Presenting The Top 150 Global Companies In Market Research! Kinda…

We at GreenBook are proud to present our first Global 150 Research List!

Before we dive into the list though, first a disclaimer:

The list below is wrong.

But it’s mostly right as well.

Sorta. But not really. Maybe…

Confused? Yeah, so was I, for years now. That is why I undertook this exercise, because not only are our industry definitions all over the place, but getting a solid read on company performance to evaluate how the industry is doing (whatever your definition!) is challenging.

I am a huge fan of the iconic  AMA Gold Top 50 Report (formerly the Honomichl Report) and the variation of it used in the ESOMAR Global Market Research Report, MRS ResearchLIVE Report, and RFL Communication’s Global Top 50 Research Organizations report. All give a unique perspective on the industry that is valuable and I applaud the work that these organizations put into them.

These reports have evolved over the years to encompass an ever-expanding definition of what constitutes market research, but have left some critical gaps by not including sample companies, technology platforms, and organizations such as Google, Facebook, Equifax, etc… companies that fit within other categories but yet have active research divisions that are players in the market. So although incredibly useful and important, I think they are incomplete views of the industry, and that is a significant issue.

Here is why: for many years the need for data-driven insights has generated adjacent categories to research that have very different business models to MR, and very different capital structures. Business Intelligence, EFM, CX, Big Data, AI, Analytics, Data Visualization, Biometrics, Web Analytics, Social Media Analytics, etc… are all examples of defined categories that are largely based on the fundamentals of market research, and all claim “insights” as one of their primary use cases. All also have very different valuation formulas for their businesses and access to capital vs. traditional MR. In many cases, companies that should rightfully just be considered research companies (Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey come to mind) bend over backward and twist themselves in messaging knots to avoid being considered research companies and position themselves as much sexier “Enterprise Feedback Management platforms” or ” consumer intelligence data platforms”.  And no wonder; those two companies alone have a combined market cap of around $4 Billion! Similar companies that have embraced the market research categorization and have great financial fundamentals can’t claim the same.

The crux of the issue is this: if we cannot develop a comprehensive view of the value of our industry, how can we convince the rest of the world of our value? Clients, investors, VC firms, Private Equity groups, strategic acquirers, even prospective employees use industry reports and rankings to validate their decisions to engage with companies. We as an industry have a very hard time delivering on this for a variety of reasons, but we need to get a lot better at it quickly.

I make a big part of my living advising the stakeholders I just listed on this space and helping to identify companies to work with, and even I, perhaps one of the most well-connected individuals in our industry, struggle to define the category and identify companies that are attractive to engage with based on their financial performance. The needed info is often very hard to come by.

These reports are not exercises in collective navel-gazing or bragging rights: they are vital information resources that play a critical role in facilitating the growth of the industry.

At IIeX in Atlanta Simon Chadwick presented his view on the structure of the industry as well as an analysis of the flow of capital related to the industry. It’s a great piece of work and helps to underline the challenges MR has in redefining itself (and the companies in it) in order to be better positioned for growth.

 

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As an industry, we could far worse than adapting Simon’s structure as the basis for analyzing the industry. In fact, I hereby challenge ESOMAR, the MRS, Insights Association, the AMA Gold Report and RFL to use this model for all future reviews of the industry and in developing industry company rankings.

We need a consistent view definition of the industry and a consistent means of evaluating the companies in it that not only is comprehensive but also can support the argument that the research industry is the core of all marketing insights-related categories and the companies that participate in it deserve serious attention as growth opportunities.

And that brings us back to the list below. As mostly an exercise in information curation, I combined all of the most recent reports from the four sources above and then added my own list of companies that I thought needed to be included, primarily sample providers, data collection technology companies, and various research suppliers that I suspected were large enough to fit.

In my seemingly contradictory opening for this piece I said it was both right and wrong. Kind of. Here is why. I’m quite sure it’s missing companies that should be on there, especially at the lower levels. In some cases, the revenue for these companies was estimated when I couldn’t find an accurate source.  I did not include all of the companies that Simon listed simply out of time constraints, but it’s an aspiration of mine for the future to perhaps re-work this list with that goal in mind. If and when I do so, it will look VERY different than the one below.

The total annual sales revenue attributed to the company is based on several sources, usually the original report I combined. For those that I added, some sales revenue data is directly pulled from financial statements or other filings (actual data), while other data is estimated or modeled based on a host of sources.

Similar to the model used in the GRIT 50 Most Innovative Companies, we have rolled up branches, subsidiaries, divisions, etc.. into the parent company, while also attempting as best we could to only consider revenue from “marketing intelligence”  operations, which generally meant the revenue came from a few key activities:

• Access to consumers for research purposes
• Data collection services and/or technology (quant, qual, behavioral, and syndicated)
• Data Analysis and Reporting
• Insights-based consulting or advisory work

If you are the CEO of a company that looks at this and says “Hey, my company is $20M, why am I not listed!” hold your righteous indignation: the reason is that neither I nor the original report authors I built off of, knew that information. Update your Hoovers, Techcrunch, CB Insights, Owler, or even LinkedIn profiles or better yet join one of the relevant trade associations and disclose that info when asked. Transparency is the key to efforts like this.

Finally, I can’t iterate enough this is an intellectual exercise more than anything. While “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is true here for sure and I think the revenue is pretty close even when estimated, there is much room to argue specifics and it is not complete. It is only as complete as the knowledge of myself and the authors of the four reports I based it on.

However, that said I do believe it is the most comprehensive view of the players that make up the research industry as loosely defined today.

Now, without further ado, here is my take on the Top 150 companies in Market Research. Congratulations to all the companies listed and take pride in the fact that your company is kicking butts and taking names!

 

Rank	Company	2016 Revenues ($Mil)
1	Optum	$7,333,000,000
2	Nielsen	$6,309,000,000
3	Video Research Ltd.	$6,288,000,000
4	Equifax	$3,985,740,000
5	Kantar	$3,847,000,000
6	QuintilesIMS	$3,301,000,000
7	Ipsos	$1,972,800,000
8	Gartner	$1,829,700,000
9	GfK	$1,677,200,000
10	Verisk Analytics	$1,270,900,000
11	IRI	$1,026,700,000
12	Acxiom Corp.	$880,000,000
13	Tableau Software	$826,900,000
14	Experian Consumer insight	$563,000,000
15	Westat, Inc.	$512,000,000
16	Rocket Fuel	$456,900,000
17	Wood Mackenzie	$442,800,000
18	Dunnhumby	$429,000,000
19	Intage Holdings	$419,200,000
20	Harte-Hanks Marketing	$404,400,000
21	iDC	$400,000,000
22	Informa Financial Intelligence	$393,000,000
23	NPD Group	$341,000,000
24	J.D. Power	$340,000,000
25	comScore	$339,800,000
26	Macromill	$300,000,000
27	Simon-Kucher & Partners	$266,700,000
28	Qualtrics	$250,000,000
29	Gallup	$249,200,000
30	Research Now Group, Inc	$238,100,000
31	ICF International	$224,000,000
32	Information Services Group	$216,500,000
33	Forrester Research	$214,500,000
34	SurveyMonkey	$200,000,000
35	Toluna	$194,400,000
36	DRG (Decision Resources Group)	$178,000,000
37	MaritzCX	$170,000,000
38	Survey Sampling International	$167,900,000
39	Abt SRBI	$147,200,000
40	LRW (Lieberman Research Worldwide)	$144,400,000
41	GlobalData Plc	$135,500,000
42	YouGov	$130,000,000
43	Leger	$120,000,000
44	Mediametrie	$118,800,000
45	ORC International	$118,500,000
46	Creston	$117,200,000
47	National Research Corp	$109,400,000
48	FocusVision	$102,000,000
49	PRS IN VIVO	$97,000,000
50	NRC health	$96,000,000
51	Cello health	$95,100,000
52	Teradata UK	$90,906,000
53	Euromonitor	$88,356,000
54	Confirmit	$88,000,000
55	Vision Critical	$84,700,000
56	C Space	$83,400,000
57	Mintel Group	$82,974,000
58	Google Analytics 360	$80,412,750
59	Blueocean Market Intelligence	$80,400,000
60	Burke, Inc.	$80,000,000
61	Periscope by McKinsey	$80,000,000
62	Ebiquity	$73,874,000
63	Schlesinger Associates	$73,200,000
64	Medallia	$70,000,000
65	Convergys Analytics	$67,400,000
66	Market Strategies International	$65,400,000
67	MarketCast	$61,300,000
68	Morpace, Inc.	$60,400,000
69	Nepa AB	$56,600,000
70	Market Force	$55,000,000
71	Service Management Group (SMG)	$53,300,000
72	Idea Couture	$52,000,000
73	LRA by Deloitte	$46,800,000
74	Focus Pointe Global	$46,200,000
75	Directions Research	$45,000,000
76	Precise Media Monitoring	$44,012,000
77	Hanover Research	$40,900,000
78	MARU / Matchbox	$40,400,000
79	Environics	$40,200,000
80	De La Riva Group	$40,000,000
81	SKIM	$39,600,000
82	Phoenix Marketing International	$36,200,000
83	MarketVision Research	$35,000,000
84	Radius Global Market Research	$33,600,000
85	Simmons Research	$33,300,000
86	NatCen	$32,933,000
87	Brainjuicer	$32,800,000
88	Kelton	$32,800,000
89	Fors Marsh Group	$31,100,000
90	Provokers	$30,500,000
91	Isobar Marketing Intelligence	$30,000,000
92	Insites Consulting	$30,000,000
93	Hall & Partners	$29,500,000
94	SSRS	$28,600,000
95	Decision Analyst	$28,200,000
96	Twitter	$28,100,000
97	Double Helix	$28,000,000
98	The Link Group	$28,000,000
99	Flamingo Research	$26,148,000
100	MMR Research Worldwide	$25,980,000
101	Zappistore	$25,000,000
102	20/20 Research	$24,600,000
103	Forethought Research	$24,000,000
104	Gongos	$23,200,000
105	Stylus	$23,000,000
106	Acturus	$22,700,000
107	Lucid	$22,000,000
108	The Research Partnership	$21,814,000
109	NAXIoN	$21,800,000
110	KS&R	$20,500,000
111	QuestionPro	$20,000,000
112	Bellomy Research	$19,800,000
113	Chadwick Martin Bailey	$18,800,000
114	Illuminas	$18,300,000
115	Frost & Sullivan	$18,280,000
116	Hypothesis Group	$17,700,000
117	Future Thinking	$17,416,000
118	RTi Research	$17,000,000
119	Azure Knowledge	$16,000,000
120	Cint	$16,000,000
121	Luth	$16,000,000
122	Netbase	$16,000,000
123	WorldOne Research	$15,500,000
124	Hay Group Insight	$15,050,000
125	Amazon Mechanical Turk	$15,000,000
126	Hotspex Inc	$15,000,000
127	Populus group	$13,489,000
128	BDRC Continental	$13,302,000
129	Defaqto	$13,190,000
130	SurveyGizmo	$13,000,000
131	Eolas International	$13,000,000
132	Incite Marketing Planning	$12,926,000
133	Markit Economics	$12,445,000
134	Adelphi international Research	$12,100,000
135	Q Research Solutions	$12,000,000
136	Datamonitor	$11,653,000
137	InCrowd Inc	$11,400,000
138	Firefish	$11,237,000
139	Realeyes	$11,000,000
140	MSW ARS	$11,000,000
141	Business Research group	$10,974,000
142	Avention UK	$10,788,000
143	Quadrangle	$10,678,000
144	Marketing sciences Unlimited	$10,618,000
145	Strategy Analytics	$10,387,000
146	Brandtrust	$10,200,000
147	iCM Research Unlimited	$9,963,000
148	2CV	$9,865,000
149	The Planning shop international	$9,633,000
150	Ameritest	$9,200,000