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Business Insider
25-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Ad giant Publicis is shopping for AI companies. Here are 6 targets industry insiders think could be on its wish list.
French advertising giant Publicis Groupe is flying high. Now, it plans to go shopping. Last week, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said his company was "doubling down" on its AI strategy by "further accelerating on bolt-on acquisitions." Bolt-on acquisitions refer to targeted purchases that reinforce its existing companies and operations, rather than transformative deals that would shift Publicis into an entirely new area of business. Publicis, the advertising industry's top performer by revenue, has already spent around 600 million euros, around $705 million, on acquisitions this year, and has set aside a further 300 million euros for M&A in the second half. Across Madison Avenue, companies are grappling with how to harness AI to offer new services to clients while trying to prevent the tech from upending their existing businesses. Publicis said in 2024 it intended to invest 300 million euros over the following three years in its AI strategy, which centers on an internal platform called Core AI. What will it buy? Tristan Rice, head of the European M&A practice at advisory firm SI Partners, said Publicis would likely make some early, speculative bets on emerging tech. That would help it avoid an intense bidding war once an acquisition target scales up. The pitch to startup founders, Rice said, is that Publicis' client base can help fuel the growth of their business. The agency group would also likely put a long earn-out on the table with the aim of enabling the founders to realize more value from the sale over time, he said. Business Insider spoke with five advertising and M&A insiders, who shared their predictions on what Publicis could target. Here were a few themes: AI startups with expertise in creating agents to handle the workflow of marketing campaigns Companies that use AI to transform big data into useful analysis Other technologies that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency disciplines, such as content production or strategy They also named some particular marketing-focused AI startups they think could be on Publicis' radar. (This doesn't mean that Publicis is in conversations with these startups.) A Publicis spokesperson declined to comment. AI-powered ads could come from Persado or Superscale AI Brands ranging from Toys "R" Us and Coca-Cola to Kalshi have used AI to create TV ads, with mixed consumer responses. But generative AI tech has been constantly improving, helping to reduce the time and costs involved in creating campaigns. Karsten Weide, principal and chief analyst of W Media Research, said Persado might interest Publicis. The company automates the production of marketing messaging based on emotional triggers and other data. Founded in New York in 2012, Persado has raised $86 million in funding to date. Weide said Persado's tech could be combined with Publicis' Epsilon data arm to help it create more personalized and persuasive marketing messaging. Persado president Assaf Baciu said that while advertising companies would be wise to seek out AI solutions as a point of differentiation, the company has expanded its capabilities beyond the advertising sector into areas such as financial services. Elsewhere, Superscale AI could be an interesting fit for Publicis, said Andrew Buckman, chief growth officer of the adtech company Azerion. The startup pitches itself as a kind of "AI CMO." It allows brands to enter the URL for the product they want to sell and then can almost instantly generate a campaign for TikTok or Instagram using a library of realistic AI-generated actors and characters. Superscale raised a $5 million pre-seed funding round in June, led by the VC firm Creandum. Superscale cofounder Patrick Haede said that while the company was not considering being acquired, he understood why it might be identified as a potential target. "AI capabilities will fundamentally transform advertising in every possible way, especially in terms of content generation, in which we are building a leading platform," Haede said. AI agents built by Newton Research or Akkio could be of interest OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that 2025 will be the year that AI agents"join" the workforce, as companies embrace the trend. AI agents generally refer to virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. Startups are betting that AI agents will be big in the advertising space, too. Ana Milicevic, principal of the digital consultancy Sparrow Digital Holdings, said Newton Research is "already making a lot of headway with agencies." It creates AI agents to handle data science projects and also works with brands and publishers. Newton Research's founder and CEO, John Hoctor, was behind the media-measurement company Data Plus Math, which was sold to the publicly listed data company LiveRamp in 2019. Founded in 2023, Newton Research has raised around $13 million to date, according to PitchBook. Newton Research declined to comment. Milicevic also said Akkio, which creates AI agents to help media agencies better understand their data, might be a good fit for Publicis. Founded in 2019, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company has raised around $18 million in funding. Jon Reilly, Akkio's cofounder and COO, said the company is building an operating system that automates "grunt work" so agencies can win pitches, safeguard margins, and stay focused on strategy. "Agencies urgently need a next-generation AI operating layer to modernize their fragmented stacks," Reilly said. Speaking generally about the AI space and without naming specific startups, Eric Franci of the VC firm Aperiam said companies that create agentic tools for marketing workflow would be the category to watch for M&A. He imagines a scenario where AI agents could drive processes like ad optimization, campaign planning, and measurement. The result would be "faster turnarounds, better performance," and teams that focus on "higher value, client-success oriented tasks," he said. AI optimization and modelling from the likes of Cassandra or Prescient AI could provide value Ad optimization used to involve humans watching ad campaigns like hawks, and adjusting spend, targeting, and creative messaging depending on how the ads were performing. AI could automate a lot of these "hands-on-keyboards" tasks. Weide said Prescient AI, an ad optimization platform that predicts the return on ad spend for e-commerce ads, could be an acquisition target for the likes of Publicis. Miami-based Prescient has raised $20.9 million in funding to date. "It's exciting to be mentioned in such a critical area of growth," Prescient AI CEO Mike True said. "With some of the brightest minds in the field, we're now focused on advancing the technology we believe will define the future of compound, intelligent measurement," he added. Italy-based Cassandra could also be a contender for a smaller bolt-on acquisition, Azerion's Buckman said. It specializes in a marketing technique called MMM — marketing mix modeling — to help advertisers assess how much and where they should be allocating their advertising budgets. The company has raised 2.3 million euros, around $2.7 million, in funding. Cristian Nozzi, Cassandra's cofounder and CTO, said the company is close to achieving $2 million in annual recurring revenue, three times the amount it registered last year. He added that the company aims to deliver "incrementality measurements at scale and with little to no effort to every organization in the world, no matter the size or budget." In marketing, incrementality refers to measuring the impact an ad campaign has had in driving additional sales.
CNBC
11-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Former Publicis Chairman: French president pushing AI growth
Maurice Levy, Publicis' Chairman Emeritus, discusses the growth of AI in France from the VivaTech conference in Paris.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Publicis acquires Lotame to fortify data-driven marketing position
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. Publicis Groupe has acquired identity solutions firm Lotame, according to a press release. Financial terms of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed. Lotame will be aligned within Publicis' data-driven marketing offering Epsilon and continue to be led by Founder and CEO Andy Monfried. Lotame wields 'one of the largest end-to-end data marketplaces' in the world, spanning 109 countries. That level of coverage combined with Publicis' existing assets is expected to enable the ad-holding group to reach nearly 4 billion unique profiles globally, or about 91% of internet-connected consumers. Lotame will also support Epsilon's expansion into markets such as Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Acquiring Lotame significantly enhances the scale of data Publicis has to offer clients that are angling for greater precision and personalization in their marketing. While plans to formally deprecate third-party cookies have been scuttled, marketers are still putting a premium on first-party data solutions that can provide a clearer view into the habits of their target consumers. Lotame enables marketers to leverage their own first-party data and further unlock its potential through collaborating with other data sources on the platform. The deal, which is expected to close in Q2, also recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) software — still the top tech of the moment — is only as effective as the quality of information it's fed. In a presentation sharing an update on the ad-holding group's CoreAI strategy, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun acknowledged that there's been a degree of B.S. in the AI advertising conversation to date and said that the modern marketing mantra should no longer be 'innovate or die' but 'connect or die.' 'AI is nothing without the data,' Sadoun said in a prerecorded video. Epsilon already boasted the industry's largest identity graph, with a view into about 2.3 billion people worldwide. Lotame, which wields nearly two decades of experience in the data-management space, brings over an additional 1.6 billion IDs, along with relationships with over 4,000 brands and publishers. In a press statement around the announcement, Lotame's Monfried said the two companies have a shared 'commitment to industry interoperability, connectivity, and privacy.' Publicis introduced its CoreAI concept last year, pledging to invest 300 million euros over three years to keep pace with the fast rise of generative AI technology. The Lotame purchase adds to a dealmaking hot streak that's included acquisitions for influencer marketing platform Influential, commerce marketing firm Mars United Commerce and performance agency Dysrupt. Publicis' pricey bets on data and AI initially faced some skepticism but have paid off in the long run, as the network has consistently outperformed its peers in recent years. The company saw organic revenue, a key measure of agency health, rise 6.3% year over year in Q4 2024 and 5.8% across the full year. Those results led Sadoun to dub the group 'the largest advertising company in the world,' though that status could soon change. Rival Omnicom is in the midst of acquiring Interpublic Group in a blockbuster $13 billion deal set to reshape the agency landscape. Agencies are also contending with increased macroeconomic volatility amid President Donald Trump's mounting trade war and more cautious consumer spending. Recommended Reading Publicis Groupe is confident in the face of expected industry tumult Sign in to access your portfolio
