• by Masha Geller , May 8, 2002

NetRatings is on a buying spree. Regulatory concerns may have derailed their merger with Jupiter Media Metrix earlier this year, but there seems to be nothing stopping them from buying up many of JMM’s pieces.

Yesterday, the company settled its patent infringement lawsuit by acquiring JMM’s computer-use tracking patents for $15 million. Naturally, JMM dropped the patent lawsuit and seems pleased to have been granted a non-exclusive license to use the patented technology in its domestic audience measurement business until June 2005. This license comes with a hefty fee - $5 million payable to NetRatings in various installments.

JMM can certainly afford it now, partly because NetRatings also purchased Media Metrix's European Internet audience measurement contracts yesterday for $2 million in cash. NetRatings also acquired JMM’s AdRelevance web analytics division for $8.5 million last month.

And the NetRatings spending spree doesn’t end there. To further expand overseas, NetRatings this morning acquired 80.1% of ACNielsen eRatings that it does not already own for $9.6 million in stock. ACNielsen eRatings provides web audience measurement services to countries outside of the U.S.

Earlier this week, NetRatings bought DoubleClick's @plan products for $18.5 million in cash and stock. @plan is the syndicated survey-based audience measurement tool for online media planning, buying and selling.

All of this obviously puts NetRatings at the top of the web measurement pyramid. Let’s just hope the consequences are in no way similar to those of CMGI’s buying spree in the not too distant past.