(L-R Derek, Ken)

MFour is proud to announce two new additions to the team!

A recent graduate from the University of California, Riverside, Derek Fuller joins the MFour operations team as a DIY Specialist. In his new role, Derek will handle the Live-Chat for the Operations Department and continue to identify and develop ways to expand the “self-help” tool in the application. Derek has valuable experience working in customer-facing roles where his interpersonal and problem-solving skills truly shine. Outside of the office, you can find Derek playing videos on his PC or honing his skills as a DJ.

MFour is also excited to announce that Ken Chen will become a valued member of Operations. Chen graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics and, using programming tools such as R and Python, Chen will be key in managing and overseeing the analysis of consumer data. He will also maintain internal quality control, manage data files, provide insight into new features, and set up surveys on MFour’s proprietary research platform.

(L-R Drew, Sally, Jimmy)

MFour is excited to announce three new hires to the team.

Drew Ostrowski joins the MFour team as a Senior Software Engineer focused on developing the back end infrastructure of the company’s proprietary algorithms. He will also be a key part of the modernization and decoupling of legacy software and building new technological components. Ostrowski brings a fluent understanding of the PHP language and a deep knowledge of system architecture and software development. Prior experience includes his achievements at INK, Verys and Driftek LLC, where he built an innovative lead generation marketing site for the financial industry. Ostrowski brings over ten years of experience to the team and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from California State University, Fullerton. Outside of the office he is a family man and movie enthusiast, being a key volunteer for the annual Newport Beach Film Festival.

MFour is also proud to add Sally Zhu to the Operations team, where she will support internal quality control systems and develop surveys for MFour’s innovative consumer research application, Surveys on the Go^®. Multi-talented, Sally has valuable experience with scripting languages such as R, Python, and SQL, as well as knowledge into software like Stata, SPSS, Tableau, LaTeX and Excel. Previously, Zhu was influential in directing and coordinating activities at Citrus College, her first job after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics.

Graduating from the University of California Irvine, Jimmy Sung has over ten years of public and private accounting experience, including time as an Accounting Manager at a global manufacturing company of nutraceutical products. Sung brings advanced accounting skills, ERP system implementations, and advanced Excel knowledge, and he will be directly assisting our CFO with budgets and forecasts for the future. He will also prepare monthly financial statements, oversee month end closing processes, lead the annual financial audit process, and manage vital treasury functions. In his free time, Sung likes to take impressive day hikes all across California, including Mt. Baldy, San Jacinto Peak, and more.

(L-R Paul, Mehdi, Elaina)

MFour has hired Elaina O’ Mahoney as Vice President of Product, a new position, as well as Senior Engineers Mehdi Eskandari and Paul (Thuy) Nguyen.

O’Mahoney brings more than a decade of experience leading product teams in the tech sector, including serving as Vice President of Product Management for CareerBuilder's Software Suite of human resources recruitment technologies. At MFour she will focus on creating easy-to-use data products that power smart business decisions by leveraging the special capabilities made possible by  Surveys On The Go^®, MFour’s advanced mobile-app research app, and the validated, first-party U.S. consumer panel that uses the app to participate in surveys and opted-in behavioral tracking. O’Mahoney holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Colorado State University and is working on a Master's in Business Administration at Maryville University. Apart from work, Elaina loves to travel and spend at-home time with family. 

Eskandari joins MFour as a Senior Software Engineer. His credentials over the past ten years include Senior Web Developer for finance company American Advisors Group and Software Developer for Dealer Solutions Group. Achievements included helping to create apps and APIs to improve user experiences. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Hardware Engineering from Azad University of Tehran. Eskandari’s tech activities also including publishing his own mobile apps, one of which was among the ten most-downloaded apps in Iran for 2014.

Nguyen, a Senior DevOps Engineer,  has more then 20 years’ experience as a System Administrator and a Senior System Engineer, including positions at Alfa Systems and Sony Network Entertainment. He earned a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from California State University, Long Beach, and also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. Thuy is an accomplished landscape photographer who also enjoys ping pong, spectator sports and playing drums and guitar in a soft-rock and oldies band.

Welcome aboard to our three new hires. 

(L-R Natasha Tran, Thomas Palompelli, Allison Constable)

MFour has hired three team members in Product Marketing and Sales who will help bring innovative online and offline mobile data products to market and help businesses use them to support smart decision-making.

Thomas Palompelli is Director of Product Marketing, a new position that plays  a key role in defining, developing and launching MFour’s data products. He brings extensive experience in advertising and ad tech, most recently as Director of Product Marketing at FreeWheel, a Comcast company. At MFour, Tom’s portfolio encompasses a wide range of product offerings for brands and retailers who need quality consumer data in all its dimensions. He holds a Master’s degree from Fordham University in Business Administration, Management and Marketing, and a dual-major Bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management and Information Systems and Operations from Fairfield University. Having grown up, attended college and spent his career until now in the Greater New York City area, Tom is beginning a new chapter as a Southern Californian. He enjoys riding a motorcycle and will now face a big decision: to lane-split or not to lane-split. It’s illegal back in New York.

Allison Constable joins the Sales team as a Senior Solutions Executive, advising brands, media companies and agencies on how to harness MFour’s groundbreaking products to drive better insights into advertising effectiveness. She brings considerable experience to addressing clients’ challenges in testing and measuring the impact of their advertising. Allison’s previous positions include Business Development Director for Media & Content at Kantar, Ad Effectiveness Analyst for Buzzfeed and Client Supervisor for Millward Brown Digital.  She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication at Elon University. Outside of work, she likes reading and listening to podcasts about human behavior and emotion, CrossFit, yoga, petting every dog she sees, spending time outside, cooking and hosting dinner parties for her friends.

Natasha Tran arrives as a Senior Solutions Development Representative, educating prospective clients about MFour products, including always-on tracking of consumers’ offline and online buying journeys. She previously was a Sales Executive for real estate data company Zillow Group, specializing in driving new business for its advertising platform. Natasha also gained a first-hand perspective on the needs of businesses and their customers in an earlier job as an Assistant Manager for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Riverside, majoring in Media and Cultural Studies, with a minor in Business Administration. Her outside interests include snowboarding and enjoying time with her dog.

Stranded at Home by the Polar Vortex? Univision's TV morning show, "¡Despierta America!," and lifestyle reporter Erick Cuesta recently advised their Spanish-speaking audience to download MFour's Surveys On The Go^® market research app to spend that time profitably by earning cash taking consumer surveys.

Brands are keen to understand the preferences and opinions of Hispanic consumers, who are a continually growing force in the marketplace. And, as the recognition by "¡Despierta America!" attests, SOTG is an ideal conduit for connecting with them.

"No dejes que tu dinero se congele: apps para hacer un dinerito extra si estás atrapado en casa por la nieve,” was the Jan. 31 segment’s caption – “Don’t let your money freeze: apps to make a little extra money if you’re stuck at home by the snow.”

“We’re thrilled to be showcased on the popular award-winning morning show ‘¡Despierta América!’” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour's CEO and co-founder.  “With 2.5 million users of Surveys On The Go^® we can connect leading brands with America’s Spanish-speaking population, which other research companies consider ‘hard to reach.’”

MFour is a go-to choice for brands and advertisers who need insights into the preferences, opinions and online and offline buying journeys of all segments of the American population, including crucial Hispanic consumers.

While the market research industry has tagged Hispanics as “hard to reach” when it comes to participating in consumer surveys, MFour provides full representation of the U.S. Hispanic population. They constitute 20% of the validated, first-party consumer panel whose members use Surveys On The Go^®, closely matching the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate that Hispanics make up 18% of the population. MFour also captures the diversity within the Hispanic consumer demographic by segmenting them into three sub-categories: Acculturated (65%), Bicultural (33%) and Unacculturated (5%).

Watch the “¡Despierta América!” feature at https://bit.ly/2SarMxT

For more on Surveys On The Go^®, click here.

(L-R: Tara Chawla, Yvette Gonzalez, Fang Zhang)

MFour announces the hiring of three team members in Technology, Research Operations and Administration.

Fang Zhang joins the technology team as a Senior Software Engineer. Past positions include Senior Software Engineer at Levyx, Inc. and Staff Seismic Image Analyst for CCG Oil & Gas Services, where his work included developing software for converting digital representations of sound waves into visual imagery to aid drilling decisions. Zhang holds multiple academic degrees – a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Connecticut, Master’s degrees from the Chinese Academy of Science (in Mathematics) and the University of California, Irvine (in Computer Science), and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Peking University. Fang is a soccer fan and enjoys reading in his free time.

Yvette Gonzalez comes to MFour as Director of Fulfillment, bringing 14 years of market research experience to her role, which includes reviewing and optimizing internal processes that drive efficient, consistent, on-time delivery of quality consumer data. She’s had extensive experience as a team leader in past positions, including supervising projects for Fortune 500 clients at MarketCast, where she was Director of Online Fieldwork, and as a Sample Strategist Manager at Ipsos Interactive Services. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from California State University, Long Beach. Outside of work, Yvette enjoys trying new restaurants and brewing her own beer.

Tara Chawla joins MFour as an Accounting Specialist in Administration. Previous jobs include working for Worthe Real Estate Group as a property accountant, and as a staff accountant for restaurant chain Tender Greens. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Finance, from California State University, Fullerton, and is pursuing a certificate in accounting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Tara’s outside pursuits include freelance blogging for health and wellness websites.

Can market researchers score special consumer insights by watching people who watch the Super Bowl? Answers may lie in the already observed behaviors of validated, first-party consumers on the days of two recent buzzed-about football games. These big days for football fans coincided with big days for carry-out pizza.

Major quick-serve pizza brands feasted on two key game days: the Monday, Nov. 19 pro football contest between Kansas City and Los Angeles, which attracted 16.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and the Monday, Jan. 7 college football championship between Clemson and Alabama, seen by 24.3 million.

To see how delicious these two Mondays were for pizza-sellers, we checked mobile location data available on MFour’s Path-2-Purchase™ Platform. It’s collected by observing the daily journeys of first-party mobile consumers across more than 12.5 million U.S. retail and restaurant locations. Brands get a unique opportunity to watch fluctuations in the ongoing visitation patterns of these validated, pre-profiled members of the largest all-mobile consumer panel. Observed participants have opted in to have their daily journeys tracked via their smartphones. The data shows not only where they go, but how often, on which days of the week, which times of day, and how long they stay. Valuable in itself, location data becomes even more useful when it’s used as a segmentation tool that identifies just the right people to approach for a subsequent survey.

In our glance at pizza consumption on the days of the two big Monday football telecasts, we looked at visits to Domino’s Pizza, Little Caesars and Pizza Hut.

• On the day of the celebrated, high-scoring game between Kansas City and LA, who both had league-best 9-1 records when they met, the three pizza chains enjoyed a combined 7% increase in visits above their average Monday. 

• The only other Monday that saw a bigger gain was Dec. 24 – Christmas Eve, when tracked consumers’ visits to the three pizza chains were 11% above the Monday average.

• The Jan. 7 college championship game saw combined visits to the three pizza outlets rise 5.5% above the average Monday. 

• Pizza Hut was the biggest beneficiary, scoring 11% above its average Monday visitation on each of the two big Monday game days.

• Domino’s was up 7% for the Monday night pro game and 3% for the college championship.

• Little Caesars saw game-day gains of 4% and 2%, respectively.

Armed with this location data, researchers would gain an advantage in exploring questions such as these:

Should competing QSR categories attempt counter-measures to maximize their own share of takeout orders on big sports-viewing days other than the Super Bowl?

Should advertisers consider using special, football-themed creative content and timed ad buys to take advantage of specific games that have a special buzz about them?

Answering these questions, and many others, requires direct input from consumers. What you lean by observing where they go will position you to identify exactly the right consumers for a mobile survey focused on the motivations behind those journeys.

For example, did a person who’d never been observed at a Pizza Hut stop at one on the evening of a big game? Why? Anything to do with watching the game? And how satisfied was this consumer with the experience of buying and eating Pizza Hut’s food?  

The odds of coming away with valuable insights improve drastically when you can first observe validated, pre-profiled consumers’ journeys to locations relevant to the research project at hand, and then survey the same consumers to discover the “why” behind the buy.

Think of this opportunity in football terms. Winning teams need the right personnel, and strong communication to develop a game plan and carry it out on the field. To win in today’s market research, observing location journeys lets you identify the right personnel – the consumers whose visits and demographic profiles identify them as the people you most want to know more about. Having identified the respondents you need, you communicate with them via a mobile survey to find out what motivates them, and how they experience shopping for and consuming a product.

Does this sound like a playbook for supplying relevant and reliable data and providing decision-makers with analysis and recommendations grounded in proven reality? For a hands-on experience, you can play with the free Path-2-Purchase demo tool by clicking here.

If you’ve been late to the party in adopting advanced mobile market research, you have perhaps two more years to get on board with today’s unique mobile data solutions – or else. The longer you remain in a state of inertia by clinging to the online studies that have been a steady standby since at least the early 2000s, the less representative your data will be. Online representation of U.S. consumers is crumbling at an accelerated pace, and in two years it will be a memory.

Call it the threat and the opportunity of a rising G-force.

In physics,  G stands for “gravitational” and represents the amount of resistance encountered by objects in motion. “Because of the stresses and strains on objects, sufficiently large g-forces… can be highly destructive,” says gforces.net.

“Stress,” “strain” and “highly destructive” are unavoidable conditions for researchers and brands that ignore the inexorable effect of a different kind of G-force in which G is for “generation” – the term communications technologists have coined to describe advances in the speed and efficiency with which successive generations of smartphones process mobile data.

This “G” spells great opportunity for market research that’s committed to meeting today’s consumers in the mobile sphere where they live. But it’s  disastrous for those who remain slow to adapt to the new reality.  Online consumers continue to morph into mobile-only consumers, and for the vast majority of U.S. residents, smartphones already are the dominant means of receiving, sharing and creating information. Now online is about to suffer a death blow from the next G-force in communications: the advent of 5G mobile access to the internet.

• The dawn of 5G smartphones is rapidly approaching. 5G adoption is expected to take off as soon as 2020, thanks to data speeds 10 to 100 times faster than the current mobile standard, 4G.

• “5G networks are the next generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices than ever before,” reports techrader.com, with United States mobile providers leading the way. “Many companies are busy making sure their networks and devices are '5G ready' in time for 2020, meaning some networks may launch before then.”

A recent rundown from Business Insider summarizes what the onslaught of 5G will mean for consumers as mobile data races ahead of online data.

• “Mobile 5G networks will be able to transfer data at speeds that are 10-100 times faster than on 4G…making mobile internet activities…more seamless and enjoyable on smartphones….

• “Mobile 5G will provide consumers with internet speeds even faster than their current home internet speeds.”

• “For instance, AT&T's impending mobile 5G network will have peak download speeds of 400 Mbps,” quadrupling the average speed of current home broadband connections.

In fact, the destruction of online consumer research representation already has crossed beyond the point of reversal.

• Pew Research Center, which tracks Americans’ internet access, reported earlier in 2018 that fully 20% of U.S. adults rely solely on mobile and have abandoned traditional online broadband access to the internet. That’s up 67% from just two years earlier.

• The number of these “smartphone dependent” adults who lack home broadband rises to 29% for 18- to 29-year-olds, and 24% for those ages 30 to 49. If you’re not reaching these key, mobile-only consumers, your research representation already stands 20% or more below the threshold of reliability. There’s no trusting data that comes from such a narrow bandwidth of the public.

The takeaway isn’t hard to see: if you’re not already studying consumers with advanced in-app mobile location-tracking and surveys, you’re digging for data in all the wrong places. 

The good news is that it’s not hard to play a rapid game of catch-up. Scores of leading brands and market research firms partner with MFour for mobile-app research technology and the fully-representative first-party, all-mobile consumer panel MFour has cultivated around its groundbreaking Surveys On The Go^® mobile research app. Among MFour’s offerings are mobile brand tracking studies whose data is of-the-moment, but can be integrated with historical online tracking data to avoid a sharp break with your existing data sets.  

Those who fail to integrate mobile successfully into their trackers will have a woeful time getting quality data. It’s just one of the ways in which winter is coming for online market research.

Retailers’ and product manufacturers’ bottom lines hang in the balance on Black Friday. We followed validated, first-party consumers from store to store during their buying journeys on the big day, and here’s some of what we discovered:

• Consumers did their part for retailers by going bargain-hunting instead of going to the gym.
• With their refrigerators stuffed with Thanksgiving leftovers, they understandably avoided grocery aisles.
• Faced with those leftovers at home, they were not entirely averse to eating out, especially at chains commonly located in shopping malls.
• However, as KFC can attest, quick-serve meals featuring poultry with biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy can be a hard sell the day after Thanksgiving.

Here are some highlights that can be observed on MFour’s consumer-journey visualization tool, Path-2-Purchase^® Platform. It continuously tracks the daily location visits of 2.5 million first-party U.S. consumers who have downloaded the Surveys On The Go^® mobile research app. Members doubly opt in to allow location tracking via their smartphones across 12.5 million locations, enabling them to receive in-store and after-visit survey opportunities for location-based research.

The figures compare observed retail visits on Black Friday, Nov. 23, with the average number of visits to each retailer or restaurant over the five previous Fridays from Oct. 19 to Nov. 16.

• About those absences from the gym: top fitness chains experienced drop-offs of 20% (at Anytime Fitness) to 66% (at Equinox). LA Fitness was in the middle with a 38% decrease in foot traffic.

Instead, shoppers flocked to the stores en masse, and many retailers saw foot traffic soar by factors of two, three, four and five over their recent Friday averages. However, to see those results you will have to wait for in our 2018 Black Friday Study webinar on December 12th at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern (which you can register for below). In the meantime, here are some other insights we gleaned from Black Friday:

• It was a more normal Friday at club stores: Costco saw a 12% increase and Sam’s Club a 10% boost.

• If working off calories in a gym wasn’t on most consumers’ agendas, they were certainly thinking about getting active in the future: Dick’s Sporting Goods boosted its foot traffic 483% above recent Friday norms, and Bass Pro Shops enjoyed a 474% upsurge.

• It was generally a down Friday for quick-serve restaurants, with Taco Bell, McDonald’s and Subway off 13% to 19% from their recent norms.

• But some restaurants that typically are inside or in close proximity to malls succeeded in refilling stomachs that had gotten over their Thanksgiving heroics. Johnny Rockets (278%), Cinnabon (147%), Sbarro (89%) and The Cheesecake Factory (55%) were busier than their usual Friday.

• And chicken didn’t seem quite so alluring as usual after a day of poultry overload. KFC’s foot traffic was down 41% and Chick-fil-A was off 19% from recent Friday averages.

• Grocery stores were down, with Albertsons, Kroger and Winn-Dixie stores averaging an aggregate slacking off of 31% from their recent Friday norms.

While it’s well worth targeting, tracking and observing demographically profiled consumers’ visitation patterns, there’s more to be done to understand their motivations and their shopping experiences. The key is being able to locate and survey them in real time, during or just after a shopping visit. That will be the subject of “Black Friday Consumer Study – the `Why’ Behind the Buy,” a webinar MFour is offering Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern. To sign up, just complete the form below.

The good news for advertising on social media is that a massive audience gathers there. The bad news is that any given social media ad is a small raft of messaging in a limitless ocean of content. To increase your social ads’ chances of being discovered - and lifting consumers’ brand and product awareness and intent to buy - keep reading.

But first, some recent data from Pew Research Center shows how potentially rewarding social media platforms can be for advertisers.

• 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube.
• Among teens, YouTube use rises to 85%.
• 68% of U.S. adults use Facebook.
• Facebook usage is highest among ages 18-29 (81%) and women (74%).
• 50% of U.S. adults visit Facebook at least once a day.
• Instagram’s share of the U.S. adult audience is 35% and Twitter’s is 24%.

That’s a lot of consumers who can potentially be reached by a given ad. The challenge is to turn the potential of social media advertising into a real return on investment. Measuring the effectiveness of social media advertising has been controversial, with concerns about transparency over impressions and other key metrics. But setting aside that debate, there can be no question that brands and agencies control the creative content of their social media ads, and need to know as much as possible as soon as possible about how the ads they’re creating are likely to be viewed and acted upon by their intended social audiences.

MFour offers an advertising research product called Social Ad Testing that raises the chances of success for any social ad campaign. It’s a test that doesn’t seem like a test to the recipients you’re targeting. Instead, Social Ad Testing presents the ad as natural content in target consumers’ actual social news feeds. The test ad is consistent with all the other posts and advertisements the recipients are scrolling through in their feeds. You’re testing in the wild, so to speak - in the natural environment where your ad must flourish or fail once the campaign actually begins.

Social Ad Testing is the only method that takes your ad right into the wilds of social media. All the others do the testing in a simulated social environment. First, you’ll just observe how your test audience responds to the ad. How long was it in view? Did they click on it to activate audio? Did they share it or “like” it?

Next, you’ll step out from behind the curtain and show them the ad, so you can survey them using key qualitative questions about which creative elements work, which don’t, and how favorable they are toward the product and brand. If all signals read “go,” you launch the campaign with confidence. If the ad isn’t ready for prime time, the test will tell you not only that it needs work, but point you to the creative elements you need to improve. With that guidance, you’ll revise and retest until you know the ad is ready to give you your best shot at capturing attention and motivating consumers in the social space.

You can test an ad across different social platforms to see where you should direct your budget. Or you can test different versions, compare, and decide which is the one to use. 

The social ad space is too big and untamed to venture forth unprepared. With Social Ad Testing, you give your campaigns the best chance of breaking through.