NEWS4 January 2021

S4 Capital acquires content and data firms

Data analytics Innovations M&A Media New business News UK

UK – Digital advertising and marketing service company S4 Capital has acquired creative agency Decoded Advertising and data-driven performance marketing firm Metric Theory in the company’s first purchases since the UK’s exit from the European Union.

martin sorrell

Metric Theory will combine with MightyHive, which leads S4 Capital’s data and digital media consultancy work, to continue development of a unitary advertising and marketing services model.

Decoded Advertising will join MediaMonks, a digital content production company that runs S4 Capital’s content practice.

Metric Theory was set up in 2012 and is an integrated performance marketing agency providing services across search, social media and commerce media. It has more than 130 staff based in San Francisco, Denver, New York and Orange County, California.

Decoded Advertising is a technology and media agency that was established in 2014 and employs almost 200 people in New York and Los Angeles.

The two companies had a projected combined gross profit of $70m in 2020, and in a statement announcing the acquisitions, S4 Capital said it would shortly announce further expansion plans following the completion of the Brexit agreement at the end of December.

The latest S4 Capital deals follow last year’s acquisitions of Latin American data and analytics consultancy Digodat and Australian analytics firm Lens10, as well as data analytics and measurement consultancy Brightblue Consulting.

Matt Rednor, founder and chief executive of Decoded Advertising, said: “In S4 Capital, we’ve found a group of like-minded collaborators that immediately expand our ability to disrupt the industry with a more modern approach to creativity.”

Ken Baker, co-founder and chief executive of Metric Theory, said that it was clear that S4 Capital and MightyHive’s “mission and values are the same as ours, and that we’ll be far better at delivering them together”.

Sir Martin Sorrell (pictured), executive chairman of S4 Capital, said: “Matt and his colleagues at Decoded share our vision of using data to develop and produce effective creative work and distribute campaigns through digital media.

“Our data and digital media practice is founded on providing clients with transparency and measurable results, two values at the heart of the business Ken and his colleagues have built at Metric Theory.”

@RESEARCH LIVE

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