- 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, weren’t disclosed.
- Lotame will likely be aligned inside Publicis’ data-driven marketing offering Epsilon and proceed to be led by Founder and CEO Andy Monfried. Lotame wields “certainly one of the biggest end-to-end data marketplaces” on the planet, spanning 109 countries.
- That level of coverage combined with Publicis’ existing assets is anticipated to enable the ad-holding group to reach nearly 4 billion unique profiles globally, or about 91% of internet-connected consumers. Lotame will even support Epsilon’s expansion into markets equivalent to Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
Acquiring Lotame significantly enhances the size of information Publicis has to offer clients which are angling for greater precision and personalization of 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 may provide a clearer view into the habits of their goal consumers. Lotame enables marketers to leverage their very own first-party data and further unlock its potential through collaborating with other data sources on the platform.
The deal, which is anticipated to close in Q2, also recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) software — still the highest tech of the moment — is barely as effective as the standard of knowledge 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 level of B.S. within the AI promoting conversation to date and said that the fashionable marketing mantra should now not be “innovate or die” but “connect or die.”
“AI is nothing without the info,” 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 twenty years of experience within the data-management space, brings over a further 1.6 billion IDs, together with relationships with over 4,000 brands and publishers. In a press statement across the announcement, Lotame’s Monfried said the 2 corporations have a shared “commitment to industry interoperability, connectivity, and privacy.”
Publicis introduced its CoreAI concept last 12 months, 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 term, because the network has consistently outperformed its peers in recent times. The company saw organic revenue, a key measure of agency health, rise 6.3% 12 months over 12 months in Q4 2024 and 5.8% across the total 12 months.
Those results led Sadoun to dub the group “the biggest promoting company on the planet,” though that status could soon change. Rival Omnicom is within 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.
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