First, the news: Compete.com, which provides Web analytics tools, is being acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc for $75-million to $150-million.
What’s particularly interesting about the deal is how Compete has adroitly positioned itself over the past year as one of the leading Web analytics players within a competitive industry that includes heavyweights such as comScore and Nielsen/Netratings, as well as startups such as Quantcast.
Armed with $10-million of venture capital raised last August, Compete clearly used a good chunk of the money on marketing. As Allen Stern points out, the Compete brand has generated a tremendous amount of buzz in recent months, and its Web analytics service has been widely used and cited by people looking to demonstrate the success of failure of a Web site.
An important part of Compete’s marketing arsenal is its corporate blog, which has emerged as an informative and entertaing source for what’s happening in the analytics world – as opposed to being used to schill the corporate manta.
As much as Compete could be seen as an overnight success story given it has emerged as a dynamic player within the last six months, it has actually been around for eight years and raised $42-million in venture capital.
In many respects, it’s a solid case study of a company that kept working away on improving its tools and services and did a great job with a well-executed marketing campaign that delivered the right messages at the right time.
Technorati Tags: Compete.com, ComScore, Web Analytics
2 Comments
I wouldn’t exactly call it a case study for success. The investors on got 2x return on their investment, but their money was tied up for 8 years! They did good stuff, but they really only turned it on in the last 6-12 months.
I should have been more clear that their activity in the six to 12 months was/is successful given they seemed to ramp up their marketing activity, which may have lead to their acquisitions.
Mark