Magid M. Abraham is an entrepreneur and expert on market research, consumer modeling, and information systems. He held several executive positions, two of which were within companies he founded. Abraham authored articles in academic and industry journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science. He is a speaker at marketing industry conferences.
Early life
Abraham was born in Mashghara, a small town in Lebanon, where he was raised on his father’s fruit farm. His interests in school included math, science, and especially physics, and this fascination has remained with him throughout his life. He attended Lebanon’s high school, followed by Paris’ engineering university, École Polytechnique. He went to the United States to attend the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he graduated with an MBA in 1981 and later a PhD in operations research.
Career
Abraham joined Information Resources, Inc. in 1985. He served as IRI president and chief operating officer from 1993 to 1994, and vice chairman of the board of directors from 1994 until 1995. At IRI, Abraham designed marketing applications that eventually became standards of CPG marketing practice, as referenced in his articles 'Promoter: An Automated Promotion Evaluation System', 1987, Marketing Science and 'An Implemented System for Improving Promotion Productivity Using Store Scanner Data', 1993, Marketing Science. Abraham was founder and CEO of Paragren Technologies in 1995, which became part of Siebel Systems. In 1999, Abraham co-founded comScore, an Internet market intelligence company where he remains president and CEO. comScore was selected as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum before the forum’s annual conference in Davos in 2007. In 2010 comScore was promoted by the World Economic Forum. In January 2008, Abraham joined the board of directors of Milo.com, a company founded by his son Jack Abraham which was acquired by eBay in 2010 for $75M. In 2015, Abraham became a lecturer at Stanford University. In 2016 ARF gave him a lifetime achievement award. In June 2016 he became executive chairman of Upskill, and Linda Abraham became vice chair. In 2011, Abraham was awarded the MIT Sloan School of Management Buck Weaver Award, for theory and practice in marketing science. In 2009, he received the American Marketing Association’s Parlin Award. He was inducted into the Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2008, designated along with comScore as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum. He was also given the title of Entrepreneur of the Year in the Washington DC Area by Ernst and Young, and received an award from the Advertising Research Foundation. In 1996, Abraham was awarded the Paul Green Award by the AMA for an article that he co-authored in the Journal of Marketing Research in 1995 described as showing “the most potential to contribute to the practice of marketing research and research in marketing." That award was validated 5 years after the initial publication, with the AMA William F. O'Dell Award in 2000 recognizing research which made a significant, long-term contribution to the marketing discipline. In 1992, Abraham was listed as one of the “Top 40 Under 40" awarded by Crain’s Chicago Business, given to 40 business professionals in Chicago annually.
