The latest insights on M&A activity in life sciences commercial vendors

As part of our LINX bio-pharma vendor review, Zensights is pleased to share an update on merger activity to help our ZEN members understand the market activity that may impact their supplier relationships.

Key M&A highlights in Q1 2025

✓ Merger activity in the new year returned to the normal quarterly range that we’ve observed over the past few years. Generally, we observe 6-8 acquisitions each quarter, but the volume had fallen at the end of last year. We identified eight acquisitions during Q1, up from four in the last quarter of 2024.

✓ The global marketing agencies continue to both acquire and divest as they evolve their organizations and networks. This past quarter included acquisitions expanding into new geographies and also those to transform offerings to meet client needs.

✓ Client demand for market access and AI capabilities is driving much of the transformation, and we observed both the agencies and other types of suppliers engaging in activity in both spaces. As noted in prior updates, these two market areas have significant and expanding demand – and suppliers are doing what they can to evolve their offerings to meet this client demand.✓ In addition to M&A activity, we note an increased use of strategic partnerships between firms to support their clients with broader offerings than individual firms can offer themselves.

✓ Access to information about specialty and more specialized markets also drove activity in the quarter. Past updates have noted the expanding use of clinical and patient data for commercial purposes, and there were acquisitions in the quarter by suppliers trying to fulfill client interest in understanding these smaller and hard-to-track markets. 

✓ Alternative delivery of healthcare has also been a recurring theme across the past few quarters, with non-traditional delivery of healthcare services capturing the interest of acquirers, generally with an eye toward expanding and scaling delivery capacity by smaller firms.

✓ We also note that the acquisitions in Q1 were completed by firms with a track record of serial acquisitions as well as by firms making their first acquisition. This may indicate that the use of acquisitions is becoming a more required method for firms to grow and evolve their offerings and geographies.

2025 Q1 Activity highlights

In the first quarter of 2025, M&A activity continued with eight deals identified in the markets we monitor for our clients.

 1. Stagwell acquires Create Group (January 2025)

Stagwell announced an agreement to acquire Create Group, a strategic digital communications group operating in the Middle East. The company will join Stagwell’s Code and Theory Network, which partners with businesses to navigate the complexity of changing consumer behaviors, emerging technologies and AI.

This deal follows other recent Stagwell acquisitions of Consulum and LEADERS. Stagwell is expanding its global footprint and has announced plans to continue investing in strategy and communications capability to help clients drive digital transformation. 

 2. Klickhealth acquires Peregrine Market Access (January 2025)

Klick Health announced the acquisition of Peregrine Market Access, its first acquisition. The deal adds the capability to Klick’s “Mediverse” offering, its machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, and its expertise in helping clients use and manage data. Peregrine’s capabilities bring to Klick a market insights group that does analytics research, a strategy and consulting team, a digital modeling group that leverages AI and machine learning to solve data questions for manufacturers, market access and reimbursement services, contract account and payer sales team, market access PR offering, and media publication and strategy.

This acquisition furthers Klick’s desire to expand the breadth of offering across the complete lifecycle of products from much earlier in the development cycle all the way to loss of exclusivity.  

3. Highlander acquires Target RWE (January 2025)

Highlander Health, a firm advancing evidence generation and personalized health care for the new era of medical innovation, announced the acquisition of Target RWE from existing investors. Target RWE is a longitudinal data company that generates high-quality real-world datasets and evidence across multiple therapeutic areas, with liver disease as a flagship. Target RWE is the first acquisition for Highlander.In addition to expanded technological capability, the acquisition supports ChapsVision’s international expansion plans, particularly in Europe and North America. 

The joint Highlander/Target RWE team will accelerate the development of state-of-the-art clinical research evidence to support improved patient care. The partnerships with key opinion leaders, clinicians, patients, and health systems have developed meaningful patient-centric and scientifically-sound research results will help the team build on prior capabilities and ultimately help clients provide better care for more patients.

4. Swoop buys MyHealthTeam (January 2025)

Swoop has taken control of more than 60 patient communities by acquiring MyHealthTeam, positioning the Real Chemistry spinout to offer new communication options to its pharma clients. MyHealthTeam runs condition-specific communities such as “My Asthma Team” and “My Obesity Team.” The chronic and rare disease sites contain articles, answers to questions and conversations about their respective conditions. Many of the patient communities, including some Spanish-language groups, have more than 100,000 members, according to MyHealthTeam’s figures. 

Swoop has identified the communities as a good fit for furthering its strategy. The company, which split off from the agency Real Chemistry last year, is evolving into an AI-driven omnichannel healthcare marketing business. Swoop’s offerings include support for marketing to healthcare professionals and directly to consumers, plus help with planning, running, and tracking TV campaigns. The company said integrating MyHealthTeam into the offering will enable pharma companies to engage with condition-specific communities, scale its reach to opted-in patients across all channels and generate first-party data to better understand patients and healthcare professionals.

5. Avel eCare purchases Amwell Psychiatric Care (APC)  (January 2025)

Avel eCare, a telemedicine provider of clinician-to-clinician services, announced the acquisition of Amwell Psychiatric Care (APC). This acquisition strengthens Avel eCare’s position as a national leader in telemedicine and expands its Behavioral Health services to meet the growing demand across rural and urban communities.

Avel’s existing Behavioral Health offering is being blended with APC’s offerings. The acquisition is intended to enable faster transitions for patients experiencing mental health crises to speak with clinically trained mental health professionals. The combination of the offerings should strengthen service delivery and expand Avel’s footprint to over 45 states. The acquisition brings a new set of customers including some of the largest health systems in the US to the more than 1,000 clients who currently receive telemedicine solutions from Avel eCare.

6. Truelink Capital purchases R/GA from Interpublic Group (March 2025)

Interpublic Group has sold R/GA to private equity firm Truelink Capital. The transaction returns the marketing agency to independence as a privately owned company with senior leaders invested in the company as part of the deal. As part of the transaction, Truelink is establishing a $50m (£40m) innovation fund to invest in new skillsets and talent, and plans to acquire new capabilities, tools and platforms. 

As an independent company, R/GA is establishing a new AI-enabled model focused on serving clients, is modifying business model structures to be outcome-based, is implementing agile new team structures, and is scaling up its flexible talent model “R/GA Associates.” The agency has also established a Strategic Advisory Council to support emerging AI client transformation.

7. Publicis buys Lotame (March 2025)

Publicis Groupe announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Lotame, an independent identity solution, in an update on its AI strategy. Via existing capabilities in data, identity and technology, Lotame currently operates a large end-to-end data marketplace in 109 countries. Its proprietary identity solution delivers consistent and relevant addressable audiences built on 100+ data sources and activated through more than 1.6 billion IDs, for over 4,000 of the world’s leading brands and publishers to leverage at scale and with precision. 

The combined data and identity assets of Lotame and Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon (acquired in 2019) will enable clients to reach 91% of adult internet users with personalized messaging at scale with even greater accuracy. This scale, combined with breadth and depth of data, will allow marketers to find and activate against the right audiences with increased accuracy, to engage their consumers in more relevant and meaningful ways. Lotame will be positioned as part of Epsilon, accessible to all Publicis clients and teams to enhance their ability to deliver personalized marketing services at scale.

8. Klick buys Ward6’s Singapore operations (March 2025)

Klick Health announced it acquired Ward6 Singapore’s operations. Through the acquisition, Klick is expanding Singapore’s largest independent life sciences agency, known for healthcare professional (HCP) marketing and medical communications. The deal also strengthens Klick’s leadership and client portfolio in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and furthers implementation of the global agency’s ongoing expansion and growth. 

Klick reports that the acquisition brings an impressive roster of pharmaceutical and consumer health clients, and it is part of a strategic transformation that has been underway for more than two years. Ward6 Singapore has deep expertise in HCP marketing and helps Klick further scale its team and meet client demand.