Experian has acquired Simmons Research. Details of the transaction were not announced.
Simmons will operate as a standalone entity within Experian’s Marketing Services division under the name Simmons, an Experian Company. Bill Engel and Bill Livek, who currently serve as co-CEOs, will retain their titles and report directly to Deborah Zuccarini, president of Experian Marketing Services
Simmons will continue to be based in Deerfield Beach, FL, and will maintain its sales operation in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Simmons specializes in consumer transaction, attitude, lifestyle and media use syndicated research. The company is best known for its studies of media and markets, which includes nearly every network and cable television show, 40 radio formats, more than 200 magazines, a wide variety of newspapers and the top 75 Web sites.
Simmons also measures consumer use of nearly 8,000 branded products in 450 categories.
The media and product usage information Experian is acquiring will be complementary to the capabilities it picked up when it purchased Metromail in 1998, according to Zuccarini.
“We view this as a growth opportunity,” Zuccarini said.
The acquisition will allow marketers to feed anonymous customer behavior from Experian’s files into Simmons’ media database. Relying solely on transactional behavior, Simmons will then be able to generate media strategies appropriate for reaching specific clusters of customers through a variety of online and offline media.
“That particular product plays well with companies that are concerned with privacy, or that cant disclose because of Gramm-Leach-Bliley,” Engel said.
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