Stagwell Buys Media Monitoring Company Unicepta

'Challenger' marcoms group Stagwell has agreed to acquire Colgne, Germany-based media monitoring firm UNICEPTA, which will join the 'PRophet' comms tech suite within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud. The buy is Stagwell's tenth of the year.

Founded in the 1990s, UNICEPTA combines analysis tech with the skills of more than 500 analysis and monitoring experts to scan content from global social media, online, print, TV, radio and other sources in real time - the output is used for decision-making in corporate management, communications and marketing. The firm also has offices in Berlin, London, Paris, Zurich, Shanghai, São Paulo and Washington DC.

PRophet was launched in 2020 by KWT Global founder Aaron Kwittken, and uses AI to help PR professionals generate, analyze and test content that predicts earned media interest and sentiment. In 2023 it added an end-to-end influencer marketing discovery and engagement platform and a news monitoring and analysis service, and this autumn new AI-driven features including influencer discovery and campaign management, as well as machine learning-based news monitoring.

'This is a game-changer for the burgeoning, nine-billion-dollar comms tech industry' says Kwittken (pictured), 'enabling PRophet to compete at scale and dethrone stodgy old-school competitors everyone loves to hate. UNICEPTA will supercharge our global suite of AI and human-powered software and services, adding sophisticated always-on reputation management and campaign tracking capabilities, joining our award-winning journalist and influencer discovery, management and content generation platforms'.

Alexander Peinemann, co-CEO of UNICEPTA with Sebastian Rohwer, comments: 'this collaboration allows us to accelerate our development in advanced analytics and predictive insights, especially in North America - an essential step in helping our clients succeed in today's interconnected landscape'. Rohwer and Peinemann will continue to lead UNICEPTA, as part of PRophet, which now has more than 500 team members worldwide, under Kwittken's leadership.

Stagwell is the parent of Harris Insights & Analytics, the former Nielsen Mobile Insights Survey and Total Communications Survey, now known as HarrisX; and former Nielsen entertainment research subsidiary NRG, as well as creative digital firm Code and Theory.

Web sites: www.prprophet.ai and www.stagwellglobal.com .