The year-end report issued by the New York-based investment bank Peachtree Media Advisors [1] showed that there were 755 capital raises, mergers, and acquisitions in digital media in 2009 – an increase of 7% over 2008 – although the total value of such deals fell 10% in 2009 to $15.2 billion.
We offered this report free to our readers a few days ago, click here [2].
In all, the report goes on to show that there were 85 merger and acquisition transactions in the mobile arena in 2009, more than double the 41 such deals that occurred in 2008.
On the other hand, social media saw a major drop off in M&A activity last year, with 47 deals in 2009 versus more than 100 in the previous year..
According to Peachtree’s report, when consumer interest in smartphones surged upward in 2009, driven by the iPhone and Google’s Android software, money began to pour into the fast-growing mobile sector.
Meanwhile, as more Web publishers faced an abundance of inventory and a data, along with a weak display market, the back end operations side of the digital media business received increased attention and deal making.
Peachtree’s report shows that companies focused on such services as ad optimization, targeting, analytics and operations were hot in 2009, resulting in 144 transactions – up from 74 in 2008.