31 March, 2014
"Data of Now" deal includes new five-year programme to connect data and jointly create research products

Kantar and Twitter have entered an enhanced global partnership with agreement over 5 years. Under the program name "Data of Now," both parties have agreed to collaborate on new research products in the areas of advertising effectiveness, consumer insight, brand equity, customer satisfaction and media measurement.

Additionally, the companies have agreed to expand the connections between select Kantar and Twitter data assets and accelerate innovation.

Kantar CEO Eric Salama said: "We are very pleased to be extending this relationship and build on the learning and successes of our initial collaboration in the area of social TV. Incorporating Twitter as the "data of now" will allow us to make real time predictive research a reality for our clients across a range of our services."

"Twitter plays host to a real-time, public conversation at scale on all manner of topics-including television," said Twitter COO Ali Rowghani. "We're thrilled to expand our partnership with Kantar beyond media measurement, to other areas that impact their clients. We're also looking forward to working with Kantar to bring Twitter TV standards and measurement tools to more regions across the globe."

At the same time, Kantar and Twitter have announced an extension of their exclusive partnership for the provision of social TV ratings and analytics. The agreement will see the relationship grow from its current base in the UK and Spain to include the Nordics, Russia, as well as parts of Africa and south-east Asia.

Kantar and Twitter initially announced their agreement to jointly develop a suite of tools to support planning and analytics for the UK TV industry in August 2013. This agreement was subsequently extended to Spain in October 2013.

The tools bring together social TV data from Twitter with the audience research expertise of Kantar Media. They enable broadcasters to assess programmes and series, plan programme promotions more effectively and assist media buyers and sellers to integrate insights from social data more comprehensively into the TV component of their media mix.

The Kantar/Twitter partnership followed an earlier agreement signed in June 2013 with Kantar parent company WPP and the Data Alliance, which covers other WPP divisions including media investment management company GroupM and digital agencies such as Wunderman.

For further information, please contact Lindsay McMurdo at Kantar on +44(0)7768 591977 or at lindsay.mcmurdo@kantar.com

About Kantar
Kantar is the data investment management division of WPP and one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups. By connecting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 28,500 employees work across 100 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at every point of the consumer cycle. The group's services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.

For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com.

kantar_pressrelease_twitter_mar14.pdf

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