M&A activity across digital media, advertising technology, commerce, and marketing services in 2025 reflected a decisive shift in buyer behavior toward strategic adjacency, with acquirers prioritizing infrastructure, data control, commerce enablement, video monetization, and executional depth over standalone growth assets.
Across both strategic and private equity buyers, transactions clustered around ownership of decisioning layers, tighter integration between media and transaction data, consolidation of fragmented CTV and video ecosystems, and the simplification of increasingly complex service delivery models.
AI featured prominently throughout 2025 deal narratives—not as a discrete acquisition category, but as an embedded acceleration layer enhancing infrastructure, commerce, media, and services platforms. Buyers consistently favored companies where AI was operationalized within workflows, decisioning, attribution, and monetization, rather than experimental or standalone AI capabilities.
For founders, CEOs, and boards evaluating strategic alternatives, these patterns provide a practical lens into how assets are being underwritten today—and where durable, buyer-aligned value and premium outcomes are being created.
