Nielsen to Acquire Attribution Software Company Visual IQ

Nielsen Holding said it agreed to acquire Visual IQ, which does multi-touch attribution modeling of digital advertising in order to improve its capabilities for measuring marketing effectiveness.

Terms were not disclosed.

With Visual IQ’s intellectual property, Nielsen said it will be better able to absorb and process data and help advertisers measure and improve their return on investment.

Visual IQ enables brands to coordinate and connect advertising exposure with brand engagement, online conversation and in-store sales.

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By combining Visual IQ with its current assets for measuring advertising effectiveness, Nielsen said it will be able to help marketers make better decisions about allocating cross-channel advertising and marketing spending.

“Our acquisition of Visual IQ strengthens Nielsen’s powerful capabilities in the marketing effectiveness space, bringing speed and granularity at scale to ROI measurement,” said Matt Krepsik, global head of product leadership for marketing ROI atNielsen. “Visual IQ’s rich history of marketing attribution and digital intelligence combined with Nielsen’s gold-standard marketing effectiveness solutions will provide advertisers, publishers and agencies with a holistic platform that offers the transparency to optimize and improve the return on marketing investments.”

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The acquisition also extends Nielsen’s marketing effectiveness business into new verticals and global markets.

Nielsen clients will gain access to Visual IQ’s marketing attribution expertise and a comprehensive software platform for analyzing customer profiles, in combination with tactical marketing performance across all channels and devices.

“Our mission at Visual IQ has always been to drive marketing effectiveness with algorithmic attribution technology that allows customers to view tactical advertising performance through the lens of key audience segments,” said Manu Mathew, co-founder and CEO at Visual IQ. “Our team is excited to be joining the Nielsen family as we integrate our capabilities with theirs, and provide increased value to clients and a more powerful combined solution to the industry as a whole.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.