This past week, the pre-eminent M&A advisory firm for global media, marketing, information, and technology industries, JEGI Clarity, held its 19th Annual Media and Technology Conference in New York City. The team advises founders, investors, and global corporations through the M&A process, among other investment strategies. This year’s conference featured the theme “Maintaining a Winning Mindset” and explained what makes a business and industry successful.
Some key takeaways and learnings from this conference:
- The Insights Industry is continuing to grow. Throughout the uncertain economic circumstances in recent years, more and more businesses across dozens of industry verticals have realized that having insight into marketplace nuances is essential, rather than flying blind when the precious budget is at risk. Companies within the insights industry handle the collection, combination, cleansing, measuring, interpretation, presentation, and activation of market data to enhance the performance of businesses worldwide. Because of this, this industry has continued its explosive growth with an average of 3-30% international growth opportunity. Market research expanding to a $50B+ market, Experience Management into a $75B+ market, and Data Measurement into a $25B+ market.
- With increasing competition comes a higher bar for quality and innovation. There have been “tectonic” shifts to software and technology-enabled solutions that are agile and very clearly inform activation to deliver ROI. This demand has spurred dozens of new technology products aimed at empowering businesses to become their own researchers and discover mission-critical answers faster, easier, and with greater precision. And with this increased competition, insights companies are under additional pressure to deliver only top-quality data that allows businesses to think forward instead of looking backward.
- Brands need the insights of tomorrow, today. With modern trends and weekly culture-shifting, a premium is placed on speed. These agile technology solutions must harness the power of technology/machine learning/AI to capture real-time insights faster without compromising quality. Businesses must be able to make decisions about the future in an even more demanding environment.
Additionally, the conference covered the anatomy of a successful insights deal. There are dozens of new insights industry deals each year, but JEGI featured InnovateMR’s acquisition of Ivy Exec to break down the blueprints of a successful market research business deal. The conference organizers highlighted the unique services of both organizations, including qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and execution, and how the combination of an expert network and large-scale global research technology provider has empowered both brands to meet the demands of the ever-evolving business researcher.
Overall, the conference provided a great inside look into the evolving world of insights M&A. It can be easy to get so involved in the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day, but it is essential to take a step back and recognize how this industry continues to be full of innovation and opportunity at every stage in the research journey.
About InnovateMR – InnovateMR is a full-service sampling and ResTech company that delivers faster, quality insights from business and consumer audiences utilizing cutting-edge technologies to support agile research. As industry pioneers, InnovateMR provides world-class end-to-end survey programming, targeted international sampling, qualitative and quantitative insights, and customized consultation services to support informed, data-driven strategies, and identify growth opportunities. Known for their celebrated status in customer service and results, InnovateMR combines boutique-level service with extensive global reach to achieve partner success.
