News notes
On October 17, the board of directors of the Marketing Research Association (MRA), Washington, D.C., approved revisions to the MRA Code of Marketing Research Standards. The revised Code contains 42 principles, culled from ethical and best practices in the marketing research profession, intended to direct marketing research practitioners in their daily operations. The Code is available at www.marketingresearch.org/code. (See Trade Talk.)
Acquisitions/transactions
Columbus, Ohio, technology firm Information Control Company has acquired Columbus, Ohio, research company Farsite Group for its decision-making tools based on predictive and advanced analytics.
Palo Alto, Calif., research software company SurveyMonkey has agreed to sell San Francisco third-party validation company TrueSample to a group of investors, led by Five Peaks Capital Management. TrueSample will be independently operated and continue to develop data-quality solutions for market research.
New York big data company XL Marketing Corp. has acquired the assets of London data services company Intela LLC. XL Marketing will merge Intela’s data and customer acquisition businesses with Virtuoso Advertising, XL Marketing’s U.K. subsidiary, into a new entity, dubbed XL Marketing Europe. In addition, Intela’s e-mail business, based in Colorado, will merge with XL’s e-mail services division.
Facebook, San Francisco, has acquired Onavo, a Tel Aviv, Israel, mobile data company.
Target Research Group Inc., Nanuet, N.Y., has been purchased by its employees.
L&E Research, Raleigh, N.C., has acquired Hatch Global Research, St. Louis. L&E will take over Hatch’s two research facilities in the greater St. Louis area.
Stagnito Media has acquired Carbonview Research, Jupiter, Fla.
Radius Global Market Research, New York, has acquired Probit Research, San Antonio. Probit will continue operating under its own name.
New York research company TNS has extended its stake in Seattle research software company Enprecis Inc.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Crimson Hexagon, a Boston social media analytics software firm, has partnered with several academic researchers at public-sector organizations under its Social Research Grant Program. The program is designed to provide academic, not-for-profit and nonpartisan researchers with access to the Crimson Hexagon ForSight platform. Partners include Harmony Institute; Harvard Business School; Harvard Department of Government and Princeton University Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; Harvard’s Berkman Center; Institute for Social Research, Norway; MIT Sloan School of Management; National Democratic Institute; UN Global Pulse; and University of Bamberg, Germany.
Research companies The Data Alliance, a New York division of WPP, and FourthWall Media, Dulles, Va., have partnered to collaborate on data-driven marketing solutions for television advertising effectiveness.
New York research companies Nielsen and Experian Marketing Services have partnered to extend the Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings solution to report campaign audience by including additional demographic and lifestyle segments, such as estimated household income range, family size and education level.
Orlando, Fla., research company Golf Datatech LLC and Yano Research Institute of Japan, Tokyo, have agreed on a joint, ongoing working relationship to develop a worldwide research and retail data platform for the golf industry.
Awards/rankings
Atlanta research company CMI’s paper, titled “Extending Cluster Ensemble Analysis via Semi-Supervised Learnings,” was voted Best Paper at the Sawtooth Software Conference in October in Laguna Cliffs, Calif.
New York research company Sticky received the iMedia Next Wave Award at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in October in Austin, Texas. The award recognized Sticky as the best new mobile startup in the media and marketing landscape.
London research company BrainJuicer Group PLC’s paper, titled “Research In A World Without Questions,” by BrainJuicer’s Tom Ewing and Allstate’s Bob Pankauskas, won the ESOMAR Excellence Award for The Best Paper of 2012-2013 at the 2013 ESOMAR Congress in September in Istanbul, Turkey. The award is given to the best paper submitted to any of the ESOMAR conferences throughout the year that most accurately reflects the broad aspects and challenges faced by the market research industry today.
Additionally, BrainJuicer announced that its John Kearon received the 2013 NGMR Disruptive Innovator Award in the Thought Leadership category at The Market Research Event in October in Nashville, Tenn. The award recognizes individuals and companies that have demonstrated outstanding leadership as change agents and made significant contributions to harnessing disruptive innovation to drive research industry progress.
New accounts/projects
The Audited Media Association of Australia has selected Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. to provide the analytics platform for an audited Web site measurement service. The account was previously held by New York research company Nielsen.
The Business Marketing Association, Naperville, Ill., has selected FORUM: Business Results Through People, an Evanston, Ill., research center affiliated with Northwestern University, as its research arm.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
Austin, Texas, communications agency Sanders\Wingo and Austin, Texas, research company Somerset Consulting Group Inc. have partnered to launch The Behavioral Science Lab, a brand research center also based in Austin.
Oslo, Norway, research software company Confirmit has relocated its London headquarters to the Blue Fin building on Southwark Street. The new location will combine staff from Confirmit’s two previous U.K. offices.
Norrköping, Sweden, research company Dapresy has opened U.S. offices in Boston and San Francisco.
Provo, Utah, research software company Qualtrics has opened its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. This is the company’s first international office.
B2B International, a Manchester, U.K., research company, has debuted a new look and brand proposition, built around the tagline “Beyond Knowledge.”
Auckland, New Zealand, research company Infotools has relocated its Latin America office to a larger facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Carlson Group, a Lombard, Ill., research company, has opened an office in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Datalogix, a Westminster, Colo., research company, has renovated its headquarters, including a 20,000-square-foot expansion.
Research companies Significant GfK and GfK Audimetrie have merged to become GfK Belgium. All existing contractual rights and obligations between clients and Significant GfK and GfK Audimetrie will automatically be transferred to GfK Belgium.
The NPD Group Inc., a Port Washington, N.Y., research company, has acquired Boulder, Colo., research company Leisure Trends Group. The acquisition does not include Leisure Trends’ customer relationship management (CRM) business. This business is being spun off as a separate company called Ascent CRM. Ascent CRM and Leisure Trends will continue to be located in the same building in Boulder.
New York research company Hall & Partners has launched a global brand and marketing team, led by Ashley Walker, director, global marketing and communications.
London research companies FreshMinds Research and FreshNetworks have merged and will move forward as FreshMinds.
New York research company OnePoint Global has announced plans to more than double the size of its development and innovation teams and launch the OnePoint Global Innovation Center (OPIC). OPIC aims to assess and adopt new technologies for mobile research.
Potentiate Australia, a Sydney, Australia, research company, has opened an office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Barry Ooi will serve as managing director.
Research company earnings/financial news
Study Hall Research, Tampa, Fla., reported a revenue increase of 19.7 percent for the third quarter ended September 30, 2013. For the first three quarters, total annual corporate revenues rose 11.4 percent.
GutCheck, Denver, reported that its third-quarter results were up 400 percent over the same prior-year period.
The Nielsen Company, New York, reported results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2013. Revenues for the quarter increased 2.7 percent to $1,387 million. Adjusted net income rose 17 percent to $193 million.
Nielsen also completed the acquisition of Arbitron, now rebranded as Nielsen Audio.
Ipsos, Paris, reported third-quarter 2013 results. Ipsos achieved organic growth of 1.8 percent. Revenues totaled 418.6 million euros, down 5 percent year-over-year.
ComScore Inc., Reston, Va., achieved record quarterly revenue of $71.6 million during third-quarter 2013.