Reston:comScore, Inc. has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the ARSgroup, a leading communications research agency specializing in the measurement of advertising persuasion for TV and multi-media campaigns and helping many of the world’s largest brands in the consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, retail and entertainment industries optimize their advertising messages. The all-cash acquisition will strengthen comScore’s position in the areas of measuring advertising and its effectiveness in TV, online, print and integrated cross media platforms and provide comScore with a staff of high caliber researchers that have experience working with the world’s great brands.
Headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, ARSgroup has helped top advertisers measure, optimize and predict the effectiveness of their advertising messages for more than 40 years. ARSgroup’s ARS Persuasion methodology is one of the world’s most widely documented and independently validated predictive measures of the persuasive effectiveness of advertising creative. ARS Persuasion scores have been shown through third-party validation to equate with higher sales and market share. ARSgroup’s extensive knowledge base and proven models have helped many of the world’s leading advertisers optimize their messaging in both the U.S. and international markets. ARS has a roster of marquee customers in a wide variety of consumer product categories, including the Consumer Packaged Goods, Retail and Pharmaceutical industries. The company has received numerous awards for advertising research, including an Advertising Research Foundation Ogilvy award in 2009 for work on Walmart’s “Earth Month” campaign.
ARSgroup’s product suite evaluates and quantifies the impact of campaigns comprised of any combination of touch points, including television, print, radio, outdoor and digital. From strategy development to the various stages of creative development to in-market validation, ARSgroup helps local and global marketers build and cultivate strong brands and services. ARSgroup’s areas of expertise include: brand strategy, all stages of creative development, campaign evaluation across all marketing and media channels, media planning and strategy, return-on-investment, and forecasting. The company provides solutions and consulting to advertisers and agencies across traditional and digital marketing including: media mix optimization, media budget allocation, media and message connection, channel selection, digital media and emerging platforms.
“The acquisition of ARSgroup marks an important step forward at an opportune time for comScore in the area of cross-media measurement,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore President & CEO. “As the advertising market continues to become more fragmented as it migrates toward various emerging digital content channels, understanding how to measure the effectiveness of one’s advertising messages has never been more important. We believe that the high quality, proven research tools and practices of the ARSgroup will powerfully complement comScore’s existing product suite, allowing us to strengthen our portfolio of advertising measurement services. We are excited about the opportunity to leverage ARS’s expertise and proprietary IP to build innovative solutions in the online measurement space and to provide leading cross media measurement solutions for the measurement of advertising effectiveness.”
“We are excited to become a part of comScore and the opportunity to provide exciting additions to comScore’s existing global suite of products,” said Jeff Cox, CEO of ARSgroup. “comScore’s world-class brand, broad global footprint, commitment to research quality, and massive data processing infrastructure should not only enable us to continue to deliver the value that our clients have come to expect from ARSgroup, but should allow us to expand our offerings globally. comScore and ARS share a common passion for innovation. By putting the two companies together, we’ll provide an even broader set of tools to help our mutual clients measure the changing dynamics of advertising across all media.”
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, following completion of which ARSgroup will be renamed comScore ARS and Mr. Cox will be named an Executive Vice President of comScore.
comScore anticipates closing the transaction in March 2010 and expects ARS to fuel incremental growth for comScore in 2010.