Interpublic Group (IPG)’s sale last week of R/GA to private equity (PE) firm Truelink Capital signals a coming wave of PE buying and investing in creative agencies, industry leaders tell ADWEEK.
R/GA is not the only agency that has recently sold to PE: last year, Svoboda Capital Partners invested in creative agency Highdive; Keystone Capital invested in Barkley, which then merged with OKRP; and independent media agency Brainlabs nabbed funding from Falfurrias Capital Partners (FCP).
Other PE deals in the ad arena include FCP’s investment in digital shop Said Differently; Shamrock Capital’s (which also owns ADWEEK) stake in experiential consultancy DE-YAN; and Growth Capital Partners minority investment in U.K. social agency Coolr.
As private equity dealmaking in the ad industry heats up, ADWEEK spoke to experts about what agency leaders can expect under PE ownership.
PE buyers are getting more sophisticated
While PE firms have invested in agencies over the past 10 to 15 years, their targets have mostly been performance marketing firms, said Michael Seidler, CEO of M&A advisory firm Madison Alley, pointing to deals like New Mountain Capital’s 2020 acquisition of Tinuiti from another PE firm, Mountaingate Capital.
“Following the Tinuiti [deal], so many groups saw the success of data-driven performance marketing groups and thought that they could replicate that,” he said.
![Interpublic Group (IPG) has sold R/GA to a group led by private equity firm Truelink Capital and the agency’s global leaders. Los Angeles-based Truelink will own a majority stake in […]](https://www.adweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/RGA-1.png?w=640&h=360&crop=1)
In contrast, PE firms historically saw creative agencies as project-based and talent-driven businesses, and therefore less predictable, Seidler added.
But recently, there has been growing interest in creative and “tech-enabled” shops, said Lisa De Bonis, chief executive of Huge, a former IPG agency that sold to PE firm AEA Investors in December.
“I’m convinced this is the next wave,” De Bonis told ADWEEK. “As a natural consequence of the adoption of tech more broadly, and how quickly consumer behaviors and businesses are having to transform, private equity firms are seeing that tech-enabled creative services are an area of growth. They’ve woken up to it.”