Research firm Ipsos buys social listening platform Synthesio

Market research firm Ipsos announced on Tuesday it is acquiring social listening platform Synthesio, the latest in a series of industry-wide mergers and acquisitions of social platforms.

Deal terms were not made public. Synthesio’s platform, featured as a Leader in the most recent Forrester Wave report on that sector, allows brands to monitor what is being posted about them and competitors in social media, and to discern trends.

How they will combine. Synthesio CMO Chris Vitti said in an interview that his company, as a technology firm, complements Ipsos, which has primarily been a professional services firm delivering research about markets and customer opinions.

He noted that Ipsos has been employing Synthesio technology, among others, while Synthesio’s small professional services practice for analyzing its social listening data can now become a larger offering.

This will better position Synthesio to differentiate itself with account management and human added-value, Vitti said, with a continued orientation around social media intelligence. Some other social platforms like Sprinklr, he said, are moving to become full engagement suites oriented around social media, while others — like NetBase — are getting into business intelligence.

Synthesio will become known as “an Ipsos company,” and will maintain its central office in New York City, as well as four branch offices in other cities around the world.

Why this matters to marketers. This acquisition continues a trend by social media vendors to expand their point solutions through merger or acquisition, adding new channels or new ways to interpret their data. This is creating a new landscape of social media tools with multi-purpose offerings available to marketers.

In September, social community/customer care platform Lithium merged with social media management firm Spredfast to create a combined social management and customer care platform. This month, social intelligence firms Crimson Hexagon and Brandwatch combined into an enlarged social-based market intelligence platform. Last year, Brandwatch purchased content and influencer tracking platform BuzzSumo.

Last week, content marketing firm Skyword merged with marketing insights platform TrackMaven, and in 2017 Sprinklr announced it was evolving into a customer experience platform.