London, 6th February 2012 - TNS has announced an exclusive partnership with 3D online virtual reality specialist, ACTISKU, to further extend the company’s offer in retail and shopper research into online 3D environments, complementing their work with Kantar owned Red Dot Square in offline virtual reality. This partnership enables TNS to invite respondents to shop in online virtual aisles from their own homes anywhere in the world, offering a fast, flexible and globally scalable approach for brands and retailers looking to research new pack, shelf and point of sale initiatives.

“Testing shopper marketing initiatives in order to manage risk, size the growth opportunity and optimise ideas before roll out is increasingly essential to our clients. Robust research with engaging visualisation also helps clients gain buy-in to brand and category initiatives from their retail customers,” said Susan Thomas, Global Director of Shopper Solutions, TNS. She continued “We’re delighted to partner with ACTISKU for exclusive access to the best consumer-facing 3D online technology available, allowing us to boost our existing retail testing offer with a truly scalable and realistic online virtual shopping capability anywhere in the world.”

TNS and Red Dot Square have established a leading position in the market for central location virtual reality testing and this new partnership extends TNS’s capabilities to the online space. TNS will use the ACTISKU solution to custom-build 3D virtual shopping environments that can be accessed through any Internet connection, so research respondents can take part in simulated shopping trips from their home PC. The ACTISKU system logs shopper activity throughout the ‘trip’, generating purchasing behaviour data which TNS integrates with feedback from the respondent about the shopping experience to give a comprehensive view of how they respond to the environment. Clients can test several different scenarios to establish which will lead to most incremental purchasing and most positive shopper perceptions to drive brand and category growth.

"TNS knows how important online 3D virtual testing will become, this partnership now gives them the means to achieve this reality," said Bennet Holmes, Business Development Director at ACTISKU. He continued, “Their commitment to evolving their online offering combined with a truly global network and pioneering approach to shopper research makes them a perfect partner as we grow our business.”

The partnership was agreed in January 2012 and development of a new suite of Shopper Testing solutions is under way to be rolled out globally early this year.

About TNS

TNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and stakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the world’s consumers than anyone else and understands individual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. TNS is part of Kantar, one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups.

Please visit www.tnsglobal.com for more information.

About Kantar

Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 28,500 employees work across 100 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.

For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com

About ActiSKU

ACTISKU S.A is a privately owned VC-backed French company which has created a powerful online 3D virtual reality platform called ACTISKU. The solution can be used to create 3D virtual reality environments easily and quickly. Each environment can then be easily accessed by consumer panellists from the comfort of their own home. Thanks to its proprietary technology and a dedicated research & Development team, ACTISKU is able to constantly stay at the forefront of this fast evolving sector.