New portal to help identify government opportunities
Northern Light, a Cambridge, Mass., research company, has launched a portal designed to help companies identify sales opportunities with federal, state and local governments throughout the United States. The SinglePoint Government Opportunities Edition indexes an array of government buying intention announcements, reports and news stories from research sources specializing in government procurement. Government-specific sources include Centurion Research Solutions, EagleEye, Infobase Publishers and FedBizOps.gov.
Powered by Northern Light’s search engine, SinglePoint Government Opportunities Edition provides a search index of targeted government RFIs, RFPs and contract awards. Also included in the search index are 85,000 reports from 20 IT market research firms such as Datamonitor, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan, and 20,000 stories daily from 6,000 Northern Light Business News sources such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. When users find opportunities or documents that they wish to explore, they can click through directly to the opportunity and associated research at the provider’s site or directly to the document on the publication’s site, if the desired material is from Northern Light Business News.
SinglePoint features MI Analyst - an automated meaning extraction application designed for market intelligence, market research and product research - which is designed to speed and improve a researcher’s ability to analyze reports from internal and external sources, identify the strategy issues and suggest the business implications of the analyzed content. Another option, SinglePoint Connects, is a series of Web 2.0 capabilities designed to enable users to collaborate online in a variety of ways within the portal environment. As a result, users can find, annotate and share documents in a single user interface, while the portal’s authentication system enforces the business and copyright rules on document dissemination. SinglePoint Government Opportunities Edition is available from Northern Light. Pricing starts at $96,000 per year. For more information visit www.northernlight.com.
Nielsen expands mobile and out-of-home services
New York researcher The Nielsen Company has expanded its suite of out-of-home media measurement services to cover the $1.3 billion advertiser-based video network business. The new service, Nielsen On Location Media, is designed to provide syndicated reporting for advertiser-backed video networks in health clubs, gas stations, hotels, retail outlets, amusement parks, arenas, on airplanes and other commercial locations, which are estimated to have combined revenues of $1.3 billion.
Networks that have committed to syndicated reports from Nielsen On Location Media include IdeaCast Health Club TV, which covers advertising in health clubs across the U.S.; Gas Station TV, a provider of TV at the pump in U.S. cities; The Hotel Networks, which is extending its Nielsen partnership to provide sponsored video-on-demand content and advertising in more than 1 million hotel rooms; Arena Media Network, a national sports and entertainment media company; Buzztime, which offers interactive entertainment distributed in restaurants, sports bars and pubs throughout North America; OnSpot, a digital high-definition network with screens in Simon Malls; and IdeaCast Airline TV, which delivers advertising and entertainment content to passengers through seatback TV screens.
The Nielsen On Location Media reports will be distributed to all interested Nielsen agency clients for use in planning, buying and evaluating the medium. The reports are intended to define standard Nielsen’s metrics for location-specific video networks; establish report formats that will be common to all Nielsen measured networks; bring dynamic measurement with updated reporting; and provide analytics to support analysis, planning, buying and post-buy evaluation of location-specific video networks.
Additionally, Nielsen has partnered with Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), San Mateo, Calif., to begin delivering daily all-electronic national TV ratings of television viewing that occurs outside of the home. The two charter clients are ESPN and Zenith Media.
Separately, The Nielsen Company has launched Mobile-PRIZM, an offering that combines the company’s consumer segmentation and mobile media targeting tools, designed to help advertisers target mobile audiences. Mobile-PRIZM combines the resources of Nielsen Mobile and Nielsen Claritas.
For example, analysis of one PRIZM segment, Bohemian Mix (a mix of young singles and couples, students and professionals who are quick to check out the latest movie, nightclub, laptop or microbrew), shows that this group leads all other categories in mobile Internet usage, with 27 percent accessing the mobile Internet in the last 30 days (compared to an average 16.7 percent across all other segments). Besides Bohemian Mix, other key audience segments in Nielsen’s mobile targeting tool include Young Digerati (affluent and tech-savvy professionals), Upper Crust (the nation’s wealthiest group), Money and Brains (advanced degrees and sophisticated tastes) and The Cosmopolitans (immigrants and descendents of multicultural backgrounds). For more information visit, www.nielsen.com.
Arbitron releases ROI sales toolbox
New York research company Arbitron Inc. has released a 10-piece marketing kit designed to help radio station sales executives in Portable People Meter (PPM) markets demonstrate radio’s effectiveness at reaching consumers.
The toolbox contains a detailed explanation of the change in the delivery of gross rating points (GRPs) that occurs with the transition to electronic measurement, training opportunities and a detailed account from an industry veteran who has made the transition to selling with PPM data. The complete packet is mailing to station executives in New York, Middlesex-Somerset-Union, Nassau-Suffolk, Los Angeles, Riverside, Chicago, San Francisco and San Jose.
Arbitron’s 10-piece toolbox includes a collection of materials intended for all stations in PPM markets, regardless of format, market or targeted demographic. The 10 components to the toolbox are: “The Audience Is the Same - Only the Measurement Has Changed,” a note card providing quick answers to advertisers who challenge the need to adjust their buys to reflect the change in GRPs; “Planning and Buying Radio Advertising in a PPM World,” a brochure detailing the change in GRPs that comes with the transition to electronic measurement; “SQAD Monthly Excerpt,” Arbitron’s explanation of how to adjust cost-per-thousand estimates in PPM markets based on data from SQAD; “PPM ëLearn to Earn’ Training for Radio Sellers,” a brochure highlighting available training options for understanding and utilizing PPM data from a sales perspective; “Arbitron PPM Passport Training Program,” a list of several brochures that can be used on visits with agencies; “Guide to Understanding and Using PPM Data,” a basic run-through of the new concepts and terminology associated with PPM and electronic measurement; “PPM Trailblazer,” an industry veteran provides a personal account of the advantages of making the switch to PPM data; “2009 TV and Radio Survey Calendar,” survey dates for Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research; “You Can’t Spell Radio Without ROI,” a poster to use as a reminder about the value radio provides; and “Radio Retains 92 Percent of its Audience During Commercials,” a brochure that includes data from a study conducted by Coleman, Media Monitors and Arbitron. For more information visit www.arbitron.com.
Itracks debuts online community research solution, Populis
Itracks, a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, research company, has released details of its new online community research solution, Populis. Itracks intends to use Populis in comparative research studies of existing customers to prove that community members purchase significantly more products and services than non-members. Populis was also designed to track client referral rates, customer satisfaction levels and loyalty.
Populis, developed internally by Itracks’ custom software division, integrates with its existing research tools and is designed to serve as a landing point for online qualitative and quantitative research. The software is designed to allow companies to synthesize Web 2.0 technologies and utilize the benefits of user-generated content. For more information visit www.itracks.com.
New Vovici program supports offline survey data collection
Dulles, Va., research company Vovici has released Vovici Mobile Survey - PC Edition, which works in conjunction with EFM Community, Vovici’s enterprise feedback management platform, and is designed to allow organizations to collect survey data offline on any PC and then upload the data to a centralized response database. Users can gather data via Windows Vista or XP-based PCs and upload the captured responses to a server-hosted response database once an online connection has been reestablished.
Vovici Mobile Survey - PC Edition is built on Vovici’s EFM Community platform and works with both enterprise and professional versions. All responses gathered from Mobile Survey - PC Edition are co-located with survey responses received from other modes to ensure that all feedback is integrated and available for reporting. For more information visit www.vovici.com.
Ipsos introduces Poll Predictor for Facebook
Ipsos Interactive Services, the Bucharest, Romania, division of Paris-based research company Ipsos, has released Poll Predictor, a new interactive tool designed for the online social networking community Facebook.
The game challenges users to correctly guess the percentage of “yes” answers to all types of fun questions initially put to Ipsos panelists in the U.S. Participants can guess, for example, just how many Americans make their bed in the mornings, what percentage believe in UFOs and what proportion would tell on a cheating friend.
The questions used for the game were drawn from a recent survey conducted across the U.S. to determine the behavior of the American public, asking over 1,100 questions covering a wide variety of topics.
Poll Predictor on Facebook aims to strengthen the Ipsos i-Say brand to a younger user base. For more information visit www.ipsos-interactive.com.
QRCA aids employers and seekers
The Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA), Glastonbury, Conn., has launched a free service to help buyers of qualitative research find a researcher for their projects. The new feature is accessed on the QRCA Web site (www.qrca.org) by clicking on the Projects/Jobs tab on the left side of the homepage. In addition to the project postings, organizations looking to hire an on-staff researcher can post positions, also within the Projects/Jobs link. Organizations can post projects - such as RFPs, limited engagements, contract positions and full-time positions - all free of charge.
Once projects and jobs are posted, QRCA members can browse the postings and respond as appropriate. For more information visit www.qrca.org.
Briefly
E-Tabs, a London research software company, has launched a new version of Enterprise, a product that automates graphs and charts that will now work within the Microsoft Office 2007 suite.
Additionally, E-Tabs has launched a plug-in for the SPSS Dimensions suite of analysis products. The plug-in is designed to enhance printing, viewing and reporting links for Desktop Reporter and other products within the SPSS Dimensions suite. For more information visit www.e-tabs.com.
Research Now, London, and Reed Business Information (RBI), a Netherlands-based business-to-business publisher, have partnered to create online panels for the business-to-business research sector. Research Now and RBI intend to build, operate and sell online panels of business professionals. Each panel will be by invitation only, stand-alone and research-only. The panels will be profiled using 70+ parameters with a series of tailored incentives and respondent specific content to encourage active participation and engagement.
Additionally, Research Now has launched an online panel in India. For more information visit www.reserachnow.co.uk.
A Des Moines, Iowa, research company, iEmergent, has debuted its new line of demographic mortgage forecast reports that assess lending opportunities and show loan distribution patterns among various home-buyer and loan-type segments including ethnicity, race and gender. For more information visit www.iemergent.com.
Globalpark, a New York research company, has released Version 6 of its enterprise feedback suite (EFS). Version 6 includes a set of Flash-based question types, increased functionality for the user to comment on and offer improvement suggestions for the software, a revised translator interface for multilingual projects and further updates to EFS Panel, EFS Employee and EFS Survey. The upgrade is free of charge for licensed customers. For more information visit www.globalpark.us.
The StreetDVD 2007, from East Brunswick, N.J., research company GeoLytics, is a six-DVD product that includes recent street data, new economic census boundaries and updated voting districts. StreetDVD 2007 is designed to allow users to import geographic data into ArcView and MapInfo using a Windows interface. In addition to economic census boundaries and voting districts, the StreetDVD 2007 provides classifications and data for roads, railroads, hydrography and landmarks, as well as legal, statistical and administrative boundaries for census, transportation and education. For more information visit www.geolytics.com.
Chicago research company SPSS Inc. has unveiled SPSS Viz Designer, which features graphic technology designed to create and share visualizations that clarify results from SPSS Predictive Analytics software. With SPSS Viz Designer, users with little or no programming skill may create customized visualizations that reflect branding and style standards to create a consistent look and feel for internal presentations. For more information visit www.spss.com/vizdesigner.
Ipsos in North America, the New York division of Paris-based research company Ipsos, has updated its Interactive Forum (IAF), a custom panel platform that includes the panelist database, survey scripting and research results data. Key features of the updated IAF software include multilingual capabilities and direct client access to online real-time data with multiple reporting and data export formats, such as PDF, Excel and SPSS. Each custom panel is branded to match client specifications. For more information visit www.ipsos-na.com.
Australian research company QSR International has released a new version of its qualitative research software NVivo 8. NVivo 8 is now available in English, simplified Chinese and Spanish. Following the Japanese version of NVivo 7 released in 2007, a new Japanese version of NVivo 8 is also being released. Additional language versions are also under consideration. For more information visit www.qsrinternational.com.
20/20 Research Inc., Nashville, Tenn., has launched QualMeeting Version 1.0, which uses Webcam technology and streaming video to assist in conducting live, online, one-on-one interviews and focus groups. For more information visit www.qualmeeting.com.
MRT Services Inc., an Atlanta research company, has released its Integrated Transcription System, which is designed to integrate responses to a single set of questions from multiple transcripts. For more information visit www.mrtservices.com.
Survey Sampling International, a Fairfield, Conn., research company has expanded its business-to-business online research communities, particularly in North America. Marketing researchers will have access to more than 3.6 million profiled business and IT professionals to support their B2B sampling needs. Nearly three million of the respondents are in North America, while more than 300,000 each are offered in Europe and Asia. For more information visit www.surveysampling.com.