Home Agencies S4 Confirms It Wants MightyHive As Its Second Agency Acquisition

S4 Confirms It Wants MightyHive As Its Second Agency Acquisition

SHARE:

Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital said Monday it is in advanced talks to acquire programmatic marketing agency MightyHive, five months after it paid $350 million for digital production agency MediaMonks.

MightyHive is valued at up to $200 million and brings in $25 million in annual revenue, according to Financial Times.

Sorrell launched S4 in April after being ousted from WPP – the holding company he built and ran for 30 years – following allegations of harassment and misuse of company funds. He didn’t wait long to launch a new network that would take a modern spin on his former empire with operating companies focused on first-party data, content and digital planning and buying.

MightyHive is a welcome addition to the family. Founded by former Google executive Pete Kim, the agency focuses on programmatic operations with heavy expertise on the Google Marketing Platform.

“MightyHive is a digital media and programmatic consultancy, not a conventional media agency,” said Jay Pattisal, principal analyst at Forrester. “It gives S4 the ability to effectively and efficiently place campaigns and content created by MediaMonks.”

Latching on to a growing industry trend, MightyHive helps clients bring programmatic in-house. Over the past three years, 26% of programmatic buying has shifted from external to internal agencies, according to the ANA. MightyHive counts Bayer, Sprint and Nationwide among its in-house clients.

MightyHive is also a Certified Google Marketing Platform Partner, a program started by Google to outsource sales and services for its stack. Since its launch in 2012, MightyHive has expanded its expertise to other programmatic platforms to be more agnostic for clients. The firm lists expertise with The Trade Desk, Amazon and BrightRoll on its website.

“We’ll objectively audit and score your data sources and platforms for their efficiency, transparency and efficacy for programmatic,” MightyHive’s website reads.

Ad tech expertise is crucial for S4, which wants agencies that are “agile, efficient and of premium creative quality – in other words: faster, better and cheaper” than those at legacy holding companies, Sorrel said last month at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO. “Whether you and I like it or not, that is the way the world is going.”

WPP has suffered major media account losses this year, including United Airlines and American Express, and its stock continues to drop. Many criticize the company and its peers for being slow, inefficient and unwilling to collaborate.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

S4 will incentivize collaboration by giving bonuses to agencies based on the performance of the group, rather than the individual agency.

“Because media agencies act as banks for pass-through costs, they operate in a low-margin environment,” Pattisal said. “That puts tremendous pressure on the ecosystem. A MightyHive deal demonstrates Sorrell is looking to build a more modern digital agency group and not repeat mistakes of the past.”

Must Read

Rest In Privacy, Sandbox

Last week, after nearly six years of development and delays, Google officially retired its Privacy Sandbox.
Which means it’s time for a memorial service.

AWS Launches A Cloud Infrastructure Service For Ad Tech

AWS RTB Fabric offers ad tech platforms more streamlined integrations with ecosystem and infrastructure partners, allegedly lower latency compared to the public internet and discounts on data transfers.

Netflix Boasts Its Best Ad Sales Quarter Ever (Again)

In a livestreamed presentation to investors on Tuesday, co-CEO Greg Peters shared that Netflix had its “best ad sales quarter ever” in Q3, and more than doubled its upfront commitments for this year.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: No One To Play With

Google Pulls The Plug On Topics, PAAPI And Other Major Privacy Sandbox APIs (As The CMA Says ‘Cheerio’)

Google’s aborted cookie crackdown ends with a quiet CMA sign-off and a sweeping phaseout of Privacy Sandbox technologies, from the Topics API to PAAPI.

The Trade Desk’s Auction Evolutions Bring High Drama To The Prebid Summit

TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).

How Google Stands In The DOJ’s Ad Tech Antitrust Suit, According To Those Who Tracked The Trial

The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.