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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile considers the VNU group.
It covers -
introduction
Based in Haarlem (Netherlands) the VNU group - formerly
the Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen group - employs
around 38,000 people worldwide. It is active in over 100
countries. VNU publishes approximately 250 titles (including
puzzle booklets) with a total circulation of over 375
million copies per year, and includes the AC Nielsen audience
measurement business. Around half of its €4.3 billion
revenue is generated in North America.
Overall it claims 180 trade magazines, 125 trade shows/events
and over 250 internet sites. The corporate site is here.
the group
VNU publishes consumer magazines in the Netherlands, Belgium,
United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania.
VNU's US business publishing arm publishes trade magazines,
provides online services and organizes trade shows and
conferences. Titles are aimed at the entertainment, media,
marketing, retail trade, groceries and beverage sectors,
including Beverage World, Bicycle Retailer & Industry
News, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter and
Adweek.
It is one of the largest organizers of trade shows in
the United States, Argentinia and Brazil.
Its European business publishing arm includes computer
magazines (eg the trade magazines of CMP in the United
Kingdom and France, and Ziff Davis
Media's IT magazines), trade magazines and trade shows.
VNU's acquisition of ACNielsen was promoted as providing
"global leadership in market research" regarding
retailing and media audiences, including online use. In
the EU the groupoffers 'lifestyle' and other marketing
information through its Claritas arm. Its ORG-MARG arm
is attempting to build a similar presence in Asia.
holdings
An indication of VNU holdings is here.
history
VNU was founded in 1964 through the merger of two Dutch
publishing companies. In the 1960's the group was centred
on publishing, printing and distributing consumer magazines,
newspapers and books in the Netherlands and Belgium.
During the 1970's it moved into trade magazines and sought
to build a presence as a supplier of professional information
services. In the 1980's that activity was strengthened
by expansion into other European countries and the United
States.
Book publication was discontinued at that time, with printing
operations being sold during the early 1990s. Most growth
occurred by acquisition in the US. In the late 1990s VNU
began publishing telephone directories.
In 1999 it acquired Nielsen Media Research. A year later
it disposed of its newspaper arm to Wegener
and bought the Miller Freeman USA trade shows and business
magazine group.
At the end of 2000 VNU announced the sale of its Consumer
Information and Educational Information activities: its
consumer magazines were sold to Finnish publishing group
Sanoma WSOY in late 2001 for
€1.25 billion.
At the beginning of 2001 VNU took over ACNielsen Corporation.
Prior to September 2004 - when it unloaded its VNU
World Directories arm to venture capital groups Apax Partners
and Cinven for €2.1 billion - VNU was the largest
'yellow pages' publisher in Europe. The arm was active
in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal, Romania,
Puerto Rico and South Africa with over 115 telephone directories.
VNU World Directories had a market share of over 90% in
Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, Puerto Rico and South Africa
and over 50% in the Netherlands.
In 2005 it agreed to pay US$6.9 billion for IMS Health,
the US-based research group formerly held by Dun
& Bradstreet. That deal was abandoned in November
2005.
In May 2006 a group of private investors - operating under
the name Valcon Acquisition - announced that their US$9.7
billion bid for VNU had succeeded. The announcement followed
months of speculation that VNU would be acquired and then
disassembled.
In December VNU announced sale of its European business
magazines in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands
and Belgium (including Accountancy Age, Computing,
IT Week, ComputerActive, CRN,
Computing, Financial Director, Information
World Review and Personal Computer World)
to private equity group 3i for €320m.
Nielsen
ACNielsen has been one of the world's largest market researchers,
best known for its role in development of television ratings
systems in the US, Australia and other countries.
Arthur Charles Nielsen (d 1980) established the eponymous
firm in 1923 to provide reports on industrial equipment.
In 1933 the company launched the Nielsen Food Index, followed
by the Nielsen Drug Index in 1934. The indexes provided
retailers, advertisers and manufacturers with periodic
reports on the volume and price of packaged goods in a
national sample of US grocery stores and pharmacies.
Nielsen began tracking radio advertising and programming,
reflecting academic developments such as research by Cantrill
and Lazarsfeld. In 1936 he acquired rights to the Audimeter,
a mechanical device that recorded of the stations to which
a consumer's radio receiver was tuned. Nielsen expanded
to the UK in 1935 and began to build an international
network, for example opening an office in Sweden in 1939.
The Nielsen Radio Index (NRI), a national report on radio
audiences, commenced in December 1942 and became the dominant
radio ratings mechanism after Nielsen purchased the Hooper
radio and television ratings service in 1950. Nielsen
launched rating services in Australia and other countries
during that decade.
In 1963, with the proliferation of US stations (and Congressional
criticism of the ratings industry), Nielsen replaced the
mechanical meter with a diary-based survey of radio audiences
- the Audiologs - but increasingly concentrated on network
and local television audience measurement through devices
such as the PeopleMeter. Early services included the National
Television Index (NTI) and Nielsen Station Index (NSI).
In 1984 Nielsen was acquired by Dun
& Bradstreet, going on to buy a range of specialists
such as Logistics Data Systems and Survey Research Group
(SRG) before being spun off in 1996 as AC Nielsen and
Cognizant. The latter was rebadged as Nielsen Media Research
in 1998 before being acquired by VNU the following year
for US$2.7 billion. ACNielsen was acquired by VNU in 2001.
IMS
IMS Health, founded in 1954 by Ludwig Frohlich and David
Dubow as Intercontinental Marketing Services (later Intercontinental
Medical Statistics), originated as a provider of syndicated
market research studies for the pharmaceutical industry.
In 1980 it expanded into consumer market research in the
apparel and household appliance industries but subsequently
refocused efforts on its drug industry research.
IMS was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 1988 for around
US$1.8 billion. After minor restructuring - its communication
arm was sold in 1991 - IMS was spun off from D&B as
a separate company in 1998 and in turn shed itself of
Gartner and other non-health interests
studies
There are no major English-language studies of the
VNU group. An upbeat a commemorative volume, Van Haarlem
naar Manhattan, was released by Boom Publishers (Amsterdam)
in 2005.
Perspectives on the ratings business are provided by Karen
Buzzard's Chains of Gold: Marketing the Ratings &
Rating the Markets (Metuchen: Scarecrow 1990),
Philip Napoli's Audience Economics: Media Institutions
& the Audience Marketplace (New York: Columbia
Uni Press 2003)
and Measuring Media Audiences (London: Routledge
1994) edited by Raymond Kent.
There is a broader view in Consuming Audiences? Production
& Reception in Media Research (New Hampton: Creskill
2000) edited by Ingunn Hagen & Janet Wasko, Hugh Beville's
Audience Ratings: Radio, Television & Cable
(Hillsdale: Erlbaum 1988), Ratings Analysis: The Theory
& Practice of Audience Research (Mahwah: Erlbaum
2000) edited by James Webster & Patricial Phalen and
Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of Media Consumption
(Thousand Oaks: Sage 1993) by Shaun Moores.
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