Mergers and acquisitions
Comscore acquired Media Metrix in a deal announced in June 2002. Earlier, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would block a bid by NetRatings to acquire Media Metrix.
Media Metrix originated as PC Meter, a business unit of market research company NPD Group, and began publishing statistics in January 1996.[17] In July 1997, it changed its name to Media Metrix.[18] In October 1998, Media Metrix merged with a rival, Relevant Knowledge.[19] The company went public as NASDAQ:MMXI in May 1999, reaching a market cap of $135 million on its first day of trading.[20] In June 2000, the company acquired Jupiter Communications for $414 million in stock and changed its name to Jupiter Media Metrix.[21] In the aftermath of the dot-com bubble collapse and associated downturn in internet marketing spending, Jupiter sold the Media Metrix service to rival Comscore for $1.5 million in June 2002.[22]
In May 2008, Comscore announced its acquisition of M:Metrics, a company that measured mobile content consumption. The transaction involved a cash payment of $44.3 million and the issue of approximately 50,000 options to purchase shares of Comscore common stock to some M:Metrics unvested option holders.[23]
Comscore announced in October 2009 the acquisition of Certifica, an internet marketing company based in Santiago, Chile. The acquisition enhanced Comscore’s presence in the Latin American market.[24]
In February 2010, Comscore announced an agreement to purchase the ARSgroup, headquartered in Evansville, Indiana.[25]
On July 1, 2010, Comscore announced that it had acquired the products division of Nexius, Inc.[26]
Comscore then acquired for approximately $36.7 million on September 1, 2010.[27]
In February 2015 Comscore US entered into a partnership with Kantar owned by WPP with an equity stake purchase.
On May 5, 2015 Comscore announced that it had acquired Proximic, a California based analytics company.[28] Several years later in March, 2023 Comscore announced a rebrand of their programmatic targeting business under the name Proximic by Comscore, utilizing the capabilities from the May 2015 Proximic acquisition.[29]
In September 2015, Comscore and Rentrak announced a merger of the two companies. The move was meant to combine Comscore's digital media measurement capabilities with the TV measurement capabilities of Rentrak to create a cross-platform media measurement firm, perhaps capable of challenging Nielsen N.V. in the media measurement space.[30] Under terms of the agreement, Comscore agreed to acquire Rentrak in an all-stock deal valued at about $732 million, with Rentrak shareholders receiving 1.15 shares of Comscore per owned share of Rentrak.[31]
The Comscore-Rentrak deal closed on February 1, 2016, with the final transaction being valued at $767.7 million.[32]
In December 2021, Comscore acquired Shareablee, a social media marketing analytics and measurement company.[33]
