CTV, Retail And Measurement Will Spur Ad Tech M&A This Year

Ad tech M&A is back, gold.

At the beginning of this month, the headlines captured four main advertising offers in so many days. T-Mobile bought Vistar Media;; Marketing company electronic trading ROKT has received a platform for a customer data platform;; The Tradest album bought startup metadata ads;; and DirecTV has gained a majority share In the Invidi Technologies TV platform.

Until last autumn was ad tech m & a hair for several years. Many buyers and retailers held on a large business because of economic uncertainty and slowing down advertising, Uren Dhananani, Vice President at Comcap LLC, told Adexchanger.

Comcap is a boutique investment banking company that provides companies on advertising technologies and other high -speed technology categories. It started as a banking company focused on electronic trade and still considers retail media to be its sweet place. For example, COMCAP was the only advisor to sell the Smarterhq data platform for Wunderkind in 2022 and for the sale of the Brazilian division of Rakuten in 2019.

Dhanani said he had expected a recent wave of consolidation of advertising technology. “It was a lot.” Pented-up demand [while] M&A went through calm. ”

This year he said that the consolidation of advertising technologies will focus on the greatest growth opportunities in advertising: retail media, connected television and solutions in measuring gaps. This is probably the biggest point of pain for traders and media buyers right now, he said.

Dhanani talked to Adexchanger about which trends of consolidation of advertising technology we should watch in 2025.

ADEXCHAGER: What will M&A look like for retail media this year?

Uren Dhanani: Retail media network (RMNS) are no longer a niche. Almost every significant dealer has its own rmn for the monetization of advertising. For larger retailers, RMN controls an increasing part of income and profits.

We expect smaller, more RMN niches to consolidate to have a better chance of larger retail media giants such as Walmart and Target.

Not all smaller players must have their own RMN because the margin is not enough to balance the investment. For example, their data could be lucrative as a consolidated national service that provides buyers across retailers.

What specific trends in the field of retail media control growth?

One of the growing trend in the retail media, which we are paying attention to, is the advertising in the store. More shopping happens personally unlike online, so retailers and advertisers try to find more ways to provide buyers to personalized advertisements for products While they are actually going through the shelves. Trend is why some technology providers away from home like TV with food [a digital in-store ad network] They get more attention in this industry.

We also expect the future efforts for merger and acquisition to focus on addressing Measurement problems. Retail media right now do not have a great brand shopping experience. For example, if you are an advertiser CPG, you have to buy an inventory from each seller individually, which also complicates the campaign measurement. This system is ineffective for the buyer of the media and is not sustainable in the long term.

How do we talk about video and measurement, how do opportunities and challenges between retail media and CTV overlap?

Video advertising for retailers also become more personalized to CTV, not only in stores. For example, programmers are also Incorporating more retail data In video campaigns to make CTV ads more specific for consumer shopping habits.

We also expect to see more consolidation among smaller and more specialized streaming services that try to compete with larger streamers and digital clean games.

As far as challenges are concerned, retail media and CTV have sounding gaps in the standardization of measurement. Measurement is definitely publishing No. 1 in both channels due to data fragmentation. Advertisers have difficulty comparing sales in stores and online among retailers in the same way as trying to measure advertising campaigns across networks.

How exactly do you expect that the measurement will lead fusion and acquisitions this year?

Right now, many innovations are happening in the measuring area, including data and measuring companies that appear to serve both streaming publishers and video currency providers. The number of players who try to solve this problem by creating measurement and metric metrics across platforms that talk about how many retail and CTV brands are just trying to calculate the return on investment.

As already mentioned, there are many opportunities for companies to jump into measurement and assignment through mergers and acquisitions. These are areas of focus that investors are really interested in.

This interview has been slightly modified and condensed.