The firm said it had begun to see the “benefits of the increased focus on its key growth areas of business”, while cost-cutting measures taken this year, including the axing of at least 30 jobs, were starting to pay off.

In a trading statement YouGov said: “These actions should help to improve underlying profitability in the next financial year although we envisage that market conditions will remain challenging, at least until the end of 2009.”

YouGov said its international operations had performed “as expected” over the past six months and that its recent US acquisition, Clear Horizons, had since been rebranded as YouGov Marketing Insights.

The firm said that the number and range of invitations to bid for corporate and public sector work had increased, especially in the UK after it was appointed to the Central Office of Information’s market research framework.

YouGov’s BrandIndex product, a syndicated tracker of brand reputation, had won “new major corporate customers” in the US and was “attracting wide interest” across the Middle East since its launch there, the firm said.