The Brandtech Group has announced it has entered into exclusive negotiations to potentially acquire global digital marketing company, Jellyfish from its private-equity owner Fimalac.
Details of the negotiations were not immediately revealed.
Jellyfish, helmed by CEO Rob Pierre (pictured, main), is a global marketing business with clients including Disney, ESPN, eBay, Netflix, Nike, Nestlé, Samsung, Spotify, Playstation, and Uber. Since launching in 2005, the marketing company has grown to over 2,200 employees across 42 offices globally.
Over the past several years, Jellyfish became known as a best-in-class reseller of Google ad products, going so far as to promote itself as “Google Services Limited”.
The company is also a Meta Business and Salesforce Consulting partner and has over 50 Amazon Advertising certified experts.
The Brandtech Group, formerly You & Mr Jones, was founded by ex-Havas CEO David Jones in 2015. Among the companies it owns is Oliver, which provides bespoke in-house services for advertisers. Additional companies under The Brandtech Group include Collectively, Gravity Road, Mofilm, and Mobkoi. Brandtech has also previously invested in Pinterest, metaverse company Niantic, and GIF sharing website Gfycat.
Fimalmac is a French holding company that focuses on digital marketing and media, as well as live entertainment, luxury hotels and leisure, real estate, and capital investment. It purchased a majority stake in Jellyfish in the months preceding the Covid pandemic in the fall of 2019 for £500m.
The sale comes as the digital advertising industry is reacting to recessionary fears after years of strong growth, helped on in part by the pandemic. Last month, several major digital advertising companies including Meta, Google, Snap, and Twitter cited a decline in digital adspend as one reason for the companies’ slowed growth and missed financial expectations.
