Mick Ridley (pictured) will oversee the division globally from his base in London, while Craig Trachtenberg heads up operations in New York. Plans are in the pipeline to roll out the division in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands before the end of the year.

At launch, Meta has secured a $500,000 contract with an unidentified “major entertainment venue”.

“Consumers create billions of gigabytes of data every year and Meta will specialise in gathering and analysing this data, identifying patterns of behaviour and purchasing preferences,” the company said in a statement.

“Data is not only gathered by a person’s online behaviour but can be collated when they are out and about, such as when they swipe their travel card at a train station, use a loyalty card in a supermarket, access a website via a smartphone or simply send an SMS. That data can then be used by Meta to analyse people’s movements and habits on a daily basis.”