GWI (formerly GlobalWebIndex) is an audience research company founded by Tom Smith in 2009. The company provides audience insight to publishers, media agencies and marketers around the world. GWI profiles consumers across 48+ countries with a panel representing over 2.7 billion digital consumers, making insights available through a subscription-based platform.
History
In October 2012, GWI surprised social media analysts and commentators by claiming that Twitter and Facebook had big followings in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
and Vietnam (later lift the ban on Facebook) – countries where those social networks are blocked by their respective governments. The story was picked up by various news outlets including
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...
,
Bloomberg
Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...
, and the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
'', where the rise of
VPN
Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...
has been attributed as the primary enabler for Chinese internet users circumventing website blocks. Almost a decade after the company was founded, and with customers including Google, Spotify, WPP and Omnicom Group, it closed its first round of series A funding in 2018. The company raised $180M series B funding in February 2022, and was valued at $850M.
Data Sources
GWI combines survey data from millions of