The influencer marketing business, which did not exist in any recognizable form fifteen years ago, has developed all the familiar rituals of a mature industry — including the acquisition spree.

SAMY Alliance, a social media agency based in Madrid that has built its presence across Europe and Latin America, said on Tuesday that it had acquired Get Engaged, an American influencer and social marketing agency with offices in Atlanta, New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles. The transaction, which involved both cash and equity, was valued in the low nine figures, according to a person familiar with the terms.

The founders of Get Engaged — Alex Dermer, Cam Fordham, and Ben Hiott, who started the agency in 2016 — will retain what Mr. Dermer described as "meaningful ownership" in the combined business. Mr. Dermer will become chief executive of the American operation, which will serve as SAMY's anchor in the United States.

"We understand culture, how content moves across the internet, and what's likely to work or fall flat," Mr. Dermer said. "Pairing that instinct with SAMY's data, technology, and global reach gives us more ways to find wins and create moments for our clients."

For SAMY, which employs roughly 1,200 people across 20 offices and counts L'Oréal, Barilla, Microsoft, and Unilever among its clients, the deal addresses a gap that has become familiar to European marketing companies: the American market remains, stubbornly, the one that global brands most want to understand. Get Engaged, with more than 120 employees and clients including Sephora, Raising Cane's, and DoorDash, offers what the Madrid company lacked — relationships with American creators and, perhaps more valuably, fluency in American culture.

(Whether that fluency can survive a trans-Atlantic integration is, of course, another question entirely.)

Neither company disclosed revenue figures, though Mr. Dermer said Get Engaged has been profitable since its first year of operation.

"Social is becoming the center of how brands build their businesses," Mr. Dermer said, explaining the rationale for selling now rather than continuing independently.

The influencer business, it seems, has reached the stage where the entrepreneurs who built it are ready to let someone else worry about the overhead.

Original story published in Adweek: "Social Agency SAMY Buys Influencer Shop Get Engaged in Low Nine-Figure Deal"