In recent years, the insights industry has become an expanding fleet of companies navigating the ever-changing seas of opinion and behaviour with diverse fortunes. And as new vessels join the formation, it becomes increasingly relevant to understand their composition, their characteristics and, of course, their size.
Companies whose business is mainly focused on data and analytics represent almost half of the total turnover of the insights industry. Ignoring those players by focusing only on those historically considered as players implies misrepresenting the industry and misguiding readers with an ultimately, irrelevant ranking.
In ESOMAR’s quest to provide useful and actionable insights about the industry, the ranking of global companies published in the 2019 edition of its Global Market Research report, offers an expanded view of the 20 most influential companies in the insights industry.
This view helps to put the industry in perspective, not only by comparing direct competitors, but also by allowing the reader to understand the relative position of the “usual suspects,” against companies that have substantially expanded their competitive “set” (which, not always indirectly, affect their performance in substantial ways).
A look at the numbers
Overall, good results from some of the 10 largest players within the historically defined industry resulted in the expansion of their world share, mainly thanks to fast growth at IQVIA, Gartner and IRI.
On the other hand, the main breaks to this growth have been Nielsen, Kantar and Westat. Along with Ipsos, GfK, Dynata and INTAGE, this group of large companies grew +4.8% in 2018, slightly slower than the +5.3% presented for 2017, but still outpacing the absolute growth reported for the sector overall (+2.1%).
- In first position appears Optum, a health services innovation company for the first time included in this ranking as the criteria for selection changed – historically, the top spot used to be reserved to Nielsen. Valued at over US$ 9 billion and displaying double-digit growth in 2018, it is poised to remain unchallenged for the time being.
- Nielsen, presents a slight decrease in revenue (almost -1%) as the ongoing investments in innovative technologies – aimed at driving portfolio expansion – prepare to bear fruit.
- With a notable growth of 7%, IQVIA has started to see top line acceleration – as expected from its merger integration – for some of its divisions, like Research & Development Solutions and Technology & Analytics Solutions businesses.
- Gartner presents one of the fastest growing results with an increase of +26% as a result of divesting several of its non-core businesses in order to focus on identified, untapped, growth opportunities.
- Other interesting contenders at the top of the list are Experian – a global information services company with revenue of almost US$ 3.9 billion – and Epsilon – a digital media agency with revenue of almost US$ 2.2 billion.
- A new addition to the ranking is Dynata, born from the merger between Research Now and Survey Sampling International (SSI). The combined insights-related turnover of both entities makes it the seventeenth largest globally, above Westat.
ESOMAR’s top-20
| Ranking | Company name | Headquarters | US$m* |
| 1 | Optum | Eden Prairie, USA | 9,008 |
| 2 | The Nielsen Company | New York, USA | 6,515 |
| 3 | IQVIA | Durham, USA | 3,904 |
| 4 | Experian | Dublin, Ireland | 3,877 |
| 5 | Gartner Inc. | Stamford, USA | 3,516 |
| 6 | Kantar | London, UK | 3,449 |
| 7 | Epsilon | Irving, USA | 2,175 |
| 8 | Ipsos SA | Paris, France | 2,067 |
| 9 | IHS Markit | London, UK | 1,996 |
| 10 | GfK | Nuremberg, Germany | 1,616 |
| 11 | IRI | Chicago, USA | 1,200 |
| 12 | Tableau Software | Seattle, USA | 1,155 |
| 13 | SAP | Walldorff, Germany | 1,124 |
| 14 | Acxiom | Conway, USA | 1,068 |
| 15 | Abt Associates | Massachusetts, USA | 553 |
| 16 | Verisk Analysis | Jersey City, USA | 513 |
| 17 | Dynata | Plano, USA | 509 |
| 18 | Westat Inc. | Rockville, USA | 506 |
| 19 | INTAGE Inc. | Tokyo, Japn | 489 |
| 20 | dunnhumby Ltd. | London, UK | 474 |
* The ranking presents only turnover related to research, data and analytics activities
Source: ESOMAR Global Market Research Report 2019
Other noteworthy companies
The Editor’s selection is comprised of companies that are worthy of mention due to their individual characteristics – be they noteworthy players in data processing, DIY tools or data and analytics companies with a distinctive focus. For instance, CoStar, a provider of information, analytics and marketing services to the commercial property industry, very recently extended to an international coverage. With a turnover of US$ 1.2 billion, it may soon be included in the Top-20 companies. Other companies worth noting are the DIY platforms Qualtrics – a company that, with a revenue of almost half a billion dollars, would be acquired by SAP in late 2018 – and SurveyMonkey; the data science activities performed by Twitter; or Comscore, a media measurement and analytics company. Closing the list of selected mentions is Toluna, a digital market research and technology based in Paris with revenues of over US$ 230 million.
Editor’s selection
| Company name | Headquarters | US$m |
| CoStar | Washington, D.C., USA | 1,192 |
| Qualtrics, Inc. | Provo, USA | 496 |
| San Francisco, USA | 425 | |
| Comscore | Reston, USA | 420 |
| SurveyMonkey | Palo Alto, USA | 254 |
| Toluna | Paris, France | 233 |
Source: ESOMAR Global Market Research Report 2019
ESOMAR will continue to keep a close eye on the evolution of the market to keep this list updated with incoming players and the resulting development of the insights industry.
Free for ESOMAR members, the report can be purchased by the wider public from ESOMAR Reports & Publications
