••• survey software
Surveys in an eCInstant
New platform offers interactivity and profiling
Miami research company eCGlobal Solutions has launched eCInstant, a platform designed to build interactive surveys that can filter target populations by multiple factors, including country, gender, region and age, and can also provide advanced profiling. The first version of the application is available by invitation only; requests can be sent to contact@ecglobalsolutions.com.
••• customer experience
SmartHub on the Horizon
Confirmit launches new version of its experience and engagement platform
Oslo, Norway, research software company Confirmit has released version 18 (V18) of its Confirmit Horizons solution for customer experience, employee engagement and market research. Horizons V18 introduces Confirmit SmartHub, a customer engagement hub designed to allow businesses to capture, analyze and respond to customer and market feedback across multiple channels and sources in real time.
Horizons V18 also features Instant Analytics, an analysis module that aims to provide immediate, actionable insights with no setup or training required. In addition, the Active Dashboards module provides enhanced data visualization to enable stakeholders to analyze information and track trends immediately on a variety of devices. Horizons V18 also adds a new Action Management module designed to ensure businesses can automatically trigger actions, based on up-to-date customer, employee or market information.
www.confirmit.com
••• text analytics
Improved Inspector
Ascribe updates Inspector software for text analytics
Cincinnati research company Ascribe has enhanced its Ascribe Inspector software, a program designed to al-low researchers to extract insights from large amounts of unstructured text, such as open-end questions in sur-veys, social media posts or call center transcripts. Version 7.5 aims to provide enhanced accessibility, perfor-mance, productivity and data visualization via a new user interface.
New visual tools, such as an interactive word tree, are intended to make it easier to see the full context around the words and phrases found in the comments. Taxonomies have become easier to create and apply across pro-jects and datasets and new master codebooks aim to allow companies to define a standard taxonomy as a start-ing place for all analysis.
www.goascribe.com
••• sampling
Do your bidding
New offering aims to streamline sample bidding
New Orleans research company Federated Sample has released Fulcrum Bid Manager, a technology solution designed to provide a centralized platform that allows engagement with any sample supplier, regardless of their availability on the Fulcrum Exchange. Fulcrum Bid Manager aims to integrate the benefits of enterprise manage-ment software to manage, track and centralize the online sample procurement process while also providing sup-pliers with a standardized method of responding to requests.
Using the platform, marketing research firms can centralize their account’s bidding activity on a single platform and search through historical data and past supplier mixes to optimize and expedite the process.
www.federatedsample.com
••• concept testing
Accelerated insights
Ipsos debuts system to create and test ideas in two days
New York research company Ipsos InnoQuest has launched Insight Accelerator, a system designed to allow marketers to create and test insights and ideas through an two-day process.
Insight Accelerator is designed to fast-track the best insights and ideas for innovation; use co-creation, com-munities and real-time evaluation to aid clients in strategic decision-making; use quicker, more efficient ap-proaches through new technology, consumer panels, communities and online methodologies; and deliver vali-dated insights and ideas across markets through proven qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
www.ipsos-na.com
••• reporting software
It has the technology
Decipher expands Beacon to integrate additional technology
Decipher Inc., a Fresno, Calif., research company, has incorporated several marketing research technology solutions into Beacon, its research and reporting platform. Integrations include Quester’s interview software tech-nology; Adobe Analytics reporting solutions; iModerate’s qualitative conversation technology; TrueSample’s data quality solution; Federated Sample’s Fulcrum online sampling platform; Sawtooth Software’s conjoint analysis software; Affectiva’s emotion measuring application; and integration with both Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office for report exporting.
www.decipherinc.com
••• brand research
Having a Brandvantage
Tracking solution hopes to bring new perspective to brand equity
The Pert Group, a Farmington, Conn., research consultancy, has launched Brandvantage, an approach to brand equity tracking that is designed to create a new dimension of brand equity understanding by uncovering the context in which consumers make brand choices, including the influences of occasions and life events.
In addition to the product’s incorporation of contextual insights on consumer decision-making, Brandvantage also features a survey structure that includes a drag-and-drop user interface.
http://brandvantage.thepertgroup.com
••• social media research
Two Metrics, three sites
Union Metrics debuts two tools for social media measurement
San Francisco research company Union Metrics has debuted Union Metrics for Instagram and the Union Met-rics Social Suite. Both platforms aim to allow users to analyze social media campaigns on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.
Union Metrics for Instagram is intended to offer real-time analytics reporting for any account or hashtag on In-stagram so that users can discover their most popular media and hashtags; identify an account’s biggest fans and advocates; monitor hashtag reach and exposure over time; track competitor performance to compare share of voice; and analyze likes and comments to determine when fans are most active. Subscriptions start at $199 per month.
Additionally, the company’s enterprise cross-platform social analytics suite, dubbed the Union Metrics Social Suite, is designed for larger brands and agencies running campaigns across multiple social networks. This inte-grated suite is intended to monitor a company’s social media presence across Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. Pricing starts at $500 per month.
www.unionmetrics.com
••• predictive analytics
Predicting the future
Social search program uses conversation-pattern prediction to look ahead
BlabPredicts, a Seattle research company, has released BlabPredicts2, a predictive insights console that aims to predict what, where and when online conversations will gain velocity up to 72 hours in advance. It is designed to improve social search by analyzing one million predictions per minute.
Conversations (both online and offline) shift according to one of hundreds of thousands of patterns that have evolved over time. Applying pattern logic, BlabPredicts models real-time social conversations against these pre-defined paths to predict how that particular dialogue will move, morph and grow on news channels, blogs and social networks.
BlabPredicts analyzes and associates text in any language, including images and video across thousands of real-time data sources (50,000 content platforms), text-, video- and image-based content.
www.blabpredicts.com
••• online research
Google Consumer Surveys goes pro
New offering puts an expert touch on micro-surveys
Lightspeed GMI, a Warren, N.J., research company, has launched Survey Cycle, a program that uses GMI’s survey design and project management skills in combination with Google Consumer Surveys’ automated platform for micro-surveys of 10 questions or less. Survey Cycle is designed for those customers that find value in micro-surveys and quick-turn research but prefer to have a qualified research professional execute the research fieldwork for them.
www.lightspeedresearch.com/surveycycle
••• mobile research
An app’s impact
Millward Brown debuts Apps extension for Link
New York research company Millward Brown has launched Link for Apps, an extension of Link and its creative development programs, to help marketers understand the impact of mobile apps on brands.
Available initially in the U.S. and Canada, Link for Apps is designed to provide marketers with consumer feed-back on how an app impacts brand equity, while also understanding how an app’s look and feel, usability and technical competency play a contributing role. Specifically, Link for Apps aims to help marketers diagnose an app’s strengths and weaknesses specific to brand building; gauge if consumers are receiving a brand message as intended; and understand the brand impact and persuasive power of the app.
www.millwardbrown.com
••• social media research
A LIVE Pulse of social data
NetBase launches new dashboard
Research company NetBase, Mountain View, Calif., has launched Brand LIVE Pulse, a dashboard program designed to provide feedback on brand and competitor social data. It can be used on smartphones, tablets and billboards and aims to allow users to know how customers feel about their brand versus the competition; watch the most-shared images for their brand on social media; see the most engaging posts going viral and who they could target directly; and identify unusual spikes in activity and unusual fluctuation in sentiment toward their brand and know what drove it.
www.netbase.com
••• media research
Trio of measurements
ComScore rolls out three offerings for campaign analytics
Reston, Va., research company comScore Inc. has debuted a single, unduplicated multiplatform global audi-ence metric across desktop computers, smartphones and tablets. The measurement also employs comScore’s multiplatform audience de-duplication methodology combined with comprehensive tagging to produce a measure of unique people being reached across the globe.
Additionally, comScore’s actionable brand metrics for mobile ad campaigns are now available to advertiser and publisher clients through validated Campaign Essentials Mobile and validated Media Essentials Mobile. These ad measurement solutions are designed to provide demographic delivery insights for ads appearing on smartphones and tablets, both in-app and via mobile Web.
The two offerings aim to facilitate cross-platform campaign buying, planning and evaluation; deliver actionable performance metrics; and improve mobile ad monetization.
www.comscore.com
••• Briefly
Boston research company Crimson Hexagon has expanded its social listening software ForSight to evaluate text from Instagram captions and comments, noting common words and phrases used in Instagram posts.
www.crimsonhexagon.com
Research company Mashwork, New York, has launched Canvs, a social TV analytics tool designed to pro-vide instant qualitative feedback from TV and movie audiences.
www.mashwork.com
Space Doctors, a Brighton, U.K., research company, has launched Cymbol, a crowdsourcing mobile soft-ware application designed to allow participants to upload photos, videos and comments in real time.
www.space-doctors.com
London research company MMR has launched Impackt Lite, a packaging research software application de-signed for users to create surveys on packaging designs, analyze the results and view the final report via a Web-based dashboard. The software is available through ZappiStore.
www.mmr-research.com
Los Angeles research company Ipsos SMX has released its Socialized Research Platform (SRP) Mobile, a Web app that features optimized viewing across all major devices and screen sizes; real-time photo and video capture and uploads from existing library; discussions, blogs, quick polls and surveys; support for unique experiences along multiple customer segments; automatic updates for new releases; and the ability to Like and comment on any post.
www.ipsossmx.com
New York marketing company The Halo Group has created the Halossary, a glossary of marketing terms and jargon.
www.thehalogroup.com/halossary
Easy Analytic Software Inc., a New York developer of demographic software, has launched The Right Move, a mobile app designed to provide real estate professionals, location analysts, business researchers and house hunters with the most current neighborhood demographics and accurate location analysis reports. The app is available for iPhone and iPad.
www.easidemographics.com/mobileapp
Research companies CMNTY Corporation, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and O2MC, Amsterdam, have partnered to develop the Emotion Engine, a component of CMNTY Story that is designed to automatically detect emotions expressed in community messages.
http://www.cmnty.nl
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), New York, has released its 2014 DMA Statistical Fact Book, which aims to provide information on benchmarks, marketing trends and consumer behavior. The 2014 edition contains facts from nearly 70 research sources and nearly 350 charts from information sources and includes an expanded chapter on data and a new retail section.
http://thedma.org
Borderless Access, a Bangalore, India, research company, has launched a panel in the Philippines.
www.borderlessaccess.com
Research and Markets, Dublin, has published its Social Media Benchmarking Report 2014, compiling infor-mation from 288 client-side marketers and designed to provide insight into social media trends and activities in B2B organizations.
www.researchandmarkets.com
Civicom Marketing Research Services, Greenwich, Conn., has launched the Download Center, a virtual li-brary of project ideas and technology applications for marketing research professionals. Access to the Download Center is free after registering on Civicom’s Web site.
www.civi.com
Chinese mobile crowdsourcing company Wei Chai Shi and Shanghai, China, research agency nQuire have partnered to create China’s largest mobile research panel, along with a DIY tool offering researchers immediate responses.
www.nquirechina.com
San Diego Web analytics company Apmetrix has added 40 data sources to its analytics platform, including data from comScore, Flurry, Facebook, Google Analytics, Tumblr, Yahoo! and YouTube. The Apmetrix software tools are designed to allow developers to view data from multiple sources, track events and send automated messages to mobile users.
www.apmetrix.com
MSW•ARS Research, Lake Success, N.Y., obtained a U.S. patent for its Outlook Media Planner, an app de-signed to enable marketers to run multiple $B!H(Bwhat-if$B!I(B scenarios to determine the likely impact their ad-vertising will have on sales and market share.
www.mswresearch.com
IMS Health, Danbury, Conn., has released a series of four white papers, themed “Launch Excellence,” that chronicle corporate and market challenges of pharmaceutical launches of new chemical entities.
www.imshealth.com
Just The Facts Inc, an Arlington Heights, Ill., research company, has updated its corporate Web site at www.jtfacts.com.
Mountain View, Calif., research company Ace Metrix has published the 2014 edition of the Ace Metrix Blackbook, a guide to television advertising brand performance based on the complete body of work for nearly 1,400 brands.
http://blackbook.acemetrix.com
ASDE Survey Sampler, Gatineau, Cananda, has launched a new Web site for clients at www.surveysampler.com. The site is available in both English and French.
Focus Pointe Global, a Philadelphia research company, has expanded the mobile capabilities of its re-spondent Web site (www.focusgroup.com) to make it accessible from any Web-enabled device and provide a more secure login interface.
Singapore research company Union Panels has announced an alliance of global online research panels.
www.unionpanels.com
Dialego, an Aachen, Germany, research company, celebrated its 15th anniversary in April.
www.dialego.com
Think Global Qualitative, an alliance of qualitative research practitioners, celebrated its first anniversary at the 2014 QRCA/AWR Joint Conference April 30-May 2 in Budapest.
thinkglobalqualitative.com
Chicago research company Strategex has begun offering due diligence customer surveys as part of its voice-of-the-customer program.
www.strategex.com
AOC Marketing Research, Charlotte, N.C., has expanded its focus group facility to include four private client suites, each with a multipurpose testing room, lounge, office, restroom, entrance, exit and HVAC controls.
www.aocresearch.com
GfK’s Starch Syndicated Research, New York, has reached the milestone of measuring customer response to over 500,000 print magazine ads.
www.gfk.com/us