GfK

GfK (founded in 1934 by an association of university teachers as "Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung", "Society for Consumer Research") is Germany's largest market research institute, and the fourth largest market research organisation in the world, after Nielsen Company, Kantar Group and Ipsos. In 2008 they attempted to become #2 via a merger with Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), a British firm.
The GfK-Telemeter (also known as GfK-Meter) is a device to measure the TV ratings. It is deployed in a representative subset of households and registers the selected channel second by second (including the use of videotext and video recordering and replaying), while differentiating between registered users.
History.
In April 2005 it acquired NOP World (originally National Opinion Polls), based mostly in the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy, which was rated the ninth largest market research business in the world.
In May 2008 it acquired an equity stake in Deep-Packet Inspection company Qosmos in order to track and monitor Internet usage for marketing research.
In December 2011, GfK acquired Knowledge Networks, based in Palo Alto, California the United States, which does online research for consumer products and services, pharmaceuticals, retail, media, and public policy. KN's Dimestore platform offers unique platform for measuring the effectiveness of digital ad campaign with simple surveys of streaming video ads, that also allows real-time reporting.
In 2010, the company was the fourth-largest market research company by revenue.
In December 2016 the capital firm KKR announced an offer to take over the majority of GfK SE's shares.