Marketing firm Dentsu Aegis Network acquires mobile ad agency Fetch Media

(Updated 11.6.14 at 12:14 am PT with comments from Greg Grimmer)

Digital media and marketing communications firm Dentsu Aegis Network announced this morning it has acquired Fetch Media Limited, a global mobile ad agency.

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Terms of the deal were not made public. (Disclosure: Fetch owns a less-than-0.5 percent stake in VentureBeat.)

The London-based Fetch, started in 2009 by James Connelly and Declan Reddington, will keep its brand. CEO Connelly and recently appointed COO Greg Grimmer will remain in their positions.

“The headline is business as usual,” Grimmer told VentureBeat, with no changes expected at the agency.

He recalled that other companies had approached the mobile agency for a buyout, but Dentsu Aegis’ perspective was “we will let you grow” in accordance with Fetch’s vision.

He compared Fetch’s position as a growing — 100 percent year-over-year growth for the last two years — global mobile agency to Somo, which has “drifted into ad serving.”

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He said the “most lookalike agency,” against which Fetch often pitches, is M & C Saatchi Mobile.

“We are an agency-managed service, so we’re technology-neutral,” he said. “We will never say we will built an app, [but] we’ll say we’ll find a company [for building] the app.”

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Dentsu Aegis, part of Dentsu Inc. and also headquartered in London, has eight global network brands — media planning and buying specialist Carat, ad/PR firm Dentsu, media communications provider Dentsu Media, digital performance marketing agency iProspect, digital marketing network Isobar, ad agency mcgarrybowen, out-of-home media specialist Posterscope, and media communications provider Vizeum.

The nework also has the specialist brands Amnet, Amplifi, Data2Decisions, Mitchell Communications, psLIVE and 360i.

For three straight years — 2011, 2012, and 2013 — Fetch received Mobile Entertainment’s Marketing Agency of the Year award.

In September, Dentsu Aegis bought the San Diego, California-based Convario, a search and content performance marketing agency.

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