Reportlinker's blog : Web 3.0, Vertical Search, Information Industry and Market Research News - Market Research Aggegators

Industry Report Aggregators : The managers behind that business

Nicolas — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:46:00 +0200

Ubiquick – Benjamin Carpano

Benjamin Carpano co-founded Ubiquick with Nicolas Bombourg in January 2001. The company innovate in launching Reportlinker.com, the first industry reports aggregator dedicated to public sources in March 2007. You can find more information about Ubiquick here, and both founders biography here.

More about Benjamin ?

More about Nicolas ?

Alacra – Steve Goldstein

Source : http://www.alacrablog.com/about.html and http://www.alacra.com/about/bios.asp

Steve Goldstein started Data Downlink Corporation in July of 1996, which became Alacra in June 2001. Steven Goldstein is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alacra. Formerly, Mr. Goldstein was Vice President of Strategic Planning for Knight-Ridder's Business Information Services division. Mr. Goldstein has a BS in English from SUNY Albany and an MBA in Finance from Cornell University.

More about Steve ?

Marketresearch.com - Rob Granader

Source : http://www.alacrawiki.com/index.php?title=Rob_Granader

Rob Granader is Marketresearch.com CEO and co-founder.In 1998, he purchased FIND/SVP’s Published Products division and FINDEX, the worldwide directory of market research reports. After forming MarketResearch.com in 2000, he went on to raise venture capital allowing him to expand the distribution side of the business.

Rob spent his years before MarketResearch.com covering Capital Hill and the White House as a reporter for a number of print news outlets Rob received his BA in English from the University of Michigan and a JD from George Washington University.

More about Rob ?

Bharat Book Bureau - M.K.Chettiar

Source : http://www.alacrawiki.com/index.php?title=M.K.Chettiar

Mr.Rm.Muthukaruppan Chettiar is President & CEO of Bharat Book Bureau (3B).M.K.Chettiar started 3B (http://www.bharatbook.com) in 1990, mainly handling imported technical and management books providing business information to industry, banking and financial institutions. According to change of time, the business is diversified in to marketing Online databases, CD, reports etc. Previously, he worked for Allied Publishers, promoted as officer and then as manager and became an all India manager within four years M.K.Chettiar graduated in Business Administration and in information science from Madurai University.

More about M.K.Chettiar ?

Zoominfo

Eberts Ltd – Ross Glover

Source : http://gradireland.com/Profiles/View.asp?ID=232

Ross Glover started Research & Markets in 2002. He is currently CEO, and in charge of the web development strategy. Previously, graduated he worked as an IT contractor for a variety of organisations. Ross studied Management science & information system in Ireland.

Industry Report Aggregators : What happens for 10 years ?

Ben — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:52:00 +0200

When you look at the market research market chronology, you can easily segment it into 3 different phases

1/1990 – 1998

Slow opening of the first Market Research Aggregator, which a clear acceleration after 1996, with the development of the Internet.

2/ 1998 – 2001

The gold year of the funds raising : more than $M 40 are injected by VC in what are then the industry leaders. Most of this money will be waste in large scale recruiting.

3/ 2001 – 2006

Challengers appear on the market. In a first time local aggregator (Ex in France Plusdetudes.com ), then English speaking aggregator, usually translation of local website. Players consolidate their business model, and Direct Marketing and SEO Know how, and publishers get used to work with Internet infomediary. In 2006, 3 new aggregators are launched. Each of them are local declination of challengers websites (China, Spain, France).

The next stage, 2007 and short term future of this industry will be detailed in a coming chapter.

Detailed Chronology

1990

Mr.Rm.Muthukaruppan Chettiar, (M.K.Chettiar) starts Bharat Book Bureau (3B) a company importing technical and management books providing business information to industry, banking and financial institutions.

1996

Steven Goldstein and Michael Angle, former executives of Knight-Ridder's Business Information Services division co-found Data Downlink Corporation. In the same time, Osmin Alavarez launch Publications Resource Group Inc.

1998

Publications Resource Group (PRG, Inc.) launches MindBranch, Inc. During the same year, Marketresearch.com was founded in June 1998 by Robert Granader, and Global Information opens www.infoshop-japan.com

1999

June : Data Downlink Corporation announced today that it has secured $4 million in financing from

Flatiron Partners (www.flatironpartners.com)
Chase Capital Partners (CCP) (www.chase.com)

Bharatbook Bureau launched www.bharatbook.com

2000

April : Data Downlink Corporation announced that it has secured $11 million in financing from several prominent investors, including :

Flatiron Partners (www.flatironpartners.com)
Chase Capital Partners (CCP) (www.chase.com)
Franklin Capital Corporation (www.franklincapitalcorp.com)
BARRA (www.barra.com)

June : MarketResearch.com raised $6 million in its first round of private financing from Axalon Internet Group.

August : Publications Resource Group Inc announced that it's received $18.5 million from

Village Ventures Inc.( http://www.villageventures.com/)
The Berkshires Capital Investors

MarketResearch.com spend his fund in acquiring Newsletters.com, which became Marketresearch.com backbone

2001

April : MindBranch Inc acquired Intelligex, a New York firm that runs an online marketplace for research buyers and sellers.

May: Ubiquick launched Plusdetudes.com, first French speaking portal aggregator

June Data Downlink Corporation is renamed Alacra. . Its services, including the business search engine formerly known as Portal B™ and its flagship database service, .xls, were refined and repackaged.

2002

January : Alacra secures $4 M in third round Financing. The participants in the round were Barra, JP Morgan Partners, Flatiron Partners and Franklin Capital.

July - MarketResearch.com, Inc. Acquires MindBranch, Inc

September - Ubiquick launches Allbizreport.com, English version of Plusdetudes.com - Global Information launched www.giikorea.co.kr

2003

- Dynamic technologies GmbH launches Market-studie.de Until 2006, 7 new global aggregators will open.

2007

March : Ubiquick launched Reportlinker (www.reportlinker.com), first aggregator including public report directory

April : MarketResearch.com acquired Thomson Business Intelligence (TBI) Market Research (Profound(R)) Service.

10 years of market research aggregation : Competitive Landscape

Nicolas — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:45:00 +0200

Just type a query on Google....

The competitive landscape of aggregator is at the same time simple to understand, and complex to define. The internal competition is really fierce, as you will see if you type a query on any general search engine.

Just try to type “China "Retail Industry" "market research” on Google for example.

If we analyse the results, we can see that aggregators also face the competition of :

publishers, their providers who also directly sell online. In that example, Plunkettresearch ranks first.

the other aggregators

Larger aggregators, with broad scope of industries covered (allbizreport.com in that example)

industry focused aggregators (Just-food.com in that example). These aggregators are focused on a single industry. Most of the time, they also provide access to industry news, organize summit and promote major events.

Main aggregators are summarized in the following table.

Consulting firm

There is a huge difference between the expected results of an Ad Hoc research and an off-the shelves report, a difference of prices also. Ready-to-use reports are sold between 1500 and 5000 €, when a Ad Hoc research prices can be 10 times more expensive. But to provide their clients with the latest updated information, they are using multiclients reports to illustrate their work ! In our example, we made a screen shot from Google contextual ads.

Governments and public sources, such as University (Washington University in that example), giving free access to their own publications

At last, a large number of products can also satisfy client’s need for information (workshop, conference, press clipping...)

Who are the leading aggregators ??

As you can see in the previous table, less than 10 companies now manage one or more market research aggregators.

1/ The technology companies

Let’s first introduce us !! Ubiquick is a market leader in real-time web mining software. Our technologies enable you to connect, collect, and organise information from virtually any sources (web, intranet, application). We deliver these technologies through built-in online services, or as a licensed software. I let you guess what are our main force ! We sell reports through :

Plusdetudes.com, French speaking catalog
Allbizreport.com, English speaking market research catalog
But also Reportlinker.com, which is the first website offering access at the same time to public and private reports

The Alacra Store is an e-commerce website offering consumers access to select reports from a host of Alacra premium databases. Searching the Alacra Store is free. You register to purchase and download reports with a credit card. Types of business information available include company fundamentals and financials, credit research, earnings estimates, economic data, filings, market and investment research and news. The Alacra company coverage includes more than 45,000 global public companies, 20,000 private issuers of public debt and 350,000 global private companies with more than $20 million in revenue or 200 employees.

The Alacra Store is a service of Alacra, Inc. Alacra is a leading global provider of business and financial information and solutions. A privately heldcompany founded in 1996, Alacra is headquartered in New York City. The company provides a diverse portfolio of authoritative databases along with proprietary solutions that enable clients to quickly find, analyze, package and present mission-critical business information.

Last interesting stuff : Alacrawiki a guide to business information companies, publishers and databases. Anyone can contribute, but you must create an account in order to do so.

2/ The service companies

Bharat Book Bureau facilitate and support all business information needs by providing the relevant information materials generated and published by global agencies on Core Industry (Automotive, Insurance, Banking and Finance, Shipping and Marine, Metals and Minerals, Oils and Gas etc.), Country Information, Technical and Management subjects, both in print and electronic format. These include Reports, Newsletters, Country and Company profile etc.

Bharat Book Bureau also propose ad hoc research to companies that did not find the information theyr are looking for in their database.

Dynamic technologies GmbH is the operator of reports-research.com, markt-studie.de and studio-mercado.es. Few information are available on this company. Basically, we can consider them as being really opportunist, as they open portal in language in which nobody was involved yet (German, Spanish). They also offer consulting services.

Global Information, Inc. (GII), which was established in 1984, has since emerged as the leading aggregator for market research products in the Eastern hemisphere. Based in the Greater Tokyo Area, GII has opened offices in Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Brussels, and the United States. The company provides continuous 24 hour service around the globe.

MarketResearch.com defined himself as the leading provider of global market intelligence products and services. This aggregator probably provides the broadest catalog with over 100,000 private research reports (well, don’t forget that Reportlinker.com offers the access to 1,2 M public reports). They grow last years in taking over two competitors, firstly Mindbranch in 2003, and TBI Profound this year. The company, that we can consider as an industry shaper, also publish reports through different branches, such as Kalorama or Packaged Facts, that they both acquired in 1998, or SBI.

Research and Markets are another source for international market research and market data. They currently hold over 80,000 major research publications from most of the leading publishers, consultants and analysts. Based in Ireland, and created in 2002, this company has been quickly growing thanks to good knowledge in the SEO field.

10 years of market research aggregation : history

Nicolas — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:13:00 +0200

Private market reports publishers sales forces have a lot of choice in their e-business strategy: Banners, press articles, interview... they are using classical marketing tools to generate traffic and sales over the Internet.

But for few years, they also sign distribution agreements with a new kinds of distributors : market research aggregators. What’s a market research aggregator ? What are the characteristics of that market ? What’s its history ? today’s situation ? future ? Who are the leaders ?

We are in this business for 6 years. And have seen so many new incomers ! We propose you to discover this market today through different papers and interviews we will post in the coming weeks.

What's a market research aggregator ?

The aggregator is an intermediary between off the shelves market research publishers, such as Datamonitor, and clients. They are the most famous indirect e-channel sales for market research publishers..

Their business model is based on commission given by publishers on each sales. No fix fees, only success ! To multiply the occasion of sales, they gather as many reports as possible, on different industry, players, countries… For an aggregator : Catalog = Content, Content = Traffic, Traffic = Commission

We estimate that 200 000 multi-clients reports are available online. But few publishers providing deep catalog on the market : Datamonitor, Euromonitor or IDC are the most famous. All of these use the aggregator channel to distribute their industry reports.

Thus, leading aggregators share almost the same catalog. And nowadays, their only tangible difference is the language in which the user interface is translated. Aggregator now exist in English, French, Spanish, German, Korean….

Market Characteristics

The entry barriers on the market are really low, which explain the multiplication (proliferation ??) of new comers. Anyone can open a website, sign few agreement and begin to sell worldwide. Skills required are distance selling knowledge, and a dash of good sense

Publishers offer’s is really atomised. If a very large number of publishers sell industry reports, few of them are global, large and famous ! This last have developed specific part of their organization towards aggregator (ex : licensees manager), and specific offers too. Publishers conditions to enter an aggregator catalog are quite basic : warranty about marketing operation (ex : Call Center), and safe financial situation

The clients are potentially any organisation looking for information on market, competitors, products …. The benefits of using aggregator is double : - simplify their search - simplify ordering process, especially in case of multiple reports acquisition

If we had to make a typology, we could share clients between - Industry focused professional o They regularly look for information on a single industry, their company core market. Usually, they are working as marketing or sales manager - Multi-industries players o They look for information on a number of industry, their company is selling services to different markets. Obvious examples are consulting firm, banks, VC…. - Administration and Governmental organisation

We will publish next week the second chapter of this paper, and will then present the competitive landscape and the most important event that occurs for 10 years