Dentsu to acquire Tag Worldwide

Dentsu Group has reached a deal with Advent International to acquire its global creative digital production firm Tag Worldwide, the companies have announced.

The deal will add roughly 2800 employees located in 29 global markets to Dentsu’s creative digital production capabilities. Tag will become Dentsu’s sixth distinct network brand "for the foreseeable future," the agency network says. Global CEO David Kassler will continue to lead Tag out of London

The acquisition is aimed at scaling Dentsu's content offering for clients across the customer journey, tapping Tag’s digital infrastructure which includes a scaled personalization engine for customer experience management (CXM). The capabilities will allow more production at scale and efficient  use of media through dynamic content optimization (DCO).

Tag currently provides serices in three main areas: Creative Production (including digital video, CGI, AR / VR and post-production); Technology (UX design, web and platform development, managed services) and Channel Activation (advisory and omnichannel content delivery).

While financial terms were not disclosed, Dentsu expects the deal will represent approximately 3% of its revenues on completion, and will boost its Customer Transformation and Technology (CT&T) net revenues to 34% from 32% for FY2022. Dentsu's long-term goal is to have 50% of its revenues coming from CT&T. 

“Tag will truly enable us to scale our CT&T business for global clients with a technology-driven solution," said Dentsu president & CEO, Hiroshi Igarashi. "By applying mass-personalization across the three services lines, we will create a best-in-class, horizontal creativity offering."

“We can’t wait to start this next phase of our journey and couldn’t be happier to be joining the Dentsu family," added David Kassler, Tag's global CEO. "The market is moving incredibly fast towards integrated services - the combination of Tag’s global technology-enabled content production with dentsu’s broader marketing, technology and consulting skills will be tremendously additive for both sets of our wonderful clients.”

The deal has been approved by both company boards and is expected to close later in 2023 subject to antitrust approvals.