PMG + Digital Voices: Moving Past the "Tech Sheen" to Close the Creator Funnel

By Chris Erwin

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Let’s break it down…

–TARGET: Digital Voices–

Overview

• Global influencer marketing agency 

• Uses proprietary data tools to link influencer campaigns directly to sales and commercial KPIs

• Focuses on YouTube (core), TikTok, and Instagram

• Uses Chord for centralized campaign management and Composer for AI-driven predictive insights

• Partners with global Fortune 500 and enterprise brands across high-growth sectors, specifically CPG (Unilever, PepsiCo), Tech (Adobe), and Commerce (DoorDash)

• Founded in 2017 by Jennifer Quigley-Jones

• 77 associated members via LI

• HQ in London, UK (offices in NY and Costa Rica)

Company Highlights

• Large-scale global activations for household names including Adobe, Unilever, and PepsiCo, resulting in 4 billion total views

• Global reach with local execution capabilities across 43 markets, including Germany, France, and Japan

• 3.5B+ social impressions and converted 52% of sales from new customers for Dove

• 19% engagement rate for DoorDash to drive app downloads and brand love

• Proprietary database tracking over 500 million creator data points 

Founding Story

• Founder Jennifer Quigley-Jones launched the agency in 2017 after leaving YouTube, where she advised creators and brands on platform growth

• Before Google, was at the Aga Khan Foundation in Egypt and as a sub-editor at The Daily Star in Lebanon

• Specialized in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard and previously worked for NGOs like the Red Cross

• Driven by a feeling that she "wasn't learning enough" in the large corporate environment of Google, she created Digital Voices with the goal to move the industry away from "guesswork" and treat creators as a serious, data-backed performance channel

• Started the company with a “$700 personal investment”, driven by desire to gain the hands-on "technical skills" of business building and navigate founder challenges

Tech / IP

• Chord…

• A central dashboard for brands to manage creator approvals and track live campaign performance in real-time

• Composer…

• An AI-driven tool used for predictive insights and identifying the right creator-brand fit based on audience data

• Chime…

• A consumer intelligence tool that identifies emerging cultural themes to uncover brand opportunities before they go mainstream

Business Lines / Service Offerings

• Strategy & Creative…

• Long-term creator roadmaps and "content-first" campaign concepts for brands

• For example, launching new product lines for CPG brands like General Mills

• Campaign Management…

• End-to-end execution of influencer activations, from talent sourcing and contracting to content review and distribution

• Performance & Measurement…

• Utilizing data to track commercial impact, such as driving app installs for tech partners like Adobe or coupon redemptions for DoorDash

Capital Markets History:

• Jan 2026: Acquired by PMG, a marketing services and tech company

• Jan 2020: Raised $0.2M in Angel funding from a group of undisclosed investors at a $3.3M pre-money valuation

–Buyer: PMG–

Overview

• Global independent marketing services and technology company

• Positions itself as a "future-forward" partner that unifies media, technology, and storytelling

• Powered by Alli, a proprietary marketing operating system that centralizes data and insights for global brands

• Focus on enterprise clients

• Founded in 2010 by George Popstefanov

• HQ in Dallas, TX (with offices in NY, Dusseldorf, and London)

• 1000 stated employees

Company Highlights

• 90%+ client retention rate

• 20% revenue growth in 2025

• 33%+ of PMG’s staff are engineers

• 90% employee retention rate over the last five years

• $7B in media spend across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America

Founding Story

• Founder George Popstefanov began his career in account strategy at Range Online Media (2005–2010), where he managed digital strategy for major retailers like Burberry and Adidas before leaving to start PMG at age 26

• Early success was built on performance media and search, eventually expanding into a full-service agency and technology provider

• Over the last three years, the firm pivoted toward aggressive growth via strategic M&A, including Empirical Path (2021), Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media (2023), RocketMill (2023), Momentum Commerce (2025), and most recently, Digital Voices (2026)

• Today, PMG manages over $7 billion in annual media spend and employs 1,000+ people across global hubs

Tech / IP

• Alli…

• A licensed platform that unifies a brand’s fragmented marketing data into a single, real-time dashboard

Business Lines / Service Offerings

• Media & Strategy…

• Integrated planning and buying across digital and traditional channels for brands like Apple and Sephora

• Creative & Content…

• In-house creative studio developing brand identity and digital assets (e.g., global campaign assets for Kohler or Madewell)

• Retail & Commerce…

• Specialized services for e-commerce growth and retail media network optimization (e.g., scaling marketplace presence for Kimberly-Clark)

Capital Markets History:

• Jan 2026: Acquired Digital Voices, a global influencer marketing agency

• Jun 2025: Acquired Momentum Commerce, a digital retail marketing agency

• Dec 2023: Acquired RocketMill, a marketing and advertising agency

• Sep 2023: Acquired Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media, a digital media agency

• Jul 2021: Acquired Empirical Path, a digital marketing performance agency, alongside Further

–DEAL DETAILS–

Overview

• Announced Jan 6, 2026

• Financial terms were not disclosed

Strategic Rationale

• Brings influencer marketing and creator strategy fully in-house for PMG, improving execution speed and accountability by reducing reliance on external partners

• Positions PMG to scale influencer-led campaigns globally, supported by Digital Voices’ 70+ person team across London, New York, and Costa Rica

• Adds Digital Voices’ proprietary tools, Chord and Composer, which support influencer discovery, campaign management, and performance measurement.

• Enables PMG to integrate influencer execution more tightly with paid media, data, and performance measurement.

• Aligns with PMG’s strategy to make influencer marketing a core part of its media offering, rather than a standalone service

• “The Digital Voices team brings a strong track record, complementary technology, and a culture that reflects our values,” said George Popstefanov, Founder & CEO of PMG

• “Joining PMG means multiplying the value we create for both creators and brands,” said Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Founder and CEO of Digital Voices. “As part of PMG, we’ll have the platform and resources to scale our offering across media, expand use of technology across our offering, and help our clients drive meaningful commercial impact and unlock greater potential.”

Post Deal Operations

• Digital Voices will operate as an influencer marketing practice within PMG’s global organization

• Digital Voices founder and CEO Jennifer Quigley-Jones will continue to oversee the business post-acquisition

• Digital Voices’ Chord and Composer platforms will be integrated into PMG’s proprietary Alli operating system

–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–

The acquisition of Digital Voices by PMG is a calculated move to treat creators as a true performance channel, effectively bridging the gap between social storytelling and the data-driven rigor of enterprise media buying.

Below is the strategic breakdown of why this deal matters and what it signals for the creator economy and M&A landscape.

Influencer Marketing Tech & Data: "Sheen" VS Proprietary IP

A persistent debate in our M&A advisory is whether an agency’s tech is a proprietary engine or merely a "tech sheen" designed to inflate multiples.

Digital Voices brings Chord (centralized management) and Composer (AI-predictive insights). I unfortunately can’t speak to the quality of this technology and how much it drives automation and efficiency across their business. That being said, their blue-chip enterprise clients like Unilever / Adobe / PepsiCo and shared performance metrics signal they’re doing something unique in market. 

For PMG, what stands out is their claim that 33% of their workforce is engineers. That is high relative to market. Though I don’t know if that figure is based on FT in-house staff, or external contractors. Nevertheless, the number stands out. 

Of note, PMG isn't keeping these tools in a silo post deal close; they’re integrating them into Alli, their enterprise-grade operating system. This helps transform Digital Voices from a service provider into a software-enabled solution that can scale across PMG’s $7B in annual media spend.

We believe that future agency exits will increasingly depend on interoperability i.e. can your agency’s data tools plug into a buyer’s existing OS to prove higher client ROAS, and in turn drive more client acquisition and account size growth over time?

The Challenger Network Arms Race for Creator Marketing

We’re witnessing the rise of a new class of Challenger Ad Networks. PMG, alongside players like Stagwell, SAMY Alliance, and Brave Bison, have historically moved faster than the Big Five (WPP, Publicis, Omnicom / IPG, Dentsu, Havas) to consolidate the creator marketing space.

Specifically, PMG has acquired five companies since 2021 (Empirical Path, Camelot, RocketMill, Momentum Commerce, and now Digital Voices).

By buying Momentum Commerce (retail media) and Digital Voices (influencer) in back-to-back years, PMG is building a full-funnel machine. They can now link a YouTube creator’s video directly to an Amazon purchase or app install, providing the closed-loop attribution sought by enterprise brands.

Though of the Big Five, Publicis has been very aggressive in the past 2 years, buying Captiv8 (deal analysis), BR Media Group, and Influential (deal analysis). And I bet now that the Ominicom / IPG merger is finalized, expect the new combined co to begin a deal spree, and likely with an aggressive mandate across creator marketing capabilities.  

Capturing Global Advertising Budgets from Enterprise Clients

Historically, influencer marketing (IM) was a localized, experimental line item. That is over.

Our RockWater team is hearing more and more from our clients that for the month of January, demand for creator partnerships and content is significantly up from where it was in the same period for 2024 and 2025, and are no longer part of experimental test budgets. Instead, our clients are now pitching for meaningful media budgets from the media agencies and brand marketers themselves.

Further, large enterprise brands (Unilever, Adobe, PepsiCo) are shifting billions in media budgets away from traditional TV / digital display and toward creators. To capture these 8-figure budgets, agencies must have the infrastructure to manage thousands of creators across time zones without losing brand safety or performance tracking.

As it relates to this deal, Digital Voices’ presence in London, NY, and Costa Rica, combined with execution capabilities in 43 markets, bolsters PMG’s pitch for global master service agreements (MSAs) direct with brands. Winning these MSAs is a function of being able to develop and run global, multi-component ad campaigns coordinated across various account teams, and with the ability to report on localized and consolidated performance metrics to understand and improve upon campaign efficacy.

Closing the Funnel: The Shift to Performance Influencer

The era of vanity metrics (likes and impressions) is dying. Increasingly, influencer marketing is being reclassified as performance media.

Digital Voices’ focus on driving app downloads (DoorDash) and sales KPIs (Unilever) aligns with recent deals like Later buying Mavely, where the goal noted by the Later CEO in the announcement of the deal, was to close the funnel between brand awareness and performance.

PMG didn't buy a creative shop nor a network of influencer relationships; they bought a conversion shop. They’re betting that the future of the creator economy isn't just about content, but instead about delivering low CAC and high ROAS for their marketer clients.

I'm the founder of RockWater Industries. We do M&A and strategy advisory for creator economy and social / audio agencies. From buy and sell-side M&A and fundraising to market research and go-to-market planning. 

DM me on LinkedIn or email [email protected]

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