Acxiom brand lives on as IPG completes £2.3bn deal

acxiom1Interpublic Group has finally completed the $2.3bn (£1.7bn) acquisition of Acxiom’s Marketing Solutions business and has confirmed it will operate it as an independent company under the Acxiom brand name, led by co-presidents Dennis Self and Rick Erwin.
The deal, first announced in July, sees the remaining Acxiom Corporation business now trade as LiveRamp Holdings under chief executive Scott Howe. Acxiom will retain its headquarters in Conway, Arkansas, and fall under the remit of IPG chief data and technology officer Arun Kumar.
IPG insists that Acxiom’s data and service offerings, which enable personalised, omnichannel customer experiences, combined with IPG’s vast scale and breadth of complementary agency services, bring together “the art and the science of marketing”.
It is claimed that this combination will provide clients with the ability to manage first, second and third party data at scale, using a suite of offerings for data strategy and management, audience creation, performance media, planning and buying, personalised messaging, and analytics.
IPG chairman and CEO Michael Roth said: “With this transaction, we will add a foundational, world-class data asset, covering two-thirds of the global population, to our capabilities. Having the ability to leverage data at scale enables us to develop deeper relationships in the marketplace, and to do so by bringing together two companies with cultures that are highly aligned when it comes to our approach to high standards of transparency and respect for the consumer.”

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