Lightspeed and TNS 6th Dimension to Merge Panels

After a long battle to aquire TNS¹, WPP has finally begun to merge the “two companies panels”²

While there have been many arguments about choosing back-end data quality over respondent quality; with two different companies merging their online panels this could be an interesting time for data mining and identification of individuals that are blatantly fraudulent. Who knows, perhaps even an algorithm could be defined to identify “unlikely” respondents.

In any case, our most gnawing question is: how much overlap is going to be discovered between the two panels? It would be incredibly interesting to see the number of duplicates in conjunction with a bit of ip location magic to search and destroy a slew of false respondents.

Too bad its all proprietary.

¹ WPPs Pursuit of TNS Ends with 193B Buy

² TNS and WPP Merge Panels.