Publicis Groupe’s acquisition of Captiv8, an end-to-end influencer marketing platform, is seen by many in the creator economy as another major development for the industry. It represents the latest in a series of strategic investments by the French advertising giant to strengthen its digital and influencer capabilities.
This deal follows Publicis’ $500 million acquisition of Influential in 2024, which was one of the industry’s largest transactions last year. The creator economy saw 65 M&A deals completed in 2024, according to Quartermast Advisors, with consolidation expected to continue this year.
The Captiv8 acquisition brings substantial scale to Publicis’ influencer marketing operations, incorporating a network of 15 million creators across 120 countries and technology that processes over 2.5 billion social posts annually. The combined entity aims to deliver enhanced capabilities through an expanded creator network, AI-powered platform integration with technology, commerce capabilities, and advanced measurement solutions of Publicis-owned tech company Epsilon.
The big question is, “What does this acquisition mean for the broader creator economy moving forward?”
We asked several industry experts to share their thoughts and insights on how this consolidation might impact brand-creator relationships and what it signals for the future of the creator economy.
Influencer marketing has evolved from a supplementary tactic to an integrated core component of robust marketing strategies. This shift necessitates placing data at the heart of all marketing decisions, and influencer campaigns are no exception. There’s increasing pressure on holding companies and larger agencies to innovate, with influencer marketing often central to these new approaches. As the wider creator economy gains prominence in media strategies and social commerce platforms like TikTok Shop rise, the importance of carefully structured influencer marketing strategies becomes even more critical for success.
It really does feel like just the beginning. I have a strong feeling we’ll start to see many more acquisitions, potentially with larger companies looking to compete with Publicis to build out the largest global influencer network of agencies and software.
Publicis’ acquisition of Captiv8 is yet another example of the broader trend of creators moving towards the center of every business’ marketing and content efforts.
Media budgets are shifting towards creator-driven content, and the traditional media agencies are acquiring technology and expertise to help them win in this new paradigm.
Publicis’ acquisition of Influential and most recently Captiv8 signals its continued confidence in the creator economy and the power that social media and influencers bring to the traditional marketing stack. As one of the few sectors in marketing where ad spend has grown year over year, influencer (and more broadly digital) is at the epicenter of culture and is increasingly being seen by CMO’s as the core place where consumer decisions are made. It’s exciting to see Publicis’ excitement about the space as it is a positive signal about the types of requests the largest brand marketers are making of their agency partners and how those agency partners are reacting to be able to win and retain their clientele.
Publicis acquiring Captiv8 right after Influential brings together two of the biggest names in influencer marketing — and signals a clear move to scale operations under one roof. It’s about centralizing the infrastructure, data, and deal flow behind creator campaigns. As the space becomes more structured, the key will be making sure content still retains what makes it engaging in the first place. Even at scale, the best campaigns will always feel personal, intentional, and worth watching.
The Captiv8 acquisition by Publicis less than a year after the Influential acquisition shows that the influencer marketing industry is far larger and more strategic than most may have thought, even those in it. These investments are not just representative of the market today. It’s speculative on what’s to come, and the fact that all of media and creative dollars (which are many times greater than influencers marketing dollars) are all underpinned by creators.
Put simply, agencies like Publicis make most of their money off of paid media dollars. And those dollars will forever be many times that of influencer dollars. But all of that paid media is now living and dying with strong creator content. So if the creators and their creative become the core strategic pillar of all paid media, do they really want to lose control of that? No.
WPP recognized this early, and gobbled up Obviously, Village Marketing and The Goat Agency. Publicis realized this last year and went deep into their pockets for the Influential and now Captiv8 acquisitions.The others will unquestionably follow suit. As will companies outside of major agency holding co’s, who also see the writing on the wall that creators are the new media.
Now the million dollar question is… who will be next?
This acquisition reinforces what we’ve known all along—creators are the engine of modern marketing. The most ambitious, high-growth brands of 2025 and beyond are betting on creators not just for awareness, but for real business outcomes: brand equity and profitable growth.
Publicis’s acquisitions of Captiv8 and Influential signal a clear shift: influencer marketing is no longer a niche—it’s central to brand strategy. But while big platforms and celebrity influencers still get attention, the real future lies with micro-influencers and everyday customers. Audiences are increasingly drawn to authenticity over reach, and brands are realizing that real fans—people who already love and use their products—drive deeper engagement and trust. This move validates the growing importance of platforms that can scale authentic, community-driven content, not just celebrity endorsements.
With Captiv8 and Influential now under its wing, Publicis isn’t just expanding—it’s declaring influencer marketing a core go-to-market pillar, right alongside Search, Social, and TV. This isn’t just the fastest-growing ad spend category—it’s quickly becoming the infrastructure for how modern brands go to market.
Publicis is building a new tech stack for the influencer channel: Captiv8 delivers the activation layer, Epsilon brings the attribution core, and all that’s missing is a commerce and conversion layer to close the loop. Add AI to the mix, and you’ve got an enterprise-grade influencer OS. That’s not just scale—it’s a serious strategic shift in the market.
I’m sure this is a step towards even greater maturity of influencer marketing. It is no longer just a performance channel on top of others, but a full-funnel strategic, measurable, and data-rich media investment. Creators influence people’s decisions in an authentic and natural manner. Denying this trend may lead to missing a real opportunity to become an even more visible and successful brand.
With Captiv8 and Influential, Publicis will only strengthen influencer marketing, as they will now be able to directly manage and control the right creatives, create a strategy, track performance, and adjust campaigns for better results.
Publicis acquiring Captiv8 less than a year after the Influential acquisition signals that the major holding companies are no longer flirting with the creator economy, they’ve moved in.
Captiv8 and Influential were once viewed as platforms & agencies that connected creators and brands. But this move goes beyond acquiring tech or access to creators. It reinforces the importance of influencer marketing as a central pillar of the modern marketing mix on par with other performance marketing efforts. Publicis isn’t just buying access; it’s securing end-to-end creator marketing and offering advertisers first-party audience insights, behavioral intelligence, and pinpoint targeting.
The creator economy is evolving from the scrappy free-for-all days to an industry dominated by global enterprise software and major media budgets.
Publicis’ recent acquisition of Captiv8 further supports the maturation of Influencer marketing from a niche tactic to a core pillar of modern brand marketing. What remains to be seen is how the holding companies will integrate expanded Creator capabilities into holistic Creative solutions, beyond tech, paid media and scaled sponsored posts.
Publicis’s acquisition of Captiv8 reflects a broader shift in the industry: influencer marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most important customer acquisition channels for commerce. As brands increasingly treat creator partnerships as performance-driven investments, I expect we’ll see continued consolidation and M&A activity across the influencer and creator tech landscape.
The Publicis acquisition of Captiv8 marks a clear turning point: the creator economy isn’t just growing, it’s maturing. As demand for scale, creativity, and performance rises, the consolidation of platforms like Captiv8 and Influential mirrors the evolution of search marketing, which once redefined the media landscape.
What started as creative experimentation has evolved into a sophisticated channel; one that demands a deep understanding of creator communities and their native formats, enabling brands to seamlessly integrate into the content itself. Social feeds dominate attention, and influence drives purchase, but too many still treat creator content as ad inventory.
As the space scales, creativity will become the key differentiator. Because in the creator economy, it’s not just about who reaches an audience—it’s about who truly moves them.
Cecilia Carloni, Interview Manager at Influence Weekly and writer for NetInfluencer. Coming from beautiful Argentina, Ceci has spent years chatting with big names in the influencer world, making friends and learning insider info along the way. When she’s not deep in interviews or writing, she's enjoying life with her two daughters. Ceci’s stories give a peek behind the curtain of influencer life, sharing the real and interesting tales from her many conversations with movers and shakers in the space.
Publicis Groupe’s acquisition of Captiv8, an end-to-end influencer marketing platform, is seen by many in the creator economy as another major development for the industry. It represents the latest in a series of strategic investments by the French advertising giant to strengthen its digital and influencer capabilities.
This deal follows Publicis’ $500 million acquisition of Influential in 2024, which was one of the industry’s largest transactions last year. The creator economy saw 65 M&A deals completed in 2024, according to Quartermast Advisors, with consolidation expected to continue this year.
The Captiv8 acquisition brings substantial scale to Publicis’ influencer marketing operations, incorporating a network of 15 million creators across 120 countries and technology that processes over 2.5 billion social posts annually. The combined entity aims to deliver enhanced capabilities through an expanded creator network, AI-powered platform integration with technology, commerce capabilities, and advanced measurement solutions of Publicis-owned tech company Epsilon.
The big question is, “What does this acquisition mean for the broader creator economy moving forward?”
We asked several industry experts to share their thoughts and insights on how this consolidation might impact brand-creator relationships and what it signals for the future of the creator economy.
Sam Royle, Co-Founder & CEO, SoSquared
Influencer marketing has evolved from a supplementary tactic to an integrated core component of robust marketing strategies. This shift necessitates placing data at the heart of all marketing decisions, and influencer campaigns are no exception. There’s increasing pressure on holding companies and larger agencies to innovate, with influencer marketing often central to these new approaches. As the wider creator economy gains prominence in media strategies and social commerce platforms like TikTok Shop rise, the importance of carefully structured influencer marketing strategies becomes even more critical for success.
Abraham Lieberman, CEO, Clicks Talent
It really does feel like just the beginning. I have a strong feeling we’ll start to see many more acquisitions, potentially with larger companies looking to compete with Publicis to build out the largest global influencer network of agencies and software.
Andy Cloyd, Co-Founder & CEO, Superfiliate
Publicis’ acquisition of Captiv8 is yet another example of the broader trend of creators moving towards the center of every business’ marketing and content efforts.
Media budgets are shifting towards creator-driven content, and the traditional media agencies are acquiring technology and expertise to help them win in this new paradigm.
Doug Landers, Co-Founder, Greenlight Group
Publicis’ acquisition of Influential and most recently Captiv8 signals its continued confidence in the creator economy and the power that social media and influencers bring to the traditional marketing stack. As one of the few sectors in marketing where ad spend has grown year over year, influencer (and more broadly digital) is at the epicenter of culture and is increasingly being seen by CMO’s as the core place where consumer decisions are made. It’s exciting to see Publicis’ excitement about the space as it is a positive signal about the types of requests the largest brand marketers are making of their agency partners and how those agency partners are reacting to be able to win and retain their clientele.
Michael Curtis, Founder & CEO, Proud Management
Publicis acquiring Captiv8 right after Influential brings together two of the biggest names in influencer marketing — and signals a clear move to scale operations under one roof. It’s about centralizing the infrastructure, data, and deal flow behind creator campaigns. As the space becomes more structured, the key will be making sure content still retains what makes it engaging in the first place. Even at scale, the best campaigns will always feel personal, intentional, and worth watching.
Keith Bendes, Chief Strategy Officer, Linqia
The Captiv8 acquisition by Publicis less than a year after the Influential acquisition shows that the influencer marketing industry is far larger and more strategic than most may have thought, even those in it. These investments are not just representative of the market today. It’s speculative on what’s to come, and the fact that all of media and creative dollars (which are many times greater than influencers marketing dollars) are all underpinned by creators.
Put simply, agencies like Publicis make most of their money off of paid media dollars. And those dollars will forever be many times that of influencer dollars. But all of that paid media is now living and dying with strong creator content. So if the creators and their creative become the core strategic pillar of all paid media, do they really want to lose control of that? No.
WPP recognized this early, and gobbled up Obviously, Village Marketing and The Goat Agency. Publicis realized this last year and went deep into their pockets for the Influential and now Captiv8 acquisitions.The others will unquestionably follow suit. As will companies outside of major agency holding co’s, who also see the writing on the wall that creators are the new media.
Now the million dollar question is… who will be next?
Riley Cronin, Co-Founder & President, ZeroTo1
This acquisition reinforces what we’ve known all along—creators are the engine of modern marketing. The most ambitious, high-growth brands of 2025 and beyond are betting on creators not just for awareness, but for real business outcomes: brand equity and profitable growth.
Adam Dornbusch, Founder & CEO, EnTribe
Publicis’s acquisitions of Captiv8 and Influential signal a clear shift: influencer marketing is no longer a niche—it’s central to brand strategy. But while big platforms and celebrity influencers still get attention, the real future lies with micro-influencers and everyday customers. Audiences are increasingly drawn to authenticity over reach, and brands are realizing that real fans—people who already love and use their products—drive deeper engagement and trust. This move validates the growing importance of platforms that can scale authentic, community-driven content, not just celebrity endorsements.
Brian Klais, Founder & CEO, URLgenius
With Captiv8 and Influential now under its wing, Publicis isn’t just expanding—it’s declaring influencer marketing a core go-to-market pillar, right alongside Search, Social, and TV. This isn’t just the fastest-growing ad spend category—it’s quickly becoming the infrastructure for how modern brands go to market.
Publicis is building a new tech stack for the influencer channel: Captiv8 delivers the activation layer, Epsilon brings the attribution core, and all that’s missing is a commerce and conversion layer to close the loop. Add AI to the mix, and you’ve got an enterprise-grade influencer OS. That’s not just scale—it’s a serious strategic shift in the market.
Michael Kuzmiunov, CEO, HypeFactory
I’m sure this is a step towards even greater maturity of influencer marketing. It is no longer just a performance channel on top of others, but a full-funnel strategic, measurable, and data-rich media investment. Creators influence people’s decisions in an authentic and natural manner. Denying this trend may lead to missing a real opportunity to become an even more visible and successful brand.
With Captiv8 and Influential, Publicis will only strengthen influencer marketing, as they will now be able to directly manage and control the right creatives, create a strategy, track performance, and adjust campaigns for better results.
Kamla Pande, Vice President of Talent, Fixated
Publicis acquiring Captiv8 less than a year after the Influential acquisition signals that the major holding companies are no longer flirting with the creator economy, they’ve moved in.
Captiv8 and Influential were once viewed as platforms & agencies that connected creators and brands. But this move goes beyond acquiring tech or access to creators. It reinforces the importance of influencer marketing as a central pillar of the modern marketing mix on par with other performance marketing efforts. Publicis isn’t just buying access; it’s securing end-to-end creator marketing and offering advertisers first-party audience insights, behavioral intelligence, and pinpoint targeting.
The creator economy is evolving from the scrappy free-for-all days to an industry dominated by global enterprise software and major media budgets.
Gabe Gordon, CEO, Reach Agency
Publicis’ recent acquisition of Captiv8 further supports the maturation of Influencer marketing from a niche tactic to a core pillar of modern brand marketing. What remains to be seen is how the holding companies will integrate expanded Creator capabilities into holistic Creative solutions, beyond tech, paid media and scaled sponsored posts.
Noah Tucker, Founder & CEO, Social Snowball
Publicis’s acquisition of Captiv8 reflects a broader shift in the industry: influencer marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most important customer acquisition channels for commerce. As brands increasingly treat creator partnerships as performance-driven investments, I expect we’ll see continued consolidation and M&A activity across the influencer and creator tech landscape.
Morgan Barclay, Senior Vice President of Strategy, QYOU Media
The Publicis acquisition of Captiv8 marks a clear turning point: the creator economy isn’t just growing, it’s maturing. As demand for scale, creativity, and performance rises, the consolidation of platforms like Captiv8 and Influential mirrors the evolution of search marketing, which once redefined the media landscape.
What started as creative experimentation has evolved into a sophisticated channel; one that demands a deep understanding of creator communities and their native formats, enabling brands to seamlessly integrate into the content itself. Social feeds dominate attention, and influence drives purchase, but too many still treat creator content as ad inventory.
As the space scales, creativity will become the key differentiator. Because in the creator economy, it’s not just about who reaches an audience—it’s about who truly moves them.