Acquisitions/transactions
Los Angeles-based researcher LRW (Lieberman Research Worldwide) has completed the purchase of Tonic Insight, an online insight communities firm with offices in London and New York. The company will now be named LRWTonic. This is the second in LRW’s planned series of acquisitions supported with growth capital from Tailwind Capital Partners. Nick Priestley will continue serving as the general manager of the company.
Danbury, Conn., information and technology services company IMS Health has acquired Canada-based Privacy Analytics Incorporated, a provider of technology solutions for de-identifying and anonymizing health care information, to extend its Real-World Evidence capabilities. Privacy Analytics’ capabilities will be used across IMS Health to develop approaches and enhance existing methods for ensuring the responsible use of anonymous health care information. The solutions will continue to be offered to Privacy Analytics and IMS Health clients as an independent suite of products.
Provo, Utah, customer experience software firm Qualtrics has acquired Statwing, a statistical analysis software start-up based in San Francisco. Qualtrics will integrate Statwing’s point-and-click tool into the Qualtrics Insight Platform in an effort to make data science faster, easier and more accessible.
San Francisco account-based marketing firm Demandbase has signed an agreement to acquire data science company Spiderbook. The addition of the Spiderbook technology will allow Demandbase to use machine learning and data science at scale to analyze Web pages for signals that map to the keywords, interests and profiles of its customers’ target accounts. Spiderbook also extends the Demandbase offering with the technology to identify the right people to target at these accounts and recommend the right messages. Spiderbook employees will be joining Demandbase’s team at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
San Mateo, Calif., engagement marketing software and solutions firm Marketo Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners in an all-cash deal for a total value of approximately $1.79 billion. Marketo headquarters will remain in San Mateo. Closing of the deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of Marketo shareholders and antitrust approval in the United States. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016.
In London, search marketing agency Ayima has acquired social media, retargeting and display advertising firm QuickThink Media. With the acquisition, Ayima will increase in size to almost 150 people worldwide across five offices.
Research technology firm FocusVision, Fresno, Calif., has acquired Lakewood, Colo., research intelligence platform 24Tru and QualVu, the qualitative research and insight arm of 24Tru.
Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., has announced that it will acquire professional network LinkedIn, Mountain View, Calif., for $196 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $26.2 billion. LinkedIn will retain its brand, culture and independence and Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both LinkedIn and Microsoft. The deal is expected to close this calendar year and is subject to approval by LinkedIn’s shareholders, the satisfaction of certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Berlin-based digital publisher Axel Springer has acquired New York-based researcher eMarketer Inc. The transaction allows Axel Springer to expand digital activities into the U.S. market and to broaden its portfolio of paid content offerings. Axel Springer will pay approximately $242 million (approximately Û213 million) for 93 percent of the shares in eMarketer. Together, eMarketer’s co-founders Terry Chabrowe, CEO, and Geoff Ramsey, CIO, will continue to hold around 7 percent of the company. Both co-founders are committed long-term and will keep their positions. The transaction is subject to approval by relevant antitrust authorities.
Advanced Focus, a New York research company, has acquired Marketview - Tarrytown. The new company will be known as Advanced Focus Westchester. Marketview’s staff, including Managing Director Meredith Falvo, will join the Advanced Focus team.
Radnor, Pa., visual analytics firm Qlik has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo LLC in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3 billion. The agreement was unanimously approved by Qlik’s board of directors. Qlik will maintain its corporate headquarters in Radnor, Pa., and will continue to service its customers led by its existing executive team. The proposed transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016, subject to approval by Qlik’s shareholders and regulatory authorities and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Los Angeles-based researcher SoapBoxSample has formed a strategic partnership with Wakoopa, an Amsterdam-based behavioral data company. The business alliance marks the launch of Wakoopa Hub, a new behavioral data marketplace. SoapBox can now provide digital behavior data from PC or mobile devices, helping clients capture a holistic view of their specific target audience’s digital journeys. Clients can use this to build digital profiles of their consumer segments or understand the path to purchase with better insights than what can be provided from survey research alone. In partnership with a global network of panel companies, Wakoopa Hub is a way for researchers to access behavioral data from respondents worldwide. The delivery model simplifies the purchasing process, leading to broader industry access and increased economies of scale. By lowering the barriers to studies that rely on behavioral data, Wakoopa Hub will help researchers uncover digital behavior insights that are only possible through passive metering approaches. In addition to SoapBox, launching partners include panel providers Netquest, Critical Mix, Respondi, OMI, YouGov, STEM/MARK, Majestic MRSS, Mindtake and GapFish.
Canada-based brand loyalty agency Bond Brand Loyalty has formed a partnership with Belgium-based omnichannel marketing platform Selligent. The partnership will enhance Bond’s Synapze technology platform with Selligent’s omnichannel engagement capabilities to deliver more relevant and personalized experiences for brands and their customers. By strengthening its loyalty solution offerings with Selligent’s platform, Bond Brand Loyalty will be able to offer enhanced real-time marketing automation to support its clients’ CRM and loyalty needs. With a real-time connection between the Selligent and Synapze platforms, Bond will enable 360-degree relationship marketing while streamlining communications across multiple channels.
EXIN, a Netherlands-based independent certification institute for ICT professionals, has signed a strategic partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute, based in Dublin. The partnership will allow EXIN to deliver the Digital Marketing Institute’s certification program through its network of accredited partners.
MVI Marketing Ltd., a marketing intelligence company for the gem, jewelry and watch industries based in San Luis Obispo, Calif., has formed a strategic partnership with Stockholm-based research technology firm Cint to leverage Cint’s technology for obtaining insights for its Millennial Discretionary Spend Research Report. MVI’s research report provides its active clients in the luxury goods sector with a look into current market trends. MVI has also tapped into Cint’s insight exchange platform to reach MVI’s niche target audiences (professional Millennials, those soon to be engaged/recently engaged and luxury brand purchasers) for their research efforts. Through the partnership, MVI will have quicker access to profiled research respondents for their regular omnibus and quantitative research studies. Over the next few months MVI and Cint plan to work to programmatically automate their technologies via API.
Columbia, Md., performance marketing agency Merkle has partnered with Google on its Customer Match Uploader (CMU) service. Google unveiled its four agency partners for the CMU product at the Google Performance Summit, which took place on May 25. The launch of Google’s Customer Match Uploader allows Merkle to upload pre-hashed Customer Match first-party data files to a secure, authorized API. Google can then proceed with the standard Customer Match audience creation process and deposit the resulting audience in the brand’s Adwords account.
Oslo, Norway, customer experience software solutions firm Confirmit has partnered with Waltham, Mass., emotion recognition technology firm Affectiva to provide market research organizations and voice of the customer (VoC) programs with the personal sentiment and behavioral insight needed to understand the role of emotion in driving consumer spending and loyalty. Affectiva’s emotion recognition technology captures and measures unconscious responses and unbiased consumer reactions. The solution can be embedded into a Confirmit Horizons survey to enhance research or VoC programs by analyzing a respondent’s reaction to videos. Respondents are transferred between the platforms for the facial emotion detection portion of the research. Emotion data is then viewed on Affectiva’s dashboard or combined with the Confirmit survey data to provide the context of other important factors. The combined solution can help organizations better understand customer opinion and predict loyalty, enhance product and service offerings, improve A/B advertising concept testing, determine media spend, benchmark in-market campaigns and quantify attention, engagement and emotion in general.
Leger, a Canadian-owned research and polling firm, has become a strategic partner of Los Angeles-based technology firm Passenger Inc. As a strategic partner, Leger has expanded its offerings to include FUEL CYCLE by Passenger, an online community platform that helps brands engage customers via ongoing conversations that take the pulse of consumer attitudes, behaviors and trends.
Awards/rankings
Samsung and France-based research company Strategir received the golden trophy for research at the French Marketing Awards. The award is given for the development of virtual reality shopper research, which Samsung conducted as part of a redevelopment of the Samsung Experience Store Madeleine in Paris. Samsung worked with Strategir to develop a shopper approach that uses virtual reality for in-store immersion to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current configuration of the store, product presentation and demonstration videos. The research compared the feelings and behavior of potential smartphone buyers “visiting” the store with a Gear VR headset with visiting the physical store and also to “visiting” the store via a full-size projection. The study showed that the 360-degree tour of the store with a virtual reality helmet favored concentration. The technology encourages natural behavior on the part of consumers and allows them to look where they like. Silver went to Kantar Worldpanel for NRJ Global and bronze to Harris Interactive for NestlŽ Dolce Gusto.
The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) has named Toronto-based digital innovation company Delvinia as the winner of MRIA’s Innovation and Advancement in Marketing Research Award in recognition of Methodify, a research automation platform, which has turned into a business unit within the Delvinia group of companies. The award recognizes research initiatives that exhibit a new direction for marketing research work. Additionally, Delvinia CEO Adam Froman was recognized by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance with the Telfer School of Management Private Sector Leadership Award.
At the MRIA 2016 National Conference, Annie Pettit, VP, data quality at Plano, Texas, firm Research Now and chief research officer at San Francisco firm Peanut Labs, was named a Fellow of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association. Additional honors given to Research Now at the conference include the CMRP certification for Jeremy Mullin and Annie Pettit and the MRIA Award for Excellence Behind the Scenes, which recognizes efforts that enable the completion of research projects that do not have direct client contact. This year’s award recognized the Research Now Client Team’s support delivering the Shopper Intelligence Study.
Steve August, CMO for research technology firm FocusVision, Fresno, Calif., was named a winner of a Bronze Stevie Award for Tech Innovator of the Year in the 14th Annual American Business Awards.
Researcher Ipsos and its clients were given awards in four of the eight categories at the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association Awards during the 2016 National Conference in Montreal: The “Smart Account” project conducted by Ipsos, Dine Discoveries and element54 for CIBC earned the Pinnacle Award for Outstanding Research Project; The Best Quantitative Project award, recognizing a research project that used exclusively quantitative techniques, was given to Ipsos and Manulife for “Censydiam Segmentation;” the City of Toronto and Ipsos Public Affairs received the award for Excellence in Public Policy & Government for “Uber and the Taxi Industry;” and the City of Mississauga and Ipsos Loyalty earned the award for Public Service Impact and/or Benefit for the “MiWay Customer Service Satisfaction Survey.”
Annie Pettit, VP, data quality at Plano, Texas, firm Research Now and chief research officer at San Francisco firm Peanut Labs, received the Ginny Valentine Badge of Courage Award at the IIeX North America conference. Pettit was nominated and received the award for bringing attention to the lack of gender parity among speakers in the marketing research conference industry.
Media company TMC has named Confirmit Horizons Version 19 (V19) as a recipient of a 2016 CRM Excellence Award, presented by CUSTOMER magazine. Released in September 2015, Horizons V19 is a multi-channel software platform for customer experience, employee engagement and market research programs by Oslo, Norway, customer experience solutions firm Confirmit. The award recognized Horizons V19 for its voice of the customer capabilities, which enables businesses to gain value and insight through customer feedback.
Data-driven marketing firm Experian Marketing Services, New York, was named a Strong Performer in the Forrester Research Inc. May 2016 reports The Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Campaign Management, Q2 2016 and The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q2 2016.
New accounts/projects
Nielsen, New York, has renewed contract services covering metrics for all of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer Meijer’s 227 supercenters and grocery stores throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Wisconsin. With the extended agreement, Nielsen will continue its relationship with Meijer and serve as the company’s sole provider of consumer insights and analytics with an expanded retainer of services.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
U.K. research agency BrainJuicer has opened a new office in Australia, led by Ed Harrison as managing director.
Advertising agency AKA NYC, New York, has launched Show & Tell Broadway, a market research firm that provides insights to Broadway shows and art organizations. The firm uses online surveys, which draw on a proprietary in-house panel of over 12,000 theater, arts and culture lovers, in-person focus groups and other tools to help shows improve branding, advertising and marketing. Show & Tell Broadway is led by media research analysts Janette Roush and Sam Gates and analyzes things like brand perception, pricing and competition. It also tests consumer affinity for key art, copy and advertising and offers post-show sentiment analysis.
Arlington, Texas, research and analytical consulting firm Decision Analyst Inc. has launched a new company called Symmetric that allows research agencies and companies to acquire samples from Decision Analyst’s consumer and business-to-business panels. The panels include the American Consumer Opinion Worldwide panel, Physicians Advisory Council, Medical Advisory Board, Technology Advisory Board and the Contractor Advisory Board. Symmetric is online at www.symmetricsampling.com.
In Philadelphia, Savitz Research Companies has formed a new research organization, SavitzConsulting LLC, led by Founder and CEO Jeffry Savitz, that connects clients with marketing and marketing research consultants. Consultants can register for different positions and categories of products and services. Clients can then browse the consultants’ resumes and hire them in any one of four ways: hourly, for a short term assignment, for a project or full-time. SavitzConsulting can be found online at www.savitzconsulting.com.
U.K. research consultancy BrainJuicer Group PLC has launched System1 - Feel More: Buy More, a creative agency based on BrainJuicer’s behavioral science work. According to the announcement, System1 will quantitatively pre-test every piece of creative work prior to presenting ideas to clients, guaranteeing a minimum ROI against every idea. The agency will be run by Chief Executive Rod Connors and will also be supported by an advisory board made up of industry figures including: Richard Holmes, CMO of Specsavers; Peter Soer, Kellogg’s CMO of Europe and EMEA; Adrian Holmes, creative partner, HHM; and Mark Earls, author and latterly chair of global planning council at Ogilvy Worldwide.
Research company earnings/financial news
Audience measurement company Verto Analytics, New York, has announced a $16.1 million Series B funding round led by EQT Ventures. Series A leads, Conor Venture Partners and Open Ocean Capital, along with new investors Vision+ (Tero OjanperŠ), Finnish Industry Investment and additional angel investors also participated in the Series B round, bringing the total capital raised to date to $23.9 million. Verto will use the new funds to scale its services globally within the digital media, mobile app and gaming, adtech and Internet sectors and expand its global operations. The firm has also appointed Ben Feder as chairman of the board and Henrik Landgren of EQT Ventures as a new board member.
Amplitude, a San Francisco-based user behavior analytics firm, has raised a $15 million Series B investment led by Battery Ventures with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Data Collective, Merus Capital and Quest Venture Partners. With funding from this round, Amplitude says it will hire talent, fuel product development of its analytics platform and expand sales and marketing. Neeraj Agrawal, general partner at Battery Ventures, will join the Amplitude board of directors. Amplitude has also unveiled Pathfinder, a new analytics tool that shows all of the different ways users navigate through a product, showing the best paths to increase conversion and retention.