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

Millennials Won't Trust You if You Don't Trust Mobile.

Shunned by Millennials? Friend Them with a Great Mobile Experience.

See Why Small Mobile Screens Give You Big Research Results.

And here's a Friday tune to get all of us giggling.

Is virtual reality on the verge of triumphing as the next entertainment experience to enchant a mass public? Global Web Index (GWI) says affordability, software performance, and content will decide the question – and that the best bet as competitors race to dominate virtual reality is to focus on delivering the experience to consumers on their smartphones.

Success, the report predicts, will mandate engineering a vivid, top-quality virtual reality experience on mobile devices, rather than on personal computers and gaming consoles. The takeaway for market research is that there’s a new opportunity, because developers of content, software and hardware alike, along with retailers, all will have a stake in staying closely on top of consumer sentiment about virtual reality as a whole.

Here are some of the insights GWI is offering on the opportunities and challenges that virtual reality presents:

• “For VR to make it to the mainstream, developers need to look at it from the perspective of the consumer.”

• That ultimately means targeting consumers on the devices they are already use, which makes the smartphone the strongest contender.

• At the moment, Google’s smartphone-focused “Daydream” headset “holds the most intrigue” in the race to “bring high-quality smartphone-enabled VR to the masses.”

• Although “the buzz surrounding VR and AR has been intensifying for some time…it’s difficult to ignore the hurdles that stand in the way of it achieving mainstream adoption.”

• “The biggest of all is a lack of quality, compelling content.”

• “Investment may have poured into the hardware supporting the tech, but the same cannot be said for the content across different genres.”

Based on past experiences in entertainment in the smartphone sphere, virtual reality’s potential does seem vast. We already know that smartphone users everywhere will flock to good content and smoothly-functioning technology when it reinforces consumers’ demonstrated delight in their phones. Smartphones are where entertainment consumption increasingly happens – Americans already are spending an average of more than two hours a day having media experiences on mobile apps. It’s only logical that virtual reality will succeed to the extent it can provide mobile experiences equal to or better than the ones mobile consumers already enjoy.

Whether you’re looking to measure consumer sentiment about virtual reality or you’re just looking for deep insights into your current products, you’ll discover a new world of market research by simply taking a look at the MFourDIY^TM  platform – the world’s only all-mobile, true-mobile research platform.

Once upon a time young Baby Boomers had a saying: “don’t trust anyone over 30.” Now their children and grandchildren who make up the Millennial generation are doing them one better: “don’t trust anyone, period.”

That’s the seemingly sorry takeaway from a Harvard University study of U.S. Millennials’ attitudes toward our society’s leading institutions. Focusing on 18- to 29-year-olds, the survey asked respondents to identify institutions they feel are trustworthy “all of the time,” “most of the time,” “some of the time,” or “never.” The U.S. Military was the only one that at least half of Millennials felt deserved their trust all or most of the time.

But in adversity lies opportunity. Brands and companies have a chance to lower Millennials’ shield of mistrust, if they can find the right messaging and provide products and experiences that deliver value and signal that they are authentic and real. Have something specific and relevant to offer and you can occupy the high ground of confidence, relatability and reliability that many big institutions have lost. And market research provides the crucial data to shine a light on which paths to take to that higher ground. If, that is, the research is done right – and, crucially, in a way that can engage those mistrustful Millennials who seem ready to tune out at the very moment they’re coming into their own as the dominant force in driving government, commerce, and social mores.

In a moment, you’ll see some ideas about how to cut through Millennial mistrust with Millennial-friendly research approaches. But first, here’s a grid showing what you’re up against – a Millennial mindset that seems to regard institutions’ messages and actions as suspect until proven otherwise.

From the 2016 questionnaire, here’s what Millennials said about trusting the following institutions to do the right thing:

Two things that do resonate with Millennials are rewarding encounters with technology and a belief in the wisdom of crowds. As Washington Post blogger Emily Badger phrases it, “I don’t trust you, Random Guy Giving Me a Ride Home, but I do trust the 4.9-star average rating of all the people who’ve been in your car before.” That’s because, for Millennials, it “is about trust between one person and the crowd.”

This is encouraging. It means you have good field position (to use a football metaphor) to score with Millennials. You just have to have the right game plan. Connect with them on the right devices and reward them with the right kinds of survey experiences, and you’ll get this wary generation of doubters and skeptics to trust you enough to give you the quality consumer data you need.  

Millennials are ready to trust and engage with your surveys if you show you’ve got the technological savvy to give them a smartphone experience they’ll admire and enjoy. The best true-mobile research technology can connect you with more than 700,000 Millennials who use the Surveys on the Go® app. They’ve certified their trust and engagement by giving the app consistent average ratings of at least 4.5 stars out of 5 (you can check out tens of thousands of unsolicited ratings and reviews for the Surveys On The Go® app by visiting its pages at the App Store and Google Play). To learn more about how you can connect with Millennial consumers for research that both parties can trust, just click here.

A new report by eMarketer says that mobile users are more than twice as likely to block advertisements on personal computers than on smartphones. It’s perhaps the ultimate testament to mobile dominance, and to the public’s eagerness for all kinds of experiences on their phones. If ads are welcome on mobile, what isn’t?

The eMarketer study of Americans’ ad-blocking behavior showed that 20.1% of pc users employ ad blockers, compared to just 7.9% of smartphone users. While Millennials are particularly intolerant of advertising on personal computers, far more are willing to accept it on their phones. eMarketer estimates that 41.1% of Millennials use ad blockers – but that the great majority of the blockers are deployed on personal computers rather than on smartphones.

It’s one more reason that market research, too, must be devoted to providing a rich smartphone experience. Why? Engagement is why. You have to give the people what they want – and they want good smartphone experiences. Mobile surveys can be among the most rewarding and engaging experiences for smartphone users, but that hinges entirely on knowing how to provide a satisfying experience. All mobile is not created equal, and only the most advanced, true-mobile research solutions will give you the panel engagement that's needed to drive fast and accurate insights.

A great way to get started is to try MFourDIY™ – the nation’s only do-it-yourself mobile research tool. It's your secret weapon for capturing vivid consumer insights. And we’ve made it simple for you to use. To learn more, please contact sales@mfour.com – and you’ll be on your way to delivering the type of mobile experience that panelists love.

If your mobile research strategy is really screwed up, it might stem from believing the myth of the small screen. It was once thought that smartphone screens were ill-suited to consumer research because they’re too small to engage mobile survey respondents and elicit accurate reliable data. These smartphone denialists say it’s better to stick to online studies geared to desktops and laptops – sizeable screens that supposedly provide a better user experience.

There’s plenty of real-world data that busts this particular hot air balloon – with one caveat: like TV’s Mythbusters, contradicting a myth takes lots of experimental ingenuity to properly put it to the test.

Recent earnings reports suggest that Google, no stranger to technical ingenuity, is also busy exploding the small-screen myth. Which is only natural, given that Google’s phenomenal success stems in large part from satisfying the public’s enthusiasm for – make that the public’s insistence on – accessing all kinds of content on smartphones.

• Forbes predicts that Google’s advertising revenue from mobile searches will reach $29 billion in 2017 – 26.6% higher than the $22.9 billion expected from Googling on personal computers.

• The New York Times reports that Google commands more than 90% of search revenue from mobile devices.

• And here’s a big reason why: “On smaller mobile displays, Google’s ads occupy a large portion of the screen – making it more likely a user will click on them.”

That last item says it all: the right kind of display on a smartphone screen doesn’t alienate. It engages. And it motivates interaction.

Smartphone surveys are a sequence of mobile interactions. As respondents move through shifting screen displays to receive and answer questions, smooth function is essential; so is an elegant display that’s clear and simple enough to command full engagement. And this leads us to another mobile myth that needs busting: the notion that all mobile is created equal.

Mobile research technology is not a commodity. It is not a generic, undifferentiated, one-size-fits-all utility. Rather than give you a step-by-step explanation, here are the two essential questions you should ask of any supplier of mobile survey technology and mobile panel:

• “Will my survey be fielded with a native app that makes it truly mobile, or is the process you’re selling only adapting online methodology to a smaller screen?”

• “Do your mobile surveys require a connection between the phone and the web?”

If the answer to both is that you’re getting an in-app process that loads the entire survey into a phone and requires no further web connection – then you’re buying glitch-free, true-mobile research and a fully-engaged panel.

But if the answer is a product tied to the mobile web, you’re buying all the hazards that go with smartphone web connections, including respondents losing connections in dead zones, and watching question downloads slow to a crawl. You’ll be buying a real risk that survey-takers will tune out at the first sign of a delay. Now your more mobile-savvy competitors will be laughing as they outflank you.

Google makes no such mistake. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, told the New York Times that beautifully functioning content such as its YouTube, Maps, and Google Play assets constitute “prime time in the mobile era.”

If you want prime time mobile research, the best way to get started is with MFourDIY™ – the only in-app, true-mobile do-it-yourself survey-building tool. You’ll see for yourself how mobile myths get busted – and you’ll stop screwing up your research and deliver more vivid results. For full details, just click here.

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

• Speed Minus Quality Gets You Nowhere Fast
• Forbes Gives Our App the Thumbs Up
• These Five Little Questions Could Save Your Career

And here's a Friday tune to send you smiling and prancing into your weekend.

Here’s a message for all who’ll attend The Quirk’s Event West next week in Irvine, CA: Welcome to the neighborhood!

MFour’s headquarters is just two miles from the Hotel Irvine, the event site where we’ll all be getting reacquainted. Be sure to stop by booth #715 to talk about your survey technology and panel needs – but especially to play! That’s right. You get to step into our “Surveys on the Blow” Cash-Grab Wind Booth and snag all the greenbacks you can as they swirl about you. Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson – and you. Grabbers keepers!

The fun doesn’t stop there. You also get to play around with programming a demo survey with MFourDIY™ – the nation’s only all-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building platform. See your design come together on our big screen. You’ll also hear the latest about MFour’s ad-measurement capabilities across all channels, including the just-introduced Mobile Ad Metrics OnDemand solution. So come visit us and enjoy some hometown hospitality. If you need more details, feel free to contact us at sales@mfour.com. See you soon!

MFour is pleased to announce Darren Clark as its Chief Operating Officer. Bringing more than 15 years of executive experience, Darren will play a leading role in guiding MFour as it expands its staff, introduces new products, and sets increasingly higher standards for mobile market research technology. Darren’s key task is ensuring that clients continue to receive the highest level of technology and service during this time of accelerating growth.

To see the full announcement, click here. 

Mitchell Jacobs, Chris Nguyen, Adam Barnhart (L-R)

MFour has hired three new employees whose expertise will help drive the ongoing advancement of research technology and survey programming quality that make the company the leading innovator in mobile market research.

Adam Barnhart joins as Survey Programming and Data Processing Manager, a supervisorial position in which he’ll oversee the Operations Department’s workflow, which involves everything from programming to data processing, driving on-time, error-free results for MFour clients. Adam arrives with extensive technical and managerial experience in market research, including more than 20 years with the market research firm Survox/CfMC. He earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History and Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also served as a teaching fellow. Adam is also a bass player, an avid sports fan (Lakers, Angels, Liverpool Football Club), and a family man with two children, two dogs, and a wife who’s a veterinarian.

Chris Nguyen joins as a Quality Assurance Engineer who’ll focus on processes that safeguard the security and integrity of mobile data, ensuring smooth performance and software updates for MFour’s Surveys On The Go® research app. He arrives from Ticketmaster, where he played a comparable role in assuring data security. Chris earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from California State University, Fullerton.  

Mitchell Jacobs comes aboard as a Quality Assurance Specialist whose duties focus on perfecting internal processes to deliver the highest quality data for MFour clients. Mitchell previously worked in quality assurance at Numecent, Inc., and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. In his spare time, Mitchell likes to turn his technical know-how to music production and sound design.

Welcome Aboard!

We’re honored that Forbes Magazine highlighted MFour’s signature Surveys On The Go® research app in a recent article under the headline “How To Make Extra Money Using Mobile Apps.” We’re especially pleased that writer Maya Kachroo-Levine captured the essence of the app’s significance when she wrote that, in addition to giving users a source of extra earnings, our survey experience “can be really interesting.”

Important business decisions ride on what consumers say -- including getting maximum impact from an advertising campaign by pre-testing, then measuring how consumers respond to messaging. It's therefore imperative to make sure that respondents are fully engaged when taking surveys. Amazingly, this point apparently has been lost on many market research professionals and their clients – to the vocal dismay of the authors of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) report.

According to the GRIT report, quality data and insights depend on having a quality panel that’s deeply engaged in answering questions thoughtfully. But only 50% of GRIT respondents said that a quality sample source is important. Even more disconcerting to the authors was this remarkable statistic: only 4% of clients and 7% of research providers agree it’s important “that your participants speak highly of their market research experience [and] convince people they know to participate in research.”

In today’s mobile-centric world, survey respondents demand rewarding experiences. That’s one of the reasons why Surveys On The Go® is the highest-rated and most downloaded survey app. The Surveys On The Go® app – and the one million-plus panelists who use it – are delivering rich insights that arise from gratifying experiences with their smartphone features. Every other panel provider will paint you a rosy picture of its panel’s engagement, and you’ll have to take their word for it. MFour’s panelists, on the other hand, speak for themselves – literally – by posting unsolicited comments and ratings about their experiences at the App Store and on Google Play.

But don’t listen to us. Listen to the experts from GreenBook. And listen to our panelists. If Forbes knows what to look for in a mobile research app, so should you. A good point of entry is MFourDIY™ – the industry’s only true-mobile DIY survey-building platform. To learn more, contact sales@mfour.com.