Amazon agency Podean acquires Amerge for overseas marketshare

Marketplaces are still a big growth engine for e-commerce.

However, as the pace of retail media growth slows, a consolidation among marketplace agencies that offer professional services to optimize seller listings and manage ads is underway.

The latest acquisition comes from Podean, which services brands that sell on Amazon. Podean has acquired Amerge, an international firm that manages Amazon advertising for brands across the EU, Ryan Craver, co-founder and chief strategy and AI officer at Podean, told Retail Brew.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Private equity firm Mountaingate Capital poured money to finance the deal. Amerge, headquartered in London, is Podean’s third acquisition after it acquired rival Commerce Canal and Ad Advance, another marketplace agency which specializes in advertising. Amerge will bring some additional technology to Podean’s current platform.

“It’s all about strength in numbers,” Craver said. “There’s a consolidation of agencies, and the larger agencies generally will have better placement, better opportunities for better programs, better pricing, and better overall tech.”

Amerge is Podean’s third acquisition in the past year, “but it won’t be our last,” Travis Johnson, global CEO of Podean, said in a statement. “Our strategy is driven by the services and geographies our clients need to drive growth. As an integrated leadership team, we fundamentally believe in the importance of independence and a clear focus on marketplace and retail media networks.”

The deal adds strength to Podean’s client stack with tech, electronics, and consumer goods verticals. Plus, the technology used by Amerge “reinforces the speed [Podean brings] to clients,” Amerge Co-Founder and the new International CEO of Podean John Doyle said in a statement.

“We’re taking the best of their tech and including it within our tech,” Craver added.

The timing of the deal is not surprising because retail media has been under some pressure, thanks in large part to AI. Agent-assisted shopping is expected to push regular digital advertising on retail sites out of the spotlight. Therefore, companies like Podean need to insulate themselves from future uncertainty.

“We are seeing more consolidation among both the smaller and larger agencies in this market,” Sky Canaves, eMarketer analyst for retail and e-commerce, told Retail Brew. “It’s just more efficient for brands to work with agencies that can provide more services and can really support them across geographies.”

The combined entity will represent more than 450 global brands on Amazon including e.l.f. Cosmetics, Mattel, Adobe, and Danone. Plus, it will have more than $500 million in marketplace and retail media billables. Podean and Amerge together generated more than $4 billion in Amazon sales in 2025.

“This just helps to provide more of the services that brands are looking for, because a lot of the brands that they serve are not necessarily just US-focused,” Canaves said, “but they want to be able to sell globally and plug into Amazon wherever it operates.”

The AI shift: As ad buying becomes more automated, a critical part of the marketplace ecosystem is understanding how to maximize existing tools while deploying AI.

“Certainly, they’re larger agencies that have larger scale can have more to invest in AI, and can then translate that to their clients,” Canaves added.

Meanwhile, Craver admitted that if agentic purchases bypass ad clicks, Amazon’s advertising revenue will take a hit.

“I do think that there’s an impact,” Craver said. “But I also would highlight the fact that agentic buying is a very small percentage of overall business today—and how large it becomes over time is difficult to say—but I wouldn’t anticipate it being a massive percentage of the overall business.”