Corporate Advisory firm CIESCO has produced its H1 2016 Global M&A Survey of Transactions in the technology-enabled media and marketing sectors. This follows on from its 2015 full year report published in January this year. CIESCO tracked 619 transactions in digital media, marketing and related technology sectors spanning 39 countries with buyers coming from 33 countries. Cross-border deals accounted for 32%.

Aggregate deal value was $65.5bn including Microsoft’s $26.2bn acquisition of Linkedin. Excluding this, value was $39.3bn, up from $19.3bn in the first half of 2015.

The biggest deals were undertaken by technology companies with the marcoms giants, led by WPP and Dentsu, active with smaller acquisitions. Earlier this month Dentsu announced plans to buy a majority stake in US CRM agency Merkle, valued at a total $1.5bn.