Good Job Not Buying Alexa
by John Paczkowski
Posted on March 3, 2008 at 8:16 AM PT
Compete must have used a fair bit of the $43 million in VC funding it’s raised since 2000 on marketing, because market research outfit Taylor Nelson Sofres is acquiring it–despite the “digital intelligence” company’s reputation for inaccurate Web site traffic measurements and its loss of $4.5 million on $14.9 million of revenue in 2007.
Under the terms of the deal, TNS will purchase Compete for $75 million in cash and another $75 million in performance-based earn-outs over the next two years.
Compete, which has long been overshadowed by metrics verterans like comScore and even newcomers like Quantcast, was overjoyed to be among the early acquisitions in the consolidation beginning in the Web-traffic analysis sector. After all, TNS might have bought Alexa. “Why are we excited about becoming part of the TNS family,” Compete execs wrote in a post to the company blog. “Because it means joining our click-stream data with TNS’s massive consumer panel operations, consumer research capabilities and ad-measurement databases on a global scale. Marrying online and offline consumer data with media spending and exposure is the holy grail of marketing. All of our marketer, agency and media partners will benefit from access to new consumer, brand and media research that will revolutionize how they plan and measure their performance. It’s a big, exciting vision that neither company could do on its own.”
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