• by Masha Geller , June 11, 2002

The last time two research companies tried to merge, Jupiter Media Metrix ended up torn to pieces between Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore.

The latest case of merging researchers is much more peaceful.

The venerable Taylor Nelson Sofres, parent company of Competitive Media Reporting (CMR), yesterday bought the business and assets of Evaliant, planning to merge it into CMRi, the Internet division of CMR/TNS.

Founded in 1998, Evaliant tracks more than 100,000 brands and products on thousands of websites worldwide, spanning an range of categories including financial, healthcare, IT, sporting goods, books and travel.

Evaliant's "spidering" technology combs websites and gathers in-depth advertising data and graphics for thousands of brands and products, making it the only company to capture and categorize new advertising and advertisers on a daily basis.

The acquisition is a good match, because CMR already provides advertising expenditure tracking, evaluation and consultative services for broadcast, Internet and print media. Evaliant strengthens the suite of the company’s Internet offerings and brings America Online, Yahoo!, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, BBDO, Havas and DoubleClick to the table as current clients.

And who knows, maybe CMR will even include online ad data in their ad spending reports from now on.