Consolidation amongst media businesses massive and small has been broadly anticipated since Omnicom proposed buying Interpublic Group final December. To a big extent, the trade hasn’t disillusioned, with Indies merging to kind larger Indies, and holdcos persevering with to accumulate totally different specialty retailers to develop even larger.
The most recent merger is available in a large nook of the advertising and marketing world, of e-commerce and retail and full-funnel technique that goes past media funding — they’re generally known as “market” businesses. They serve manufacturers which are plying their gross sales on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Store and different commerce websites, which collective symbolize some $525 billion in gross sales within the U.S. alone.
Digiday has realized that Podean, which payments itself as a market company, is buying once-competitor now companion Commerce Canal to kind what it’s calling the biggest impartial market company, strategizing with purchasers together with Mattel, Danone, Colgate-Palmolive, Luxottica, Steve Madden and AB InBev, amongst others. It should function below the Podean title.
Podean is thought for its strategic steering on analytics, media, social commerce and content material, and has a bigger world attain, whereas Commerce Canal has a repute for market optimization technique, model, licensor and licensee administration capabilities — and has the important thing AI instruments to assist construct a brand new tech stack. The mixed company in 2025 will generate 80% of its revenues within the U.S. and 20% globally, in accordance with Mark Energy, Podean’s founder. By itself, Podean was drawing 35% of its income globally.
The acquisition, whose price ticket was not shared by the principals, was facilitated by personal fairness agency Mountaingate Capital, which has invested within the likes of Tinuiti and Mars United Commerce, the latter now owned by Publicis. Totaling some 200 staffers throughout 17 nations, the objective is to develop internationally in addition to within the U.S.
Within the merged firm, Energy will concentrate on progress of relationships, expertise and purchasers as chief progress officer within the merged operation, whereas Ryan Craver, Commerce Canal’s founder, turns into chief technique and analytics officer. Travis Johnson, Podean’s CEO, will maintain that very same function within the merged company.
“Should you don’t have the ecommerce foundations to promote the proper merchandise in the proper promoting mannequin, have the proper buyer expertise, you possibly can find yourself taking place a really wasteful path the place media shouldn’t be getting put to make use of in the proper approach,” mentioned Energy. “An built-in strategy, with robust operational foundations and logistics, and all these issues that you want to get merchandise into the fingers of the patron, are important earlier than you simply spend extra {dollars} on media.”
A part of what makes the union work is Commerce Canal’s proprietary AI platform, Purvey.AI, which makes use of machine studying and AI to ship planning and funding insights for purchasers, and which is able to kind the idea of the merged company’s tech stack.
“We recognize [Podean’s] continued funding in choices by way of their new acquisition, particularly a concentrate on making use of AI to ship the effectivity and effectiveness wanted for us to keep up and broaden our class management,” mentioned Adam Kagan, svp of youngsters at Centric Manufacturers, an attire and equipment firm, in an announcement asserting the acquisition.
Amazon accounts for almost 65% of that whole market spend in 2025, however in accordance with Sky Canaves, principal analyst of retail and ecommerce at eMarketer, its share peaked at 71% in 2022, regularly declining as marketplaces from Walmart, Temu, and TikTok Store cribbed bits of market share.
Calling Podean and Commerce Canal two of the larger gamers in a posh market, Canaves mentioned slowing progress throughout marketplaces might be a spur for the 2 businesses to come back collectively.
“There’s a lot uncertainty in retail and ecommerce this yr, and particularly, there’s some slowdown in progress happening in ecommerce in addition to in marketplaces broadly,” mentioned Canaves. “However marketplaces nonetheless symbolize the large progress engine in e-commerce.”
Canaves additionally identified that the granularity of Podean and Commerce Canal’s consultative talents are capable of put it up in opposition to the rising commerce clout of company holding firms like Publicis and Omnicom, each of which have made important investments within the area (Publicis with Profitero, CitrusAd and Mars United Commerce, and Omnicom with Flywheel).
The merged providing is “a little bit of a broader providing, and it does appear like it will get extra into the nuts and bolts of daily operations for the manufacturers,” mentioned Canaves.
