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- Advertising giant Publicis Groupe is on the hunt for AI companies.It's set aside around 300 million euros for more "bolt-on acquisitions" this year.Industry insiders say Publicis may want to get expertise in areas like agentic AI and ad optimization.
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.
Publicis Groupe
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 campaignsCompanies that use AI to transform big data into useful analysisOther 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.
Martin Flindt
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.
Cassandra
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.
