••• ad research
This time with feeling
A new metric for measuring video ad effectiveness
Ace Metrix, a Mountain View, Calif., research company, has introduced the Emotional Sentiment Index, a metric intended to determine the level of emotional engagement consumers have with ads. The index does not judge an ad but rather gives the advertiser an index score to understand how the ad engages with viewers on an emotional level – positive, negative or neutral – relative to every other ad in the database, other ads in the category and other ads from the brand.
Using natural language processing algorithms, Ace Metrix calculates the positive and negative words used in verbatims collected from each ad through Ace Metrix’s testing environment. The Emotional Sentiment Index is represented on a scale of 1 to 100 and the score indicates where the ad sits relative to every other ad in the database.
www.acemetrix.com
••• mobile research
Usability on-the-go
The appTimizer aims to improve mobile UX
London research company Skopos has debuted the appTimizer, a solution that uses a suite of qual and quant research techniques and technologies to uncover insights on areas for mobile user experience improvement. The service aims to “triangulate the truth” regarding app user experiences using in-person, in-situ usability tests; in-app quantitative surveys (via ads/links) on the user experience; and user ratings.
The system is being used to provide insight during development and pre-testing (via usability interviews and quant surveys with potential users but without user ratings) and post-launch (with in-app surveys and user ratings).
www.skopos.info
••• customer experience
Streaming business decisions
Solution for monitoring real-time online visitor behavior
Webtrends, a Portland, Ore., research company, has debuted Webtrends Streams, a digital intelligence solution designed to harness visitor-level data, as it happens, across all digital properties of an enterprise, including Web sites, mobile and social channels. Configurable live streams of real-time online customer activities provide views of a company’s online business.
With Webtrends Streams, organizations can stream visitor events as they happen, allowing marketers to use this digital intelligence across their optimization, segmentation and targeting efforts to improve engagement with customers while they visit.
Webtrends Streams is powered by Streams Lab, a real-time big data exploration and visualization tool that aims to allow marketers to segment unlimited events and customer attributes into any number of live streams, depending on the business need. These live streams can be configured, enriched with other data streams and shared with testing, targeting and personalization solutions to drive immediate action and improve the customer experience.
www.webtrends.com/streams
••• customer experience
Acting on big data
Cloud-based predictive intelligence to help marketers take action
Mountain View, Calif., research company AgilOne has launched its flagship solution, dubbed AgilOne. AgilOne is a cloud-based collection of predictive marketing tools based on an intelligent platform and designed to deliver insight into customer data across all channels (e.g., customer data, Web activity, social behavior, in-store purchase, mobile, etc.) and recommend immediate actions to increase revenue.
AgilOne aims to allow high-volume marketers to harness big data and provide marketing analytics to help companies understand customer acquisition, retention and reactivation and predict what their customers are going to do next.
The AgilOne application includes PowerAlerts to tell marketers what is happening in the customer base (such as which segment may be inclined to respond to a specific offer) and what they can do about it immediately; Pathways to give marketers prebuilt dashboards and guided analysis against a specific business problem, such as churn; Metrics to allow analysts to do rapid, advanced ad hoc reporting; 360Profiles to give marketers a complete view of customer contacts, accounts or other important entities (such as products and key behaviors); and Actions to take immediate action.
www.agilone.com
••• data visualization
DIY dashboards
Enhanced reporting tool to improve Confirmit’s VOC platform
Oslo, Norway, research software company Confirmit has introduced Active Dashboards, an enhancement to its reporting technology, in the latest release of its CustomerSat solution. Active Dashboards aim to allow users to visualize feedback results and share voice-of-the-customer (VOC) data across the enterprise for analysis, reporting and action management.
Active Dashboards provide each employee with a personalized, interactive view of customer feedback, tailored to their specific role within the organization. Expressly designed for VOC programs, Active Dashboards deliver customer survey data in real time, displayed through charts, tables and widgets that enable users to visualize and analyze survey results at a glance.
To ensure that the right Active Dashboard reports are delivered to the right employees, Confirmit CustomerSat’s QuickPaths hierarchy-building feature automatically populates dashboards with survey data according to a company’s organizational hierarchies. When employees change roles, QuickPaths adapts the hierarchies and automatically updates dashboards based on those changes.
Active Dashboards’ reporting capabilities include features such as displaying performance across metrics and questions using color-coding and heat maps; trending a statistic over time; comparing scores for metrics and performance over time; setting crosstabs to compare metric performance; displaying verbatim responses; monitoring the health of a survey by tracking response rates in real time; conducting an automatic statistical analysis of KPIs to compare results between groups or teams; PeerCompare to allow users to see their scores for metrics in comparison to their peers; and the ability to share dashboards.
www.confirmit.com/customersat
••• research education
Keeping up
Online research course debuts trends curricula
The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga., in conjunction with the Marketing Research Institute International, St. Louis, has introduced new trends curricula to its Principles of Marketing Research: An Online Certificate Course. The material is intended to incorporate the latest thinking and practical industry knowledge, focusing on new and emerging technologies such as Web 3.0, big data, automatic language processing and others; evolving data collecting methods, such as mobile marketing research, data mining, panel evolution, apps-based research and gamification; and the changing structure of the research industry. The material was written by Blair Peters and is available to all who enroll.
www.principlesofmarketingresearch.org
••• gay and lesbian
Not so narrow
Service to target LGBT in gen-pop media
Gay Ad Network, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has launched a data-driven audience targeting service designed to allow advertisers to reach gay and lesbian consumers beyond gay media. The service uses demographic, behavioral, purchase intent and social data-targeting algorithms to identify audience targets across an array of media outlets, ranging from niche LGBT Web sites to premium mainstream Web sites and mobile apps. The most relevant ads are delivered to individual consumers based on specific engagement metrics, interests and behaviors.
www.gayadnetwork.com
••• diy research
Simplify sampling
Samplify offers DIY online research sampling
San Francisco research company Peanut Labs has launched Samplify, a software-as-a-service sampling platform designed to provide real-time DIY access to Peanut Labs’ online sample. The goal is for users to go through fewer steps to ensure that a representative sample is delivered to their clients.
Samplify aims to allow users to access the sample pool, both feasibility and pricing, test project links and launch and manage surveys. Additional functionalities include project configuration and nested quotas; the option to add pre-screeners; 24-hour access to reporting on project activity (both overall and by quota); real-time access to project status indicators (including attempts, completes, over quota, daily quotas and progress); and basic project management actions (including managing, resuming and duplicating projects).
http://samplify.it
••• survey software
Bolstered Beacon
Reporting software adds tools for improved survey programming
Fresno, Calif., research company Decipher Inc. has added the Alternative Question Toolkit and Decipher’s alternative question library to its Beacon market research platform. The updates are designed to allow users to utilize quick configuration that automatically incorporates built-in checks like error reporting, translation support and device targeting and optimization; add device-agnostic custom interactions and customize a survey’s look and feel with HTML5, CSS and Javascript; apply open-source libraries controlling visualization and interactivity; and build their own library of alternative questions or use Decipher’s integrated questions.
www.decipherinc.com
••• television research
Tracking TV on Twitter
Nielsen and Twitter partner to measure TV social media chatter
New York researcher The Nielsen Company and Twitter, Palo Alto, Calif., have collaborated to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating service for the U.S. market. Under this agreement, Nielsen and Twitter will aim to deliver a syndicated-standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter.
The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating is slated for commercial availability at the start of the fall 2013 TV season and will serve as a complement to Nielsen’s existing TV ratings, building on NM Incite’s SocialGuide audience engagement analytics platform.
www.nielsen.com
••• Briefly
Research companies Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, Austin, Texas, and StartSampling, Carol Stream, Ill., have partnered to deliver in-home product testing services to Kinesis users. The partnership will use StartSampling’s project management, product fulfillment and research facilitation for in-home product testing initiatives. Consumer feedback will be supplied via online surveys powered by Kinesis Survey.
www.kinesissurvey.com
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Cint has partnered with Delta Marketing Dynamics, a Syracuse, N.Y., research company, and extended its existing collaboration with ImpactRx, a Horsham, Pa., research company, to increase its panel sample of medical professionals. The agreements are designed to allow health care organizations to obtain the opinions of medical professionals through Cint.
www.cint.com
Boston research company Crimson Hexagon has integrated San Francisco research company Klout’s influence scores within its ForSight platform. The Klout algorithm analyzes more than 12 billion data points each day across key social media networks, as well as several offline influence factors.
www.crimsonhexagon.com
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has announced the U.S. beta release of Media Metrix Multi-Platform, a solution designed to offer unduplicated accounting of audience size and demographics that reflects the multiplatform digital media environment, which includes Web sites, apps and video content accessed from multiple devices.
www.comscore.com
Shelton, Conn., research company SSI has announced plans to release version 8.2.0 of its SSI Web platform. The update will include a data generator to create practice respondent data to help users test skip patterns and set up crosstabs prior to getting real data; anchored scaling in max-diff; and latent class and logit integrated within max-diff’s menus.
www.surveysampling.com
New York researcher The Nielsen Company has rolled out its Nielsen Online Brand Effect measurement and optimization solution in the U.K.
www.nielsen.com
Portland, Ore., research company Rentrak Corporation has expanded its International Box Office Essentials measurement service to begin collecting daily theater level attendance and ticket sales information in Malaysia and Singapore.
www.rentrak.com
London research company YouGov has launched its YouGov Omnibus services in the U.S. Ray Martin will lead the initiative out of the company’s New York office.
http://research.yougov.com
Waban, Mass., research company Temkin Group has released The State of CX Metrics, 2012, a report that details how large companies are using customer experience metrics and how the effectiveness of these efforts has changed since last year. The report is available for download at www.temkingroup.com.
SIS International Research, New York, celebrated its 30-year anniversary in December 2012.
www.sismarketresearch.com
Clever Instruments, Barcelona, Spain, has launched a new Web site for its market research division, ARN Healthcare at www.arn-healthcare.com.