Kantar Buys Chinese Social Media Researcher CIC

Kantar Media has acquired Chinese social media research, monitoring and analysis firm CIC, to complement its own range of social media capabilities in the country. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2004, and with offices in Shanghai and Beijing, CIC provides proprietary tools to enable clients to understand social media and Internet word-of-mouth (IWOM) intelligence. The firm employs 120 staff, including more than 60 social media consultants, and for the year ended 31 December 2011, revenues were approximately RMB 29.9m (£3.08m).

CIC's founder and Chairman Sam Flemming says the deal will enable the two firms to develop new offers by identifying the synergies between their data sets, including his firm's archive of more than three billion consumer brand mentions, and Kantar Media's data resources.

Following the acquisition, CIC's staff will remain based in Shanghai and Beijing, and its management team will report to Jean-Michel Portier, Global CEO of Kantar Media.

Portier comments: 'CIC is an exciting and successful company, which will enrich our global digital expertise in capturing millions of online conversations and 'making sense of the buzz', in order to provide interpretation that informs strategic decisions and leads to action.'

Web sites: www.kantarmedia.com and www.cicdata.com .