Nielsen will go ahead and complete the acquisition of blog and word-of-mouth measurement firm BuzzMetrics, of which Nielsen already owned 58 percent, and blend it with NetRatings to make a new firm.
When it comes to measurements and numbers, there is one figure Nielsen won’t discuss about its final pickup of the remaining BuzzMetrics pieces: the price, which was not disclosed.
Jonathan Carson, BuzzMetrics’ CEO, said in an email the company will combine with NetRatings, the Internet audience measurement service run by Nielsen. The two will form a new unit that will track consumer behavior online.
The deal will give Nielsen an even greater grasp on what people see online, and throughout all kinds of media. Nielsen chairman and CEO David Calhoun described in a statement just how much of this will be within the Nielsen ecosystem now:
More broadly, we can provide our clients with even more insightful information when Internet/Online consumer usage is combined with what products and services consumers buy (ACNielsen), what consumers watch on television (Nielsen Media Research), and what books, films, audio and video usages consumers interact with across multiple platforms.
Nielsen is going to know a lot about people no matter what they do, online or off. Carson views the development as a positive one, as it validates the importance of consumer-generated media, i.e., blogs, videos, podcasts, and social media.
Marketers should like this comprehensive tie-in of information, and likely will come to expect that of other firms. It should be interesting to see what other deals take place as marketers and measurement companies try to pry as much information as they can out of the public’s media consumption habits.
