Marketing & Communications

Marketing & Communications spans the agencies and specialists that build and promote brands — advertising and creative, digital marketing and SEO, public relations, events and experiential, brand strategy, social and influencer, and commercial photography and video. The field runs from the global agency holding companies down to a vast base of independent shops and freelancers.

It is a large, fragmented, and actively transacted market. The shift of spend from traditional to digital has reshaped growth — digital and performance marketing are the engine, while some traditional formats stagnate — and consolidation runs in two directions at once: holding-company M&A at the top and private-equity roll-ups of independent and digital agencies below.