With Ardian's support, public-Idées and place des leads create Timeone, the new leading player in data driven marketing

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Press release

With Ardian's support, public-Idées and place des leads create Timeone, the new leading player in data driven marketing

  • 14 January 2016

  • Growth

  • France, Paris

6 minutes de lecture

Public-Idées and Place des Leads, two Internet Marketing specialists based in France, today announce their merger. The merger was identified and facilitated by Ardian, the independent private investment company. The merged group will be called TimeOne, and will be the first independent marketing specialist in France focused on data analytics, the new group will generate a consolidated turnover of c.€50 million.

The founding management teams will remain majority shareholders, alongside Ardian, which has invested over €5 million in the transaction. 

The TimeOne group will focus on content, data and prescriptive marketing, with a strong platform for innovation and scientific research. By combining the expertise of Public-Idées and Place des Leads, TimeOne will be positioned as a market leading “one-stop-shop” offering a comprehensive range of online marketing solutions. In addition to France, the group also has a presence in the United-Kingdom, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Asia and South America. 

Founded in 2005 by Sylvain Gross, Pierre Rondelli and Fabien Barbaud, Public-Idées was created to meet the growing demand for integrated online marketing solutions for advertisers and online content publishers. Since Ardian invested in Public-Idées in 2007, the company’s turnover has multiplied by eight times.

Sylvain Gross, co-chairman of TimeOne and CEO of Public-Idées, said: “Following the merger, our enlarged group will be able to offer our clients an even stronger value proposition around big data. TimeOne is well-positioned to respond to market developments and create value-add solutions for advertisers.”

Place des Leads, created in 2010 by Ralph Ruimy, Hervé Degauchy and Alexandre Aubry, is a specialist in the collection and qualification of new customer leads on Desktop and Mobile. The company uses a differentiating real-time platform for purchasing and selling leads. Since Ardian’s investment in 2012, Place des Leads has seen an average annual growth of more than 70%.     

Ralph Ruimy, co- chairman of TimeOne and CEO of Place des Leads, said: “Place des Leads and Public-Idées share a common ideology and approach to our businesses, and this merger is an important milestone for both companies. Ardian has played an instrumental role in the lead up to this merger and we look forward working with them further as the enlarged group.” 

Ardian’s involvement in the merger of Public-Idées and Place des Leads is a demonstration of Ardian Growth’s position as a growth accelerator for companies in fast developing sectors with a leading domestic market position and an international development ambition. 

Laurent Foata, Head of Ardian Growth, said: “This merger was possible thanks to the support and the mutual trust which we were able to establish with the founders. Having supported both companies as they successfully grew at home and abroad, we are delighted to have played a part in this new stage of their development which creates a major market player.”     

Romain Chiudini, Investment Manager at Ardian Growth added: “This merger demonstrates our strategy to enable our portfolio companies to expand their operations in high-growth markets. TimeOne is the illustration of our long-term support for the entrepreneurs and our commitment to create European leaders.” 

ABOUT TIMEONE

Created in 2016, TimeOne is a marketing services group formed from two online marketing specialists, Public-Idées and Place des Leads. The group’s core offering is to provide content and data solutions. With a well-established reputation in prescriptive marketing and a common technological base (DMP), TimeOne is founded on innovation and realized through research and development.

TimeOne offers a comprehensive range of online marketing solutions: Programmatic, Native, Performance, digital Marketplace, Publishing and Mobile. The company has a presence in France, in the United-Kingdom, in Spain, Italy, South Africa, Asia and South America.

ABOUT PUBLIC-IDÉES

In the crossroads of data, publishers and advertisers Public-Idées offers new services in customer acquisition, turnover generation, the reactivation of dormant leads and user loyalty. The company operates throughout the value chain of Performance Marketing: strategic consulting, implementing multi-channel strategies, media activation, animation of publisher network and results measurement.

Created in 2005, Public-Idées is present in France and, in the form of its international brand Public-Ideas, in Spain, Italy, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil. The company employs a qualitative publisher’s network in each country, which helps to ensure targeted and efficient campaigns.

ABOUT PLACE DES LEADS

Ardian, founded in 1996 and led by Dominique Senequier, is an independent private investment company with assets of US$50bn managed or advised in Europe, North America and Asia. The company, which is majority-owned by its employees, keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and delivers investment performance to its global investors while fuelling growth in economies across the world. Ardian’s investment process embodies three values: excellence, loyalty and entrepreneurship.

Ardian maintains a truly global network, with more than 410 employees working through twelve offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Zurich, New York, San Francisco, Beijing, Singapore, Jersey and Luxembourg. The company offers its 433 investors a diversified choice of funds covering the full range of asset classes through Ardian Funds of Funds (comprising primary, early secondary and secondary activities), Ardian Private Debt, Ardian Direct Funds (comprising Ardian Mid Cap Buyout, Ardian Expansion, Ardian Growth and Ardian Co-Investment), Ardian Infrastructure, Ardian Real Estate and customized mandate solutions with Ardian Mandates.

Participants

  • ARDIAN

    • Laurent Foata, Romain Chiudini
    • Legal: McDermott Will & Emery (Grégoire Andrieux, Diana Hund, Antoine Vergnat, Pierre-Arnoux Mayoly)
    • Financial audit : Grant Thornton (Marc Claverie, Louis-Olivier Martin-Prevel)
  • TimeOne

    • Public-Idées: Sylvain Gross
    • Place des Leads: Ralph Ruimy
    • Legal: SB Avocats (Sacha Benichou)
  • Financing

    • LCL: Geoffroy De Chassey, Antoine Leandri
    • Société Générale: Tanguy Grenouilleau, Gregory Le Bris

Press contact

ARDIAN Headland

TOM JAMES

tjames@headlandconsultancy.com

+44 207 3675 240