AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Tealium.
This week’s podcast guest, LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja, will deliver a presentation on digital media investment trends at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference, taking place October 15-16.
You knew we’d have Terry Kawaja on the podcast eventually. We’re only surprised it took this long.
Kawaja is the merry prankster of digital advertising, an investment banker whose parody videos and LUMAscapes alone would be enough to sustain his reputation. And then there’s his deal making. Kawaja and his partners have advised on tens of billions of dollars worth of M&A. Deals include Oracle buying Moat, Singtel buying Turn, Criteo buying HookLogic, Adobe buying Demdex, Neustar buying Aggregate Knowledge, Google buying Admeld and Invite Media. The list goes on.
In this episode he talks about LUMA’s approach and shares his current view on the market. He notes deal flow has been slow of late, held up in part by the enormous potential acquisitions involving media and telco giants like Disney, Comcast, 21st Century Fox, AT&T and Comcast.
“The big media and telco world is awash with pending deals,” Kawaja says. “I would describe that as tectonic plate shifting. Some of that needs to settle down before people turn their attention to the also important but much smaller issues of what digital capabilities they’ll need to monetize said assets.”
Separately, he says marketing technology is undergoing a natural consolidation of marketing technology, exemplified by the growing presence of private equity. “Private equity tends to get involved when an industry is in a down curve,” Kawaja says.
Also in this episode: The upside of GDPR, the rise of blockchain and changes to the TV ad market.
This episode is supported by Tealium
