Taylor Nelson Sofres, a London, England based market research company has paid $75 million to have Compete.com integrated into their company.  Compete could receive an additional $75 million in earn-outs through 2010 as well [Source: Techcrunch].

Compete.com mines data from 2 million Compete Toolbar users to monitor online behavior.  TNS will use this data for the purpose of providing extra services to their own clients.

Compete.com will remain operating as a stand-alone company.  Compete raised $43 million in capital since 2000 from various venture capital firms including Charles River Ventures, Commonwealth Capital, Chicago Growth Partners, and Split Rock Partners.

Competitors include Alexa, comScore, and Quantcast.  The power of analytics reporting has on Wall Street was recently demonstrated when comScore revealed a slip in Google Ads clicks.  GOOG stock dropped heavily shortly after comScore’s announcement.

“The opportunity is to make it easier for marketers to spend money online,” stated Konrad Feldman, the CEO of Quantcast. “Panel-based research doesn’t work well in a fragmented media.”

Now backed with over $25 million in funding, Quantcast is the only free internet ratings service.  Quantcast can measure widgets and other Flash media to show how often they are viewed everywhere.  The investors in this round of funding include Polaris Venture Partners and Founders Fund.

With this round of funding, Quantcast will be ramping up their services and improve its accuracy.  Essetially, Quantcast is gearing up for taking on the bigger names of rating services like comScore and Nielsen.  Over 20,000 clients use Quantcast including Fox, CBS, Accuweather, and IDG.

Down the road, Quantcast will most likely act as a broker for pairing up target advertisements with web sites that have relevant audiences.  “There are going to be big changes to how the business operates,” added Feldman. “We aren’t going to be talking about GRPs anymore. It’s going to be audience segments. There’s going to be a massive transformation over the next five to 10 years.”

[Information Source: AdWeek]