2018 was a blockbuster year for mergers-and-acquisitions activity in media, with AT&T lapping up both Time Warner and AppNexus, and Comcast acquiring Sky.
And you shouldn’t expect the flurry of activity to die down anytime soon.
The media industry is likely to continue to be disrupted in 2019, with several new deals shaking up the space, according to a new report by the market research firm Forrester.
“We feel that there are specific events that will take place in 2019 — specifically around further M&A,” Collin Colburn, a B2C marketing analyst at Forrester, told Business Insider. “Our predictions are grounded in the trends and events from this year and the needs of technology companies, media conglomerates, and marketers.”
Here are the deals that could shake up the media and advertising industries in 2019.
AT&T’s next big move could be going after Roku
With Time Warner, AppNexus, and DirecTV under its belt, AT&T seems to have content, ad tech, and distribution figured out. But that still isn’t enough to help it transform into a digital media and marketing powerhouse and take on the Facebook-Google duopoly, according to Forrester.
That’s because AT&T is still not plugged into consumers’ daily lives the way Facebook and Google are. One way around that could be to invest in a content platform, according to Forrester — such a move would enable AT&T to grab not only a more central role in consumers’ lives but a bigger share of their 42-hour-a-week video-entertainment-viewing habit.
As AT&T looks to compete for more market share in advertising, Roku could be an attractive target.
The argument, according to Forrester, is simple: Roku has a massive (and rapidly growing) user base of 20 million, which, when added to DirecTV’s 20 million households, would give AT&T greater scale than any other TV-centric media company.
Plus, Roku captures a lot of detailed data about over-the-top TV viewing and can dynamically insert targeted ads into its videos, which would complement AT&T’s new targeted-advertising division, Xandr.
AT&T is ready and willing to wage war against the existing duopoly over advertising dollars, Colburn said.
“Buying Roku is a natural next step for AT&T after their acquisitions of Time Warner and AppNexus in 2018,” he said. “The combination of the biggest audience with massive data and a tech stack that enables precision targeting anchored in quality video content is a highly appealing proposition to advertisers.”
Google could snap up LiveRamp
Ever since the data-marketing giant Acxiom sold its marketing-solutions platform to the ad holding company IPG this summer, all eyes have turned to LiveRamp, Acxiom’s other big business.
LiveRamp helps brands link their data with real people, and industry experts consider its data-onboarding practice second to none.
As the industry is increasingly plagued by regulatory concerns, LiveRamp is becoming a highly critical asset for any ad-tech or marketing-tech vendor.
That’s expected to lead to a huge bidding war for LiveRamp, according to Forrester. The likes of Adobe and Salesforce could attempt to counter holding companies like Dentsu Aegis Network, which could seek to complement its Merkle M1 data platform with LiveRamp’s data.
But Forrester thinks the ultimate winner will be Google, which could outbid everyone with its trove of cash and make LiveRamp’s data available for customers using its newly branded and consolidated ad-tech stack, Google Marketing Platform.
LiveRamp offers Google enhanced connectivity to the digital world outside of itself, an expanded (and perhaps mutually beneficial) relationship with publishers, and a unique set of data and identity assets, Colburn said — which would make Google mightier than ever.
“If Google acquires LiveRamp, it will make its new Marketing Platform all the more powerful and enticing for marketers that have already been using some of Google’s legacy tools,” he said. “With these acquisitions, the big keep getting bigger.”
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