The global research company bought Sensemetric, a crowdsourcing digital platform for social media analytics, at the beginning of the month having used it as a preferred partner since 2011.

Sensemetric will be fully integrated into the operations of GfK and its new Social Media Intelligence Centre, which aims to centralise conducting social media analysis at an international level, and will be headed up by Sensemetric’s former managing directors Christian Waldheim and Florian Schütz.

In a statement, GfK said social media had become a critical forum where marketing and word-of-mouth could influence both brand and sales.

The company added: “Therefore, it’s important for marketing research both as a source of insights about brand effects in this forum, but also as general source of intelligence about public sentiment and brand health.”