Singapore and Shaghai – Kantar Media has acquired FishEye Analytics, a Singapore-based start-up providing global social media listening research.Bottom of Form The integration will extend Kantar Media’s global multi-lingual social measurement and analysis capabilities.

Andy Brown, Global CEO of Kantar Media, said: “The development of our business in Asia is a strategic priority for Kantar Media. Following the acquisition of China social insight experts CIC in 2012, I’m delighted that we can complement our services and develop new client offers by combining our data and tools with Fisheye Analytics. The integration will help enterprise grasp the revolutionary opportunities brought by the development of social business so that they can fully leverage the power of Internet Word of Mouth across their organisation.”

The APAC region is fast-growing in social media with nearly 800 million social media users, making up 64% of the total 1.2 billion internet users across the 18 countries.

Sam Flemming, founder and CEO of CIC, commented: “This acquisition responds to the increasing request from clients for consistent social listening and insights across markets, but with a local expertise. With FishEye Analytics and CIC we combine our strengths to provide a global solution with necessary local context, depth and granularity.”

Founded in 2009 in Singapore with an R&D centre in Hyderabad, FishEye Analytics pioneered social intelligence tools in Asia and developed a technology that collects and analyses online discussions in 67 languages, thanks to proprietary NLP and text mining features. This global ability allows FishEye Analytics to support clients with powerful social media insights, including some of the biggest sports governing bodies, international organisations and governments from Asia to Middle-East and Europe.

“Kantar Media is the ideal environment for our capabilities,” said Ashwin Reddy Gayam, co-founder and CEO of FishEye Analytics. “We will provide Kantar Media clients with accessible and intelligent analysis of brand discussions that take place online and offline, and across geographies.”

Kantar Media is part of Kantar, the data investment management division of WPP and one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy groups.