Nielsen acquires iag to build up analytical expertise

To gain more penetration into consumer engagement on all platforms, including the net, the Nielsen Co. Announced plans to acquire IAG Research.

While Nielsen measures what consumers view, IAG measurement the effectivity of the ad and programme engagement. IAG's clients include major advertisers, advertising agencies, Internet supplier, content supplier, and telecom services. The combined entity will measurement online and TV audiences, among other platforms.

Nielsen's strengths are "in the quantitative area of media measuring in terms of how many people are observation and what they are observation," said Nielsen Co. Spokesman Gary Sherlock Holmes. "IAG has important expertise in how engaged they [the audience] are in the programme, how effective commercials are, and Nielsen feels that it would like to build up the analytical part of its concern. IAG, with its expertness, seemed like a perfective fit."

The acquisition offers data and resources to IAG as well. "IAG will get entree to an enormous amount of data that Nielsen produces every day in media behaviour and ingestion," said Sherlock Holmes. "They'll be able to combine data with their analytical information to come up with important insights in apprehension what consumers are doing."

In the past year, the methodological analysis of Nielsen and other panel-based research firms have been called into inquiry by the Interactive Advertising agency. P>For Nielsen, IAG's qualitative research adds another component it can offer advertisers and content owners.

"I think this will be an important new resource for our digital and online products. They do have an expertness in the online area. We'll be able to marry their expertness with our quantitative research. They can develop new merchandise and services based on our expertness and data," Sherlock Holmes said.

Nielsen's offering price of $225 1000000, which is topic to regulatory review, is expected to close by the end of June..

IAG had revenue of $35 million in 2007; Nielsen's Internet measurement services generated $114 million in revenue last year.