Let’s not pretend this is just another quiet data tuck-in. Alliant isn’t merely acquiring AnalyticsIQ—they’re essentially buying a PhD in consumer psychology, wrapping it in a deterministic data blanket, and strapping it to a privacy-compliant rocket aimed at the future of audience modeling. Welcome to the age of data with a conscience and a cognitive bias.
Scarlett Shipp, formerly CEO of AnalyticsIQ, is now at the helm of Alliant. JoAnne Monfradi Dunn, the long-reigning empress of Alliant, is stepping away from the day-to-day but staying close enough to whisper strategy from the boardroom shadows. It’s a classic succession-with-a-twist: retire the founder, install the brains behind your newest acquisition, and hope the chessboard doesn’t flip during integration.
This isn’t a simple “1+1 = bigger list of lookalikes” merger. It’s a full-on Frankenstein fusion of the transactional and the emotional. Alliant has always been the stoic accountant of the data world—tracking what people did. AnalyticsIQ? That’s the therapist. It predicts what people might do—and more importantly, why.
🧬 The Real Asset: Not the tech. Not the client list. It’s the models based on surveys about sleep cycles, mental health, motivation types, and other psychographic gems most data firms wouldn’t touch with a HIPAA pole.
So now Alliant has the receipts and the reasons.
Here’s what this power-couple dataset unlocks:
Sleep-deprived insomniacs who impulse-buy CBD gummies at 2 a.m.? Targetable.
CFOs with chronic decision fatigue and a Fitbit addiction? They’re in there.
People who identify as health-obsessed but still DoorDash mozzarella sticks? Bingo.
That’s because AnalyticsIQ doesn’t just collect data. It theorizes. It diagnoses. It builds personas that live somewhere between Freud and Salesforce.
And now that mind melds with Alliant’s transactional backbone—bills paid, things bought, identities verified with email hashes and IP addresses. It’s a match made in probabilistic modeling heaven. And just in time, because deterministic data is evaporating faster than cookies on a GDPR compliance form.
🧩 But wait, there’s a roadmap. And a few potholes:
Alliant is eyeballing agentic AI to “recommend” audiences. That’s marketing speak for: “We’re building an AI that will guess who you should sell to, and maybe be right more often than your CMO.”
No layoffs yet—but Scarlett Shipp already admitted there could be role overlap. Translation: If your title includes “data onboarding,” update your LinkedIn.
They’re cross-training sales teams across the board. Expect awkward Zoom calls where former rivals pretend they’ve always been besties.
Meanwhile, Alliant’s parent company Inverness Graham is in the background playing chess. This is their first big acquisition since buying Alliant in November 2024, and they’re framing it as a platform play. Which is PE-code for: "We’re stacking companies like Legos until the EBITDA looks pretty."
🏛️ The takeaway? This isn’t about scale—it’s about sophistication.
Brands don’t just want more data. They want smarter data. Data that explains why your customer bought an air fryer at midnight and then searched for “how to cook sadness.” Alliant + AnalyticsIQ gives them just that: the what, the why, and the when, all wrapped in privacy-compliant bows and IAB-certified packaging.
And they’re already talking about deeper integrations, new data products, and omnichannel activation across 400+ platforms. So yes, your media plan might soon be built by a machine that knows you’re emotionally vulnerable after a bad night’s sleep and wants to sell you chamomile tea on Hulu at 3:12 a.m.