Publicis doubles consumer reach to 4 billion with Lotame acquisition

By Leo Marchandon and Mara Vilcu

(Reuters) -French advertising giant Publicis has reached an agreement to acquire data and ID technology group Lotame and plans to wrap it into targeted marketing unit Epsilon, its main business driver.

Publicis said it expects the deal to expand its individual consumer profiles to 4 billion from a current 2.3 billion.

The combined capability would allow Publicis to interact with 91% of all adults who use the internet, CEO Arthur Sadoun said in a statement.

Publicis has outpaced its adland competitors after a 10-year, 12 billion euro tech-driven transformation, leveraging AI and big data to become the world's largest advertising firm, at least until the planned merger of Omnicom and Interpublic, which would form a combined entity with more than $25 billion in revenue.

Publicis said last month that it expects to outperform the market again this year with an organic growth forecast of between 4% and 5%, slightly below 2024.

British rival WPP expects its revenue and profit to be flat at best this year as its shares hit a four-year low following disappointing results in February.

Publicis plans to allocate between 800 million and 900 million euros this year for targeted acquisitions in technology and proprietary data.

The advertiser did not say how much the acquisition of Lotame, which is expected to close early in the second quarter, would cost.

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon and Mara Vîlcu in Gdansk; Editing by Jan Harvey, Kirsten Donovan)