Congratulations in order this morning to Janet, Howard, and the rest of the team at Umbria. The brand monitoring firm was acquired today by J.D. Power & Associates, the customer satisfaction research company.
The significance of this acquisition lies in the acquirer – McGraw-Hill/JDPower is different type of company than Nielsen and TNS – and will use brand monitoring differently. One thing in common – another brand monitoring brand name disappears. Umbria will be folded into their new parent company, while Buzzmetrics/Intelliseek have disappeared into Nielsen Online and Cymfony now operates as part of TNS media.
I have a short research piece publishing soon for Forrester clients.