Equativ has completed its merger with Sharethrough, strengthening our offerings under one unified brand. CEO Arnaud Créput and senior leaders share reflections on the merger and its future impact for clients and partners.
Our merger with Sharethrough is now complete, and as we come together as one team united under the Equativ brand, we look forward to embarking on a new chapter even stronger together.
We’re excited for what’s ahead and asked our CEO, Arnaud Créput, as well as some of our senior leaders to reflect on the journey we’ve taken over the past year and share their thoughts on what lies ahead for Equativ and our clients.
Arnaud Creput, CEO, Equativ: One standout moment was our first joint leadership offsite last year (shortly after we made the merger announcement in June 2024)—seeing two teams come together not just to align strategies, but to truly listen to one another and build trust. There was a clear sense that this was more than a merger of capabilities; it was the start of a shared vision. Another powerful moment was watching cross-functional teams collaborate on major client opportunities and deliver stronger, more integrated solutions for our Equativ and Sharethrough clients. You could feel the momentum shift as we realized we’re better together.
Céline Gauthier-Darnis, EVP, MENAT & APAC: I would say, if I look at the beginning of the year, for example, all the events that we have shared together. Talking about CES, Possible, the Green Media Summit for example, where I felt we have shown our ambition to the market, we have shown our alignment, our vision, and I do feel that this is probably the best illustration showing our merger.
Laura Bromwich, EVP, Sales, North America: I think last night was one of the biggest key moments. I think just seeing the size of the company now and meeting such amazing people. Not only is it strategic in terms of our products and offerings, but it really is one team now and the power that we have now with 600, 700 people within the company to really make that difference and drive innovation and drive revenue, is I think, the most exciting part.
Michael Sadicario, EVP, Supply & Curation, North America: There's so many things that have stood out to me. I'm so blessed that I get to work across all the different companies that we have acquired or merged in the last few years. Every single time I feel like I get a new group of people I get to engage with. And every single time it's brighter and better than the last. It's amazing. And so, for me, I'll speak about Possible. This last Possible experience, which was only two weeks ago, and the Possible the year prior where there was sort of a little rumor, or some talk, a little chatter about how we might merge together and then this year was the full realization of that. A stronger team, a bigger team. A team with expertise in all different areas who can really talk to anything. It was amazing to see everybody pull in new people to those conversations. Oh, you want to talk about retail media, here's this person. You want to talk about a trading agreement, here's that person. Oh, you want to talk about supply and everything, here's that person. So, it was amazing to see everybody come together, work with each other to help collaborate and better help answer questions from our clients, to take out our clients, and entertain our clients. It really felt like a cohesive group only a year from when it first started. It's pretty amazing.
Parag Vohra, CRO: So I think the first one was Possible last year where I was personally having the first official meetings with our counterparts. We hadn't really announced anything yet, but those of us who were in the know knew what was coming and the agreement was in the final stages. So that was the first moment of ok, this is getting real. I would say the second one was, yes, when the agreement was signed. We had a day in New York where the Sharethrough team had some over and this is where I got to meet a whole lot of folks. I think last year at Cannes was where it got real. It got real because now we were sharing a boat, talking to clients, talking about the fact that it's coming together, we'd made a public announcement, so that's where it got real. Then where I would say it got a little intense was when we had an offsite for the commercial team - a meeting in Montreal. There were commercial people on both sides, systems, processes, getting into the granularity of market segmentation. The different integration workstreams, things like that. And this is where we know it has to be backed up by work and that's when we really turned down and got down to work. I think all of that paid off over the last few months. We've seen the teams come through together and it's been really good.
Arnaud: This merger has supercharged our ability to move faster and go further. By combining the creative innovation and agility of Sharethrough with Equativ’s scale and global reach, we’ve created a next-generation platform that can compete at the highest level. It’s strengthened our ambitions to lead, not follow, in areas like sustainability, curation, transparency, and independent innovation. We now have the depth, the talent, and the technology to shape the future of ad tech on our terms.
Céline: For sure, I feel we have a stronger position, a bigger dimension. But, if I add specifically for our region - APAC, Middle East - we're going to benefit from new features, new layers of opportunity in terms of creative enhancements, which means more engagement. In our region performance matters a lot. Better engagement makes people excited. And I can feel it from the client side, you know, that they show enthusiasm about the bigger reach they can access and also about the sustainability that we are able to offer, so I see a lot of opportunities. And, internally, a lot of excitement.
Parag: Well, I think, it's been a very complementary merger. We've had very unique and overlapping strengths coming in. So, I think there's some obvious things, such as geography. The other thing is that their go-to-market has been more around specialist solutions around media, we've actually had more of. a holistic approach around platforms, platform capabilities. So, the two coming together are fundamentally complementary. It makes us more global, holistic, and more interesting. I think that is where - especially on the enterprise side - we're now going in a as much more holistic solutions provider. Obviously, North America was a big hole in our capabilities on the programmatic side, Sharethrough fills that and they instantly become global as well.
I have a great example of that, which is a client who was specific to Sharethrough for a US-specific agreement and has just expanded into a global agreement across the combined entity and will now activate us across Europe, APAC, and continue to do so for North America as they were. So, that agreement encapsulates everything we're trying to do.
Arnaud: Simply put, our clients get more - more reach, more intelligence, more precision. With the unification, we’re delivering a more seamless, omnichannel offering backed by deeper insights, curated inventory, and user-first technology. It’s also allowed us to be more responsive, offering tailored solutions at scale while staying aligned to what matters most in today’s attention economy: real outcomes, responsible media, and meaningful engagement.
Laura: I think I'm most excited about this merger because it really brings three things to our clients. First, bigger scale that we can do both in North America plus globally now, which is a great benefit to our brands. Also as we take a look at performance and sustainability across what we have to offer. And I think what I've been in market most pitching to our agency and brand clients is our Maestro platform with curation. Curation's been a hot topic in the marketplace. When we bring this offering to clients, they love the platform, they love the usability of it and I really think it's a game changer for us to elevate our position within the market and, as a company to really lean into the partnership side with our agencies and brands.
Michael: I think there's so many ways in which we enhance the value for our clients based on this merger because we have so many clients and we have to think about each one individually, each product we have, and what service we're providing. So I'm going to take you through every single one of our products and services. That's probably the best way to explain and encapsulate everything that we do.
So, for our agency partners, if you're talking about our exchange offering, our PMPs, our open exchange, our access to supply. For those folks, this merger really brings together two puzzle pieces that I think were missing potentially from both companies. I think the geography is the fit. I think there's a lot of other things - creative enhancements on one side, some enrichment of data into PMPs on another side. There's a lot of things I can go to, but I think really, to me, what I've noticed in North America, is that the global piece with the North American piece is the perfect fit for each other. So this has really been the biggest benefit to most of our partners. They see us as much bigger, and our presence is just so much more helpful to them as they are looking to get access to supply in interesting ways and fully get to outcomes for their clients.
For our managed service group, the benefit of getting direct access to supply and premium CTV supply - huge. Massive for our business. For our clients, they can rely on us to achieve their marketing goals by reaching the audiences that they want to reach on a regular basis with ease and great certainty and transparency that they're doing it with a partner that's not just one piece of the ecosystem, but the full stack of the ecosystem.
For our curating partners, we were clearly already building a best-in-class curation platform, but two of the bigger issues is that we didn't necessarily have access to all the supply that our curating partners wanted and we didn't have the agency agreements that those curators needed in order to sell those deals. So, now...Boom! We're ready! Today is the day, we can actually do this and it's really sort of a new day for us. Brighter than ever before for our clients.
For our publishers, wow, the full stack is really here. So, we're now bringing amazing unique demand, diversified demand from so many different avenues. Whether it's through our managed service group, through agency relationships and selling PMPs and open auction demand, to facilitation demand and sales enablement of our curation platform, we're really achieving new heights for our publishers every day and we're hearing about it from our publishers. How excited they are. It's not just about what's happening today versus maybe a year ago, but also what the potential is for the future a year from now.
So, it's really exciting to bring together everything and I haven't even mentioned the fact that our ad serving products are so much stronger. Whether that be through the addition of SSAI or the addition of Kamino with retail media. We just have so much more to discuss and a great arsenal of products to take to our clients and offer them simplicity in working with one partner who can do way more than ever before.
Arnaud: Energized. There's a fresh sense of momentum and purpose. We've built something that's not only bigger, but better, and the opportunity ahead feels limitless.
Parag: I think execution would be my one word because it goes back to what I said in my previous sentence, we can do the marketing, we can do the narrative, but ultimately, our consumers need to find fulfillment in every aspect of our offering across the globe. That is about execution.
Execution from a commercial narrative that we're saying the same thing, it's execution from an ad operations and account management standpoint that we're executing the right things. It's obviously making product capabilities seamless. It's about Maestro, offering our creative enhancements. It's about their clients - as in Sharethrough's clients who only work in terms of PMPs, getting familiar with curation, becoming familiar with more self-service capabilities. Things like that.
So, to me, it really is about execution. And, in a global company, execution sounds glamorous, but it's a lot of work. And I think that's really what we have to focus on so that we are able to execute globally in every major market. That, to me, is the brand coming together. When we can execute well, then I'm saying the brands have come together.
Michael: Ok, so I've thought about this and I struggled because there's so many words. And, to me, I want to say the word is today. The word of the day is today. And what today means to me is that we have to focus on where we are today and also on where we will be in the future. Not what has transpired in the past or where we've been.
It is the biggest challenge, I think, for people around an organization that has merged with or acquired numerous companies and has grown so much in the last few years. We can think about the things that have happened, and where we were, and the historical what we've tried - and maybe failed at, which happens - but I don't want us to focus on that because that was yesterday and the word of today is today and where we are today is really exciting.
Laura: I think at this point, momentum. We've done a lot of the integration phase between the two companies and now we're really in action mode. So, it's taking those offerings to our clients and the Equativ name and ensuring that our brands know the benefits that they get from it and the features that we have to offer and that we do perform and will drive results for our clients.
Céline: One word? Unstoppable.
This milestone marks a pivotal step forward in our mission to become the leading independent, end-to-end media platform for advertisers and publishers worldwide. With expanded capabilities, global reach, and a shared commitment to delivering results, our team are experts in helping you capture attention, drive quality, and achieve real outcomes across every channel.
As Director of Marketing and Communications at Equativ, Amy leads the company’s owned content, social media, and public relations strategies. Collaborating with stakeholders across the organization, she writes on topics ranging from Equativ’s product innovations to broader industry trends.
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