Full Year 2022 Media & Marketing Industry Trends

2022 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Microsoft Corporation’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, an interactive entertainment company, was the largest Media & Marketing transaction in 2022, with an acquisition price of $68.62 billion.

There were 206 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $35.86 billion, representing 17 percent of the total volume and 24 percent of the total value, respectively.

2022 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2022 increased by 14 percent over 2021, from 1,050 to 1,201.

The segment with the largest transaction volume in 2022 was Marketing with 461 transactions.

Total transaction value in 2022 decreased by 28 percent over 2021, from $207.47 billion to $149.40 billion.

The median EBITDA multiple declined from 11.7x in 2021 to 11.2x in 2022. The median revenue multiple decreased from 2.9x in 2021 to 2.5x in 2022.

Notable growth sectors on an annual basis included Exhibitions, Conferences, & Events, which saw M&A activity increase from 22 transactions in 2021 to 55 transactions in 2022.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 3,466 Media & Marketing transactions between 2020 and 2022, of which 686 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $387.49 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 2,780 undisclosed transactions to be $52.57 billion, totaling $440.07 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 2.7x revenue and 11.0x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$20 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 2.2x revenue, compared to 4.6x revenue for those in the $160 million and above range.