What JEGI Clarity’s Own Numbers Say
JEGI Clarity, a specialist M&A advisory covering marketing, media, and martech, put a specific number behind the sector’s deal pace in a November 2024 release: deal volume across the two quarters it covered exceeded the quarterly average of 300 transactions over the last seven years. The same release found private equity buyers accounted for 32% of year-to-date M&A activity in digital marketing services, a real presence in a sector where deals were once dominated more heavily by strategic acquirers.
That release confirms JEGI Clarity as an active, current tracker of exactly the deal-volume question this page is built around. It does not, on its own, provide a full year-by-year count going back further than the trailing seven-year average it cites.
The Multi-Year Trend, and Where the Hard Numbers Stop
Legacy Advisors’ compiled report, drawing on sourcing it attributes to Greenwichgp.com, GroupM, Intrepid Investment Bankers, and Davidson Capital Advisors, puts US digital marketing and advertising M&A at 835 deals in 2021, alongside a comparable global-sector count of 558. That fell to an estimated 420 global deals in 2022, roughly a 25% decline, with US activity described as 15% to 20% below the 2021 peak, then to an estimated 340 to 350 global deals in 2023, roughly a 22% further decline, with US volume described as about 25% lower than 2022. The publisher itself flags the 2022 and 2023 figures with approximation language, so treat them as directional rather than precise counts.
For 2024 through 2026, Legacy Advisors offers qualitative description only: deal flow that “picked up” in the second half of 2024, 2025 activity that “exploded,” and 2026 “shaping up to be one of the most active years... in recent memory.” No deal count is published for any of those three years in what this research located, and this page states that gap directly rather than filling it with an estimate.
The Numbers
Digital marketing services M&A deal volume exceeded the quarterly average of 300 transactions over the last seven years, across the two quarters covered by JEGI Clarity’s November 2024 release.
Private equity buyers represented 32% of year-to-date digital marketing services M&A activity, per the same JEGI Clarity release.
US digital marketing M&A ran 835 deals in 2021 (558 in a comparable global-sector count), an estimated 420 global deals in 2022 (about a 25% decline), and an estimated 340 to 350 global deals in 2023 (about a 22% further decline), per Legacy Advisors’ compiled multi-year report.
Legacy Advisors, “2022-2025 U.S. Digital Marketing & Advertising M&A Report (2026 Outlook)”
Legacy Advisors describes 2024 through 2026 only in qualitative terms, deal flow that “picked up” in the second half of 2024 and activity that “exploded” in 2025, with 2026 “shaping up to be one of the most active years,” publishing no deal count for any of the three years.
Legacy Advisors, “2022-2025 U.S. Digital Marketing & Advertising M&A Report (2026 Outlook)”
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- JEGI Clarity, via PR Newswire, “JEGI CLARITY Notes Increased M&A Activity within Digital Marketing Services”
- Legacy Advisors, “2022-2025 U.S. Digital Marketing & Advertising M&A Report (2026 Outlook)”