[Posted by Peter Kim]

Congratulations in order this morning to Janet, Howard, and the rest of the team at Umbria.  The brand monitoring firm was acquired today by J.D. Power & Associates, the customer satisfaction research company.

The significance of this acquisition lies in the acquirer –
McGraw-Hill/JDPower is different type of company than Nielsen and TNS –
and will use brand monitoring differently.  One thing in common –
another brand monitoring brand name disappears.  Umbria will be folded
into their new parent company, while Buzzmetrics/Intelliseek have
disappeared into Nielsen Online and Cymfony now operates as part of TNS
media.

I have a short research piece publishing soon for Forrester
clients.