From Stack to Strategy: Martech Acquisitions Defining the Future
Who's buying whom—and why it matters: A breakdown of the biggest martech acquisitions transforming how brands connect, personalise, and scale.
In a space where innovation moves faster than strategy decks can keep up, the industry’s biggest marketing technology players are making bold acquisitions and razor-sharp bets on AI, identity, and automation.
This surge in high-impact mergers and acquisitions aim to close capability gaps, accelerate innovation, and consolidate fragmented ecosystems. From AI-powered decisioning and data collaboration to influencer marketing and automation, martech partners are snapping up specialist platforms that help them deliver faster, more connected, and more personalised customer experiences.
These acquisitions reveal a shared ambition: to own the future of customer engagement. Whether it’s a content stack built for real-time personalisation or a clean room for secure data collaboration, the direction is clear—martech is moving toward intelligent orchestration powered by AI, enriched by identity, and defined by measurable outcomes.
Below, we break down the most significant acquisitions in recent months—who’s buying whom, why it matters, and how these deals are shaping the next generation of marketing.
1. Alianza Acquired Metaswitch from Microsoft
Date: March 2025
Why? The acquisition expands Alianza’s cloud-native offerings and provides more than 1,000 service providers with a clear path to modernise and transform their communications networks.
“The acquisition of Metaswitch by Alianza will accelerate product innovation and growth for thousands of service providers across the industry who face similar obstacles in modernising their networks,” said Brian Beutler, CEO and Founder of Alianza.
2. Apply Digital Acquired Ragnarok
Date: March 2025
Why? The acquisition will enable Apply Digital to support clients across the entire digital lifecycle, while Ragnarok will benefit from Apply Digital’s strategy, experience design, tech advisory, and engineering expertise.
Steven Aldrich, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Ragnarok, said, “Apply Digital and Ragnarok share a strategic focus and bring together specialisms in CX, offering a perfect match to help large enterprises accelerate digital transformation.”
3. Banzai Acquired Act-On for 53.2 Million
Date: January 2025
Why? Act-On was founded in 2008, one year after Marketo and two years after Pardot. While Marketo and Pardot were acquired by enterprise vendors — Adobe bought Marketo in 2008 and Salesforce bought Pardot in 2013 — Act-On focused on delivering sophisticated yet affordable marketing automation capabilities to mid-market customers at an affordable price.
“Today’s marketers require efficient and agile marketing automation to achieve tangible business results, and we believe that Act-On provides solutions that fulfill this need,” said Joe Davy, Founder and CEO of Banzai.
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4. Brave Bison Acquired Engage Digital Partners for £10 Mn
Date: December 2024
Why? Engage delivers fan engagement campaigns via a broad roster of services, including digital content and commercial strategy, creative production, social media management, measurement, analytics and digital asset management through an owned technology stack.
Brave Bison Executive Chairman Oli Green said, “This combination comes at a time when rights holders and sports federations are looking to maximise their IP, boost fan engagement and really drive commercial performance using a more data driven approach.”
5. Braze Acquired OfferFit for $325 Mn
Date: March 2025
Why? OfferFit has been building a multi-agent solution that recommends individualised cross-channel customer journeys in partnership with customer engagement solutions like Braze.
“Our real-time stream processing technology differentiated Braze’s modern approach to cross-channel customer engagement. And now, with OfferFit, our complementary products and teams will come together to define the next chapter of the evolution of customer engagement with AI,” said Bill Magnuson, Co-Founder and CEO of Braze.
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6. Contentstack Acquired Lytics
Date: January 2025
Why? The acquisition brings comprehensive audience insights, content analytics and profile management to the Contentstack platform, unlocking real-time personalisation.
Neha Sampat, Founder and CEO of Contentstack, said, “Truly personalised digital experiences require a marriage of scalable content management and actionable first-party data, wherever it lives, operating in real-time. This is why combining Contentstack and Lytics makes so much sense for brands who are building the world’s best digital experiences.”
“We have solved a major problem for brands – capturing, connecting and enriching first-party data and making it actionable,” said James McDermott, Founder and Former CEO of Lytics and Contentstack’s new Global Head of Data Products.
7. DoubleVerify Acquired Rockerbox for $85 Mn
Date: February 2025
Why? To improve marketing measurement and web behavior analysis. It strengthens DoubleVerify’s analytics by integrating Rockerbox’s measurement platform.
Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, said, “With the acquisition of Rockerbox, we will gain a transformative opportunity to capture the full scope of a campaign’s performance, integrating DV’s trusted data with conversion insights across both the open web and walled gardens.”
Ron Jacobson, CEO of Rockerbox, said, “By combining DV’s trusted data and Rockerbox’s outcome measurement, we’re delivering the industry’s best full-funnel measurement offering.”
8. Experian Acquired Audigent
Date: December 2024
Why? Audigent’s privacy-focused data activation platform will be incorporated into Experian’s offerings, reinforcing marketing data and identity resolution capabilities.
Scott Brown, Group President, Experian Financial and Marketing Solutions, said, “With our acquisition of Audigent, we’re bolstering our industry recognised best-in-class data and technology, enabling a better understanding of consumers and driving better outcomes for marketers.”
9. Fivetran to Acquire Census
Date: May 2025
Why? With this acquisition, Fivetran becomes the only fully managed platform that enables enterprises to move governed, automated, and real-time data across their entire stack, from source systems to data platforms and now back into the business applications that drive decision-making.
“This is an exciting moment for Fivetran, and even more so for our customers. For years, our most strategic customers told us they also want to action their data in real-time with Fivetran, not just centralise it in a warehouse. With Census, we’re delivering on that need,” said George Fraser, CEO of Fivetran.
10. Foundry (Formerly IDG) Acquired by Regent LP
Date: March 2025
Why? The sale enables IDG to focus on the core strengths of International Data Corporation (IDC), its technology intelligence company, which offers some of the world’s most trusted research, data, and events to businesses navigating an AI-driven world.
“As it has in the past, IDC is well-poised to provide the technology intelligence leadership that businesses need to advance in this new era,” said Genevieve Juillard, CEO of IDG.
11. Getty Acquired Shutterstock for $3.7 Billion
Date: January 2025
Why? A strategic and necessary move during a time when the licensed visual content industry is facing threats from generative AI tools. The deal is expected to generate between $150 million and $200 million in annual cost savings.
The deal will help the companies in enhancing “content offerings, expanding event coverage and delivering new technologies”, said Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images.
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12. Later Acquired Mavely for $250 Million
Date: January 2025
Why? Integrate Mavely’s creator network into Later’s social media platform to elevate influencer marketing and performance attribution.
Scott Sutton, CEO of Later, said, “By combining our strengths, we are enhancing the value we provide to marketers and empowering creators to build sustainable, income-generating businesses. This move enables us to deliver a seamless, full-funnel experience for marketers—offering ROAS based campaigns and driving predictable, attributable outcomes.”
13. MongoDB Acquired Voyage AI
Date: February 2025
Why? Voyage AI’s advanced embedding and reranking models enable applications to extract meaning from highly specialised and domain-specific text and unstructured data—ranging from legal and financial documents to images, code, and enterprise knowledge bases.
Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB said, “By bringing the power of advanced AI-powered search and retrieval to our highly flexible database, the combination of MongoDB and Voyage AI enables enterprises to easily build trustworthy AI-powered applications that drive meaningful business impact.”
14. Omnicom Group Acquired Interpublic Group (IPG) for $13 Billion
Date: March 2025
Why? The combined company will unite top marketing talent with the industry’s most innovative services and advanced platform to deliver full-funnel solutions and stronger outcomes for leading global clients.
John Wren, Chairman & CEO of Omnicom, said, “Now is the perfect time to bring together our technologies, capabilities, talent and geographic footprints to bring clients superior, data-driven outcomes.”
Philippe Krakowsky, Interpublic’s CEO, said, “By joining Omnicom, we are creating a uniquely comprehensive portfolio of services that will make us the most powerful marketing and sales partner in a world that’s changing at speed.”
15. Publicis Acquired BR Media Group
Date: February 2025
Why? To integrate BR Media Group’s vast creator network and scale influencer marketing capabilities.
Arthur Sadoun, Chairman & CEO of Publicis Groupe, said: “At a moment when the industry is focused on cost savings, we are investing for our clients in innovative products and services that will accelerate their differentiation and growth.”
Celso Ribeiro, Co-Founder and CEO of BR Media, added, “The media strength, creative firepower, and data-driven capabilities of the Group will boost our ability to deliver value to our clients, creating unprecedented opportunities by connecting brands and communities authentically and strategically.”
16. Publicis Acquired Lotame
Date: March 2025
Why? The combined data and identity assets of Lotame and Publicis Groupe’s 2.3 billion global profiles will enable clients to reach 91% of adult internet users with personalised messaging at scale with even greater accuracy.
Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO Publicis Groupe, said, “By connecting that best-in-class identity to our clients’ data thanks to AI, and leveraging it across their marketing spectrum, from their PESO media ecosystem to content production, all in their owned environments, we are truly delivering measurable outcomes for their business.”
17. ServiceNow Acquired Moveworks for 2.85 Billion
Date: March 2025
Why? To integrate Moveworks’ AI-driven automation into ServiceNow’s workflows and enhance automation across enterprise departments.
Amit Zavery, President, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Product Officer at ServiceNow, said, “Moveworks’ talented team and elegant AI‑first experience, combined with ServiceNow’s powerful AI‑driven workflow automation, will supercharge enterprise‑wide AI adoption and deliver game‑changing outcomes for employees and their customers.”
18. Teads and Outbrain Merged
Date: February 2025
Why? To provide a solution for marketers to leverage a single partner to deliver concrete outcomes at every step of the marketing funnel, offering unique ways to combine advertising solutions from awareness to sales.
“This transformative merger creates a company that directly addresses a large gap in the advertising industry: a scaled end- to-end platform that can drive outcomes, from branding to consideration to purchase, across screens,” said Outbrain CEO David Kostman.
19. Uniphore Acquired ActionIQ
Date: December 2024
Why? By bringing Uniphore, ActionIQ and Infoworks together, enterprise customers will have access to an entire suite of AI capabilities that empowers organisations to move beyond proof-of-concept AI trials into full scale implementation.
Tasso Argyros, CEO and Co-Founder of ActionIQ, said, “At ActionIQ we’ve been hyper-focused on data and helped create and now lead the massive category of Customer Data Platforms, helping dozens of F1000 enterprises transform their Customer Experience.”
20. WPP Acquired InfoSum for 150 Million
Date: April 2025
Why? Allows WPP’s clients to maximise the value of their first-party data with privacy-enhancing connections to data providers and media partners, powering campaigns across the entire marketing ecosystem.
Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM, said, “Our approach recognizes the importance of identity data to today’s marketing strategies while allowing us to take advantage of the limitless opportunities for growth we can create by moving beyond them.”
Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said, “It allows clients to stay in complete control of their first-party data, while also giving them access to vastly greater quantities of high-quality, privacy-compliant data and pioneering technology that is not available anywhere else in the market today.”
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