public relations and public affairs agency in Washington, is being acquired by McBee Strategic, also in Washington. Gibraltar, with 22 employees, becomes McBee/Gibraltar, the strategic communications business unit of McBee, which has 42 employees and is known for services to companies and investors like lobbying, research and capital formation.

Clients of Gibraltar include the Dole Food Company, Gilead Sciences and Raytheon. Clients of McBee Strategic include FedEx, Google and Oracle.

Eric Bovim, chief executive at Gibraltar, becomes managing director at McBee/Gibraltar. Thomas J. Pernice, chairman at Gibraltar, becomes senior adviser, working with Steve McBee, president and chief executive at McBee Strategic.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/new-year-begins-with-flurry-of-ad-industry-deals/?partner=rss&emc=rss