Forget what the adage says. You can judge a market research company by its cover.

A website home page is the cover – and a well-designed home page doubles as table of contents. With that in mind, the concept behind the new MFourDIY™ website is clarity, transparency, and a refreshing openness about product information. The goal is to help prospective users of the nation’s only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool make a fully-informed decision. By being upfront with the information researchers need as they shop for solutions, we're simply giving them the respect they deserve.

We know you want to cut through the foggy generalizations you may have encountered elsewhere in your attempts to figure out whether a given research provider is offering quality technology and an engaged panel for a fair price. So here’s what you’ll find when you visit MFourDIY.com:

• A price calculator that lets you plug in all the variables that go into programming surveys – and automatically tells you exactly how much you’ll pay. Now you can budget accordingly.

• The ability to target respondents by the apps they use – and the cost of this unique feature, which is an additional $1 per complete.

• GPS-enabled, GeoValidated® studies in which you’ll locate, and then interview, natural panelists while they’re still inside a store – or just after they’ve left.

• Multimedia options that fully exploit smartphones’ capacity to receive or create audio and video content. It’s a great way to delve into the real life of consumers at the moment of purchase.

We’re also particularly proud of two prominent visuals that highlight the new MFourDIY™  website. They may be unique in the research field.

1,000,000 Panelists 

With a single click from the new home page, you’ll access information about who you’ll reach among the million-plus active panelists who use MFour’s top-rated Surveys on the Go® research app. Contrast this with traditional online panel providers who are reluctant to share details about their panelists. On the MFourDIY™ site, you’ll see the panel’s make-up by age, race, income, education, marital status, and geographic distribution. You’ll see that the panel is especially strong on hard-to-reach, smartphone-centric groups who are vital to forming an accurate picture of what’s happening among consumers – Millennials make up 70% of the panel, Hispanics, 21%, African Americans, 14%, and parents of young children, 42%.

U.S. Map of Real Time Streaming Data

A map of streaming data captures the essence of MFour and MFourDIY™ -- showing real panelists crossing into geofenced areas across the United States, where you can reach them in real time. You’ll see yellow and green vectors streaking suddenly across the nation to and from our headquarters in Southern California whenever a panelist starts or completes a survey. It’s a bit like a representation of nerve synapses firing in a brain – not a bad image for market research itself, which ideally captures what’s going on in consumers’ minds.

MFour has revolutionized how mobile market research is done. Now it has set the standard for how researchers should be informed when they’re out shopping for the survey-building products they need to succeed.

MFourDIY.com is your open book of research solutions, so feel free to come and judge us by our cover -- and by everything else you'll see inside. Or you can contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com to talk in-depth about how our solutions can answer your research needs.

MFour has launched a new website for MFourDIY™  -- the nation's only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building tool.

The innovative site allows users to create sample surveys, view instant pricing quotes, and generate interactive reports. It also features a first-of-its kind, real-time monitor that shows MFour in action, with vectors shooting across a map of the United States that represent each survey as it goes out, and each completed interview as it comes in from one of the million-plus members of MFour's all-mobile panel. 

“It’s exciting to see consumers respond to surveys across the country 24-hours a day, in real time,” says MFour CEO, Chris St. Hilaire.

Click here to see a press release announcing the new website and its special features.

And for full details on how you can tailor MFourDIY™ solutions to  meet your  needs, please contact us at sales@mfour.com.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from MFour to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into the weekend.

• Getting Smart About Ad Measurement

• 2,246,714 Ways to Connect with Consumers

• DIY Webinar: Mobile App Tracking

And here's a Friday tune to stoke your holiday spirits.

MFour welcomes three more new employees, continuing its dramatic growth with the hiring of team members who’ll contribute to three key departments – Operations, Sales, and Labs & Engineering.

Michael Schmall joins Operations as a Market Research Manager, involved in planning, implementing, and delivering quality surveys, including the crucial task of communicating with clients throughout the process. He previously was a Research Manager at Lieberman Research Worldwide. Michael has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School of Business. Michael comes to MFour with a championship pedigree – he played three seasons as a starting linebacker on Penn’s football team, including the Quakers’ 2012 Ivy League championship team.

Football is also in the blood, literally, for Dodge Salisbury, who has joined MFour’s sales team as a Solutions Development Representative, alerting and educating potential new clients about how MFour’s products and services can solve their research needs. Dodge has a Bachelor’s degree in Sports Management from Texas A&M University, and previously worked in business development and marketing for the Levecke Corp and Sports 1 Marketing. His interest in the business of sports is no accident – Dodge’s father is former NFL quarterback and current sports-radio talk show host Sean Salisbury. For the record, Dodge is a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

Adding to Four’s technological expertise is Software Engineer Andrew Prendergast, who’ll bring his talents in app and web design to the Labs & Engineering team. Andrew earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Web Development certificate from Parkland College. He previously worked at the marketing and web design firm Brandastic. Levity, rather than football, is Andrew’s game – he created LaughLocator, an app that keeps live-comedy fans posted on upcoming shows, and HeckleKiller,  an app that helps comedians write jokes. Andrew is a fan of the once-laughable Chicago Cubs, whose recent triumph after a 108-year championship drought has put him in a good humor.

Welcome aboard!

Digital technology is revolutionizing the way advertisers and market researchers measure campaign effectiveness. But for out-of-home (OOH) ad measurements, data that accurately reflect consumer sentiment have been elusive. And that’s likely because there’s something important missing from today’s ad lift assessments: the human element in real time.

To get real answers you need to talk to real people. The good news is that advertisers and marketers can talk to them by harnessing smartphone GPS technology and true-mobile survey methodology. Talking to people who’ve actually passed in view of the billboards or other signage in your OOH campaign provides you with real insights. It’s a quantum leap from customary OOH measurements that are strictly a numbers game, substituting basic statistics such as traffic counts, average speeds, and viewing angles for what you really need: active opinions elicited from real people who’ve seen your signs.

The stats-only method is valuable, if you’re only looking to get a ballpark idea as to how many consumers are potentially exposed to your ads. But you won’t be able to ask the questions you really need answered, particularly those tricky and invaluable questions that can only be accurately assessed with qualitative responses. With $7.3 billion a year at stake – the amount advertisers spend on OOH campaigns according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America – it’s imperative to get the reliable data that are only available from real consumers.

So how do you get feedback from the people your campaign is targeting? Using MFour’s all-mobile panel, you can:  

• Create geofences around all the billboards or signs in your regional or national campaign

• Access a panel of more than one million active members, all of whom have downloaded the Surveys on the Go® mobile app, to send the right questions to the right consumers at the right time

• Locate panelists who fit within your demographic criteria and automatically send notifications to complete a survey once they cross a geofence

• Get a response to learn what they’ve noticed and how it’s impacting them while the experience is fresh in memory

An advanced, true-mobile OOH study also gives you the context you need. MFour’s standard practice is to run control surveys that measure awareness and sentiment among consumers who haven’t been exposed to a campaign. That gives you the comparative data you need to know what kind of lift your campaign is actually producing.

To learn how MFour’s OOH measurement solutions can solve your specific needs, just send a message to Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

The conversation in advertising and marketing has turned inevitably to how to reach consumers on the mobile devices that define the smartphone era.

But let’s not forget the traditional meaning of “mobile” – as in anyone or anything that moves. Old-fashioned mobility remains indispensably important in the advertising and marketing sphere – where it has played a vital role ever since the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt put up Western Civilization’s first outdoor ads on obelisks to express their power, accomplishments, and initiatives to the populace. Some good ideas never go out of fashion, and what we now call out-of-home advertising won’t lose its appeal and effectiveness so long as human beings walk or ride through their world.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America has quantified the extent of out-of-home advertising in today’s U.S.A.: 2,246,714 signs – not counting untold numbers of additional signs in places such as bus benches, leisure venues, restaurants, and bars. Here’s the breakdown:

◊ 1,250,000 Digital Video Screens

◊ 49,082 Bus Shelter Ads

◊ 512,040 Transit Ads  

                    40% Buses

                    35.4% Subway & Rail

                    13.4% Airports

                    9% Taxis

                       0.7% Digital

◊ 368,539 Billboards

                    2% Digital   

                    43% Large (672 Square Feet)

                    54% Poster-Size (72 to 303 Square Feet)

◊ 66,354 Alternative Ads

                    2% Arenas & Stadiums

                    46.2% Shopping Malls

                    51.8% Cinemas

The takeaway is that while nearly all eyes are on mobile devices these days, the same is true for out-of-home signage. When an advertising channel reaches seemingly everyone in your target market, it’s vital for you to understand and measure the extent to which consumers notice and respond to it.

MFour has out-of-the-box mobile research solutions that let you locate and reach exactly the consumers your out-of-home ads seek to capture – in the very moment they’re in a position to see your ad. You can get insights into how many people are noticing your OOH ads, and more importantly, how each person feels about your ads the moment they see it.

To get the best advice on research that will help you maximize ROI from OOH, contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into the weekend.

• 5 Ways to Filter Out Faulty Information

• 9 Insights into Holiday Shopping

• Why a Happy Panel Delivers Great Data

And here's a Friday tune to stoke your holiday spirits.

RetailMeNot, Inc. needs to know what shoppers want to buy, where they want to buy it, how much they want to spend, and what they think of their shopping experiences. That’s why it engaged MFour for an important study about deal-seeking consumers at 1,000 leading malls across the country during the five most crucial shopping days of the year – Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

RetailMeNot stands in the middle of the relationship between millions of shoppers and untold numbers of retailers and brands. Through its website and mobile app, RetailMeNot matches consumers with discount offers – and in 2015, the deals it relayed to consumers helped drive $4.8 billion in retail sales. So it has an extremely large stake in gathering accurate insights into holiday shopping.

Using its own internal capabilities, RetailMeNot was able to collect an impressive aggregate of statistical data, revealing that mobile users accounted for 77% of the Black Friday traffic on the RetailMeNot website and 61% of Cyber Monday traffic. But it also needed to get inside consumers’ heads – and so it turned to MFour.

We supplied the most advanced, true-mobile technology available – technology that first located consumers who, without prompting, had gone shopping at one of the malls in the study, and then sent them a survey invitation on their smartphones just as they left the mall.

The study’s other key component was the human factor. The size, engagement, and diversity of the all-mobile panel that uses MFour’s Surveys on the Go® app provided a sample that would be fully representative of the U.S. population. The panel’s million-plus active members make it easy to connect with traditionally hard-to-reach consumers such as Millennials, Hispanics, African Americans, and parents of young children who are particularly focused on their mobile devices.

Fielding lasted from Nov. 24 (Thanksgiving) to Nov. 28 (Cyber Monday). MFour delivered  topline data from the 1,500 completed and validated responses on Nov. 30. On the following day, Dec. 1, RetailMeNot publicly announced key insights it had gained into holiday shopping trends and shoppers’ deal-seeking behaviors. The insights include:

• 82% of shoppers used a special promotion to make a purchase

• 78% of shoppers searched in advance for deals before heading to the mall

• 69% used an app to search for those bargains

• Nearly 70% who shopped in-store during the five days also shopped online

• 50% said that they’ll do most of their holiday shopping in stores rather than online

• 10% said they’ll use smartphones for the majority of their holiday shopping

• Users of the RetailMeNot discount app were most likely to have spent $101 to $250 over the five days, compared to less than $100 for users of other apps

One important takeaway, noted Marissa Tarleton, Chief Marketing Officer, North America, at RetailMeNot, is that consumers begin planning their holiday shopping well before Black Friday, and “the fact that retailers are following suit by optimizing deals…prior to Black Friday is a win for retailers and consumers alike.” It’s an example of consumer insights leading to smart business decisions.

To learn how MFour can put you in touch with today’s smartphone-centric consumers, just send a message to Alex at acolao@mfour.com. He’ll get you started on harnessing MFour’s true-mobile technology to help bring home the insights you need.

Tidings of comfort and joy? If only. That’s the takeaway from Forrester Research’s recently-issued predictions about what 2017 will hold for marketing — and particularly for marketing executives.

Here’s one cold, hard, bluntly-stated assertion from Forrester’s analysis of what’s ahead in the new year: “We predict that CEOs will exit at least 30% of their CMOs for not mustering the blended skill set needed to drive digital business transformation, design exceptional personalized experiences, and propel growth.”

All we can say to that is “Yikes!” However, the new insights go beyond giving marketing and market research professionals something to worry about for the sake of simply scaring them. The predictions may get them thinking about the kinds of actions needed to throw a life preserver around sales revenues amid today’s dizzying churn of technological change.

The report is “2017 Predictions: Dynamics That Will Shape The Future in the Age of the Customer." You can download it from Forrester’s website, but here are six of its key insights about how the speed of technology has changed the consumer expectations that marketers need to get ahead of — or else.

• Those crazy Millennials and their famous fickleness? They’ve been crazy like a fox. They keep their options open because it’s so easy to comparison shop for myriad brands and consumer experiences. It’s a completely rational and savvy consumer behavior, given how easy smartphones make it to compare competing products and services.

• Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are becoming more like Millennials in the ways they access and exploit information. They’re trusting their ability to browse for options instead of staying with brand loyalties that marketers previously took for granted. After all, they’ve got smartphones, too.

• Brands, products, and services have virtually no margin for error: “Today’s customers reward or punish companies based on a single experience — a single moment in time….Customers who experience disgust, anger, or a feeling of neglect during a brand interaction are about eight times more likely not to forgive that company.”

• With consumers holding so many cards, and their preferences so changeable, Forrester predicts brands will face up to 50% more “revenue risk” in 2017.

• The only choice, Forrester says, is for businesses to change rapidly to keep up with consumer expectations. It recommends experimentation to harness new technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality to enrich the consumer experience. On the management side, Forrester says new approaches will demand rapid changes in corporate structures and company cultures.

• Forrester sums up its message with this: “In 2017, a few companies will make important inroads on what drives consumer decisions. This is a first step in understanding emotion as both a descriptive and predictive measure to guide experience design and govern operations.”

Scary? Yes, but change is always scary. The thing is to allow it to get you going, instead of scaring you stiff.

The Martians invaded Earth on Oct. 30, 1938, landing in New Jersey, then wreaking destruction as they advanced on New York City. At least that’s what many a panicked listener thought after tuning in to Orson Welles’s radio drama of H.G. Wells's ‘“The War of the Worlds.” Welles used a newscast format to dramatize the classic science fiction story, but some people automatically associated “news” with reality. The power of mass media to misinform – in this case, inadvertently – was clearly established.

Today the battle continues. On one side, authenticated fact. On the other, rumor, supposition, and deliberate deceit. The biggest battlefield is social media, where two New York Times headlines, “Google and Facebook Take Aim at Fake News Sites” and “Twitter Adds New Ways to Curb Abuse and Hate Speech” suggest that defending the reliability of information and sifting through what’s useful from what’s toxic takes constant vigilance. With that in mind, here are tips for your own use in assessing the reliability of information that turns up in your web searches or social media feeds.

• Government websites: Even if you don’t trust government to get policy right, state and federal websites are the best source for information about the overall economy – such as income, demographics, export/import revenues, expenditures, and much more. It’s worth adding .gov to your search terms when looking for demographic breakdowns or macro data on product categories or economic sectors.

• Be your own fact-checker: When aggregators pass along information without linking to a source, use terms or phrases from their reports in fact-check searches of your own.

• Be wary of “scoops”: Scientific experiments must be replicable to be verified as accurate. By the same token, don’t take news and information on face value when they come from just one source, unless it’s a source you really trust.

• Separate opinion from fact: A great deal – perhaps the vast majority – of web content is opinion, not reported fact. Seek out straight news-reporting first. Then, armed with a factual basis, you’re in a good position to decide whether analysis and commentary make sense to you.

• Don’t over-distrust the mainstream media: While there’s competitive pressure on legacy news organizations and serious information websites to post news as fast as they can – sometimes to the detriment of good reporting – their main value proposition continues to be accuracy and accountability (although that's no longer a guarantee). Go with information from organizations that have a financial incentive to get it right.

Authentication and reliability are crucial in the business world. Market research rises or falls with the authenticity of survey data. Digital advertisers need trustworthy authentication to be confident their messages are reaching targeted audiences. Moral of the story? Like anything else, if you want good value in information, you have to proceed with healthy skepticism and shop around. And if you hear that the Martians have landed, don’t run – verify!