Innocean acquires digital marketing company D-Plan 360

Innocean, a Hyundai Motor Group-affiliated advertising agency, has acquired the Seoul-based digital marketing company D-Plan 360 to greatly raise its digital marketing capacity.

Innocean on Thursday signed a deal to acquire D-Plan 360's shares, with executives from both companies attending including Innocean CEO Lee Yong-woo and D-Plan 360 CEO Shin Yeong-hee.

D-Plan 360 is a media rep company that sells ads to major broadcast companies and online media such as Google and Naver. The basis for its acquisition was the company's successful collaborations with domestic and foreign clients in sectors like food, construction, real estate, government offices and cosmetics.

"Through our acquisition of D-Plan 360, we secured not only branding and performance marketing know-how but also the capacity to perform independent media operations," an Innocean source said.

Innocean is reinforcing its digital marketing due to surging growth of the related advertising market. The public agency Korea Broadcast Advertising Corp. said online advertising spending rose 21.5% from 6.5 trillion won ($5 billion) in 2019 to 7.9 trillion won last year, with this year's forecast at 8.8 trillion won.

In June last year, Innocean stressed the digital and data sectors at a briefing on future business strategy for analysts from some 20 domestic and foreign securities companies.

Innocean has pursued several M&As to secure future growth engines. In May 2021, it acquired D-Purple, a domestic digital performance marketing company that uses data-based marketing to understand the process in which consumers make purchasing decisions.

Innocean also launched an intellectual property (IP) unit to boost its digital marketing, unveiling its character Boss Ttokki (Rabbit) in April. As the nation's first comprehensive advertising agency to roll out its own IP, the company at the time of its IP unit's launch collaborated with Hangang Brewery to sell Boss Ttokki Makgeolli, a version of the nation's traditional milky rice wine makgeolli.

Innocean will expand its IP business by collaborating with companies that seek its marketing consulting.

Write to Mi-Kyoung Lee at capital@hankyung.com