With Ardian's support, public-Idées and place des leads create Timeone, the new leading player in data driven marketing

The founding management teams will remain majority shareholders, alongside Ardian, which has invested over €5 million in the transaction. 

The TimeOne group will focus on content, data and prescriptive marketing, with a strong platform for innovation and scientific research. By combining the expertise of Public-Idées and Place des Leads, TimeOne will be positioned as a market leading “one-stop-shop” offering a comprehensive range of online marketing solutions. In addition to France, the group also has a presence in the United-Kingdom, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Asia and South America. 

Founded in 2005 by Sylvain Gross, Pierre Rondelli and Fabien Barbaud, Public-Idées was created to meet the growing demand for integrated online marketing solutions for advertisers and online content publishers. Since Ardian invested in Public-Idées in 2007, the company’s turnover has multiplied by eight times.

Sylvain Gross, co-chairman of TimeOne and CEO of Public-Idées, said: “Following the merger, our enlarged group will be able to offer our clients an even stronger value proposition around big data. TimeOne is well-positioned to respond to market developments and create value-add solutions for advertisers.”

Place des Leads, created in 2010 by Ralph Ruimy, Hervé Degauchy and Alexandre Aubry, is a specialist in the collection and qualification of new customer leads on Desktop and Mobile. The company uses a differentiating real-time platform for purchasing and selling leads. Since Ardian’s investment in 2012, Place des Leads has seen an average annual growth of more than 70%.     

Ralph Ruimy, co- chairman of TimeOne and CEO of Place des Leads, said: “Place des Leads and Public-Idées share a common ideology and approach to our businesses, and this merger is an important milestone for both companies. Ardian has played an instrumental role in the lead up to this merger and we look forward working with them further as the enlarged group.” 

Ardian’s involvement in the merger of Public-Idées and Place des Leads is a demonstration of Ardian Growth’s position as a growth accelerator for companies in fast developing sectors with a leading domestic market position and an international development ambition. 

Laurent Foata, Head of Ardian Growth, said: “This merger was possible thanks to the support and the mutual trust which we were able to establish with the founders. Having supported both companies as they successfully grew at home and abroad, we are delighted to have played a part in this new stage of their development which creates a major market player.”     

Romain Chiudini, Investment Manager at Ardian Growth added: “This merger demonstrates our strategy to enable our portfolio companies to expand their operations in high-growth markets. TimeOne is the illustration of our long-term support for the entrepreneurs and our commitment to create European leaders.”