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M&A activity in the sector was up 20.6% year over year in October with 252 deals recorded by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The jump in activity is notable because M&A activity had returned to normal by October 2020 after a pandemic-related dip. The 209 transactions recorded a year ago were 0.5% more than the same month in 2019, itself a healthy year for information technology deal activity. October also saw a new face among the biggest information technology transaction advisers as LUMA Partners LLC advised on a transaction between Twitter Inc.Keep Reading

Is ad tech’s hot streak on the public market sustainable? No, and that’s not a bad thing. After four quarters of spiking valuations and an IPO runway so crowded that one ad tech company opted to postpone its IPO until next year, the market is starting to stabilize. LUMA Director Conor McKenna explores the key factors affecting the market. Click the button to read the article and download LUMA’s Q3 2021 Market Report for the full analysis.Keep Reading

After years of debate, Apple Inc. and Google are making separate moves to effectively kill the software marketers use to track your online activity and tailor ads specifically for you. The moves are upending the way companies have reached audiences and made money from ads since the earliest days of the internet. Review the article noting LUMA’s Terence Kawaja own personal twist on Apple’s ATT system.Keep Reading

Ad Tech is back in vogue with the investment community and, more importantly, buyers, as the once unpopular sector is one of a handful that have benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking at Adweek’s Outlook 2021: The Year Ahead in Marketing and Media event Wednesday, Terence Kawaja, CEO of investment bank LUMA Partners, told virtual attendees that after a dip in M&A activity in early 2020, the ad-tech, mar-tech and digital content sector saw a 20% annual increase in deals with 96 such purchases in Q4. Click the link to read the full article.Keep Reading

Terence Kawaja, Founder & CEO, LUMA Partners Investment Banking, on their new SPAC LUMAscape which maps over 250 SPACs by sector and status. Hosted by Carol Massar. Click the button to listen to the interview.Keep Reading

Experian has purchased Tapad from international telco Telenor in a deal valued at $280 million as the credit rating company furthers its investment in identity resolution services. Terence Kawaja, CEO of investment bank Luma Partners, helped broker the deal between Experian, Tapad and Telenor, and said the $80 million reduction in sale price between 2016 and now is indicative of how privacy legislation, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, has altered earlier business plans in the space. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading

LUMA Partners behind more than $300 billion of digital media and marketing transactions during the past two decades. CEO Terence Kawaja in a fireside chat with Megaphone’s Brendan Monaghan on Podcast Movement panel states that podcasting is one of the media he is most bullish about in the coming years. Click the button to read the article.Keep Reading

After a harsh first half of the year – Q2 was particularly gloomy – the M&A market is starting to rebound. Deal activity was up in the third quarter with particular momentum in gaming and digital audio, although ad tech and mar tech made a respectable showing, according to a Q3 market report from investment bank LUMA Partners released last week. Click the button to review the article.Keep Reading

Having built essential industry investment/deal guides called “LUMAscapes,” visual presentations of interrelated businesses in the media, marketing and adtech industries, investment bank LUMA Partners has introduced the Black LUMAscape, a diagram and directory that charts scores of Black-owned and founded businesses. We spoke with LUMA founder and CEO Terry Kawaja about the new effort and his hopes that it drives more investment to these businesses. Click the button to watch the interview. To view the Black LUMAscape, click here.Keep Reading

Investment bank LUMA Partners LLC has made Black-owned media, marketing and technology companies the focus of the latest installment in its LUMAscape series of charts, which investors and others use as industry references, amid a broad push for racial justice. Terence Kawaja, a founder of LUMA and its chief executive, said the company drew up the “Black LUMAscape” to raise awareness of Black-owned companies in industries that have been criticized for their lack of diversity. The new chart includes technology firm StackShare, The Weather Channel and direct-to-consumer beauty company Pat McGrath Labs. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading

According to the traditional playbook, these brands, known as DTCs, should struggle to carve out anything more than a niche business with their limited budgets. A decade ago, the notion that there would soon be a tidal wave of DTCs grabbing meaningful marketshare, raising huge amounts of venture capital and even going public—well, it would have sounded not only unlikely, but absurd. Epsilon highlights LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja’s “Fire Your CMO: Marketing’s Future Will Not Resemble Its Past” presentation on how DTCs have taken an approach pioneered by software companies and applied it to more traditional goods and services.Keep Reading

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the volatility of the typical revenue model in ad tech, whereby companies are largely reliant on taking a percentage of media spend and is accelerating the push for more stable modes of income. Terry Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners, explains that it’s up to a brand or agency’s procurement team to buy a SaaS offering, and that can be difficult when budgets are planned against a percentage of media, not around technology solutions. Oftentimes, such teams calculate the associated costs as a percent of media.Keep Reading

It was a chilly Q1 for ad tech deal-making, and you can expect more of the same in the second quarter. But you can’t blame it all on COVID-19 – at least not entirely. The ongoing health crisis is only accelerating trends that were already rolling, said Terry Kawaja, CEO and founder of investment bank LUMA Partners, which released its Q1 2020 market report on Tuesday. Click the button below to check out the full article.Keep Reading

The gap between the haves and the have nots in ad tech has never been starker: There is the high-flying company like The Trade Desk with a market capitalization of more than $13 billion. And at the other end is a laundry list of bankruptcies, firesales and companies going out of business altogether. And as the market consolidates, a set of opportunist buyers — the vulture capitalists — are ready to pounce on the remains.Keep Reading

LUMA CEO Terence Kawaja’s latest tweet throws down the “election” gauntlet for CES attendees to choose between speakers Mediaocean’s CEO Bill Wise and the White House’s Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump. Both speakers are scheduled to appear on separate stages same time. Click the button below to check out AdAge’s take on the post.Keep Reading

Last year, Direct to Consumer (D2C) brands stole the show, most notably in Terry Kawaja’s presentation, ‘Fire your CMO‘ presentation. This year, as first-time sponsors, we were surprised that D2C brands were largely absent from both the stage and the conference floor. Click the button to read the full article.Keep Reading

SANTA BARBARA — The marketing industry has been thrown into turmoil by a collection of digital privacy scandals and regulatory responses that have changed the nature of ad targeting. But it will recover as one which executes similar opportunities on a different basis. That is according to one of the arch dealmakers responsible for stewarding billions of dollars in ad-tech M&A activity in the last few years.Keep Reading

McDonald’s is starting to throw a few ideas on the grill after spending around $300 million to acquire personalization and decision logic tech startup Dynamic Yield in March.Keep Reading

Last month, French ad holding giant Publicis announced that it was shelling out $4.4 billion to acquire Alliance Data’s Epsilon marketing unit to bolster its data capabilities and expand its digital business in North America. That move makes the company more relevant to its clients, Rishad Tobaccowala, Publicis’ chief growth officer, said, speaking to former GroupM executive Rob Norman at the LUMA’s Digital Media Summit on Tuesday in New York City.Keep Reading

In Westwood One and LeadsRx first-ever direct-to-consumer media attribution and awareness report, a historical account of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands effect on digital media & radio and the projection of their future are accessed with insights from digital industry leaders.Keep Reading

To maintain incremental growth, today’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) darlings are looking to expand beyond the digital sandbox where they grew up. After years of slathering on the search and Facebook ads, DTC brands are approaching a saturation point in these channels.Keep Reading

Many of the hot brands in retail today didn’t exist a decade ago. But now, backed by big-time venture capital, new direct-to-consumer players are making enough waves in the retail landscape that heritage players are forced to pay attention. Larger brands caught dueling for consumer dollars might do well to adopt some of the marketing strategies that startup brands have deployed from infancy. Check out LUMA’s Terry Kawaja in AdAge’s latest article.Keep Reading

With 2018 in the rearview mirror, a few of the year’s main events still appear larger than life. AdAge highlights 10 stories that will continue to reverberate through the media and marketing industries well into 2019 and beyond.Keep Reading

Direct-to-Consumer Brand Success Offers Lessons for All Marketers November 1, 2018 by Terry Kawaja, Founder and CEO, LUMA Partners A week ago I delivered my keynote presentation to an overflow ballroom at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Florida. My provocative title, Fire Your CMO: Marketing’s Future Will Not Resemble Its Past, was designed to drive tune in (check the box) and get marketers thinking hard (another check) by examining the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) phenomenon that is sweeping marketing.Keep Reading

DPAA President and CEO Barry Frey caught up with LUMA CEO Terry Kawaja for a quick look at LUMA and what Terry will be addressing at the Video Everywhere Summit on October 30.Keep Reading

LUMA CEO Terry Kawaja sits down with the Association of National Advertisers’ Group EVP Bill Duggan for a one-on-one interview on LUMA, the new LUMAscapes, and Terry’s speaking engagement at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference set for October 24, 2018.Keep Reading

While there are tactical ways to make advertising more relevant, Terry Kawaja believes there’s a bigger concept at play: relegating interruptive advertising to the past. The CEO & Founder of LUMA will be one of some 250 industry leaders attending The Relevance Conference hosted by AT&T in Santa Barbara on Sept. 24-26. On the opening day he will join Otter Media’s Tony Goncalvez and others on a panel titled Putting A Price On Content that will explore the “happy medium” between paid subscription models and ad-supported media.Keep Reading

AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. This week’s podcast guest LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja talks about LUMA’s approach and shares his current view on the market.Keep Reading

Just a week after its $85bn Time Warner takeover was rubber-stamped, US telco AT&T is reportedly in talks to purchase adtech outfit AppNexus, in a move that would better enable it to take on the likes of Facebook and Google.Keep Reading

Speaking at the 2018 Digital Media Summit, in New York City, Sorrell spoke on stage with LUMA Partners chief executive Terence Kawaja about his thoughts on the current media landscape, including where the biggest opportunities lie, with the former WPP chief describing the period since his WPP exit as “a fresh start”.Keep Reading

Sir Martin Sorrell, the former chief executive of advertising giant WPP Plc, described himself as a “realist” regarding the challenges facing traditional media and advertising companies and emphasized the need for scale during an interview at an ad-industry event. On stage with LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja at the company’s Digital Media Summit in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Sorrell continued to point to the growing advertising and programming strength of Amazon.com Inc. and its potential to challenge television companies as well as the advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook Inc.Keep Reading

ESPN’s first attempt to cut out the cable guy and bring sports programming directly to consumers launched on Thursday. Its new streaming video product, ESPN+, comes wrapped inside a re-launched ESPN app and costs $4.99 a month.Keep Reading

For mar tech companies, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) preparation starts by acknowledging that they handle personal data.Keep Reading

LUMA’s founder and CEO, Terry Kawaja, billed 2017 as a period for “healthy clean-up” in the media and marketing space, as a number of public ad tech firms trading at low valuations were acquired or taken private.Keep Reading

Terrence Kawaja, co-founder and chief executive of investment bank Luma Partners, points to his outfit’s recent market report which demonstrates that the total number of M&A deals in the US digital media sector between 2016 and 2017 rose from 236 to 252.Keep Reading

The ad tech industry also saw what Luma Partners CEO and founder Terence Kawaja called the Great Ad Tech Cleanup, wherein he predicted no public ad tech company will have an I/O model by Q1 2018.Keep Reading

It’s been a long time since industry analysts expressed optimism about the fate of big-box retailers, but a ray of light just crept in. Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Home Depot each topped earnings estimates and demonstrated strong year-over-year growth.Keep Reading

ad:tech New York 2017, the original industry authority for marketing and media technology practitioners and digitally savvy brand marketers, announced the recipients of the 2017 ad:tech Industry Achievement Award: Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB); Terence Kawaja, Founder and CEO, LUMA; Pam Horan, Co-Founder, Horan MediaTech Advisors; and Heidi Browning, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, National Hockey League.Keep Reading

Once a well-kept secret among German media and ad tech executives, Dmexco has evolved into a sprawling monster of a trade show, the tentpole, global event in the digital marketing calendar.Keep Reading

If you’ve been to a digital media event, you’ve seen the LUMAscape, showing the vast number of programmatic advertising firms that dot the industry. Some see innovations; others see a mess. LUMA founder Terry Kawaja sees opportunity.Keep Reading

Business Insider caught up with Terry at the Cannes Lions in the South of France where he told us what he sees in the future of media and tech. We talked about Snapchat, Sprinklr, the upcoming Appnexus IPO, and whether it’s a good idea for cable companies like Verizon to buy media companies like Yahoo and AOL.Keep Reading

In this video interview, LUMA Partners founder and CEO Terence Kawaja spoke with Beet.TV at LUMA’s own Digital Media Summit, where he delivered a State Of Digital Media address he said puts “the case for optimism”.Keep Reading

Speaking about his outfit’s latest quarterly report, one of the foremost advisors in M&A for the adtech sector Terry Kawaja, chief executive of LUMA Partners, speaks to The Drum about his assessment of the likely outcomes in the mid-to-long term future.Keep Reading

Private equity firms and business interests from the Far East are increasingly taking a stake in the combined adtech and martech space, according to Results International, which also finds that martech is growing in popularity with acquirers.Keep Reading

For companies in the crowded online advertising sector it’s been a bumpy ride in the past few years.Keep Reading

Like any emerging market, timing is everything for venture capitalists. Being too late is a missed opportunity, and being too early is a good way to flush funds down the drain.Keep Reading

“We recently revisited the premise that advertising and marketing technologies are converging.Keep Reading

The distinction between the two sectors is increasingly blurring, but investors say a predictable revenue model is key.Keep Reading

Another day, another Chinese group splashing out on ad tech.Keep Reading

The investment bank LUMA Partners, the company known for its LUMAscape summaries, has a new presentation on the state of digital media that helpfully explains the biggest trends in the digital media industry in an easy-to-understand way.Keep Reading

Worries about fraud and fragmentation may prompt a shake-out in the crowded online-ad industry.Keep Reading

This investment-bank presentation helps explain the complicated digital marketing industry for normal people.Keep Reading

If you need an indication that an industry is facing an existential crisis, you won’t do much better than one of digital advertising’s most familiar luminaries turning to gore to make a point.Keep Reading

Earlier this year, Terrence Kawaja, well-known investment banker and ad tech divinator, rattled many nerves when he predicted an imminent wave of consolidations and failures in the ad tech sector. Of the roughly 2,000 companies involved in advertising technology, he estimated that no more than 150 will live to see a successful liquidity event.Keep Reading

Firms in the hyper-competitive advertising technology marketplace face challenges as they attempt to overhaul the way ads are bought and sold. You wouldn’t guess that judging by the scene on the French Riviera this week.Keep Reading

Investment banker Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, the company famed for its LUMAscapes, has a new, epic presentation on the state of digital media. It takes a specific focus on digital media and marketing.Keep Reading

More than $15 billion of ad spend will be transacted through programmatic channels this year, and that budget will flow through a famously fragmented set of technology systems. But what specifically are the steps behind a programmatic transaction? How does a single ad move across the LUMAscape? In this post, we will break down the 5 key steps of every programmatic impression.Keep Reading

Industry Preview 2015: Are Enterprise Stacks Shying Away From Media Execution?Keep Reading

While advertising-supported digital media is quickly growing, there are much larger opportunities for adtech companies. This exists in the total addressable market (TAM). This includes e-commerce, retail, e-payments, marketing automation and SAS, says Terence Kawaja, CEO and co-founder of the boutique investment bank LUMA Partners, in this interview with Beet.TV.Keep Reading

The founder and CEO of LUMA Partners LLC neatly separated all the major players into two sets, and for about a half an hour Kawaja explained how they’re different, how they’re the same and how ultimately they will work with each other.Keep Reading

This past summer, trade press commentary focused on the impending doom of the Ad Tech space, pointing to the industry’s fragmentation and noting the underperformance of recent IPOs: Millennial Media (MM), Tremor Video (TRMR) and YuMe (YUME). The tides quickly shifted in the fall when Rocket Fuel (FUEL) went public and finished up nearly 100% on its first day of trading. The following month, Criteo (CRTO) also had a successful IPO and, along with Rocket Fuel, trades at higher multiples than the first batch of deals with a market cap well north of a billion dollars.Keep Reading

Every good story needs a hero. Back when I wrote The Search, that hero was Google – the book wasn’t about Google alone, but Google’s narrative worked to drive the entire story.Keep Reading

According to Gartner, by 2015 the technology budget of CMOs will likely exceed that of CIOs. There is no question that marketing has become more data-driven and technology-driven than in the past. “Analytics,” “algorithms,” “optimization” – terms that in the past were typically relegated to the cubicles of specialized marketing analysts – are now part of the daily conversation in the CMO suite. Much has been written about audience targeting, programmatic buying, real-time bidding, data management, etc., showcasing impressive advances made in advertising over the past few years.Keep Reading

I was talking recently with Edi Immonen of Glome about the idea behind it: turning users into publishers. He used the word “media,” but I’m going with “publishers” for now, because that’s the word used in this graphic (one of many like it — all amazing and excellent) from LUMA partners.Keep Reading

VC-backed ad tech firms have arguably inflicted one big mess on digital advertising.Keep Reading

In the technology world, big companies that buy smaller ones often will map out dozens of potential acquisition targets. Why shouldn’t the start-ups and their investors be able to size up the potential buyers? Now they can.Keep Reading

The advertising-technology field is shaking out, as failed start-ups merge with more-successful peers, non-advertising companies snap up industry players, and venture capitalists show less interest in new investments.WSJKeep Reading