Year in, year out WPP tops the list of busy acquirers in the marcoms sector, not necessarily by monetary value but in terms of numbers of deals.
2016 looks like being more of the same and WPP’s Millward Brown, what used to be known as a ‘qualitative research’ company, has agreed to buy Analytics Quotient (AQ), a sizeable marketing analytics operator, based in India with a handful of offices in the US plus London. Among other things AQ builds “data visualization tools and custom analytics solutions to help clients slice, dice, simulate and monitor business data.” Big data seems to be mean big opportunities these days for all sorts of companies.
Founded in Bangalore in 2008, AQ now employs around 400 people and works with some of the world’s largest packaged goods, retail and hospitality brands. Its unaudited revenues in 2015 were about $12.3m with assets of $9.5 million.
Millward Brown, which used to be a niche part of the JWT empire, now employs a staggering 30,000 people in 100 countries and claims to work with over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies worldwide.
