Aegis Media, the $20 billion global communications group, plans to acquire a strategic stake in Commmunicate 2, a Mumbai-based search marketing and contextual advertising firm.
Communicate 2 will be a part of Carat, a media planning and communications agency under Aegis Media in India.
Aegis Media's global digital marketing solution, Isobar, will also start expanding capabilities for the Indian market.
Nigel Morris, CEO, Isobar, said final negotiations are on for a "significant financial stake" in Communicate 2. The buyout will allow Aegis to include search engine marketing into communication solutions for India.
"Search engine marketing is one of the key components of a successful campaign today," said Morris. "We've realised this early. Keeping this as a central philosophy, we globally acquired about 32 specialist agencies in the last four years."
Internationally, the internet advertising market is pegged at around $15 billion and is growing rapidly. Isobar has online billings in excess of $1.5 billion.
Communicate 2, based out of Mumbai and Pune, services financial clients such as Reliance Money, Apna Loan, ICICI Bank and Standard Chartered. Under the Isobar network, Communicate 2 will now gain access to global tools, partners and search market capabilities of Aegis.
"Digital spends have reached the tipping point, and they want to quadruple it over the next few years. Advertisers have a great advantage to leverage the growing number of internet users who control a large portion of the disposable income of the country," Vivek Bhargava, CEO, Communicate 2, said.
Isobar plans to make more acquisitions in India over the next 12-18 months in disciplines such as social and viral marketing, mobile and CRM, said Morris.
Patrick Stahle, CEO, Aegis Media, said the company would be relaunching its out-of-home (OOH) media solution Posterscope later this year. The OOH brand earlier had a presence in India through a partnership with Percept, which lasted four years.
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"We plan to invest over $100 million over the next 3-5 years in India. Our focus clearly is on building up our capabilities in media, OOH and the digital and interactive domain," he said.
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