Acquisitions/transactions
Astute Inc., a customer engagement and VOC platform, has acquired social media marketing platform Socialbakers.
WPP digital agency Wunderman Thompson has acquired French customer experience consultancy Velvet Consulting.
AI software provider DeviceBits has unified its brand with customer experience company ResultsCX.
Data and insights platform Dynata has acquired digital ethnography solution CrowdLab.
Research and analytics company MarketCast has acquired data science company Deductive.
Sampling platform PureSpectrum has acquired market research services provider Inteligx. Todd Myers will join the PureSpectrum executive team and lead the Inteligx unit as president.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Digital consumer intelligence company Brandwatch and Kinetiq, a TV intelligence provider, have partnered to provide a cross-channel marketing intelligence solution.
Media measurement company Comscore has partnered with the World Surf League to provide digital audience measurement.
Research company Market Cube has joined FocusVision Sample Marketplace. Marketplace gives researchers access to sample providers directly from FocusVision Decipher. Market Cube adds sampling capabilities to FocusVision Sample Marketplace with its 5 million respondents.
Marketing research agency Potentiate and MirrorWave, a New Zealand-based company specializing in relationship analytics, announced a partnership that will add MirrorWave’s longitudinal system to Potentiate’s suite of services.
Consultative agency Gongos and Los Angeles-based insights platform DISQO have partnered for digital consumer insights.
Strategic brand consultancy Hall & Partners and data and insights platform Dynata have formed a partnership, using Dynata’s data capabilities and technology to power The Hub, Hall & Partners’ data visualization and storytelling platform.
Research and consultancy firm One Inch Whale has partnered with color intelligence and insights agency Color Navigator for a combined offering.
Behavioral research firm InsightsNow has signed on as a corporate donor to support Women in Research, a networking organization that advocates for women and minority groups in the market research industry.
Predictive marketing solution Alphalyr has partnered with Advalo, a sales performance management platform, to offer retailers an omnichannel view of marketing performance.
Schlesinger Group, a marketing research and data collection company, has become a sponsor of the Market Research Institute International’s Principles Express course, Qualitative Market Research.
Data intelligence company TeakOrigin has partnered with intelligence platform Streetbees to expand the reach of its nutritional data analysis to the U.K.
Online survey company SurveyMonkey and data visualization company Tableau have formed a partnership with Axios to provide access to public opinion data to explore national and state-level sentiment in the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Australia-based DBM Consultants has partnered with media measurement company Nielsen to integrate its DBM Atlas dataset with Nielsen’s consumer and media view solution for a joint offering called DBM Atlas + Media Profiler.
Association/organization news
The Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC) has launched the CRIC Pledge to Canadians, which commits CRIC members to ethical standards and helps Canadians distinguish requests to participate in legitimate research from other requests they receive.
Awards/rankings
Numerator, a data and tech company for market research, has received an Award of Excellence in the 32nd Annual APEX Awards. The award recognizes Numerator's consumer app, Receipt Hog, which collects consumer buying data for the Numerator Omnipanel and Numerator Insights.
New accounts/projects
Audience technology platform Eyeota has achieved certification from the IAB Tech Lab for its Data Transparency Standard Compliance program.
Media measurement company Comscore announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted its patent on Device Identification System and Methods. This patent covers Comscore's method of using household router meters to anonymously identify individuals within a household.
Analytics platform Signals Analytics announces approval by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its patent for the automatic extraction of information from unstructured data sources.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
Data collection agency Rep Data has officially launched, partnering with SampleChain for fraud prevention in primary research surveys.
Daughters of Sailors, a partnership between MR recruiters Sarah Penny and Inger Christensen, has officially launched to offer recruitment service for marketing research agencies.
Data collection and research services provider Schlesinger Europe has rebranded its collection of companies in Europe to align with the Schlesinger Group brand. The Research House is now Schlesinger Group U.K., Schmiedl Marktforschung is now Schlesinger Group Germany, BDI Research becomes Schlesinger Group Spain, ConsuMed Research is now Schlesinger Group France and Passerelles has rebranded as Passerelles Schlesinger Group. Schlesinger Europe continues to represent the company’s collective offering in Europe. In other adjustments, Schlesinger Interactive will become Schlesinger Quantitative to align with the U.S. brand.
Customer insights solutions provider Vision Critical has rebranded to Alida, a customer experience management and insights platform.
Intelligence platform Upwave has rebranded from Survata and has launched an automation of campaign data ingestion via an ad server API. The first ad server integration is with Google Campaign Manager.
Infogroup, a provider of data and data-driven marketing solutions, has changed its name to Data Axle, formerly the name of the company’s real-time cloud-based data and AI/ML platform.
Research company earnings/financial news
Narrative, a software company focused on the acquisition and distribution of data, has raised $8.5 million in a Series A funding round led by G20 Ventures with participation from Glasswing Ventures, MathCapital, Revel Partners, Tuhaye Venture Partners and XSeed Capital. Additionally, Narrative has launched its Data Streams Marketplace for data acquisition.
Data platform InfoSum has raised $15.1 million in a Series A funding round led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures with participation from Ascential, Akamai, Experian, ITV and Xandr. Brian Lesser, the founder and former CEO of Xandr, will become InfoSum’s executive chairman.
Emotion AI company Entropik Tech has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Alpha Wave Incubation with participation from Bharat Innovation Fund and IDFC Parampara Fund.
Customer experience management platform Sprinklr has raised $200 million from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and has secured an additional $150 million in convertible securities from Sixth Street Growth.
GlobaLexicon, a provider of market research and health care translation services, announced a 30% growth in revenue in the first half of 2020, as well as the hiring of over 20 new team members and the launch of new client service offerings.
Fintech machine learning company Attunely Inc. has raised $9 million in financing with investments from Framework Venture Partners, Anthos Capital, Vulcan Capital and additional independent investors. Andrew Lugsdin, partner at Framework Venture Partners, will join the Attunely board of directors.