Sir Martin Sorrell’s new venture S4 Capital has secured its second acquisition with the purchase of programmatic ad firm MightyHive as it continues its quest to build a new media business incorporating data, content and technology.
Sorrell said the deal, which values the business at $150m, marks an important second strategic step for his new company, adding: “The peanut has now morphed into a coconut, and is growing and ripening.”
The move comes five months after Sorrell bought MediaMonks, a digital agency with headquarters in Amsterdam, as his first major purchase under S4.
Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based MightyHive claims to be one of the fastest-growing programmatic buyers in the world; it has offices in London, Stockholm, Singapore, New York and Sydney.
The two businesses will now work together to provide S4 Capital’s clients with “end-to-end, fully integrated and seamless capabilities in purely digital marketing”.
Sorrell said: “S4 Capital intends to provide global, multi-national, regional, local clients and influencer-driven millennial brands with new age/new era digital marketing services concentrated in three key areas initially – the development of a global digital content platform; first-party data fuelling both digital media planning and creative ideas; and, finally, digital media buying.”
As part of the deal, MightyHive chief executive Peter Kim and chief operating officer Christopher Martin will become directors of S4.
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