Deloitte follows Accenture with Dutch digital buy

Industry Contributor 11 May 2019 - 2 min read

Deloitte follows Accenture with Dutch digital buy

By Paul McIntyre - Executive Editor

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Tags: deliotte, accenture, marketing, advertising, digital, programmatic, creative, social, search, full service, consultancy, holding groups, media

Deloitte Digital has acquired Dutch agency Pervorm as the consultancy eyes a greater slice of marketing budgets. The deal bolsters its capabilities in programmatic, search and social (The Drum).

Key points:

Deloitte moving into digital buy-side
Follows acquisitions of creative agencies Heat in 2016, and Acne in 2017; ‘proposition design’ consultancy Market Gravity in 2017; and interactive marketing agency Brandfirst and cloud and marketing automation firm CloudinIT in 2018
Move follows Accenture Interactive’s deal for Netherlands-based Storm Digital in March this year

Accenture Interactive has made much of the early running but Deloitte is also amassing a battery of digital and data capability. While Accenture's buys are handily listed here, Deloitte's are harder to piece together. But in recent years it has bought specialists across mobile, digital, design and CX/UX, marketing and analytics consultancies, a marketing automation firm and an AI-driven audience platform business. It has acquired those companies in territories ranging from the US and Canada, to Sweden, the UK, Poland, Belgium and now Holland (see a partial acquisition list here).

As traditional media spend continues to fall, with budgets diverted into other forms of customer experience management, the ad agency holding groups are responding. Following Dentsu’s acquisition of Merkle and IPG’s recent acquisition of Acxiom, Publicis’ $4.4bn deal for Epsilon is the latest and most ambitious marker of how seriously they take the siren calls from consultants and platforms wooing their clients.

How will the other consultancies, such as PwC, EY and maybe KPMG respond to the piece-by-piece strategies of Accenture and Deloitte, versus the mega deal approach of Publicis? Your thoughts, as ever, are welcome...