Global management consulting giant McKinsey has acquired ET Medialabs (ETML), a performance marketing and analytics agency, adding 60 analytics specialists from India to its growing digital marketing operations and technology (DMOT) capabilities.

This strategic move expands McKinsey’s digital marketing talent pool to over 200 analysts, performance marketers, and data scientists across global hubs in Asia and Latin America, strengthening the firm’s customer-centric digital marketing offerings.

“Customer first is core to our DNA,” says Raghav Kansal, ETML’s founder, who built the company over the past decade. “It’s a value we immediately felt was shared by McKinsey and deeply embedded in their culture.”

Vincent Cremers, a McKinsey senior partner and leader in the firm’s growth, marketing & sales practice, emphasizes that today’s digital landscape requires a specialized marketing approach combining expertise, tech-enabled capabilities, and innovative operating models. “Rigorous performance management is a critical lever to driving any growth transformation,” Cremers notes, highlighting ETML’s technical prowess in optimizing marketing spend.

ETML has established a track record helping scale-ups, unicorns, and multinationals optimize their marketing efforts. Their diagnostic-to-insight methodology reduces digital ad spend optimization time by 66 percent while boosting campaign impact time by 62 percent.

Stephan Zimmermann, a McKinsey senior partner leading the DMOT offering, points to ETML’s distinctive speed and cross-channel messaging consistency as key differentiators. “Using customer insights to effectively personalize and enable clients to connect with their audience is where we’re most excited to see rapid impact,” he explains.

The integration will see McKinsey and ETML teams working directly with clients to optimize digital marketing operations while building capabilities collaboratively.