NIQ

A.C. Nielsen Company was founded in 1923 in Chicago by Arthur C. Nielsen Sr. in order to give marketers reliable and objective information on the impact of marketing and sales programs. The company began expanding internationally in 1939. Their first location outside of the United States was in the United Kingdom in the city of Oxford, which remains NIQ's UK HQ.

In 1984, A.C. Nielsen was acquired by the Dun & Bradstreet Company (D&B). In 1996, D&B divided AC Nielsen into two separate companies: Nielsen Media Research, which was responsible for TV ratings, and ACNielsen Corporation, which was responsible for consumer shopping trends and box-office data.

In 2001, ACNielsen Corporation itself was acquired by Dutch company Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen (VNU), as part of VNU's Marketing Information group, and came under the same corporate umbrella as NMR, the company it spawned (VNU acquired NMR in 1999).

In 2005, ACNielsen initiated their Media Voice Panel (MVP) program. With an approximately one week notice to members, the MVP program ended on March 17, 2008.

In 2007, the owner VNU changed its name to Nielsen Company.

On October 8, 2014, Nielsen acquired Affinnova, an international media and marketing research firm. The Affinnova team joins Nielsen's legacy BASES team to form Nielsen's Innovation Practice area. On January 22, 2015, Nielsen acquired Brandbank, specialized in the process of digitally collecting, managing and distributing FMCG product and brand image content for retail syndication across in-store, print promotional and e-commerce platforms.

Nielsen Holdings spun off its consumer data and intelligence business (the former ACNielsen part) as NielsenIQ in January 2021 and then sold the business to private equity firm Advent International in March 2021.

In 2021, NielsenIQ acquired Rakuten Intelligence in the U.S. and Foxintelligence in Europe, gaining access to e-receipt panels that extended its coverage of online retailers outside its traditional datasets.

A market research tool is the Homescan program where sample members track and report all grocery and retail purchases, allowing purchasing patterns to be related to household demographics. Homescan covers several countries including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2004, ACNielsen chose the CipherLab CPT-8001 as its data collection terminal for the Homescan program throughout Asia. The Homescan program became known as National Consumer Panel (after formation of a joint venture with Circana) in the United States.

NIQ manages the Nielsen BookScan services outside the United States. The company acts as ISBN agency for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

NIQ has several marketing and retail research products for companies such as BASES and Brandbank.

In Germany, NIQ (via its subsidiary GfK) manages the GfK Entertainment charts for music, home video, and video game sales.