Hitwise gets a $240 million hit

Experian has moved aggressively into the net space over the past few years. Some of its acquisitions include PriceGrabber and LowerMyBills.com.

Now the company is shelling out $240 million for Hitwise, which provides measurement services for Internet sites. Hitwise has been around for about ten years and has roughly 1,200 clients (the count increased by 40% in the past two years). Examples include eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and MTV.

Over the past year, Hitwise's revenues surged 50% to $40 million. And by now being part of a larger organization, the company should pick up even more customers.

The deal should also provide a valuation benchmark for comScore, which recently filed to go public. Last year, the firm posted $66.3 million in revenues and $10.9 million in cash flow from operations. It's customers include Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), and Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

You can check out the IPO filing at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.