••• social media research
Do your posts matter?
Free Facebook add-on scores post strength
Webtrends, a San Francisco research company, has released Webtrends Hoverstats, a free tool for Facebook marketers designed to allow a brand to evaluate the effectiveness of its posts – the main touchpoint with fans and friends of fans on Facebook. Webtrends Hoverstats works by providing analytics overlaid on a brand’s Facebook page.
The core feature of Hoverstats is its post strength indicator (PSI), a metric that uses publicly-available information from millions of posts published on thousands of fan pages to assign a score to individual Facebook page posts, based on total reach achieved through fan engagement. The scoring system aims to give brands a way to gauge whether the content it creates and pushes out is effectively engaging fans and their friends, thereby increasing reach on Facebook.
www.webtrends.com
••• diy research
Be your own SurveyBuilder
uSamp rolls out free online survey-authoring service
Encino, Calif., research company uSamp has introduced SurveyBuilder, a self-serve platform providing unlimited online survey authoring tools intended to enable small and midsize businesses, non-profits and those in academia to create and populate online consumer surveys.
Organizations that provide their own audience can author unlimited surveys – with an unlimited number of responses reported in real time – for free with no subscription fees or contracts. The service is available on a pay-as-you-go basis for organizations that choose to use uSamp’s respondents.
SurveyBuilder also offers: free, real-time reporting to view and drill down to respondent-level detail online; exported data to Microsoft Office and other programs for offline analysis; standardized thank-you and terminate pages; fully-customizable survey templates with instant preview; and survey promotion on social networks and proprietary channels.
www.surveybuilder.com
••• mobile research
White-label solution for surveys on the go
OnePoint debuts TellMe App for mobile research
New York research company OnePoint Global has launched the TellMe App, its mobile survey app designed to offer a white-label solution for panel development, market research, mobile marketing and crowdsourcing. The TellMe App aims to capture insight via geolocation, barcode scanning, photo, video and voice communication and offer interaction with potential customers, existing customers and panel members worldwide.
www.onepointglobal.com
••• packaging research
Ditch the guesswork
New take on packaging testing borrows from psych, science
MMR Research Worldwide, Oxfordshire, U.K., has debuted a packaging research approach that uses techniques from the fields of psychology, emotion, branding and sensory science to extract and understand the non-conscious elements of the consumer decision-making process when interacting with packaging.
The MMR approach is intended to feed consumer insight into every stage of the packaging innovation process, from concept to final validation. Rather than testing graphic designs for liking, for example, a toolbox of advanced research methods is used to access consumer conceptualizations (the meaning people attach to packaging’s multiple attributes) relating to all aspects of packaging: geometry, format, materials, ergonomics and dispensing. The end result aims to provide actionable guidelines for R&D and marketing teams, leading to a package that fits customer expectations of the product and brand.
MMR’s system includes three main service lines: Early Rules of Success (EROS), a participatory workshop involving sensory profiling that brings consumers, marketing and R&D together at the early stages of the development; Facets, a design-led consumer research tool that combines psychology, affective design, Kansei and sensory science to understand the consumer-packaging interaction, prioritize consumer and design requirements and predict the optimum structure and physical properties; and Impakt, a suite of research techniques such as eye-tracking, facial coding, advanced online and offline survey tools to test and validate new designs against previous and/or competitor designs.
www.mmr-research.com
••• social media research
Sparq sees two improvements
Community panel software goes mobile and social
Vancouver, B.C., research company Vision Critical has introduced Mobile Surveys to enhance its community panel software, Sparq. The addition of Mobile Surveys is designed to allow users to author their customer surveys once and distribute them to the panelists anytime, anywhere on multiple channels including desktop, tablets and smartphones. The panelists in turn can use their preferred devices to respond to the surveys.
Sparq Mobile supports Android-, BlackBerry- and iOS-based devices. Highlights of the new features include a new survey-responding interface for touch-based smartphones; one-time survey-authoring for automatically-optimized editions for PCs, smartphones and tablets; automatic device detection that determines the best version of the survey to show a respondent; a preview for smartphones and PC surveys as they are being designed; defined survey logic based on the device being used; built-in guidance for optimum survey design to maximize mobile response rates; and HTML5-based design for mobile browsers with no app download required.
Vision Critical has also updated Sparq with Facebook Connect, a social media tool that allows users to invite customers to participate in and share updates from topical research projects via their own Facebook accounts.
www.visioncritical.com
••• neuromarketing
An alternative to eye tracking
3M expands Visual Attention Service to include video
St. Paul, Minn., manufacturing company 3M has launched the fourth generation of its Visual Attention Service (VAS), which adds video capabilities and sequencing features to the scanning tool. VAS is often viewed by marketers as an alternative to eye-tracking.
Previously offered only for still images, 3M VAS can now analyze video to illustrate how people are most likely to visually interact with any scene or setting and identify where the average human eye will focus at any given moment. The software analyzes images, graphical and text elements of digital and print content through a series of algorithms that process important visual cues, such as colors, edges, faces, shapes and contrast.
3M is currently offering VAS video analysis as a consulting service. Customers will receive a prescriptive heat map that travels on top of the video, with a traveling fixation indicator layered on top of the heat map.
Version 4.0 also features significant upgrades to VAS still-image analysis, including a sequencing feature that demonstrates where the human eye is most likely to pay attention in the first few seconds of viewing an image and the sequence of those fixation points as well. Also new are customized setting options for direct mail/e-mail and in-store contexts, which take into account how human vision interacts with different viewing circumstances.
www.3m/vas
••• bulletin board software
Better, faster, stronger
Itracks upgrade accelerates, expands BBFG offering
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, research company itracks has upgraded its bulletin board focus group software to improve the user experience and increase the speed and functionality of the tool. The upgrade includes reduced page-loading times; improved polling functionality; faster video uploads; and enhanced reporting capabilities. It has also been engineered to allow for flexibility and expansion into a wider range of studies, including ethnography and smaller research communities. The tool services 27 different languages.
www.itracks.com
••• ad research
Ad targeting via Spectrum
New platform targets emotive-based ads at page-level
San Francisco research company BuzzLogic has released Spectrum, an online advertising platform for page-level, real-time delivery of emotive-based ads. Spectrum aims to identify and understand the influence of content at a page level – versus the site or category level – and execute real-time bids and ad placements based on content relevant to a brand’s campaign goals.
Using emotive-based ad targeting, BuzzLogic connects advertisers with targeted, engaged audiences and can help a brand develop an emotional connection with consumers via custom ads seeded on the Web.
Emotive-based targeting captures the emotional connection an audience has with specific page content. Just as no one page of content has absolute value, one ad does not fit all. Once content is identified as a good fit for the brand’s message, Spectrum builds the optimal ad for the environment. Further, as bids are won and ads placed, Spectrum indexes all pages in real time. The intelligence gathered over time is designed to improve overall system performance.
www.buzzlogic.com
••• feedback management
A new CustomerSat
MarketTools EFM offering sees several updates
San Francisco research company MarketTools Inc. has released the latest version of its enterprise feedback management solution CustomerSat. Updates include new survey options for collecting customer feedback, including giving customers a choice of survey authoring tools by integrating with the company’s online self-service survey solution Zoomerang; extending the ability to share voice of the customer data across the enterprise with published PDF reports; and enhancing MarketTools CustomerSat adaptive role-based reporting with new visual charts and reports.
MarketTools CustomerSat adaptive role-based reporting, a hierarchy-aware reporting system designed to provide interactive dashboards tailored to specific roles within an organization, has been updated to include the following new features: color-coded heat maps to help decision-makers focus on areas for improvement; historical benchmarking to compare performance metrics across departments, divisions, geographies, product lines, etc.; color-coded stacked bar charts; enhanced trends and comparative statistics reports to view performance over time across a range of question types to identify trends over time and compare metrics across segments; and new action management e-mail templates.
www.markettools.com
••• online research
Web site feedback goes mobile
Canadian research company debuts Web experience survey program for mobile users
Montreal research company iPerceptions Inc. has launched iPerceptions Mobile Web site Feedback, a random-sampling survey solution for mobile Web sites. Similar to the existing iPerceptions VoC survey invitation methodology for traditional Web sites, the mobile survey randomly invites visitors to participate on arrival to the Web site to provide immediate post-experience feedback. As soon as respondents submit their feedback, the results are available within the iPerceptions portal for review and analysis.
www.iperceptions.com
••• advertising research
The social side of display ads
Ad Metrix from comScore gains a Social component
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has released Ad Metrix Social, an enhancement to comScore’s competitive display ad intelligence product, designed to provide greater visibility into display ads appearing on social networking sites and socially-enabled display ads appearing across the Web. Socially-published ads refer to any brand’s display ads that appear on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Socially-enabled ads are standard display ads that click through to Facebook or other social networking sites, often including an emblem with verbiage such as “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter.”
This new capability is available for all countries currently reportable in Ad Metrix: U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany.
www.comscore.com
••• neuromarketing
Triggers of emotional engagement
New neuroscience offering for improving ad effectiveness
London research consultancy Foviance has partnered with Berlin, Germany, research company SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) to develop its Emotional Engagement Measurement (EEM) service. EEM is intended to combine a variety of Foviance’s user research methods, eye-tracking data collected with SMI solutions and brain data on emotional states collected with a specialized neuro-headset to understand how the brain responds to different experiences, revealing unconscious emotional states. EEM then uses this brain data to offer clients insights on how to increase the effectiveness of marketing and improve customer experience.
www.emtionalengagement.com
••• audience research
Segments via Citrus
Audience management system launched for deeper measurement
Crowd Science, a Mountain View, Calif., research company, has launched Citrus, a data-generating platform intended to provide audience research, segmentation and targeting, plus ad campaign effectiveness in a closed-loop solution. The platform aims to allow publishers to develop their own audience insights and build custom ad segments while improving audience transparency and ad-targeting efficiency. These segments can then be used to attract advertisers and improve campaign performance.
Citrus is a first-party solution that uses a publisher’s own data. Publishers pay a fee when Citrus data is used for tasks like on-site ad targeting, off-site re-targeting or data sales.
www.crowdscience.com
••• Briefly
Denver research company Qualvu has launched Institute of Qualvu, a complimentary, multi-session online program designed to help researchers understand next-generation qualitative research.
www.qualvu.com
Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, Austin, Texas, has released a case study featuring Netherlands sampling company Noviodata and its use of the Kinesis solution suite to facilitate online research projects worldwide.
www.kinesissurvey.com/resources/case-studies
Dallas research company Toluna has updated TolunaAnalytics, its real-time reporting and analytics tool. TolunaAnalytics is designed to allow companies to access data quickly and create crosstabulations and PowerPoint presentations within the tool. New features include full compatibility with all browser types and the ability to weight data.
www.toluna.com
Research Rockstar, Marlborough, Mass., has released Think Outside the Survey, an e-book by Kathryn Korostoff. The e-book is available as a free download from Research Rockstar’s Web site and covers 14 research methods, including biometrics, Facebook polls, idea management and social media research.
www.researchrockstar.com
Baltimore Research, Baltimore, has added three suites to its facility, including a test kitchen with observation.
www.baltimoreresearch.com
Stamford, Conn., research publisher Simba Information has launched its Simba Information Knowledge Center, an online platform designed to offer users access to data and analysis regarding the publishing market. The Knowledge Center lets users perform full-text searches of Simba Information’s market research reports and newsletters, including new reports as they are released. The studies cover four categories: education, trade books, professional publishing and yellow pages.
www.simbainformation.com
New York research publisher Packaged Facts has launched the Packaged Facts Knowledge Center, an online platform offering access to a collection of data and analysis on the consumer goods and services market. The Knowledge Center features Boolean search and advanced search functions; an alert service for new research as it comes available; and usage data for tracking internal service use. Users can also search the full-text of Packaged Facts market research reports published since 1995 in five categories: food and beverage, pet products/services, demographics, financial services and consumer goods.
www.packagedfacts.com
New York research company Instar has rolled out its online pharma quantitative research service Instar OnDemand in Europe and Asia. Instar OnDemand is designed to provide the pharma industry with fast-turnaround global quantitative research.
http://instarresearch.com
Portland, Ore., research company Rentrak Corporation has partnered with Cambridge, Mass., social television analytics company Bluefin Labs to offer deeper analysis into television programming. Under the agreement, Rentrak will publish weekly reports combining Rentrak’s TV Essentials system with Bluefin Labs’ data, which map social media conversations and sentiment to their televised source.
Bluefin Labs’ social response analytics are designed to show how television programming and advertising trigger reactions and reverberation through social media and the extent that this affects audience visibility and engagement. This information will be offered in conjunction with viewership ratings as Rentrak’s chatter index. The report will be available to the public on www.rentrak.com and for e-mail subscribers.
Encino, Calif., research company uSamp has developed an iPhone app, dubbed iPoll, to allow its panelists to complete surveys on the go, including those targeted on a user’s current location. The app can be downloaded for free in the U.S. App Store by users registered with uSamp’s Surveyhead panel.
www.usamp.com
Worthington, Ohio, research company BIGinsight has released the Hispanic Consumers Android Tablet App and InsightCenter, a mobile decision-support tool derived from monthly surveys covering consumer variables including economy, shopping channels, future spending plans and media consumption. Tablet app users can also customize the insights and pull in a specific company’s information.
www.hispanicinsightcenter.com
Opinionmeter International, a San Leandro, Calif., research company, has updated its mobile research survey app for the iOS platform to include respondent location data. The app is designed to allow survey respondents to drop a waypoint on the interactive map to identify any location. When the map is touched, the waypoint’s location details are captured including street, city, zip, country and GPS coordinates. The respondent can confirm the accuracy and edit the address if necessary.
www.opinionmeter.com
ORC International, a Princeton, N.J., research company, has enhanced its suite of CARAVAN omnibus surveys with two new omnibus services: youth (ages 13-24) and parents (have children 17 years old and younger). It has also expanded Online CARAVAN International into 12 new countries.
www.orcinternational/us/omnibus
Media Behavior Institute, New York, has released USA TouchPoints, an ongoing, syndicated, multimedia, consumer insights service designed to capture day-in-the-life insights using a smartphone app that respondents use throughout the day. The service looks at all media used at different times of the day, as well as where respondents are, what they are doing, who they are with and how they are feeling.
www.mediabehavior.com
Research Now, Plano, Texas, and Luma Research, Melbourne, Australia, conducted the first survey in Australia to use smartphone technology. Using Research Now’s smartphone survey platform, Luma conducted a five-minute study consisting of 16 questions with 400 consumers focused on advertising creative.
www.researchnow.com
San Francisco research company Crowd Factory has added advanced analytics capabilities to its Social Marketing Suite to help marketers measure ROI on social campaigns. New metrics are intended to allow marketers to better assess the virality of their campaigns and measure the impact of social sharing on overall traffic and conversions. These new metrics will also allow marketers to understand how much earned media was generated through their paid campaigns. New social metrics include social reach and social impressions; share rate; click-back rate; influencers; social lift; and total profiles.
www.crowdfactory.com
Adobe Systems Incorporated, San Jose, Calif., has released AudienceResearch, an audience measurement tool designed to provide certified metrics on the size and engagement of digital audiences for Web sites, mobile apps and digital magazine editions. These metrics are captured by Adobe SiteCatalyst, an online analytics application, and provide information for attracting advertising dollars. AudienceResearch provides census-based measurement of metrics. AudienceResearch is available at no additional cost to SiteCatalyst customers.
www.adobe.com
Meczka Marketing/Research/Consulting Inc., Los Angeles, has introduced Players Pulse, a biannual casino player research program intended to provide statistical analysis of casino player behavior, preferences, share-of-market, share-of-wallet and competitive penetration for specific gaming markets. Along with shared market data, each participating casino also will receive proprietary data of their designation that will be available only to them.
www.mmrcinc.com
QSR International, a Doncaster, Australia, research software company, has released NVivo 9, its qualitative data analysis software, in five additional languages: Spanish, German, French, Portuguese and Chinese.
www.qsrinternational.com
Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., data quality and address management company Melissa Data Corp has added DeliveryPlus to its line of address verification solutions. DeliveryPlus is designed to verify over five million physical addresses that are beyond the reach of USPS delivery capabilities.
www.melissadata.com
Milwaukee research company Market Probe has completed the advocacy profiles of companies in retail banking, life insurance, auto insurance, mobile services, cable services, retail stores and business-to-business services.
www.marketprobe.com