Julie Langley, Results International says:
“We are seeing massive amounts of activity and growth in B2B, both within the agency sector and the marketing automation space. And this translates into M&A interest. Dentsu Aegis is not alone amongst the major networks to be looking to bulk up its B2B offer and we can expect to see more announcements in the months ahead.
A good deal of this interest is likely to come from predominantly B2C players looking to secure a presence within the B2B space.
As well as M&A activity within the agency space, marketing automation technology companies are creating headlines: Marketo was taken private again by Vista Equity Partners earlier in the year for $1.8bn and services companies working with the major B2B platforms, such as Marketo, Eloqua and Pardot, are all seeing strong growth.
But back to Dentsu Aegis. There is no doubt they will have paid a pretty good multiple for Gyro. Independent B2B agencies of the Gyro kind are a pretty rare breed – there are simply very few large, global B2B specialists remaining – and this scarcity value will almost certainly have commanded a premium price.
And finally, why is B2B proving such a hot area? We believe that marketing automation and other analytics technologies really lend themselves to the kind of long-term, content-driven lead generation that is typical of B2B marketing.
Done well, it enables advertisers to create better customer engagement and to qualify leads better before handing them over to the sales function.”