Havas, the Paris-based member of the ad industry’s Big Four club, has acquired Noise Digital to bolster its martech capabilities.

The Big Four comprises the world’s four most profitable advertising firms. Havas and the three competing companies in the group all have tens of thousands of employees across dozens of subsidiaries.  

Noise Digital, the marketing agency Havas has acquired, maintains two offices in Vancouver and Toronto. Its 45 employees support clients in the consumer packaged goods, technology, media, entertainment and travel sectors.

Havas describes Noise Digital as Canada’s largest “performance, data and analytics agency.” The agency specializes in marketing projects that make extensive use of the client’s internal business data.

Brands have a lot of data about their customers’ buying habits. They know what products are purchased most at stores, how many users click their Facebook ads and which email newsletter format drives the most purchases.

But acting on that data is difficult because there’s a lot of it. A company struggling to realize a return on its internal troves of  marketing information can turn to Noise Digital for assistance.

Noise Digital can look at the data that a company collects about the performance of its ads and find opportunities to improve click-through rates. If the data shows that a certain ad format performs better than the rest, marketers can double down on that format.

Noise Digital also assists companies with the process of capitalizing on their offline data. That’s data collected about purchases that consumers make offline, namely at brick-and-mortar stores.

“This acquisition comes at a time when Havas Media Group is experiencing an impressive period of growth and momentum in North America,” remarked Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré. “Noise is a market leader in Canada with an impressive track record helping brands harness and activate the power of one of their most valuable assets – their data.”

Noise Digital will be folded into Havas’ Havas Media Group (HMG) North America division. It will retain its current brand following the deal.

Havas didn’t buy the firm outright but rather purchased a majority stake. That means Noise Digital’s leadership team likely retained some shares in the company, which they might be able to sell later on at a higher price depending on how the deal was structured.

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