MrWeb 21 YEARS: Remembering the Year 2000

In the first of 21 articles to celebrate our anniversary, we look at the events of a year in the life of the MR industry, as seen through articles in Daily Research News. Quanties among you will work out that the last article will involve a bit of speculation, but we start with a look way back, at the Millennium year.

2000 was the year (and March the month) in which MrWeb launched its Daily Research News service, posting 3 or 4 stories each day and emailing headlines and links as text only to subscribers. It was the year of the dotcom crash - 'though still full of stories about the booming Internet; the year that began with a sigh of relief at the non-event that was the 'year 2000 problem'; but a sigh of disappointment here in the UK when the fireworks didn't go off and the Millennium Dome, of which MrWeb had been taking and posting pictures for two years during its construction, proved not to be the centre of the world's attention as some had intended. However it did have a lot of visitors - two million by the beginning of May, as we reported in a supportive article based on stats from MORI.

We might also look back on 2000 as the last full year of an 'old order', an optimistic period characterised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and arguably ended by the events of September 11th 2001, changing forever the perspective of many about the direction in which the world was heading.

The growth of the Internet dominated the survey results which in those days were far more regular features of DRNO. Jupiter Research and Ipsos declared in November that 'online retailing would survive the [then widespread] failure of big name online retailers' - a conclusion it's hard to argue with now, but amazingly it seemed to need saying at the time. A month earlier, NOP had reported that the Internet was 'now in half of British businesses', while other findings reported on DRNO suggested that Internet penetration had reached 295m worldwide, and e-commerce was rising fast in China. Quaintly, we reported in July that the Internet had 'exceeded 2 billion pages', according to a study by Cyveillance, admirably attempting to put some numbers on the phenomenon.

In market research terms, it was a solid or better year for the biggest agencies, especially the acquisitive Ipsos which announced rocketing revenues in late November, but also for GfK and TNS. Both TNS and Ipsos made significant acquisitions in Latin America; while marcoms firm Interpublic bought NFO WorldGroup, which it would sell on to TNS three years later (www.mrweb.com/drno2k/news2478.htm ). TNS and Nielsen - of whom more below - were among those already recognising the potential of China, and investing there. WPP, at this time parent of Millward Brown and Research International among other agencies, also enjoyed a good year and began a series of investments in 'interactive' companies - what we might call digital now. British research legends Tony Cowling and Ruth McNeill announced their departures from TNS and RI respectively.

Other large research firms making the news including acquisitive Opinion Research Corporation / ORC; Harris Interactive, officially the 'Fastest Growing MR Company in the US', in rankings released in June; and online specialists Jupiter and Media Metrix, which merged the same month. A month earlier, 'though this may now seem hard to believe, Harris had proudly announced that it had been 'added to the list of the Top 50 Most-Visited Sites on the Web'. In November, a new service from Information Resources Inc. (IRI) and partners DoubleClick promised to link Internet advertising with off-line purchasing, to help marketers assess its overall impact - yes this is nineteen years ago, despite the fact that we're still announcing similar launches from companies who say it's never really been done before. Usually followed by some paraphrase of '...properly anyway'.

There were major contracts for IRI - a Europanel agreement with Unilever; and for INRA and GfK for the EU's Euro-Barometer; while Ipsos-RSL was awarded a major TV audience panel contract by BARB.

Globally, we reported in October that the MR industry's turnover had topped $14bn, although three months earlier figures from corporate member organisation the BMRA said growth in Britain's MR sector had slowed. The MRS chose to drop direct support for a number of its 'Special Interest Groups' and DRNO reported that one of the largest, b2b organisation BIG, had opted for affiliate status rather than disbanding or become a smaller entity with the parent body. It's still going strong today.

Yet, for arguably the biggest news of the year, we had to wait until just before Christmas (DRNO, 19th December), when ACNielsen announced it had agreed a merger and was to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dutch media and marketing giant VNU. Both firms had enjoyed a year of expansion, organic and by acquisition, with VNU increasing its stake in Indian researcher ORG-MARG in May, and Nielsen announcing the following month it had reached an agreement with radio ratings giant Arbitron to jointly evaluate use of the leading edge Portable People Meter technology (PPM) - a whole lot more about that in the weeks to come.

The December announcement was not just an acquisition but a reunion for two halves of the giant company - now bigger than ever. ACNielsen, founded as long ago as 1923, was split into two in 1996 by its then owner The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation - with the new name of Nielsen Media Research for one of the divisions. In the interim the other half, still named ACNielsen, went on the acquisition trail, merging with Entertainment Data, Inc.in 1997 to form new box office division ACNielsen EDI; and the following year buying test marketing and innovation specialist The BASES Group. In 1999 it bought British ad measurement firm Media Monitoring Services Ltd., strengthened its ownership of parts of the AMER group, and entered a partnership with online measurement pioneer Net Ratings, which was later to become another subsidiary.

VNU then acquired Nielsen Media Research from D&B in 1999, so the Christmas 2000 acquisition - cleared by the EU two months later - would reunite the two halves, creating not just the biggest MR firm in the world, but a significantly larger entity than had existed prior to 1996. Over the next nineteen years, Nielsen would go in and out of private ownership, and pass through a number of organisational changes, but it has been one of the dominant forces in the measurement world throughout and it remains to be seen precisely what the latest company split will mean for its functioning, and whether it will be the last time the two halves are united.


Apologies for any omissions in the above - obviously we've had to select a relatively small number of items from each year for inclusion and some important events will be left out. Note firstly that other years will include links to stories - this hasn't been possible with 2000 because intriguingly (?), all we have left of articles up to no.1000 is the headlines - oops. We've backed up our failing memories with input from other sources to flesh out the events it seems we covered. Note secondly that the above includes a bit of scene-setting, this being the first of 21 articles, and the remainder will be slightly shorter. We hope you enjoy them but, as ever, please send any comments or suggestions to us at editor@mrweb.com .

Mel Crowther and Nick Thomas

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.