Matt Nunn and Gary Nissim.
Nunn Media CEO and founder Matt Nunn first tried to acquire Indago Digital around “four or five years ago” before a deal was finally struck at the end of last week.
The Sydney-based digital agency, which works with companies including Travelex, ADT Security and Hays Recruitment, will be integrated into Alley Group, Nunn’s existing Sydney-headquartered global digital agency.
Nunn said his namesake independent media agency was "really impressed" with Indago MD Gary Nissim as a leader and an expert within the digital space.
"I think the agency’s offering and the leadership that he offers to our business will give us best-in-market capabilities and enable us to continue on our growth trajectory," he said.
Nissim – who, as part of the acquisition, will become the CEO of Alley Australia effective immediately – said that the agency had “a few suitors” over the years, but not anything that suited the company from a perspective to sell.
“We were selective on the type of agency or business that would acquire us,” he said.
“We were always keen not to go and work for a holding company, as we wanted somebody who would offer us something a bit different. We never really considered anyone as closely as we have done with Nunn, whether that be four years ago or more recently - they're probably the only business that we've really taken seriously in terms of a potential acquisition.
“We know we've grown a decent agency and we've got a good client base, but then teaming up with Matt and the ability to work with a much broader, larger client set is super attractive.”
From Nunn’s perspective, he said there were two key reasons his agency bought Indago (for how much is unknown as commercial terms haven’t been released): their capabilities and their geography.
“Being in the Sydney market, it's the biggest market in Australia, and they're one of the leading, award-winning performance agencies in that market and we're in a growth phase,” he told AdNews.
“We have a business model that Nunn Media is the mothership, but those other businesses stand on their own merits as well. We only make acquisitions where there is a champion in the business that we buy, so we regard Gary as a champion within the industry, and therefore it makes sense for us to tick that people box.”
2025 may herald more opportunities for Nunn to grow the business as he said the company is “open to opportunities” to acquire more agencies next year.
“At the moment, we're pitching for about $80 million worth of business through Nunn Media, so generally, any acquisition moving forward would be a capability acquisition, or in a space that offers us growth - perhaps in a different market, like Brisbane,” he said.
“There's certain services [Indago] offers in market that we don't currently have, so we'll try to expand that across the group and into the US as well.”
Those services include digital media, enterprise SEO, data, web development and analytics services, areas that Nissim said he believes made Indago “relatively attractive” from an acquisition perspective.
“A lot of tools like Google Analytics have been pretty become pretty difficult to use and one of the things that we did before most agencies, whether they be independent or holding cos, was actually build a robust data division,” he told AdNews.
“The ability to store client data, whether it be marketing or more business focused data - storing, aligning and visualising that data is an offering that we're very strong in, which makes that interesting from a Nunn perspective, whether it be purely digital or traditional as well.
“What we've also done very effectively is build some proprietary SEO technology for about five years as well, which gives us a very unique outlook on SEO, which traditionally is upwards of 60% of most people's website traffic.”
Nunn sees positivity for the agency heading into next year, anticipating a change in consumer confidence.
“If you look at the SMI data, you can see that September came back, and we can see a trend where ad revenue is coming back from a market sense,” he said.
“Agency business, when you simplify it, is about two things - it's about retaining current clients and revenue and growing with new business. If you have that formula right, you'll grow and I think we've had a really successful ride in that simple formula.
“This acquisition gives us added scale as well. We'll now have 65 people within the Alley business and we're really excited about the next 12 months. We would anticipate that our Alley business can grow 20% to 30% next year and the year after.”
Nissim is similarly optimistic, saying that while earlier in the year the confidence wasn’t there in the market amid budgets being cut, that has now shifted as people seem to be spending more and hiring more salespeople to deal with leads.
“We're definitely seeing that turnaround as well - it definitely seems there's a there's a different feel from our client base and there's a lot more positivity,” he said.
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