Mergers and acquisitions deals were up 11% in the adtech and martech sectors in the third quarter of 2015, according to figures from corporate finance advisor Results International.
112 deals took place between July and September, up from 101 in Q2, with almost a third (31%) of these in the marketing automation sector – up from just 10% the previous quarter.
The increase in marketing automation deals – which has more than doubled from the first three quarters of 2014 – coincides with a decrease in deals in the advertising platform space, which fell from 35% in Q2 to 7% in Q3.
Deals involving social media technology also dropped during the period from 20% to 11%, while mobile, e-commerce and video all gained market share.
The study additionally found that 75% of deals in the first nine months of the year were by companies that made just the one acquisition.
However, WPP remains the most prolific participant with nine transactions in Q1-3 2015, although many of these were minority stakes in line with WPP’s typical strategy in the tech sector.
The disclosed value of deals in the sector in Q3 2015 was $2.2bn as opposed to $7.7bn in Q2 – mainly due to Verizon’s acquisition of AOL inflating the earlier figures.
Other key deals in the sector in Q3 were AOL’s acquisition of Millennial Media for $252m, Oracle’s acquisition of Maxymiser, Rentrak’s merger with comScore and News Corp’s acquisition of video adtech company Unruly Group Limited for $177m.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the public markets have been very challenging for adtech companies this year, M&A activity has remained robust with high profile deals with new entrants such as News Corp and Verizon entering the fray,” said Julie Langley, partner at Results International.
“Martech continues to be a very high growth sector, with a number of players vying to become the de facto marketing software platforms for the marketing function, and the typically SaaS-based revenue models attracting PE interest.”
