IMGE Acquires Direct Persuasion

For thirteen years, when IMGE needed a capability that didn't exist, we built it. Our own reporting platform with Outburst. Our own advertising audiences with Increment. Our own tools, over and over, because the market's options had limits and we refused to inherit them.

Today we're growing in a new way. We've acquired Direct Persuasion.

This is our first acquisition, and we didn't take the milestone lightly. We found a rare thing in Direct Persuasion: an aligned team who builds the way we do.

Since 2017, Direct Persuasion has run more than $1 billion in paid media. Instead of accepting the industry's fuzzy measurement, they built their own answers: attribution reporting that actually answers "did it work," performance metrics that didn't exist before, and a social listening platform that catches shifts before traditional polling does.

"After nearly a decade running major brands and campaigns, Direct Persuasion knows how to run performance marketing at scale. They built technology that solved problems our industry had accepted for years. This acquisition strengthens our ability to deliver smarter strategy, better measurement, and stronger results for every client we serve."

— Carl Sceusa, Chief Executive Officer of IMGE

Founder Daria Grastara started the firm on the same bet we've made our whole existence: better technology leads to better decisions, and if the platforms can't answer your clients' questions, you build ones that can.

"We founded Direct Persuasion with the belief that better technology leads to better marketing decisions. When existing platforms could not answer the questions our clients needed answered, we built our own. Joining IMGE allows us to scale those tools across a broader client base while continuing to innovate alongside one of the industry's leading digital agencies."

— Daria Grastara, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Direct Persuasion

As of September 1, their technology runs inside our stack and their team joins ours. For existing clients on both sides, the relationships and account teams don't change. The only thing that is changing is the depth of what we can build together.

We grew by building. Now we're growing by joining forces, and we can't wait to see what that brings.