April 15, 2013 MEDIA AND MARKETING M&A VOLUME STAYS CONSTANT IN Q1 2013

Berkery Noyes has issued its Media and Marketing M&A report for Q1 2013.

According to our latest research, transaction volume remained relatively constant over the past three months, rising two percent compared to Q4 2012. Deal value showed a decline of 68 percent, from $25.6 billion in Q4 2012 to $8.2 billion in Q1 2013. Eight of the top ten largest acquisitions in 2012 occurred in either the third or fourth quarter, which contributed to this steep quarterly value decrease. 

Transaction activity in the B2B Publishing segment increased ten percent on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Meanwhile, M&A in the Entertainment Content segment increased 13 percent in Q1 2013.

One new Internet Media acquirer during Q1 2013 was Pinterest. The social networking site acquired Punchfork, a social culinary website, within the segment. This was the company’s first acquisition since its launch in 2010. Other Internet Media transactions by noteworthy acquirers were Amazon.com’s acquisition of book recommendation site Goodreads, Facebook’s acquisition of blogging website Storylane, and AOL’s acquisition of tech review website gdgt.

As for the industry’s Marketing segment, transaction volume increased eight percent in Q1 2013. This rise came in the aftermath of a 19 percent decline between Q3 2012 and Q4 2012. Content marketing is one key trend driving innovation in the digital subsector, as is the growing emphasis being placed on experiential marketing solutions.

“We expect to continue seeing an ongoing shift in advertising spend from print-based to digital media,” stated Mary Jo Zandy, Managing Director at Berkery Noyes. “One of the ultimate goals of doing so is to improve the lead generation process through greater personalization, more targeted messaging, and better measurement of the end results.”