Private equity investors continue to replace public markets as the main buyers of marketing and advertising tech companies. Latest transaction is DoubleVerify, which battles online ad fraud by authenticating that impressions are viewed and the viewers are human. Buyer was Providence Equity Partners. They didn’t announce a price but the Wall Street Journey says they paid around $200 million for a majority stake.

Publicis Groupe has acquired Capitiv8, the influencer platform that boasts 15 million creators, including 95% of all influencers with over 5,000 followers. This follows last year’s acquisition of Influential, itself a huge influencer network which works alongside Publicis-owned connected identity platform Epsilon. Adding Captiv8 gives Publicis the biggest influencer network in the world.