••• advertising research
IAB weighs in on native advertising
Aiming for transparency
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released the first set of guidelines on native advertising, to aid advertisers, publishers, agencies and advertising technology firms in making native advertising more transparent. The guidelines are intended to make it easier for consumers to spot native advertising, where digital ads are designed to look and feel like editorial content. “The guidelines help companies involved in developing and publishing such native ad formats to provide the necessary levels of transparency to consumers and uphold the integrity of online advertising,” said Alex Stepney, public policy manager at the IAB. The guidelines were based on a study by London research agency 2CV which examined consumer knowledge, attitudes and tolerance to native advertising. The remaining guidelines are due to be published in the second quarter of 2015.
••• technology research
Capture data from the Internet of Things
IT for the IoT
Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany, and Wipro, a Bangalore, India, technology firm, have partnered to design a platform for streaming analytics providing real-time feedback for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. The tool, Wipro Looking Glass, embeds Software AG’s Streaming Analytics product suite, which is designed to integrate, capture, analyze and respond to IoT data. The solution components include a real-time analytics engine, in memory database technology, a real-time user interface and mashup technologies. Wipro Looking Glass can be run both on-premise as well as hosted in a single cloud or multiple clouds simultaneously. The foundation framework allows the development of customer-specific solutions and with cloud-hosted analytics and algorithms that are accessible by digital sensors and devices, actions like process updates, event responses and machine behavior can be easily implemented.
••• hispanic research
Service tests movie trailers with Hispanic viewers
Spanish-dominant and bilingual
ThinkNow Research, Los Angeles, has launched MovieLink, a service for testing movie trailers with Hispanic viewers. Within a few days of receiving the trailer, the firm provides a report with responses from both Spanish-dominant Hispanics and bilingual Hispanics, drawn from its proprietary online panel, DigaYGane.com. Key measures include: interest in seeing the movie; when they would see the movie; motivators to see it; movie companion who would accompany them; acquaintance perception; movie description; trailer likes/dislikes; movie elements; and custom assessments as measured through customized questions related to the movie (movie themes, actors, music, etc.).
••• eye-tracking research
Tobii Dynavox offers entry-level eye-tracker
Helps new users get comfortable
In Stockholm, eye-tracking technology firm Tobii Dynavox has launched an entry-level peripheral eye tracker, Tobii Dynavox PCEye Explore. With the PCEye Explore, young or inexperienced users get a simple, no-fail way to learn how to use eye-tracking and gaze interaction. At the same time, they also become prepared for augmentative and alternative communication. The PCEye Explore lets users move the mouse pointer and perform left-clicks using only their eyes. This basic functionality, in combination with the compatible third-party software titles and Web pages, is designed to bring excitement and fun to end users, instead of work, repetition and effort. Engagement can start with simple cause and effect – look at the screen and something happens. A visible mouse cursor tracks where the user is looking so you can see if a user is responding and reacting appropriately. Use the optional Tobii Dynavox Gaze Viewer for more detailed analytics and for making and saving reports as still images or video sequences. And by introducing active targeting, users becomes familiar with the interaction process between his or her eyes and the screen.
••• competitor research
Track online reviews of your products, competitors’
Tool uses NLP, machine learning
Sunnyvale, Calif., software firm BirdEye has introduced its Competitor Analytics tool, which allows marketers to monitor reviews of their own products as well as competitor’s brands. Using keyword analysis, companies can mine customer feedback from hundreds of review sites. The tool consists of reports and insights featuring a range of benchmarking charts and metrics, including:
Competitors, reviews and ratings. Enterprises compare their reviews and ratings performance against competitors at brand level, location level and product level. Reviews and ratings reports include filters for locale (state, city), review source and time period. At-a-glance charts with drill-down data points measure performance in competitive ranking, reviews over time and rating over time.
Competitors, keywords. BirdEye uses natural language processing with machine learning to assess customer sentiment from keywords within customer reviews. Enterprises can pull competitive charts and graphs for frequent keywords, positive keywords and negative keywords to gain insight into competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Filters offer broad or dialed-in views by product, location, time period and review source.
Competitors, categories. Through competitive analysis of categories, enterprises gauge how they stack up against competitors on selected categories. The Relative Performance chart shows where on the continuum of “under performs” to “over performs” the enterprise is versus the industry. The Absolute Performance chart shows how the enterprise is faring on sentiment score on a scale of 1 to 5 versus its top competitors.
birdeye.com
••• social media research
Orgs collaborate on guide to social media measurement
Groups include Twitter, Facebook, MRS
Twitter and Facebook have collaborated with the Market Research Society, the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising and the Marketing Society, London, to produce The Short Guide to Measuring Not Counting – How to Evaluate Social Media for Marketing Communications. The guide is aimed at helping marketers assess the impact of social media using traditional marketing measurement rather than relying on numbers of clicks and offers seven guidelines, including “avoid a siloed approach,” “the value of social will lie in the richness of its data” and “even short-term results need a long-term context.” The short guide isavailable to purchase for £25 for MRS members and £50 for non-members. A longer specialist “expert” version of the guide aimed at agency planners can also be purchased. The authors of the guide are Ray Poynter, The Future Place, Nottingham, U.K., Simeon Duckworth, MindShare, London, and Fran Cassidy, The Cassidy Partnership, London.
••• grocery research
Tool keeps tabs on CPG product debuts
Shoppers report on new items
Instantly, Los Angeles, has introduced Instantly Product Watch, an early-detection tool which alerts CPG companies to the launch of competing products. Companies can subscribe to one or several data sets and follow the live crowdsourced information feeds over time and across any region. Instantly collects this data directly from its mobile audience of shoppers in grocery stores every day, reporting on newly introduced items. Product Watch also collects product images, pricing data, success prediction metrics and feedback from shoppers on purchase intent. Instantly is uSamp’s new name after its recent rebranding.
••• qual/quant research
Study looks at what’s new in MR
Draws on feedback from 58 companies
Best Practices, a Chapel Hill, N.C., management consulting firm, has released a summary of its study of new qualitative and quantitative techniques for consumer marketing research, Consumer Marketing Research Innovation: Assessing New Tools, Technologies and Approaches to Understand and Communicate with Consumers. It reviews trends in consumer research and communication and looks at which research approaches are being used most frequently for forecasting, positioning, segmentation, brand research and concept testing and why they were chosen. The study includes data on three segments: pharmaceutical companies, non-pharmaceutical companies and the total benchmark class. Feedback from market researchers at 58 companies was collected through a benchmarking survey instrument as well as interviews with eight selected respondents to collect data and insights. A complimentary report excerpt can be downloaded at www3.best-in-class.com/rr1331.htm.
••• Briefly
London research company Kantar Worldpanel has launched an out-of-home panel in China to collect data on consumer purchasing and consumption of snacks and beverages. Data from 4,000 urban consumers will be collected through smartphones, providing information on the product they consumed, where, when and why.
In Eindhoven, the Netherlands, software company CMNTY Corporation has introduced CMNTY Market, which allows researchers to create a customized platform for their online communities. The researchers can select specific modules and analysis tools according to their project.
The London-based Market Research Society has produced five short films which review guidelines for researching children, designed to promote ethically-driven standards in the field. The videos cover issues of gaining consent and permission, offering incentives and rewards and potential drawbacks to using digital media to research the market. The films are available at mrs.org.uk/campaign/video/kids.
Point-Blank International, a Berlin-based qualitative research firm, is utilizing a new methodology involving the use of LEGO bricks in creative group discussions. The LEGOs are used to stimulate the respondents’ imaginations and creativity.
www.point-blank-international.com
Dallas-based Usability Sciences has developed a method of collecting in-store consumer feedback by having shoppers complete a survey on their experience using their phones to capture photo and video while shopping. The respondents are part of a nationwide panel and they are shopping in geo-fenced stores. The research method is part of the company’s omni-channel research solution.
GeoPoll, a Denver technology firm, is partnering with Control Union, a London specialist in agricultural certification, food safety and sustainability, to engage smallholder farmers in emerging markets. Their goal is to reach 1 million farmers by 2020 via SMS and voice messaging. The partnership will allow exporters, suppliers, government agencies and non-profits to provide and receive information from the farmers and will empower the farmers to gain access to markets.
New York researcher Nielsen plans to invest $SG 14 million ($11.2 million) over the next five years to launch an Asia Innovation Center in Singapore to encourage the development of new research and measurement techniques for companies across the continent. The center will be similar to Nielsen’s U.S. Innovation Lab, opened in 2012 in collaboration with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Initial projects will include a tool for cross-platform audience measurement and effectiveness, a card-measurement platform for the financial services sector and a retail distribution modeling service using geo-satellite technology.
ORC International, a New York research firm, has introduced a customer-centricity tool for companies to assess and improve their employees’ performance. The online tool queries employees as to communication, empowerment, management behaviors, people-processes and customer vision and is designed to be used with employees having various functions and seniority levels. The results are analyzed and generate action-oriented reports. ORC used responses from a panel survey of 1,000 individual employees in the U.K., U.S., Australia and Hong Kong to design the 30-item questionnaire.
Evenbreak, a West Midland, U.K. staffing specialist, has joined with London recruitment firm Saros to increase the number of disabled people participating in research projects. The partnership will allow Saros to recruit for projects where the viewpoint of disabled people is specifically required but also for all projects. Saros also cited benefits to including disabled people in that they tend to be creative and resourceful, qualities valued in participants by researchers.
Bangalore, India, research firm Borderless Access has added consumer opinion panels in Australia, Singapore and Thailand, bringing its coverage to 20 countries.
The BBC, London, has launched the BBC Taster Web site, designed to test pilots and prototypes from the BBC and its partners. The site content will emphasize interactive and short-form features in a range of formats, such as mashups, radio shows and interactive digital poetry. The platform encourages users to rate the content and share it with others and may enable the BBC to reach a younger demographic and better understand their preferences.
Reston, Va., research company comScore is making available its comScore Trust Profiles as part of its Industry Trust Initiative, designed to enable advertising transactions between buyers and sellers. The Trust Profiles include key advertising metrics available in programmatic trading platforms, such as non-human certifications, top properties rankings, viewability and demographic statistics. Publishers who are comScore clients are able to view their own Trust Profiles in the comScore interface. The Profiles will first be available in MediaMath, Turn, The Trade Desk, Rubicon Project and Eyereturn Marketing.
www.comscore.com/industry-trust
Facebook has launched a standalone app, Facebook Lite, specifically designed for Android devices in emerging markets. It accommodates low-end and dated Android phones with 2G or poor Internet connections and is now being tested in several Asian and African countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Full Circle Research Co., Potomac, Md., has implemented Verity, the Imperium quality control software, throughout its recruitment and validation process. Verity is intended to reduce fraud by confirming the accuracy of self-reported data against thousands of databases that specialize in consumer demographics.
fullcircleresearchco.com
Fulcrum, a New Orleans research firm specializing in sampling software, has launched its Exchange Quality Program, a sample source evaluation process of all Fulcrum Exchange suppliers. The process will collect standard demographics, lifestyle and outlook information, shopping and behavioral segments and benchmark questions, allowing measurement to accepted industry norms. All existing and new U.S. suppliers will participate in the Exchange Quality Program in the first quarter of 2015 and the program will be expanded to include international suppliers in the second quarter of 2015.
San Francisco research firm Survata has launched its Consumer Feedback API, which allows any product or service to tap into consumer feedback on-demand by programmatically submitting a survey.
New York researcher Nielsen announced plans for enhancing its digital audience measurement reporting for the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Australia. The firm will introduce mobile and tablet audience measurement during the first half of 2015 and will upgrade its current monthly audience reporting to a daily audience measurement, starting in 2016. Nielsen also plans to include big data partners, which will allow Nielsen to increase the scale of people measured from one in 2,000, to one in every two.
Facebook has launched Conversion Lift Measurement, a tool allowing marketers to track online sales and offline sales driven by Facebook advertising. It will be available only to advertisers that have a Facebook sales representative and will be limited to larger accounts. Facebook will use a conversion pixel for the online tracking. The offline sales tracking is an extension of Facebook’s custom audience users and will require advertisers to upload sales data to Facebook.
OfficeReports ApS, based in Copenhagen, has updated its OfficeReports software, making it available within Microsoft Excel. The software now can work with Excel as well as with PowerPoint and Word to read raw data and provide data analysis and surveys. The firm is making a 14-day free trial available at officereports.com/download.
Levallois, France, research firm MŽdiamŽtrie has released a Twitter TV Ratings tool, utilizing a unique audience approach which measures one tweet per account.
Cint has launched Access Pro, a self-service sample supply management tool. It provides automation of pricing feasibility assessment and project delivery either through a firm’s own panels, third-party panels or using Cint’s OpinionHUB marketplace. The tool is now being tested beta mode on an invitation-only basis.
www.cint.com/solutions/access-pro
Research Now, Plano, Texas, has launched a gastrointestinal panel, consisting of people diagnosed with one or more conditions, including Crohn’s disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease, anemia, constipation, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and irritable bowel syndrome. The panel will look at practices, treatments and attitudes of members. This is the sixth Research Now panel based on a therapeutic area.
www.researchnow.com/en-us/panels.aspx
Ameritest, an Albuquerque, N.M., research firm, has established a brand consulting division, based in Chicago and led by Ralph Blessing. The new division will work with clients to better define their brands and bring them to life visually and verbally.
M3 Global Research, Fort Washington, Pa., now offers a new service, Medical Conference Recruitment (MCR), which will work with physicians attending any of the medical conferences where M3 will be participating. M3 will utilize the physician feedback to measure the effectiveness of booths, manufacturer images, conference content and messages of its clients.
research.m3.com
Seattle mobile technology firm Marchex has introduced Marchex Call Analytics for Search, a software platform which will allow marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of keywords in producing sales from mobile consumers who call businesses directly from click-to-call smartphone ads. The technology will also identify calls that are most likely to convert to sales and will allow marketers to measure and improve their campaigns in real time.
London analytics company Bonamy Finch has upgraded its SigTester smartphone app to inform users as to the significance of their quantitative data. SigTester can report if differences between mean scores, proportions or correlation coefficients are statistically significant and can estimate confidence intervals around these types of values. A third function provides the sample size needed to have a specific confidence level.
Israeli technology firm Marimedia has released a software tool to analyze mobile use behavior and demographics to improve mobile ad campaign targeting. The software determines the optimal revenue-generating match of publisher ad space with advertiser’s inventory. The tool also provides a range of user behavior data combined with demographic data such as location, age, gender and operating system to allow refinement of creative and ad spend.
Austin, Texas, research firm Icanmakeitbetter has released two new modules to its suite of feedback tools: Live Chat, which captures immediate feedback; and Digital Journal, which allows clients to create short or long-term journals.
icanmakeitbetter.com
Taptica, a San Francisco marketing firm, has launched a mobile ad analytics tool which examines mobile user behavior, including impressions, clicks, conversion, purchases and money spent. It also provides demographics such as location, age and gender.
In Westport, Conn., research firm Critical Mix has begun a daily omnibus service, kNOW, which can provide feedback from a nationally representative (age, gender and region) sample of 1,000 U.S. adults or 500 mobile-only respondents. The service is available any day of the week, including weekends, with questions submitted by 3 p.m. ET receiving answers by 5 p.m. ET the following day. Clients can receive their data in any format and have instant access through a data visualization tool.
SmartMunk, a software firm in Aachen, Germany, is offering a free demo version of UncodeSense, which analyzes product reviews from online platforms. The content of the texts is analyzed and summarized in an online report and the program can work with almost any language. The free trial can be accessed at uncodesense.com.
Lavastorm Analytics, Boston, has updated its Lavastorm Analytics Engine by adding drag-and-drop capabilities to simplify its application layer. Other new features of the platform include linear regression, logistic regression, k-means clustering, hierarchical clustering and a decision tree.
Cambridge, Mass., software firm Luminoso has launched Compass, which allows businesses to track online discussions in real time and instantly provide damage control if necessary.
Logi Analytics, a McLean, Va., software company, is offering an hourly pricing option for its Logi Vision analytics software on Amazon’s AWS Marketplace. Users will turn Logi Vision on and off as needed, only paying for what they use. They will still receive product support from the Logi Vision community. The tool includes collaboration features that allow users to access “activity streams” of information and monitor activity within their workgroups.
San Francisco software firm DoubleDutch has launched an analytics platform, Event Performance, which allows event organizers to monitor attendee engagement as the event progresses. The software provides mobile event apps used by attendees that allow organizers to track session traffic and monitor attendee satisfaction.
In San Francisco, Buffer, a social media scheduling firm, has upgraded its analytics tool to allow marketers a quick assessment of the health of their social media campaigns. The tool now includes the ability to sort posts in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ pages by popularity.
Minneapolis researcher Information Services Group (ISG) has established a dedicated cloud solutions division to assist clients as they transfer their work to the cloud. The new division will allow ISG to expand its cloud services with evaluation tools and management platforms, including evaluation metrics, scoring system and decision-support methodology.
Scanadu, a designer of medical devices based at Moffett Field, Calif., is testing Scanaflo, an iPhone-ready urinalysis strip that can detect pregnancy, diabetes or the use of some drugs. The device measures up to 12 reagents which show up as various colors on the stick. The app then detects and analyzes the colors to determine its findings. Although not FDA-approved for diagnoses, the device could have market research uses in screening subjects for health-related studies.