Axel Springer buys eMarketer

The purchase is part of Axel Springer’s strategy to expand digital activities into English-speaking territories and strengthen its business-related news content.

EMarketer’s services include reports, databases, statistics, infographics, and forecasts and it has more than 1,000 subscription contracts, among them most Fortune 500 companies. Around 81% of eMarketer’s revenues come from these subscription services.

EMarketer’s co-founders Terry Chabrowe, chief executive officer, and Geoff Ramsey, chief innovation officer, will continue to hold about 7% of the company and will remain in their current positions.

Mathias Döpfner, chief executive officer of Axel Springer SE, said: "As more and more industries are facing the challenge of digitisation, the smart creation, processing, and presentation of relevant market information is becoming increasingly important.

"EMarketer is a long-established, successful, and profitable publisher of high-quality digital market data and is excellently positioned to benefit from these market developments. The acquisition of eMarketer follows our strategy of expanding our US activities and strengthening our paid models."

He added that eMarketer also complements its business services BI Intelligence and Politico Pro in Europe.

Terry Chabrowe, co-founder and CEO eMarketer, said: "We’re excited to become part of the Axel Springer family. Its commitment to digital and strategic vision makes them the ideal partners for the next stage of eMarketer’s growth."

In 2015, eMarketer’s revenues were $45.5m. For 2016, eMarketer expects revenues of around $53m. The company was founded in 1996 and currently employs more than 180 people.

Axel Springer is also among a group of German publishers – including Gruner + Jahr and the Bertelsmann Group – which are pooling their reader data from almost 1,000 websites, to help compete with Google and Facebook, according to an article in Digiday.

The raw data is collated on a single platform called Emetriq, a subsidiary owned by Deutsche Telekom, which cleans it up to create targeted, quality audience segments that can be used by the publishers to boost advertising packages.

Publishers pay a flat fee to use the data segments, which can be anything from €4,000 ($5,000 ) to €15,000 ($17,000 ). The price depends on how many page impressions they have and how many ad impressions they use the data on.

All segments created by Emetriq are sense checked against online consumer panels from GfK and Deutsche Telekom also puts some of its own data in.