Kantar and Twitter to Extend Global Alliance

Kantar and Twitter have strengthened their global partnership with a five-year agreement under the program name 'Data of Now', and will collaborate on new research products. In addition, the firms' 'social TV' ratings and analytics will be extended to new regions in Asia, Africa and Europe.

The firms said the new research products will cover areas including consumer insight, brand equity and media measurement, and added that they would also be 'expanding the connections' between some of their data assets to 'accelerate innovation'.

The two announced plans to develop a suite of planning and analytics tools based around 'social TV' last August, with the UK the first market covered, and have since launched the service in Spain. The partnership will now be extended to include the Nordics, Russia, parts of Africa and parts of south-east Asia. The tools combine data on tweets concerning TV programming, with audience research expertise from Kantar Media, and promise broadcasters and media buyers the ability to assess programmes, plan promotions and better integrate social media into their strategy.

Twitter today acquired UK-based social TV analyst SecondSync, a company in which Kantar held shares and with which it has partnered; along with a French firm in the same field, Mesagraph.

Kantar CEO Eric Salama says his firm's extended relationship with Twitter 'builds on the learning and successes of our initial collaboration in the area of social TV', and adds: 'Incorporating Twitter as the 'data of now' will allow us to make real time predictive research a reality for our clients across a range of our services.'

Twitter COO Ali Rowghani says of the deal: 'Twitter plays host to a real-time, public conversation at scale on all manner of topics - including television. We're thrilled to expand our partnership with Kantar beyond media measurement, to other areas that impact their clients. We're also looking forward to working with Kantar to bring Twitter TV standards and measurement tools to more regions across the globe.'

Part of WPP, the research giant is online at www.kantar.com .