CHICAGO and NEW YORK — August 26, 2024 — Circana™, a leading advisor on the complexity of consumer behavior, today announced it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire NCSolutions (NCS), the joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina that improves advertising effectiveness, and Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) business.
With these two acquisitions, Circana will expand its media measurement capabilities while also increasing its marketing mix modeling and unified measurement solutions and footprint. As a result, clients of all three organizations will gain broader access to audience targeting, media measurement, in-flight optimization, and clean room solutions. Additionally, this combination will increase efficiency and offer better products and services to fuel clients’ growth via more targeted and impactful advertising.
“We are excited to welcome NCSolutions and Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling business to Circana to expand and enhance our media capabilities for our clients,” said Kirk Perry, president and chief executive officer of Circana. “Both businesses have incredible expertise, solutions, and clients that, when combined with Circana’s data and technology assets, will fuel clients’ growth.”
“NCSolutions and Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling are strong businesses that deliver spectacular value for clients,” said Karthik Rao, chief executive officer of Nielsen. “As Nielsen focuses on expanding its leadership position in audience measurement and content data, we’re thrilled that the tremendous leadership and passionate teams at NCS and MMM can continue to accelerate their growth through synergies within Circana.”
Both businesses eventually will be integrated into Circana’s Media team. Circana’s Media team works with advertisers and their agencies to plan, target, activate, measure, and optimize media spend. Its media solutions portfolio is built on a robust enterprise technology platform, actionable CPG and general merchandise shopper, sales, and causal data sets, and advanced analytics. The transactions are expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2024, subject to regulatory approvals and the completion of any required information and consultation obligations, including any works councils’ processes.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and Dentons acted as legal advisors to Circana. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as lead financial advisor to Nielsen. Bank of America Securities also acted as a financial advisor. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Baker McKenzie, and DLA Piper acted as legal advisors to Nielsen. Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP acted as legal advisor to Catalina.
About Circana
Circana is a leading advisor on the complexity of consumer behavior. Through superior technology, advanced analytics, cross-industry data, and deep expertise, we provide clarity that helps almost 7,000 of the world’s leading brands and retailers take action and unlock business growth. We understand more about the complete consumer, the complete store, and the complete wallet so our clients can go beyond the data to apply insights, ignite innovation, meet consumer demand, and outpace the competition. Learn more at www.circana.com.
About NCS
NCSolutions (NCS) makes advertising work better. With scientific rigor and leading-edge technology, NCS empowers the CPG ecosystem to create and deliver more effective advertising. With NCS’s proven approach, brands are achieving continuous optimization everywhere ads appear, through purchase-based audience targeting and sales measurement solutions.
About Catalina
Catalina is a leader in shopper intelligence and precisely targeted in-store, TV and digital media that personalizes the shopper journey. Powered by an unrivaled real-time shopper database and AI-optimized data science, Catalina helps retailers, CPG brands and agencies optimize every stage of media planning, execution and measurement to deliver more than $6 billion in consumer value annually. With operations in the US, Costa Rica and Europe, Catalina has no higher priority than ensuring the privacy and security of the data entrusted to the company and maintaining consumer trust.
About Nielsen Marketing Mix Modeling
Nielsen Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) enables customers to assess the impact of their investments, understand what’s working, and optimize marketing budgets accordingly. It provides critical marketing ROI insights using industry-leading performance models for data coverage and granularity, to help our clients make current and future marketing decisions with confidence.
About Nielsen
Nielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their global audiences—now and into the future. Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram).
Media Contacts:
Circana: Shelley Hughes
Nielsen: Carole Robinson
Catalina: mediarelations@catalina.com
