Ipsos Buys Big Village Aus Insights Unit

Ipsos has announced the acquisition of the Insights business of Big Village Australia, including expertise in public sector research, employee research and customer experience.

Ipsos says the buy enhances its position in the Australian market and strengthens its global public affairs business in line with its 2025 growth plan - in particular through the addition of large-scale federal government programs. The global group will also gain Big Village's multinational CX metrics clients in the professional services and IT sectors, and add its extensive programs of employee experience assessment and advisory across government and commercial clients.

Big Village was forced to sell off its Insights and Agency business units to holding company Bright Mountain Media for approximately $20m in April, following the news that it filed for bankruptcy in February. Until a year ago the group was known as ENGINE: the latter's US, Australian and continental European units became Big Village after the sale of their UK company to Next 15.

Ipsos CEO Ben Page says the buy 'is at the heart of [the group's] ambition to grow in public sector research and develop [its] Australian business to be the largest best-in-class market research agency' - as well as bringing 'some more great people to Ipsos'. ANZ CEO Simon Wake adds that Big Village has 'highly complementary skillsets in data collection, government, social and customer experience research' as well as bringing 'important new expertise in employee experience'.

Wendy McInnes, Big Village Australia Director of Insights, comments: 'We are thrilled to become part of the Ipsos, with its focus on being fiercely independent. Not only are our skillsets complementary, at the heart, so are our values of putting our clients and our people first'.

Ipsos, one of the top ten companies on MrWeb's RAIDAR (www.mrweb.com/raidar ) employs nearly 20,000 people and is online at www.ipsos.com .