Full Year 2025 Media, Marketing, & Online Industry Trends

2025 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Netflix’s announced acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a premier global media and entertainment company, was the largest Media, Marketing & Online transaction in 2025, with a price of $82.7 billion.

Six of the top ten highest value deals during the year were backed by financial sponsors.

There were 172 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $114 billion, representing 18 percent of the total volume and 42 percent of the total value, respectively.

2025 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2025 fell by 15 percent over 2024, from 1,116 to 946.

The segment with the largest transaction volume in 2025 was E-Commerce with 277 transactions.

Total transaction value in 2025 more than doubled over 2024, from $122 billion to $273 billion.

The median EBITDA multiple increased from 7.8x in 2024 to 8.3x in 2025. The median revenue multiple increased from 1.4x to 1.6x.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 3,374 Media, Marketing & Online transactions between 2023 and 2025, of which 760 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $425 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 2,614 undisclosed transactions to be $50 billion, totaling $475 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 1.54x revenue and 8.45x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$80 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 1.7x revenue, compared to 2.5x revenue for those in the $80 million and above range.