Persistence Pays Off For ValueAct; Finally Gets Acxiom

Data management company Acxiom Corp. has accepted an offer from ValueAct Capital and Silver Lake Partners to be taken private and acquired for $3 billion. Each Acxiom share will be worth $27.10 and both Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital (Acxiom's largest shareholder) will assume $756 million in debt.

At a news conference held to discuss the acquisition, Acxiom CEO Charles Morgan said he expected Acxiom to be able to thrive as a private company; noting the benefit of not having the pressure of answering to the analyst community that public organizations regularly face. Morgan also noted that the new owners' resources would also help Acxiom grow its business. It appears those new owners are very eager to do just that.

According to news reports, ValueAct's co-founder Jeff Ubben has spent the last two years on a mission to buy Acxiom. ValueAct was once a major shareholder in OneSource and tried to take the company private before OneSource was acquired by infoUSA. So the announcement of this deal really isnt surprising. It seems it was just a matter of time before ValueAct closed this particular deal or another involving a prominent data company. (The Acxiom acquisition is expected to become official within the next few months). It will be interesting to see how ValueAct and Silver Lake's enthusiasm will translate into a better Acxiom.

StarCite Continues Global Expansion

On demand global meeting solutions provider StarCite Inc. this week announced its acquisition of Travent Limited, EMEA, an enterprise meeting management and global technology solutions based in the U.K. The deal will help StarCite achieve its goal of global expansion as it inherits customers and employees in Europe as a result.

Travent brings a variety of corporate customers into the fold, including Pfizer and HRG and will likely help StarCite increase its international revenues even more. According to the company press release announcing the Travent acquisition, StarCite's international revenues are growing and almost 20 percent of the company's business is being conducted outside the U.S.

The end result: a broader base of customers will be able to take advantage of StarCite's online marketplace geared toward corporate meeting planners. These customers can source, bid, book and manage all of their external corporate meetings with just one solution. Before the acquisition, StarCite had a product that positioned the company for future growth as it addressed a growing customer need-tools that integrate into the workflow. Now, it's got a more diverse and robust customer base to serve. If this deal is a success, StarCite probably won't waste much time identifying acquisition targets in other regions.

Nielsen, In-Store Marketing Institute Market Metrics

The Nielsen Company and the In-Store Marketing Institute last week announced they have entered a national expansion phase in developing a service that will measure the size and composition of audiences for in-store marketing media. The new service, P.R.I.S.M. (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric) will help marketers and advertisers gain a better understanding of their customers' in-store habits (from shopping to actual buying).

Nielsen In-Store will bolster P.R.I.S.M.'s coverage to include all in-store marketing media (such as merchandising activity, retail TV and radio networks, shelf-talkers, cart-talkers and digital signage). This latest expansion represents to second stage in the P.R.I.S.M., which is a collaborative effort among Nielsen, the Institute and a consortium of manufacturers, retailers and media and promotion agencies. The first stage showed the feasibility of accurately measuring consumer traffic in the store, aisle-by-aisle and category-by-category. This second phase is expected, with a larger store sample, to help link consumer traffic to specific in-store media and marketing conditions and create a way in which to measure that for advertisers, retailers, media companies and media and promotion agencies.

The consortium of manufacturers, retailers and media companies involved in P.R.I.S.M. has some heavy hitters, including Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft and Starcom MediaVest Group. They will receive data during the fourth quarter of 2007. Nielsen In-Store will release the data industry-wide in 2008.

As we’ve mentioned before marketers and advertisers are constantly seeking information that will help them better understand their customers. At the same time, they want metrics that can effectively measure they success (or failure) of their promotions. This new initiative created by The Nielsen Company and the In-Store Marketing Institute should certainly help marketers and advertisers obtain slices of customer data that they haven't seen before. And it will provide the metrics they want. It appears that P.R.I.S.M. will help keep Nielsen at the top of the market research game; it's an initiative that should only grow more robust over time. Both organizations have plans to further the development of the Nielsen In-Store service, by entering other retail channels and countries. It will be interesting to see how else they will be able to collect and then slice and dice this data.

LoopNet Strikes Again; Announces Another Distribution Deal

LoopNet has done it again. On the heels of last month's announcement of distribution deals with American City Business Journals and GlobeSt.com, the online commercial real estate marketplace this week announced a similar arrangement with The Wall Street Journal's RealEstateJournal.com. This particular deal will enable LoopNet to deliver for-sale commercial property listings across the U.S. to RealEstateJournal.com. The result, as with the other listing distribution agreements, is increased exposure of LoopNet members' listings.

This is, yet again, a smart move by LoopNet. It widens the net for its members further than they could have imagined when they signed on with LoopNet. At the same time, it helps RealEstateJournal.com broaden its collection of listings for its readers. Both companies will benefit equally from the arrangement. LoopNet has certainly been busy forming these alliances and is likely not finished. Expect additional announcements in the near future.

Hoover's Goes To Mexico

Hoover's is certainly not a company that rests on its laurels. It continually adds new features and functionality to its subscriber site. The latest enhancement is the addition of more than 425,000 new Mexico company records. These include more than 400,000 headquarters and single locations, and more than 10,000 branches of companies based in Mexico. Subscribers will also have access to information on more than 125,000 executives at the top companies in Mexico.

Hoover's executives said they recognize the vitality of Mexico's economy and want to assist businesses that want to do business with Mexico-based businesses. This new enhancement will certainly provide a valuable introduction to potential business partners in this geographic region.

Companies and their executives have relied on Hoover's to provide valuable company information for years; and Hoover's has always tried to offer the most useful, up-to-date content as possible. There's no question that adding this Mexico-based content was a smart move. Hoover's subscribers have an unquenchable thirst for information about companies around the globe and the inclusion of Mexico enables Hoover's to check one more region off its to-do list. The only question now is what's next?