News notes
Cerebral Diagnostics Canada Inc., a Toronto-based start-up, has been issued patent No. 9,179,854 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the firm’s brain imaging technology, Dynamic Electrical Cortical Imaging (DECI).
The CBS Television City Research Center, located inside the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, welcomed its millionth visitor in November. The visitor, Latoya Washington of New Jersey, participated in a new television series study and, to mark the occasion, received an array of television and Vegas-themed giveaways from the CBS Research Center and the MGM Grand Hotel.
Acquisitions/transactions
Sterling, Va., information services company Neustar has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MarketShare Partners LLC, a marketing analytics technology firm based in Los Angeles.
The Stagwell Group, Washington, D.C., has signed an agreement with Nielsen to acquire National Research Group, a Los Angeles research and consulting services firm. It will operate as an independent entity under the umbrella of the Stagwell family of companies.
New York marketing communications firm J. Walter Thompson Company has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Cleartag, a digital marketing consultancy based in Beirut.
Jersey City, N.J., firm Verisk Analytics Inc. has acquired The PCI Group, a consortium of five specialist companies that offer integrated data and subscriptions research. PCI will become part of Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk Analytics business.
GfK, Nuremberg, Germany, has agreed to sell its global animal and crop health division to a consortium consisting of private equity investor Inflexion and the current management led by Stephen Hearn.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Salt Lake City customer experience firm InMoment has partnered with U.K. video feedback firm Voxpopme to provide InMoment clients with a range of video capture and analytics capabilities integrated across InMoment’s voice of customer platform.
Association/organization news
The Marketing Research Education Foundation has given an $8,000 emergency grant – $3,000 of which was supplied by conference organizer IIR from proceeds from The Market Research Event – to the Children of Hope School in Thomazeau, Haiti, to be used to temporarily fund its daily operations while it gets a permanent operating grant in place after unexpectedly losing its primary donor.
ESOMAR and the Global Research Business Network (GRBN) have updated the ESOMAR/GRBN Guideline on Online Sample Quality, which explains how to apply principles of market, social and opinion research in the context of the current legal frameworks and regulatory environments worldwide.
Awards/rankings
Boston-based market intelligence firm InCrowd has achieved national ranking on Entrepreneur’s Top Company Cultures list, a ranking of U.S. businesses exhibiting high-performance cultures, created in partnership with culture management software and service provider CultureIQ.
Research & Marketing Strategies Inc., Baldwinsville, N.Y., has been ranked one of the 14 largest patient-satisfaction measurement firms in the U.S. by Modern Healthcare.
Ruth Stanat, founder and CEO/president of New York-based SIS International Research, was recently named Circle of Excellence CEO Award Finalist in SmartCEO magazine.
Michelle Andre, vice president of marketing for Fishkill, N.Y., firm Virtual Incentives, has been named the winner of a Stevie Award in the Executive of the Year category in the 12th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business for her leadership work in developing integrated marketing campaigns with measurable ROI.
Stamford, Conn., research technology company FocusVision was recognized as a gold level award winner at the Annual 2015 Golden Bridge Awards for Company Growth of the Year.
London-based research firm Hall & Partners and U.K. insurance company Direct Line Group have won the 2015 TMRE EXPLOR Award for their case study on The Hub, a data integration and publishing platform. The award is for innovation in marketing research, with particular focus on new technology and methods that enhance and advance the research and insights process.
New accounts/projects
Kantar Media, London, and TNS Gallup have been awarded a new contract for the provision of TV ratings by the Danish TV audience measurement steering committee. The service will run for five years initially from 2017, with the option to extend until 2024.
Portland, Ore., media measurement firm Rentrak has signed a group-wide contract expansion with Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., Hunt Valley, Md., for audience measurement services for all stations and markets in its portfolio.
The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, a London-based TV audience measurement body, has agreed to prototype fusion contracts with Kantar Media, London, and Nielsen, New York, for Project Dovetail, its cross-platform measurement solution.
U.K. agency DJS Research Ltd. has been selected to conduct a market research project on behalf of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU). As part of the study, the firm will engage with both rugby union players and non-players in order to understand how the WRU can increase participation in rugby with a view to growing the number of people playing rugby in Wales in the longer term.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
SeeLevel HX, a business intelligence firm based in Atlanta, is the new brand name for the integrated companies comprised of Mystery Researchers, Insula Research and Beyond Hello.
Yahoo is investing $20 million to expand its data center in La Vista, Neb., by about 20,000 square feet.
The U.S. Census Bureau, along with University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials, have opened the Central Plains Research Data Center in Nebraska, which joins 20 other federal statistical research data center locations in the U.S. The centers provide qualified researchers on approved projects with a connection to restricted data collected by the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics and other federal agencies.
San Francisco-based online survey software firm QuestionPro has opened a new office in Munich. Additionally, the firm is partnering with Hamburg, Germany, social networking site XING, allowing XING premium users to use QuestionPro’s Professional Feature sets for free.
London-based media agency MEC is launching MEC Tonic, a division that will bring tech-first solutions to clients via start-ups and early stage companies. The new division will drive marketing transformation by helping brands use emerging technology at the points in the customer journey that have the biggest impact on purchase decisions. It will be led by Hannah Blake, director of open innovation at MEC.
Research company earnings/financial news
Portland, Ore., research firm Rentrak has reported total company revenue of $32.8 million for the fiscal 2016 second quarter, up 30 percent from the same period last year.
Stamford, Conn., researcher Gartner has reported total revenue of $500.2 million for third-quarter 2015, a 6 percent increase over third-quarter 2014 and 13 percent excluding the foreign exchange impact.
Mumbai, India, researcher MRSS India has reported its financial results for the first half-year ending September 30, 2015. During the first half-year, operating revenue for the company was Rs. 53.9 million, compared to approximately Rs. 55 million in the previous whole year 2014-2015.
Reston, Va., firm comScore reported third-quarter 2015 GAAP revenue of $92.4 million, an increase of 13 percent compared to third-quarter 2014.
Sales in the first nine months of 2015 for Nuremberg, Germany, researcher GfK amounted to Û1,118.6 million, a 6 percent increase over the same period of the previous year.