There’s no question that companies and brands are all-in with mobile advertising. But questions abound as to whether they’re getting their money’s worth for the billions they’re spending. Are they reaching the right consumers? Are ad recipients even aware of the commercial messages that appear on their screens? How effective are mobile ads in provoking interest in products and instilling an intent to buy?

The stakes surrounding these questions are incredibly high. Mobile ads accounted for 84% of Facebook’s  global revenues in 2016. For Google it was 59.5%, and 90% for Twitter. Advertisers know where they have to be. But so far, they don’t have a clear read on what all that spending accomplishes.

Many would-be solutions call for inferring mobile ads’ effectiveness by aggregating data that quantifies ad impressions and correlates them to sales lift. That’s important to provide a framework for understanding the “what” of ads’ correlations to consumer behavior -- but not the “who” or “why.” The real keys to unlocking the insights you need are the unique mobile Ad IDs that identify each device that receives a particular ad. Here's how the process works:

• When a smartphone or tablet receives an ad, the device’s Ad ID automatically is collected by the publisher, advertising agency or advertiser.

• Once you’ve obtained the Ad IDs for your campaign, you can match them against known recipients to see if those recipients fit the consumer profiles you’re trying to reach. .

• By partnering with MFour, you’ll match your AD IDs against more than one million active panelists who use the Surveys on the Go® research app. Now you’re ready to get insights about who those validated recipients are, and how they experienced your ads.

You now have two very useful options, each relevant to a specific need:

• Knowing your audience: Collect detailed, validated aggregate demographic data on these known recipients, which MFour collects from all panel members when they join. Do most of your mobile ad recipients fit the profile you’re paying to reach?

• See whether your ads are working: Survey these known and validated ad recipients to obtain insights into advertising awareness and recall, creative content, and to measure advertising lift.

• Did the campaign pay off? Follow up with respondents who report an intent to purchase with a subsequent survey to determine whether they actually shopped and bought. MFour experiences an 85% average response rate for follow-up surveys fielded within two weeks of the initial interview.

Do you agree that mobile ad measurement is a huge conundrum? Do Ad IDs sound like a way to find clarity? Let’s have a conversation about it. Please get in touch at sales@mfour.com.

It’s important for advertisers, marketers and research professionals to understand the mobile device IDs commonly known as Advertising IDs – what they are and why they’re uniquely powerful tools for obtaining trustworthy data and insights amid the rapid changes brought about by the explosion in mobile advertising. But when it comes to measuring mobile ads, confusion abounds. Mobile Ad IDs let you cut through the fog that has called metrics for mobile ads into question. Here are the key steps to clarity:

• Match your mobile Ad IDs to find validated recipients on the nation’s only all-mobile panel.

• Obtain complex key demographic characteristics of known ad recipients. Use to audit correct placement of your mobile ads or to detect fraud.

• Precisely target surveys to your known ad recipients to evaluate content and measure lift.

The key that opens the door to these insights and new research opportunities is the unique ID code attached to each smartphone. On iOS devices it’s called an Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) and on Android it’s the Google Advertising ID (GAID). Advertisers can collect these codes after an ad has reached a phone, then match the codes with phones used by members of MFour’s fully-representative, million-member active panel. You can opt for aggregate demographic information to see whether these validated ad recipients are in fact the audience you’re paying to reach. Then you can take your research a step further by surveying known ad recipients for fast, intelligible, and trustworthy insights into how your mobile campaign is performing. For more details on how Ad IDs can power pinpoint research, please contact sales@mfour.com.

MFour Mobile Research has partnered with Kayne NewRoad Ventures Fund for $5 million in new investment that will rapidly accelerate the mobile technology and consumer research company’s fast-paced expansion.  

The Insights technology leader will increase its 1 million-strong panel, launch mobile ad measurement products and expand mobile DIY capabilities in Q2. The funding comes after record 2016 growth that saw MFour add 88 new clients, including more than 20 Fortune 500 companies.

 “We’re just getting started,” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s co-founder and chief executive.  “Market research needs to realize that you can’t field representative surveys with online panel anymore. Mobile is the future, and researchers need to get on board or find a new profession.”

The $5 million in funding will be used to scale technology and research staff, with more than $2 million dedicated to marketing the industry’s only all-mobile, do-it-yourself (DIY) survey platform. MFourDIY® gives consumer insights professionals the opportunity to design, field and analyze their own surveys. With mobile DIY, users can locate shoppers and send them push notifications at the moment they’re making their buying decisions.

MFour will use the remainder of the investment to expand internationally and scale its staff by adding to its Labs & Engineering, Operations and Sales departments. The team will number more than 100 employees by the end of Q2, 2017, double its staffing strength from Q2, 2016.

Kayne NewRoad Ventures Fund backs rising companies with proven growth models and experienced leadership, especially in the technology area. 

To paraphrase Barbra Streisand, people who know people are the luckiest people in the world.

But what about people – let’s call them consumer insights professionals, advertisers and marketers -- who are drowning in numbers that tell them about people, but don’t give them the direct human interactions they need to really know people?

Big Data consists of numbers about people. It automatically tracks digital footprints that can reveal purchasing behavior and visits to retail sites. Insights gained from Big Data are inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence.

Advanced, survey-based mobile research is different, but harmonizes well with Big Data. It gives you direct evidence – the testimony you need to hear from real consumers in the Smartphone Era. This is how you can really know them: targeting them by demographic niche or observed behaviors, and then having a direct conversation about their  feelings, preferences and motivations. Just as in courts of justice, direct testimony from advanced mobile surveys and circumstantial evidence from Big Data go hand-in-hand.

Now there’s a numerical code that gives you a powerful new way to unlock the human side of that equation. It’s called the Advertising ID – and each mobile user has one attached to his or her phone or tablet. Acquire that number, and you can reach the real person who uses that phone.

In the next few days we’ll be telling you more about how Ad IDs are your conduits for getting to know consumers who are part of the massive digital majority that uses mobile apps and receives mobile ads. Once you master Ad IDs, we think you’ll feel like the luckiest consumer insights people in the world. So stay tuned.

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

If You Believe in “Mobile Optimized” You’ve Been Sadly Myth-led

Deep-Diving with Mobile Research

Are Mobile Panelists Distracted? Truth vs. Fiction.

And here's a Friday tune to get you bopping into a mythic weekend.

Your attention, please. Oh, never mind – we just remembered that today’s public can’t pay attention to anything at all. If a much-publicized Microsoft study has it right, the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds and you’ve already moved on to the next thing.

Millennials bear the brunt of lamentations about collapsing attention spans. They’re regularly accused of leading the charge to distractedness thumbs-first, with impulsive, non-stop swiping on their smartphone screens. Microsoft reported that “77% of people aged 18 to 24 responded `yes’ when asked `When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone.’”

But is using a smartphone an intrinsically attention-killing activity? Believing this plays into a common myth about mobile research – that anything to do with a smartphone diminishes our concentration and makes phones unreliable and undesirable for obtaining quality consumer data. You need to pause for a moment in the face of this myth and consult your own common sense and personal experience with smartphones. It will tell you that you can and do pay close attention to what’s on your phone – if and when that content is relevant and engaging.

And well-designed, intelligently fielded mobile surveys will accomplish exactly that – ask consumers about experiences and preferences that are deeply relevant, and keep them engaged by making survey-taking exactly the kind of fast, smooth in-app smartphone experience they relish. Having fielded hundreds of in-app mobile surveys with LOI of 20 minutes or more, we can assure you that they routinely enjoy completion rates of 90%, with a drop-off rate of no more than 6.5%. To find out how you can capture consumers’ attention by using advanced mobile, please get in touch at sales@mfour.com. We promise the kind of attentive and informative exchange you deserve.

We’ve all heard that all-purpose catchphrase, “keep it simple, stupid” – and the human craving for simplicity and clarity naturally makes us nod in agreement.

One of the prevailing myths about mobile research is that keeping it simple is all it can do. That is, mobile is fine for a few easy questions that respondents can answer quickly, but not suited to more complex projects. But the truth is that true, technologically advanced mobile research can do it all. Here are a couple of mistaken assumptions:

• When using mobile, you must drastically pare down grid questions to avoid squeezing in more than a smartphone screen can comfortably accommodate.

• Online, rather than mobile, is the only approach that can work for conjoint research projects that must capture insights into many different facets of consumer perceptions of a brand, product or service.

But whenever a myth presents itself, it’s important to look at the evidence – in this case by having a sophisticated conversation about the sophisticated solutions true, advanced mobile methodology puts in your hands. A mobile two-tap matrix lets respondents easily comprehend and successfully complete complex questions with many variables and answer choices. Two-tap design lets mobile panelists toggle instantly between questions and answer choices. And when your survey calls for nuanced design features such as logic and branching, the right advanced mobile approach gives you all the design complexity you need.

Whether your needs are simple or complex, you deserve to have a healthy, myth-free conversation about what true, advanced mobile research really can do. Just contact us at sales@mfour.com and tell us when you’d like to talk.

Market research exists to dispel myths and misconceptions about consumer behavior and replace them with validated facts. So it’s not only important, but extremely appropriate, to dispel the myth that “mobile optimized” research represents a step forward for researchers who need to respond effectively to the smartphone revolution.

The “mobile optimized” myth is based on the notion that mobile research is merely a one-size-fits-all commodity, rather than a highly-specialized process that requires advanced technology engineered specifically for surveys fielded to phones and tablets. Here’s the distinction that busts the myth: commodity-grade “mobile optimized” surveys shoehorn the same old online methodology into a mobile interface. True advanced-mobile research, however, takes place in a mobile app. “Mobile optimized” offers nothing technologically intrinsic to smartphones – it just uses them as generic devices to connect users to online surveys.

The term you need to understand for using mobile technology to collect consumer data is “native app” – an app that turns a survey into an intrinsic feature of the smartphone, harnessing the vast capabilities that have made smartphones today’s definitive information and communications technology. Let’s consider the factual basis for evaluating the myth of “mobile optimization.”

• 78% of American adults own smartphones, including 92% of Millennials (Pew Research Center).

• Millennials average 3.5 to 4 hours per day using mobile apps. The average for all U.S. adults is nearly 2.5 hours a day. (comScore)

• The comScore study concludes that “smartphone apps…already account for the vast majority of total mobile…time spent and are gaining share among every segment of the market.”

How does this impact mobile research? Because they require an Internet connection, “mobile optimized” online surveys take time to load in – and smartphone users won’t tolerate waits of more than two seconds. Native in-app surveys load instantly and don’t require a connection to the Internet. There’s no risk of a dropped Internet connection that’s likely to frustrate and disengage panelists, reducing your chances for fast, high-quality completes. 

So don’t be tempted to mistake “mobile optimized” for true, technologically advanced mobile. And don’t fall for the myth that all mobile research is created equal. There are other myths about mobile to explode. So please check out this week’s MFour blog for more about the myths you’ve probably heard, weighed against what you really need to know. And for full details about mobile research opportunities and solutions, please get in touch at sales@mfour.com. 

By now you’ve seen the statistics that show you’re living on a smartphone-saturated planet. And since you’re a market research professional, you’re putting some serious thought into what that portends for your livelihood. Is mobile data good data? Is it consistently reliable? Does it measure up to the online survey data you’ve built your career on? These are fair questions that deserve clear answers. In that spirit, here’s the first of several communications aimed at unraveling myths that have grown up around mobile. So is the screen too small?

It is small – no denying that. But what are you going to believe – the myth or your own hands and eyes? Chances are that you are among the 78% of adult Americans who now own a smartphone. You’re relying on it to avoid traffic on your daily commute. You’re depending on it to send important text messages. You’re using it to pick the best movie to take your kids to on Saturday—and you’ll use it to capture the beaming looks on their faces as they walk out of the theater floating on a magic carpet of delight. Then you’ll use it to send the pictures to their grandparents.

But take a survey? Maybe even a viewer-evaluation survey about that wonderful family film, sent to you by a researcher who GeoLocated you at the moment you’ve left the theater? Nah. The screen’s too small. If you believe that, then you’re admitting that we all have lyin’ eyes, because our eyes are on our smartphone screens. The myth that desktops and laptops are superior for research is a myth spun by sellers of last-generation online surveys and online panels. But what do your eyes tell you? And what do survey-taking consumers’ eyes tell them?

It’s only fitting that the best empirical evidence you can bring to bear on the myth of screen size is to find people who take consumer surveys on mobile and ask them. They’re telling you loud and clear with unsolicited public ratings and comments about Surveys on the Go® -- MFour’s native mobile research app. Week after week, month after month, year after year, it has enjoyed ratings of more than 4 stars out of 5 at the App Store and Google Play. Look it up and you’ll see endless commentary about how easy it is to take surveys when the platform is a native app and the device is a smartphone. It’s not about size. It’s about the experience—and MFour makes that experience flawless so you can get big insights.  

Columbus gambled that the earth was not flat. When it comes to mobile research, the biggest gamble is to remain in your safe, familiar harbor – until you realize that the tides have changed and standing still is not safe at all. To learn how to cut through the myth of the small screen, just contact sales@mfour.com.

As you’ve noticed, tattoos are everywhere, and MFour set out to survey members of the nation’s only all-mobile panel about tattoo consumption. Ink-credibly, we were unable to shut the survey down after the planned 6-hour fielding period. Talking about tattoos – theirs and others’ – was so engaging for respondents among the million-plus active panel members who use MFour’s Surveys on the Go® research app, that people were throwing down their smartphones in anger when they discovered the survey was already filled.

Outraged comments started pouring onto the Surveys on the Go® review pages at the App Store and Google Play. How dare we ask friends and relatives about tattoos, and refuse them the right to share their own crucial opinions on the 21st century’s most widespread form of truly committed personal expression?

We love our panelists. We take them seriously. So we reopened the study – with unlimited completes. Kudos to our Labs & Engineering team, for ingeniously installing instant emergency updates to our app and servers to keep the Surveys On The Go® system from crashing amid a flood of real time image and video responses capturing our survey-takers’ proudly-worn ink.

Among the hearts, dragons, risqué naughty bits, and heartfelt inked-in slogans, mottoes, and declarations of eternal love, we were shocked to see the Surveys On The Go® “OnGo” logo cropping up repeatedly – on arms, legs, backs, bellies, and even the occasional tush. Extending the survey from six hours to six days had so gratified our tattoo-loving panelists that a full 1% of them returned our love by rushing out to get permanent body ink.

MFour is truly humbled. And inspired.

CEO Chris St. Hilaire hit upon the most appropriate way to express his gratitude: “`Be heard, get paid’ is the Surveys On The Go® slogan – and today I’m announcing a new payment option for our panelists. Cash credits at tattoo parlors nationwide!”

“We’ll be shelling out a bundle,” the CEO added, “because we’re turning this into a tattoo tracker that’s never gonna end.”

Happy April Fools’ Day to one and all!

For a sampling of demographically representative tattoos we think we would have collected had we actually undertaken this study, just click here. And feel free to add them to your own personal collection on your next visit to your favorite tattoo artist.