Taylor Nelson Sofres (LON:TNS) announced the acquisition of Compete, Inc. today (press release, via Marshall Sponder). Today's announcement, combined with last year's acquisition of Cymfony, puts TNS on the short list of companies that offer both social media analysis and panel-based online audience measurement.
Since its consolidation of BuzzMetrics and NetRatings into Nielsen Online, The Nielsen Company has made a point of demonstrating the breadth of its media and market measurement capabilities. It's going to be interesting to see the TNS version of combining different types of research. Today's announcement gives just a hint of how the company plans to combine online and offline measurement data:
TNS will apply Compete’s ability to profile, measure and segment the online behaviour of consumers to its own 6th dimension access panels. This will start in the US, where TNS has a fully managed access panel of more than one million people and will then be extended across its network. This will give TNS an unmatched ability to provide insight based on online and offline behaviour and on consumer attitudes.Note that Compete and Cymfony are located a few minutes apart in the Boston area, which should make collaboration/integration meetings easier and more frequent.
Thanks for noting my post on www.theanalyticsguru.com on this the CompeteInc.com aquisition by TNS.
BTW, if you have time, take a look/join waasocial.webanalyticsassociation.org
it's the Web Analytics Association Social Network which my committee at the WAA is building for the analytics community. It's open, anyone can join.
Was nice meeting with you a couple of several months back in NYC.
Thanks again,
Marshall
Hi, Marshall. I think your tweet was the first I saw of the news, but I thought linking to your blog post made more sense.
I'm working on a couple of projects that will have me back in New York a few times. We'll have to introduce some more people to that Afghan restaurant.