What happens when you fail to innovate? Just ask a journalist – not because he or she is an expert on innovation, but because his or her job is in dire jeopardy because of the news industry’s failure to innovate when it had the chance. Unfortunately, there are very close parallels between the news industry’s refusal to get ahead of the curve 20 years ago as the Internet gathered momentum, and the conservative market research industry’s widespread reluctance to embrace the challenges and opportunities of the Smartphone Era.  

 

It seems incredible, but the Pew Research Center reports that 2016 marked the 28^th consecutive year of declining circulation for the U.S. newspaper industry. Combined online and print circulation tumbled 8%, and the revenue picture was even bleaker – an estimated 10% decline that was even worse than in 2015, when revenues fell 8%.

 

The Washington Post presents a good example of how the news industry looked a gift horse in the mouth and failed to respond in time to a technological sea change. Now the Post, to its credit, is belatedly taking its best shot at survival under the ownership of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who knows a thing or two about generating revenue in the age of digital technology. If Bezos and his smaller but still-potent newsroom succeed, the Post may yet manage to buck the news business’ long, downward trend.

 

History records that 25 years ago, the Post latched onto a revolutionary idea: develop an electronic edition to go with its highly profitable print paper. Attending a 1992 conference organized by Apple, the Post’s then managing editor, Robert Kaiser, saw the business implications of the rising but not yet dominant Internet. He wrote a long memo urging the Post to innovate and “be on the forefront” of the coming communications and information technology  breakthrough -- “not for the adventure, but for important defensive purposes.” The Post did, in fact, launch a website a few years later, but it never went all-in on the new technology. Like every other major daily, its finances eroded, until Bezos emerged as a white knight and came to the rescue, buying the Post in 2013 for $250 million. Post officials said it turned a profit in 2016, although as a privately held company it no longer publicly reports financial information. If revenues and profits are indeed growing, the Post is an exception to the rule.

 

Now the clock is ticking on another industry: market research. June 29 marks the 10^th anniversary of the first mass-market smartphone, the iPhone. What the Internet was to news, the smartphone is to research. It can be a destructive force, or a brilliant opportunity. It’s all up to you – stay with the old (online surveys and panels) or adapt to a new era of exciting mobile research solutions.

 

Everyone agrees that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which is why we shared this slice of history. But not everyone is able to act on it. If you think it’s time to take a step toward flourishing in the mobile present and future, then let’s talk about it. Just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

 

 

 

If your job is consumer insights, your every working day revolves around avoiding the fatal trap of data analysis: “Garbage in, garbage out.” Right?

 

Well, not always. Too many researchers for too many years have been accepting garbage from online panels because it’s the familiar and expedient thing to do. They’re willing to partner with online sample providers who resell and recycle the dwindling numbers of consumers who are still willing to take surveys on laptops and desktops, including legions of “professional” survey takers who play havoc with data quality. Not even a data-analysis genius can guide executives to good business decisions if what’s being analyzed is poorly sourced. But now we’ve reached a hopeful moment, a chance for researchers and brands’ insights departments to wake up, smell the trash, and bury it for good.

 

The recently-published GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report (GRIT) for the first half of 2017 reinforces a call to action that GreenBook’s editors have been making for more than a year: with online panels in crisis, it’s time to stop shrugging and start improving. But inertia is a powerful force. Similar alarms have been sounding for years, mainly unheeded.

 

Ron Sellers of Grey Matter Research & Consulting loudly blew the whistle back in 2009, in a hard-hitting report entitled “Dirty Little Secrets of Online Panels (And How the One You Select Can Make or Break Your Study).” He recruited his own team of “mystery shoppers” who each joined a dozen leading online research panels and took surveys for a month, recording their experiences in detail. Sellers and his helpers gave researchers a sophisticated, systematic look at how panelists were being recycled through multiple surveys – without regard to the fact that this kind of repetition and churn sacrifices quality to quantity, taints the data, and burns out the respondents.

 

Some of the panel providers Sellers included got passing grades, but others were caught in the act of supplying garbage-in sample for the sake of filling survey quotas. Among the unhealthy practices the study documented were packaging panelists from multiple sources without identifying them for a client, and biasing and burning out panelists by filtering them through multiple surveys. Consider these “Dirty Little Secrets” from 2009, and ask yourself whether they still ring true eight years later:

• “Not only are panel members inundated with multiple invitations [nearly two a day, on average, for two well-known panel providers]...but there appeared to be no limit to the number of invitations a panel member could receive or the number of studies in which they could participate.”

• “Over half of the surveys our shoppers attempted for Panel 3 were actually for Panel 12. Our shoppers even had the opportunity to complete the same questionnaire for this panel company multiple times through multiple different panel providers.”

• “End clients are getting what is likely to be poor quality research and limited insight from overused respondents. The critical question is: are you one of them?”

• “Apparently, some researchers either remain blithely unaware of what they’re getting, or they don’t care about data quality.”

Sellers repeated the exercise in 2012 and found that little had changed. It's even more telling that 45% of research clients surveyed for the just-published edition of the GRIT report said that panel quality continues to decline, versus just 20% who thought it's improving. How long will the insights industry tolerate this race to the bottom?

 

There's one crucially important opportunity that makes today much brighter than 2009 and 2012, if you're willing to seize it. Its the rise of mobile research and its ability to draw in a large, engaged and validated mobile panel. State-of-the-art mobile surveys take place inside a research app, making it possible to recruit a large, diversified and responsive panel because smartphone users want smoothly functioning mobile apps, not slow, frustrating sessions waiting for a mobile browser to connect with a website. There’s no need to recycle or outsource panelists when they flock to download a mobile survey app. Innovative mobile technology breeds strength in numbers, strength in engagement, and strength in data. Quality in, quality out.

 

Want to be part of the panel crisis’ solution? Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so let’s start a panel-quality cleanup right now by making transparency a priority and bringing specific issues to light. If you have a story to share, we’d love to hear about it. Just get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

 

What are the best ways to understand whether an advertisement is effective? That's the question at the Advertising Research Foundation's ARF Modern Measurement: Media, Models & Methods conference getting under way today in Jersey City.

 

Mobile ad measurement is a particularly hot topic. It's huge, crucial, and only dimly understood because mobile ads' ascendancy has been so sudden. With that in mind, MFour's Chief Product Officer & Director of Panel, Michael Smith, will give a 20-minute presentation at 4:10 p.m. today in which attendees can get the clear read they need on how to understand their mobile ads' effectiveness. His talk -- presented in the Holland meeting room -- is entitled "Mobile Advertising Measurement: Stop Inferring, Start Knowing."

 

It's safe to say that nobody knows more about advanced solutions for mobile ad measurement and mobile ad testing than Michael, who has overseen the launch of two new products aimed at giving advertisers the testing and measurement tools they need -- Mobile Ad Metrics OnDemand and Emotional Brand Connections Social Media Ad Testing. He's happy to be your resource in Jersey City, the town where Frank Sinatra grew up. And, as always, feel free to get in touch at solutions@mfour.com.

 

 

 

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

 

GRIT's Shocking Findings About the Research Panel Mess

 

GreenBook Says the Panel Crisis Needs Mobile Solutions

 

Test Mobile Social Media Ads in Consumers' Facebook Feeds

 

And here's a Friday tune to rock you into the weekend.

 

 

There’s hardly a word for it other than “shocking” – although “travesty” does come to mind: only 74% of consumer sample providers think they owe it to their clients to specify whether the research panels they’re selling are representative of the consumer populations their clients need to target.

 

This and other eye-popping findings about panel quality and provider transparency leap from the downloadable pages of  the newly-released GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report (GRIT) for the first half of 2017.

 

If you were told that only 74% of surgeons thought they owed you an explanation of what they’d be doing when they cut you open, wouldn’t you make darn sure to avoid the scalpels of the other 26%?

 

If only 74% of home insurance agents were willing to give you a clear and complete rundown of the coverage they were selling, wouldn’t you walk out if you found yourself sitting across a desk from one of the other 26%?

 

GreenBook’s latest survey of market research professionals also found that 88% of research buyers think panel providers should “advise on whether their samples are representative of a target population.” What’s puzzling is that 12% of buyers don’t think that information is mandatory.

 

Fully 45% of the research clients who responded to the GRIT report’s survey of 2,637 market research professionals believed that panel quality is getting worse. Only 20% said it’s getting better. It’s no surprise that panel providers surveyed for GRIT painted a far rosier picture: 55% said their product is getting better, and 20% admitted it’s getting worse. This is truly shocking. If this happened in the construction industry – 20% of concrete or steel providers copping to declining quality – there’d be a Congressional investigation.

 

With that in mind, it’s also hardly surprising that, as the GRIT authors note, “only about one in ten insights buyers say their projects compare 'very well’ to their ideal project.” About 60% of buyers said their projects performed “somewhat well” when measured against a standard of ideal quality. That means nearly a third of market research clients come away disappointed that they didn’t get anything approaching the quality they should expect. Chronic disappointment without acting decisively to change things leads to not caring. And not caring leads to not surviving. 

 

What a mess – and please note that “mess,” “shocking,” and “travesty” are our descriptors for the state of sample provision, not GRIT's. GreenBook put it a little more delicately: “Some participants seem to understand that there is a disconnect between sample providers and buyers, both in collaboration and transparency.”

 

One unnamed MR professional quoted in the GRIT report just wished that panel providers would “[be] forthcoming on all the sources a sample comes from. Without this, the industry will constantly sustain black eyes.”

 

Another GRIT respondent had this to say about the terrible consequences of slipshod panel recruitment and cultivation: “The way the industry treats respondents is not improving so I am not sure why we would expect the quality of response/engagement to improve.”

 

To their great credit, GreenBook’s editors have been sounding a clear alarm about panel quality and panelists’ dissatisfaction with their survey experiences for more than a year. The GRIT report concludes with a detailed addendum on consumers’ satisfaction with the survey-taking experience, drawn from a separate study GreenBook recently published. Taking care of panelists by providing engaging, well-designed survey experiences is at “the heart of product development and marketing, but yet are hardly even a consideration in research,” write the GRIT authors. “Participants are the lifeblood of market research, and disregarding the respondent experience in the research process is counter-productive to say the least.” [The italics are ours].

 

Maybe the reason that more than a quarter of panel providers won’t tell you whether they can fill your survey-targeting needs is that the less said about their product on all fronts, the better.

 

The GRIT report proposes “a priority action list” for addressing the panel crisis. Topping the list is a suggestion to “Go `mobile first’ in designing studies.’” That’s a start, but in our view it won’t get you across the finish line. To get the insights you need from mobile research, you have to meet the smartphone-obsessed public where it lives. So you should be looking very closely at aligning your projects to consumers’ preferred information and content platform, the mobile app. MFour’s in-app research fields questions to a large and engaged active panel of more than one million U.S. consumers who take surveys on their smartphones. It’s not merely “mobile first.” It’s mobile definitive.

 

The takeaway we want to add to the GRIT report is that the research technology and panel you need to overcome all the obstacles GRIT documents already exist. Seize them and you and your research chops will gain a great deal of credibility among your clients or top brand executives, because you'll be giving them the data and insights they need to make the right business moves. We won’t go into particulars here, but to learn more about how to get mobile right, solve your panel problems and impress your research stakeholders, click on any or all of the links below. Or get in touch at sales@mfour.com.

 

MFour Answers GreenBook’s Call to Solve the Panel Crisis

 

How Do Mobile Best Practices Drive Panel Quality? Take Six Minutes To Get Tuned In

 

MFour Panel Demographics

 

Mobile Panel Experience – and Why it Matters

The editors of GreenBook continue to do important work to warn against a threat to the market research industry’s very survival: a failure to give survey respondents a satisfying experience. When the habitat for survey-takers turns inhospitable, they’ll return insult for insult, disrespect for disrespect. The result will be miserable response rates, flatlining data quality and a deterioration in business decision-makers’ trust in their research suppliers or in-house insights departments.

 

GreenBook editors address this crisis In the latest edition of the GRIT Consumer Participation in Research Report. Their goal is to reform what they call a “quite alarming” disregard among insights professionals for the panelist experience.

 

GreenBook partnered with panel providers to survey 6,208 research participants worldwide, including 2,005 in the United States, about their satisfaction and preferences for taking part in research studies.

 

The bottom line is a warning that doesn’t mince words: “We as an industry must change our ways, and respondents have just given us a pretty clear set of directions on how to do that. The way we have always conducted research may have met our needs in the past, but the world has changed…people simply expect more from their relationships, including research.” And those expectations aren't being met. GreenBook reported that 48.9% of consumers indicated satisfaction with their survey experiences (8 or higher on a scale of 10,) and only 23.1% gave the experience a peak grade of 9 or 10.

 

Beyond documenting the threat, GreenBook posits some ideas for countering it.

• Five core principles for better panel experience: “build brands and relationships,” “be transparent,” “engagement is key,” “make it simple and clear” and “user experience matters.”

• Five suggestions for implementing these principles: “leverage technology,” “make it mobile first,” “keep it short,” “deliver flexible and real-time rewards,” and “ensure 100% data quality.” 

• And five watchwords for staying focused on giving panelists a quality experience: “put the respondent first,” “let respondents set terms of engagement,” “be respectful,” “make it rewarding” and “create win/win relationships.”

This is important. And refreshing. GreenBook has painted the big picture well, while laying out many of the specific challenges to making it brighter. However, there’s one important missing factor to consider. As researchers act on the GRIT panel experience report's urgent advice to “leverage technology” and “make it mobile first,” they need to understand two competing mobile research technologies and methodologies.

• One is transformative because it recognizes and taps into the smartphone’s powerful capabilities as a research tool.The other is a quick-fix, rear-guard action that unimaginatively attempts to migrate outdated online survey methodology onto mobile screens.

• The retro approach is commonly known as “mobile optimized.” It’s core value proposition is cosmetic: make last-generation online surveys look better in a smaller smartphone interface.

• Web-based mobile surveys don’t solve the problem of slow, unreliable performance due to dropped signals and slow load-ins. They just perpetuate the panel failures of online surveys.

• The key word here is “online,” since mobile optimized surveys require the respondent to be online to connect with a survey housed on a website.

• Advanced mobile technology transplants the survey-taking experience to a cutting-edge native app. In-app surveys are “native” to smartphones because the questionnaire is instantly embedded (“cached” is the technical term) in the phone itself.

• You’re not getting advanced mobile if the method you choose involves web connections and all the drawbacks they bring.

To learn more, just check the MFour blog for fresh daily news and information about mobile research, including specific product and panel information, and regular how-to items on mobile best practices. Use the search function by plugging in terms such as “in-app” and “panel quality” to get layers of insights into the concerns GreenBook has raised. Or, for a direct, one-on-one conversation, just contact us at sales@mfour.com.

 

 

 

The most celebrated new species discovered in 2016 was the Sorting Hat Spider, which scientists came upon in a forest in India. They named it after a wizard’s hat in the “Harry Potter” saga, because the little arachnid’s conical torso uncannily resembles a wizard’s hat.

 

So what in the world does a newfound spider have to do with consumer insights? It wouldn’t have happened if these scientists hadn’t had the good sense to venture into the most promising habitat for making discoveries. And great research won’t happen if you don’t venture into the natural habitats where consumers naturally gather.

 

That’s the core idea behind an innovation called Emotional Brand Connections Social Media Ad Testing. Inject the ad you want to test into the natural habitat most-favored by today’s mobile consumers – their social news feeds. By ComScore’s estimate, 70% of social media use takes place via a mobile app. And only an in-app mobile research method such as EBC Social Media Ad Testing can let you access mobile panelists in the mobile environments they inhabit. Here’s how it works:

• Use panel demographics to identify a test audience of mobile consumers who are likely to be interested in the product you’re advertising.

• You’ll find your target sample fully represented among the 1,000,000 active users of Surveys On The Go® – the mobile research app that powers EBC Social Media Ad Testing.

• Inject your test ad into these targeted consumers’ social media news feeds. It’s just a test – but recipients won’t know that. Because it fits in naturally with all the other content in their news feeds, your target audience will assume your test is just one more ad like all the others they get.

• Now observe ad-recipients’ natural behavior by capturing passive data from their phones. You’ll track whether they’ve interacted with your test ad – and how. Did they click or enlarge the ad? Listen to its audio? Like or share it?

• Next, survey the same ad recipients, using advanced, in-app mobile research technology. Ask about whatever you need to know – including questions about brand and product recall and intent to purchase. Ask and receive consumers’ detailed evaluations of what works or doesn’t work about the ad’s concept and creative content.

By unobtrusively injecting your test ads into mobile consumers' natural social habitats, you’ll extract quality data and insights that will help you find your way through the forest of mobile social media advertising. EBC Brand Connections Social Ad Testing will help you gain confidence that your ad campaign will drive brand awareness, interest and intent to buy – or alert you that the ad isn't quite working and needs adjusting and further testing. This may sound like wizardry, but it’s really just a matter of sound research science, with innovative technology and methodology uniting to solve one of today's most pressing problems for brands and advertising professionals. To learn more, just contact us at sales@mfour.com.

 

(L-R) Julie Huang, Julian Ramirez, Ana Truong

 

MFour continues to expand its survey development and fielding capabilities with three new hires who’ll ensure successful projects for its fast-growing client roster.

 

On the development end, Julie Huang joins the Labs & Engineering team as a Tech Lead who’ll guide a team of engineers through fielding-related projects. She previously was a web developer for Fuhu, Inc.,  and was a project manager for development of an educational app for the nabi brand tablet for kids. Julie earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine; in her spare time she’s avidly studying Japanese and Korean languages, continuing a passion that grew out of college courses. 

 

Ana Truong and Julian Ramirez are the newest additions to MFour’s Operations team. Ana is a Research Manager, working closely with clients and MFour teams to ensure project feasibility, appropriate sample specifications and effective survey design. She previously did entertainment-related research at MarketCast and Ipsos, where she worked on ad-testing, long-term tracking and concept studies for major clients. Ana holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis and a Master’s degree from California State University, Long Beach -- both in Psychology.

 

Julian comes to MFour as a Fielding Expert; previously he was a production manager for Scientific Telephone Samples. He’s an avid soccer player and has enough leftover energy to care for two puppies -- Leo the beagle and Penelope the English bulldog.

 

Welcome aboard, Julia, Ana and Julian!

MFour will be at the OmniShopper Conference in Minneapolis, June 20-22. Stop by our table and talk about your research needs with the industry's most experienced suppliers of advanced mobile survey technology and panel solutions. 

Look for us at the ARF Conference 2017, June 12-13 in Jersey City. Michael Smith, our Chief Product Officer & Director of Panel, will give a presentation Monday, June 12 on the hot topic of mobile advertising measurement.