Advantage: Internet

Editor’s note: David Nelems is president of ActiveGroup, a Norcross, Ga., research firm.

Flexibility and convenience. Two simple words that sum up why the Internet is revolutionizing every aspect of business. The flexibility of the Internet allows you to get the information that you want, tailored specifically for your needs and the convenience allows you to receive that information wherever and whenever you want it.

Flexibility and convenience are also two of the reasons that the marketing research industry is now rushing to embrace the Internet. Although the research industry has sometimes been slow to adopt new technology, the industry embrace of the Internet is encouraging.

A third advantage of the Internet is streaming media. If you haven’t heard of it yet you soon will, as this technology begins to play a more important role not only to the Web in general but to the research industry in particular.

What is it?

With this technology you can listen to and watch events live or later when your schedule permits it. In the past, to view this type of rich content you had to download the file. And since a one-minute video may have taken 30 minutes to download, few people did it. Enter streaming media. Much like TV or listening to the radio, you receive the images or audio just before you see or hear them.

Paced out over time, the file size of the clip becomes less of an issue - though it is still an issue. Raw digital audio and video files are absolutely huge. So to get them down to a size that works for a modem or LAN, compression is used. The goal of streaming compression is to throw away data that you don’t need. That makes the file size much smaller. But it also begins to degrade the image and sound.

Media producers, especially those with television backgrounds, often criticize the quality of streaming media. They miss the whole point. Streaming media isn’t about quality. It’s about access. It’s about being able to sit in an office in New York and receive content on-demand from Los Angeles.

Fortunately, most Internet users do get the point. Throughout the history of all forms of media, the new medium has often paled in comparison to the old one. But the new medium offers capabilities that the old one does not. With streaming media, it’s all about access. The pictures may be fuzzy and the sound occasionally garbled. But when a Web user clicks on that link and gets media on-demand, that is power.

Streaming media and research

So, now the Internet and the research industry have this great technology out there. The big question is: How does this benefit you? In a number of ways. One already-available way is using this technology to broadcast focus groups and IDIs over the Web so that clients no longer have to physically go to the group. My firm began offering this service and technology in late 1998 and has partnerships with facilities across the country. (Editor’s note: Stamford, Conn.-based FocusVision Worldwide also offers on-line focus group broadcasting through its FocusVision Online service.) Now, when a client wants to watch their qualitative event on the Web they simply tell the facility to add on that service just like they would if they wanted videotaping. It becomes simply another service that the facility offers their client.

With this approach we come back to the flexibility and convenience issues. Clients now have the flexibility to watch their event either live, or on-demand whenever they have the time to do so. They also have the flexibility to have the groups indexed so that in addition to having fast-forward and rewind controls they can actually jump directly to a specific portion of each group. This flexibility also is appreciated by viewers in other time zones or other countries that can watch the group when they are ready for it rather than having to get up at 5 a.m. to watch a live videoconferencing event (not to mention having to then drive to that videoconferencing facility as well).

And the Internet broadcasting of groups allows for more people to be involved in the event. Traditionally, the people who attend focus groups are in the middle management sections of a company. This is because the executive level does not have the time to travel to the groups and the junior people do not have the seniority to attend them - or the budget. By broadcasting the groups on the Web, the junior people have access to them right on their own computer; and that computer can be at the office or at home. The same goes for the senior level folks. In fact, the on-demand video can even be chopped up and sent as e-mail attachments. In other words you can send the boss an e-mail with the two-minute segment of the interview that reinforces the items you have been telling them about - and when it comes from their customer’s mouth and they can see and hear their customer talking about them, it has a big impact.

Collaboration and more

With Internet broadcasting of groups you also have the ability to keep all of the brainstorming that goes on behind the mirror, even though all of the viewers may be all over the world. Client Lounge, our company’s on-line viewing interface, embeds the video in a chat room so that all of the people who are logged on can interact with each other and discuss ideas as the group is occurring. What’s more, you do not have to take any notes, as a transcript of the session is saved and available later. And just as a traditional Web page has hyperlinks to other relevant information, our service lets our clients see the profile sheets, the moderator discussion guide, links to other Web sites and even their virtual M&M’s.

Another benefit of watching groups over the Internet is that the content is now digitized and can be included in presentations such as PowerPoint. Clients get a CD at the facility immediately after the groups containing all of the content. No more videotapes and audiotapes if you don’t want them. Clients also get a CD at the end of the job that contains all of the content across all markets.

Other research applications

So what if you do not want to do qualitative research? Another application for streaming media would be its use for advertising effectiveness testing. With the Internet as your means of distribution you can allow respondents to view ads own their own computer and then take a short survey. This incorporates the growing popularity of Web surveys with rich media. Regardless of if you solicit the respondent via generic e-mail, specific e-mail, telephone or snail mail, once they get to the page they click a button to see the ad. You can also include a number of ads to play one after another just like a television experience and you can also have the Web server automatically rotate the ad streams if that is necessary. By using the Web for this type of research, you reach a lot more people a lot faster. There is no need to have them in a brick-and-mortar facility, no need to send tapes around.

Security and quality

Other important issues are quality and security. Although the current quality of streaming media is not that of broadcast-quality television, it will be in the next two years. The combination of increasing broadband connections to the Web and the continuous improvements of the streaming media software will mean that there will be little difference in the quality. But until that time, remember one of the big words in the Internet: AOL. With over 20 million subscribers AOL cannot be ignored and the fact that their service really only supports modem speeds up to 52K is a big factor.

When looking for a streaming media partner make sure that they can provide your content to the dial-up modem users. Content that looks great but that can only be delivered over a T1 line does 98 percent of the home users no good whatsoever. In fact 70 percent of our clients view their groups over dial-up modems. If they have to stay in the office late at night to view the content, you throw the flexibility issue out the window. In addition, companies that have broadband access to the Web often restrict the amount of bandwidth that each user can receive in order to let other users log on and complete other tasks.

Security is a major concern and rightly so. You want to make sure that your provider guarantees the security of the content, not only with standard non-disclosure agreements but also by making sure that your data does not go over a third-party network. It will not make your client happy if she finds out that her groups are streaming through a third-party server that also hosts 100 other Web sites.

Technical skills

The other important item to consider is whether the company you are sending your content through really understands the technology they are providing to you and also understands your core business. Just because a company can stream your content doesn’t mean that they can make other changes to your supporting Web pages, such as the survey or other content. The Internet speeds everything up and many clients will want to make changes to the supporting pages on the fly, so make sure your service provider has real-time access to the pages for your changes.

Tired of the hype

You have probably heard so much about the Internet that you are tired of the hype. But the Internet is going to have such a profound difference in the future that it is, in fact, probably underhyped. It is important that the market research community keeps abreast of new technologies and how they can best be used.

Granted, not all clients and projects will require streaming media, but as the Internet continues to change the ways in which you can gather, distribute and report on your data, these new technologies will be hard to ignore.