J.D. Power, like Nielsen, is one of the old-line firms that has been telling companies how they are perceived by the public for decades. Both companies have been scrambling to get a hold on the Internet, which provides more opinions than a proctology practice.
Umbria, which J.D. Power just acquired, calls itself a “reputation tracker”, mining message boards, blogs and other sites for consumer opinion. J.D. Power has lagged in comparison with Nielsen, which has picked up Audience Analytics (coverage), Buzzmetrics and Telephia (coverage ) in the span of a year or so, and started several new divisions, including HeyNielsen and NetRatings.
There are still quite a few companies out there, though, including Biz360, MarketTools (our coverage), Networked Insights (our coverage) and others. Companies have a strong appetite for this sort of information, so it’s likely there will be more acquisitions and growth before the pain hits the remaining, superfluous startups that fail to excel.
The acquisition price for Umbria was not disclosed. The company’s investors included Arrowpath Venture Capital, Sequel Venture Partners and Vista Ventures.
One Comment
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Linda Margaret said:
Online reputation is increasingly important for a lot of industries, and it’s not something you can simply do through software. The world online is pretty intricate. Online reuputations have evolved in different regions, languages and specialties, all reflected through social media analysis. As consumers tend to value individual experience over marketing that many feel is dressed up and biased expertise, companies that are concerned about brand reputation need to know what is said where and by what influencers and in which market. JD Power, as usual, made a smart buy.
