For the Record: Ownership of Australian Public Opinion Polling and Market Research Companies
By Gary Morgan & Michele Levine, Directors of Roy Morgan Research Ltd publisher of ABIX
- Roy Morgan Research Ltd – Australian based with operations also in New Zealand, Indonesia, US and UK – 81.5% owned by Gary Morgan and family, 13.3% Michele Levine (CEO) and 5.2% present & former employees/consultants. http://www.roymorgan.com
- Nielsen – US based multinational valued at about $US17b – at present for sale with 8.4% owned by hedge fund Elliott Management – throughout the world conducts retail audits, net ratings and TV ratings. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/nielsen-acquisition-advent-goldman-apollo-considering.html
- Ipsos – French owned multinational conducts The Age/SMH Poll, recently purchased four divisions from GFK. https://www.ipsos.com/en-au/ipsos-world
- YouGov owners of Galaxy – a major UK based public opinion and social research company. https://today.yougov.com/about/about
https://mumbrella.com.au/yougov-acquires-galaxy-research-489774 - Newspoll – public opinion polls conducted by YouGov and published in The Australian.
- Essential Poll – conducted by Essential Media Communications the holding company is The Essential Research and Communications Group Pty Ltd. The shares are held equally by Peter Lewis & James Douglas but the shares are not beneficially held (owner not known). Conduct Robo-Polling; clients as published include Shop Distributive & Allied Employees Association Nat Branch, United Firefighters’ Union of Australia-Victorian Branch and Federal Australian Education Union.
https://www.essentialmedia.com.au/our-history - uComms/ReachTEL Poll – three equal shareholders of UComms are ACTU secretary Sally McManus, CFMMEU national secretary Michael O’Connor and James Stewart, a former executive of ReachTEL who conducted Robo-Polling. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-10/political-polling-company-ucomms-ties-to-unions-cfmmeu-and-actu/10945798
- ReachTEL – users of low-cost Robo-Polling. ReachTEL is a wholly owned subsidiary of Equifax, a NYSE listed data and analytics company.
https://www.reachtel.com.au/about - DBM Consultants – conducts customer satisfaction surveys for all major Australian bank covering both business customers and personal customers – controlled and 51% owned by an ultimate holding Chinese company – Shanghai Illuminera Marketing Strategy Consulting Co Ltd.
https://www.dbmconsultants.com.au/who-we-are - ORC International Pty Ltd trading as Engine Asia Pacific – US based corporation recently awarded by Federal Government Tourism Research tender (Contract Notice View – CN3566082) for $18,950,385.20 (not lowest) to collected personal information on overseas tourist visiting Australia (Per year: 1.4 million Chinese spending $10.4b). https://enginegroup.com/apac
- The Social Research Centre owned by the Australian National University.
https://www.srcentre.com.au - Emma conducted by NewsMediaWorks – supplier of media information from surveys conducted by IPSOS & Nielsen – NewsMediaWorks is majority owned and controlled by News Corp.
https://www.emma.com.au/about - GFK – German multinational research company – conducts Australian commercial radio ratings. https://www.gfk.com/en-au
- Kantar Group includes Taylor Nelson – owned by WPP, the world’s largest multinational advertising agency based in the UK.
http://www.tnsglobal.com/office/australia-1 - IRI – US based multinational – conducts mainly retail research.
https://www.iriworldwide.com/en-AU - Most major advertising agencies and accounting firms conduct surveys for their clients, they usually sub-contract the field work.
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About Roy Morgan Roy Morgan is the largest independent Australian research company, with offices in each state of Australia, as well as in the United States, Indonesia and the United Kingdom. A full service research organisation specialising in omnibus and syndicated data, Roy Morgan has over 70 years’ experience in collecting objective, independent information on consumers.
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
