Ipsos

History

First years in France

Ipsos was founded in 1975 by Didier Truchot, who had experience working in the Institut français d'opinion publique.

Truchot centered in offering services to the advertising and media companies and developed methods to measure the success of their campaigns, something new in France. The first of these methods was the Baromètre d'Affichage (BAF) in 1977, an instrument to analyse the effectiveness of billboard advertisements. It was followed by an instrument specific for media and, in 1979, the France des Cadres Actifs (FCA), which was used to determine reading habits of French executives.

Despite the success, the company's profitability remained at modest levels until the arrival of Jean-Marc Lech as co-chairman. From then on, it started to perform public opinion researches, another innovative activity in the French market. By the end of the '80s, it was the fifth largest media research company in France. The great activity of French policymakers at the time helped to strengthen the position of the company, especially the public opinion research sector.

European expansion

During the 1990s, Ipsos expanded, principally through acquisitions, to Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Central Europe, especially Hungary.

In 1992, the company was opened to private investment to improve its purchasing capital. The first new shareholder was Baring Private Equity. Truchot and Lech, the major shareholders, retained two-thirds of the company.

Global expansion

In the mid-1990s Ipsos was one of the most important research companies in Europe and decided to expand globally. Ipsos took on new investment partners, selling 40 percent of the company to Artemis Group, led by François Pinault, and the Amstar investment fund led by Walter Butler.

In 1997, Ipsos entered into the South American market with the acquisition of Novaction’s companies in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. In 1998, it entered the North American market with the purchase of the American company ASI Market Research.

In 1999, Ipsos was listed on the Paris stock exchange. The successful offering enabled Artemis and Amstar to cash out on their investments and also gave Ipsos the possibility to continue its expansion. Then, it participated of the creation of an Internet audience research joint-venture, MMXI Europe, with the majority of shares held by partner Media Matrix and 20 percent by Ipsos. The company also took control of four subsidiaries of NFO Worldwide specializing in the formation of access panels. The expansion continued in Asia, South America and especially in North America (with the purchase of the Canadian company Angus Reid, renamed Ipsos-Reid in 2000).

In 2009, Ipsos partnered with Thomson Reuters to conduct multi-country polling on consumer topics, politics, and economic confidence. The results of the polls would be published on Reuters. In 2011, Ipsos acquired Aegis Group Plc's Synovate division. On 30 October 2018, Ipsos announced that it acquired Synthesio, a Social Intelligence Suite that was named the leading global Social Listening platform by Forrester Research since 2014.

In November 2021, Ben Page became CEO, replacing Didier Truchot, the founder, who remained as Chairman. In February 2023, it was announced Ipsos had acquired the New York-based business-to-business research company, Xperiti for an undisclosed amount. In September 2025, Jean Laurent Poitou succeeded Page as CEO.

Ipsos Australia

Ipsos Australia has existed since at least 2000, and has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. It runs opinion polls on a number of issues, such as community support for changing the date of Australia Day, moving away from coal, Australia becoming a republic, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's mental health, and, until 2019, political preferences.

The results of Ipsos polls in Australia are published in The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), The Age and the Australian Financial Review (AFR). However, following a shock result of the 2019 Australian federal election, when the Liberal–National Coalition won the election against all of the opinion polls' predictions, the Nine Entertainment group, which owns the SMH, Age and AFR, decided to discontinue its relationship with Ipsos. Since then and the newspapers have not reported any political polling, but continue to report the results of other Ipsos polls.

KnowledgePanel

Ipsos polls in the United States are conducted through a probability-based online panel known as KnowledgePanel, which contains about 60,000 members as potential respondents. It relies on address-based sampling to recruit respondents, with its sampling frame provided by the United States Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File. A random sample of households is invited to join the panel through mail or telephone. Polls themselves are conducted online in a single-mode fashion, with Ipsos providing respondents access to the internet if needed. Demographic information about each respondent is collected initially, which is then used to deliver polls through a custom sampling method depending on the poll's target population. Sampling is conducted on the entire panel for general population polls, and stratified samples are utilized for narrower focuses. Respondents are incentivized for the surveys they complete.

Survey results are weighted for demographic variables with the United States census's Current Population Survey and American Community Survey.

Financial performance

Ipsos revenues totaled €1,785.3 million in 2015, with an organic growth rate of −1%. In 2014, Ipsos derived 44% of its revenue from the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), 39% from the Americas region, and 17% from the Asia-Pacific region.

Top 10 of the Market Research Sector 2019

Source: ESOMAR Global Market Research Report 2019

Subsidiaries

• Ipsos MORI
• Ipsos-Reid
• Ipsos Strategy3
• Ipsos Alfacom
• Ipsos Apoyo
• Ipsos Archway
• Ipsos ASI
• Ipsos Bimsa
• Ipsos B&A
• Ipsos Connect
• Ipsos Healthcare
• Ipsos Insight
• Ipsos Interactive Services
• Ipsos Loyalty
• Ipsos Marketing
• Ipsos Markinor (Ipsos South Africa)
• Ipsos MRBI
• Ipsos Novaction
• Ipsos Observer
• Ipsos Public Affairs
• Ipsos RDA
• Ipsos UU
• Ipsos Vantis
• Livra.com
• Karian and Box

Polling accuracy

During the 2021–2022 United States election cycle, in the last 21 days before each election, Ipsos polls only correctly predicted winners 17% of the time, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of elections for state governor, U.S. Senate, and House of Representatives.

References

References

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