News notes
ACNielsen Corporation, Stamford, Conn., has entered into an agreement under which VNU N.V. will acquire all of the common stock of ACNielsen for $36.75 per share in cash. The aggregate value of the transaction will .be approximately $2.3 billion. In addition to adding AC Nielsen to its stable of companies, the all-cash deal reunites AC Nielsen with Nielsen Media Research. VNU acquired the TV ratings firm in fall 1999 for $2.7 billion. Both Nielsen-branded companies had been owned by Dun & Bradstreet, which purchasedAC Nielsen in 1984 for $1.3 billion. In 1996, Dun & Bradstreet split into three companies. AC Nielsen became a standalone company and Nielsen Media became a part of Cognizant. VNU said it would seek bank financing to fund the purchase and look to sell its consumer and educational information groups in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Greenfield Online Inc., a Wilton, Conn., research firm, has withdrawn an $86.3 million initial public offering of common stock because of unfavorable market conditions. Greenfield reported the move in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it "has elected not to proceed with the offering due to general market conditions and a determination that it would not be in the company’s best interest to proceed at this time." The company was hoping to use the net proceeds to repay outstanding debt and for general corporate purposes and working capital. It had applied for a Nasdaq listing under the symbol GFOL and had hired Credit Suisse First Boston, Bear Stearns and Donaldson Luftdn & Jenrette to handle the IPO.
The assets and goodwill of London-based Marketing Direction Limited have been purchased from parent company Pensa Group (formerly Aspen Group) by MDL Research Limited for an undisclosed sum. MDL Research is a new holding company established by the existing Marketing Direction management team, Lise Cotfle and Ricky Baxter, together with John Kelly, formerly chairman of Magenta - part of the MRSL Group, and Andy Booth, formerly research director of MSB (Managing the Service Business). In the course of the purchase, MDL Research has taken over all existing employees and contracts. MDL Research Limited will also continue to trade as Marketing Direction and Media Marketing Direction. The members of the new management team are equal shareholders in the business. John Kelly has assumed the role of chairman and Lise Cottle that of company secretary.
San Francisco-based Modalis Research Technologies, Inc., and the International Webmasters Association (IWA), an association focused on educating and certifying Web professionals, have formed a strategic partnership for development and delivery of online information services.
Modalis will provide 1WA with instant surveys, syndicated reports, panels and other information services. IWA has agreed to provide Modalis with access to over 22,000 members for conducting industry-related research. To facilitate the research, the two organizations will build the Web Profession Advisory Council (WPAC), a research panel which will provide insight into the products, services, compensation, and lifestyles of Web professionals.
On January 1, Minneapolis-based Winona Research began operating under the name Research International USA as a result of its merger with Research International USA.
Jstreetdata.com Inc., a Washington, D.C., Web-based medical market research firm, has closed $2.1 million in Series A f’mancing. Investors include GreenSpring Ventures, ACI Korea, and Thorner Ventures.
Watertown, Mass.-based Primix Solutions Inc., an Internet services firm, has completed the next generation Web site for QuickTake, a division of Greenfield Online. The site, designed by Primix and Greenfield Online and developed in collaboration with other QuickTake partners, extends the QuickTake survey capability to new media including online, voice recognition, two-way paging and wireless capabilities.
In December, the Arbitron Company, New York, began recruiting consumers and placing meters for its Philadelphia market trial of the Portable People Meter, its new radio, television and cable TV audience measurement device. Over a 10-week period, the firm intends to recruit and supply meters to a panel of 300 consumers for the first trial phase in the Philadelphia market. Arbitron plans to have over 70 broadcasters and cable networks serving the Philadelphia market encoding their signals by the time the panel is in place. The Portable People Meter is a pager-sized device that is worn by consumers throughout the day. It detects inaudible codes that broadcasters and cable networks embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by Arbitron. At the end of each day, the meter is placed into a base station that recharges the device and sends the collected codes to Arbitron for tabulation. The technology has been tested in the field in Manchester, England, in 1998 and in late 1999 to early 2000.
Braintree, Mass.-based Perseus Development Corporation announced that the PalmSource 2000 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., in December was one of the first forums where conference surveys were completed using Palm Powered hand-held computers. SurveySolutions In Hand, a survey software application designed by Perseus, Palm, Inc., and Critical Path Software, allows for the creation of Web and email surveys that can be deployed on a Palm Powered hand-held. Once completed, the survey administrator can compile and analyze the results and display them in tables or graphs.
Acquisitions
Chicago-based SPSS Inc. has acquired eX Systems, a Japanese-based agent and distributor of SPSS market research solutions, for approximately $750,000 cash. As a result of the transaction, completed on Sept. 25, eX Systems’ entire staff will integrate into SPSS MR, the SPSS operating group dedicated to serving the market research industry, while continuing to work out of their current location in Tokyo.
NPD ShoeBiz, the footwear tracking unit of Port Washington, N.Y., marketing information provider The NPD Group, Inc., has completed the acquisition of Footwear Market Insights (FMI), a syndicated consumer purchase information company based in Nashville, Tenn.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Fort Washington, Pa., pharmaceutical research firm TVG, Inc., and WebSurveyResearch, a New York survey company, have announced a partnership designed to deliver online primary marketing research surveys to assess physicians’ awareness, attitudes and behaviors with regard to the use of pharmaceutical and medical products. Under the terms of the letter of intent, beginning in 2001, TVG will become a charter member of WebSurveyResearch, gaining access to the WebSurveyResearch physician panel for performing marketing research. TVG will develop the questionnaires and analyze the data. WebSurveyResearch will host the surveys on the Intemet and provide the raw data to TVG.
NetZero, Inc., a provider.of advertising-and commerce-supported Internet access, and NFO Worldwide, a Greenwich, Conn., research firm, have announced a strategic alliance among NetZero’s CyberTarget division, NFO and its affiliate, InsightExpress. The agreement will give clients of NFO and InsightExpress access to household and individual samples drawn from NetZero’s members, with targeting capabilities based upon demographics and/or Internet usage.
Separately, but also as part of this agreement, NFO will offer NetZero’s free Internet access service, including its zCast tracking software, to members of its existing household panels. With appropriate household permission, this will enable NFO to evaluate online behavioral data combined with offline research data gathered from its panelists. The agreement also calls for CyberTarget and NFO to develop cobranded research applications based upon NetZero members’ anonymous clickstream data, focusing on various industry vertical markets.
NFO Worldwide has also announced a new relationship with Terra Lycos, a global Internet network, to expand NFO’s interactive panel of consumers over the next two years. As part of the agreement, NFO will become a primary research supplier to the Lycos Network of Web sites.
Alchemedia, a San Francisco provider of software and services to prevent the theft of proprietary information online, has announced that BuzzBack, a new online platform for qualitative research, will use Alchemedia’s Clever Content technology to protect the information featured in its online consumer research sessions. Clever Content prevents the copying, printing, and screen capturing of visual information on intranets, extranets, and the Internet.
Rochester, N.Y., research firm Harris Interactive will work with Sigma Dos Interactiva (SDi), a new division of the Sigrna Dos Group inSpain, to expand and develop online research capabilities in that region. Sigma Dos Group is comprised of 14 companies, five in Spain and the remainder in Portugal and Latin America. While Sigma Dos is the main offline research agency of Sigma Dos Group, Sigma Dos !nteractiva will be fully dedicated to online social, political, marketing and branding/corporate image research.
Awards
The Chicago Software Association (CSA) has awarded SPSS its Enterprise Award at the CSA’s 2000 Achievement Awards. The Enterprise Award is presented to the CSA member company which, through sustained growth, national reputation and recognized excellence in products and services, best represents the Silicon Prairie’s stature as home to quality information technology companies. The winning company must have at least $10 million in annual revenue, be financially strong, exhibit a commitment to customer service and have established a unique place in its market. SPSS also won the Enterprise Award in 1998.
Maritz Inc., St Louis, was ranked 157th among the top 500 private companies in the November 27th issue of Forbes magazine. Maritz Marketing Research Inc. was among the divisions cited as an example of the company’s growth and diversity.
New accounts
Statistica, a data analysis and, graphing software from Tulsa, Okla.-based StatSoft, Inc., has been named a corporate PC statistics software package by BP, an energy and petrochemical firm.
San Diego-based Cardiff Software, Inc., a forms processing and business automation firm, and CaptureIT (Australia) Pty. Ltd., a data collection and data capture firm, announced that the New South Wales Board of Studies has used CardiffTELEform in Sydney to process more than 1.1 million Higher School Certificate (HSC) and School Certificate answer and marker sheets.
Millward Brown, a Naperville, Ill., research firm, has purchased a three-year license of SPSS Inc.’s market research software. SPSS MR, the market research arm of SPSS, will provide Millward Brown with a set of tools for use in its research process.
The Social & Health Services (SHS) unit of Opinion Research Corporation, Princeton, N.J., has been awarded a $1.8 million subcontract in the federal government’s new school violence prevention program. Under the subcontract, SHS will provide communications and social marketing technical assistance to the grantee school districts around the country selected by the Center for Mental Health Services to participate in its Safe Schools/ Healthy Students Initiative.
New companies/new locations
A new research firm, KLJ Field Services, is set to open this month at 94 Wentworth Rd., Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada.
SIVI (Seet Intemet Ventures, Inc.), an Internet accelerator in Los Angeles, has launched its newest site, StatSurvey (www.statsurvey.com), which provides online research services.
The Web site www.indiastat.com is now available to offer researchers socioeconomic information, services and data about India and its states.
A new B2B publishing and online professional services marketplace, www.eeountries.com, is offering market research reports and also an RFP
service for marketing researchers.