MediaLink will keep its offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, and UTA stressed there should be no job losses. He will continue as chief executive of MediaLink, which remains a standalone brand, and his 150-person team will add about 30 staff from UTA’s marketing division. Kassan told Campaign that UK-based Ascential had been a good owner of MediaLink but it made sense to join UTA, which represents talent across the entertainment industry and works with big brands. Michael Kassan, who founded MediaLink in 2003 and sold his business to Ascential in 2017, is known as one of the best connected figures in the global ad industry and has run pitches for brands such as AT&T, Disney and Walgreens Boots Alliance.Īscential bought MediaLink for $69 million, with earn-out payments likely to have taken the total consideration to an estimated $110 million, according to stock broker Peel Hunt, and its decision to sell now appears to underline its recent strategic shift towards digital commerce and data services.Īscential said MediaLink made profits of $10 million on sales of $44 million during 2020, when it was hit by the pandemic, and has “grown very strongly” in 2021, generating an annual “internal rate of return” of 14% during four and a half years of ownership. As part of that acquisition, MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan and his team joined UTA, with the agency folding its UTA Marketing division into MediaLink.MediaLink, one of the leading strategic advisory firms in the advertising industry, is changing ownership after Ascential, the owner of Cannes Lions, agreed to sell it for $125 million in cash to Hollywood talent agency giant United Talent Agency (UTA). That month the company acquired the strategic advisory and marketing consultancy MediaLink in a $125 million deal. UTA has been opportunistic when it comes to M&A, as Zimmer telegraphed to THR in an interview in December. ![]() “The more finely we can analyze that data, and the more we can integrate it with our other data sources, the more accurately we can assess the value of the content, and the more likely it is that we can identify patterns that help us drive value for our clients and see what’s coming next.” “For example, in setting the title comparisons that often form the basis of establishing the value of a film or TV show, we can go beyond the typical traits of that content and zero in, for instance, on specific story arcs or character identities, among hundreds of other traits,” Kessler says. That’s where MediaHound’s Entertainment Graph comes in, pulling metadata like the talent and creators, genres, fandoms, etc to help UTA figure out the value their clients bring to those projects. “Today’s acquisition is a strong addition to the potency of our capabilities in this space.” “Although Talent and creativity remain the coin of the realm, data aligned with strong insights is also a critical tool for our colleagues and clients,” says Jeremy Zimmer, UTA’s CEO. In other words, in a fractured content landscape with rapidly changing windows and business models, understanding the value that talent brings to a film, commercial or TV project is critical for the agency. “So, in MediaHound, we saw an opportunity to leverage their IP – The Entertainment Graph, in particular – to provide us with more comprehensive data that could drive deeper insights as well as a proven team who could architect and build our data analytics system of the future, one that serves our unique needs and give us and our clients meaningful strategic advantage.” “However, there aren’t any third-party data platforms that are designed specifically for the use cases that arise in talent agencies since there are so few companies like ours,” Kessler added. ![]() ![]() But, today, with the distribution of media being so much more complex across multiple platforms and audience touchpoints, we need to ingest and analyze our data in ways that help us, our clients, and our buyers gain a true assessment of the full impact of an artist’s work.” “At one time, it was enough for an agency to simply use Nielsen ratings and box office receipts to understand the performance value of talent and content. “UTA uses data and analytics in many different ways but chiefly in order to gain a clear, objective, and compelling understanding of our clients’ value in the marketplace,” Kessler says. UTA, like other agencies, has long used data to help inform its other lines of business, including representation. ![]() UTA Signs 'Locke & Key' and 'Wynonna Earp' Producer IDW Entertainment (Exclusive)
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