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Register Now For The “Measurement in 2010: Avoiding ‘Hybrid’ Confusion” Webinar

There is an audience measurement event on Wednesday 20 January. This live session will dig into the new 'Hybrid Model' for deep audience demographics. If you are responsible for online research or advertising sales, this is a 'must attend' event.

Register for The Audience Measurement Event

AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT 2010

• Wednesday, 20 January at 10:00 PST

• Speakers:

John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science

T.S. Kelly, Media Strategist

Register Online Now

Why Email and Incentives Hurt Market Research

Poor practices surrounding the utilization of incentives with online email panels is hurting our industry. Email panels, for the purpose of market research, have grown immensely over the past decade. These panels are easy to build, have little to no barrier to entry, and these mega-panels seem to dominate the industry.

The concept is simple: recruit individuals to provide their email address and fill out a comprehensive profiling survey. When a suitable survey is available, panelists are sent an email and have the option to fill out the survey. The panel manager charges for each completed survey and provides the panelist with some incentive for their time and effort.

This is the beginning of a dangerous, downward spiral in our industry. A primary weakness of this methodology is its strong tie to email. Today people are bombarded with tons of email from friends, family, special offers, surveys, and spam. As a result, the attention span for an email is very subject-sensitive.

Massive panels have been developed with hundreds of thousands, or millions, of members. At one point, the size of a panel was an indicator of the quality and reach of the panel. In reality, the number of active panel members is a fraction of the total members.

Poor research practices, mass panels, multiple cross-panel memberships, and the rise of professional survey takers have given surveys the appearance of spam. As a result, response rates and panel cooperation rates have dropped, and the cost of building an effective panel has increased. To try and combat this situation, panel managers are forced to provide incentives for respondents to complete a survey.

The deadly spiral continues. As participation rates drop, the natural reaction is to increase the provided incentive. As the cost to administer surveys and incentives increases (which can potentially account for 80% of total project costs), the opportunities to conduct research become more limited and costly. Due to this economic and opportunistic crunch, many market researchers are forced to run fewer studies but require more information per respondent, leading to long, cumbersome surveys. The longer the survey, the higher incentives that is required, and the more restrictive a project becomes. Thus a deadly spiral continues where researchers are forced to try and get more information from fewer respondents, ultimately hurting the industry as a whole.

20, 30, and 40 minute surveys are not uncommon, and, in my opinion, are ridiculous and do not belong online. There are always exceptions, but this is my general rule. Conduct a 30-minute online study and a million-member panel all of a sudden becomes quite small and expensive.

Much of this momentum was created because of the reliance on email as the primary delivery method. Email is on the decline; we have an emerging generation that views email as a medium for forwarded jokes and mobile text as a medium for meaningful communication.

There are solutions and there are opportunities, but only in the past few years have we started seeing these explored. If the industry can conquer its dependency on email, and move to "less information from more people" (this means shorter surveys), I suspect participation, or success rates, will increase, as will the opportunity to conduct more research because the cost of conducting each research project will be decreasing.

There is a place for incentives and for online email panels. We just need to be very careful and aware of what's happening.

Reposted from my personal blog: The Paul Neto Blog

New Survey: Females and Teens Most Prolific– and Regretful – Social Media Users

December 1, 2009 - Silicon Valley, California – Three times as many females as males surveyed call social media like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace their "favorite leisure activity" and almost twice as many females over age 21 "believe they spend far too much time on online social media", according to a survey of social media users conducted by Crowd Science (www.crowdscience.com) with its advanced research platform for online audience measurement.

Crowd Science found that:

• One-third (34%) of females vs. one-tenth (10%) of males who use social media said it was their favorite leisure activity.
• Over one-half (54%) of female study participants over age 21 who use social media vs. four-in-ten (38%) of males of the same age believe they spend far too much time on online social media.
• Over one-half more females than males over age 30 (45% vs. 29%) believe that most people are interested in what they have to say on social media.
• Detailed Study Results - Click Here

In addition to females who use social media, younger participants in the study also felt they use social media too much – 46% of teens (17 and under) and 38% of 18-29 year-olds. The figure drops dramatically to 23% for the 30-39 demographic, and 12% for those 40+. With almost half of teenaged participants admitting to over-use of social media, a similar proportion (44%) reported posting or saying things that they later regretted (vs. 30% for 18-29, 20% for 30-39 and 12% for 40+). Over a third of teens (35%) said they have used social media to reveal personal info that they wouldn't have revealed otherwise (vs. 20% for 18-29, 8% for 30-39 and 5% for 40+). However, about a fifth of all participants under 30 (21% for teens, 19% for 18-29) said it would be "extremely damaging to my social status if I stopped or reduced my use of online social media." Only 5% of 30-39 year-olds said this, and 3% of those 40 and over.

"The results of our study align with most people's intuition about the usage of social media by teens and young adults," said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. "As the economy recovers and this generation starts interviewing for jobs, there will be some interesting years ahead as they have to deal with a new level of transparency around their past adventures (and misadventures). I'm definitely glad I made it out of school before Facebook landed."

The Crowd Science study on social media users was conducted across more than 600,000 visitors to multiple websites within the Crowd Science open research network. The survey, targeting social media users age 13 and up, was conducted August 5-13, 2009.

About Crowd Science: Crowd Science was formed by experts in online market research and audience measurement with a mission to "raise the bar" in the measurement of online populations. Their goal is to help web properties understand all facets of their audience, including the impact of marketing and outreach efforts on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, through rigorous, verifiable interactive research. The company has developed an advanced platform for audience measurement and real-time survey research.

Why You Should Stop Measuring Site Satisfaction

Ok, so you shouldn't stop measuring how your visitors feel, but I maintain it is far more beneficial for you to measure site dissatisfaction.

It is a well-known fact that consumers are far more likely to discuss and share a bad experience than a good one. In fact, most estimates put the number at 12, angry consumers will tell 12 people about a bad experience they have, and you're lucky if they tell one about a good experience.

Additionally, in today's technology hungry world, bad news can spread faster, and wider, than ever before. Consumers are no longer just telling their family and friends, they are sharing with complete strangers. Bottom line is, bad reviews hurt business, so the more angry customers you have the worse off you are.

I could go on-and-on expounding on the many perils of a bad consumer experience. But suffice it to say, angry customers are far more detrimental to your business than satisfied ones. So why then do a majority of companies focus only on the satisfied portion when measuring site satisfaction?

I believe it would make more sense to focus on the unhappy, or on-the-fence customers, and figure out what it would take to convert them to satisfied. No matter how you slice it, this would lead to increased revenue.

Thoughts? Comments? I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks!

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

- John Wanamaker

But it doesn't have to be that way!

I just came across a very interesting take on the importance of consumer data. Dedric Choi, at iMedia, wrote an article in which he explains:

• The kinds of data that matter vary widely from advertiser to advertiser
• With the rise of real-time ad exchanges, data become at once more necessary and more powerful
• More information allows for more precise targeting and increases the chances of finding specific attributes that lift performance

I, like Choi, felt the pain of advertisers and publishers alike in the situations he illustrated:

How many times have you worked with a client and found that its idea of the target audience for the brand or product is significantly different from the actual audience? Similarly, how often have you looked at data around a "targeted" media plan and found that less than 50 percent of impressions were served against your target? Or you were told a site indexed 80 percent female, making a great fit for your brand, only to find 40 percent of your impressions were served to teenage boys.

Crowd Science understands that this is a day-to-day struggle for so many advertisers and publishers. That is why we created a demographics platform product from the ground up to address this problem.

Check out the article here: The Growing Importance of Consumer Data

WSJ.com Considers Blocking Google

Lots of talk today about Rupert Murdoch's suggestion that News Corp might start blocking Google from premium properties, like WSJ.com, in an effort to drive up subscription-based revenues.

Hitwise shows that Google and Google News account for 25% of WSJ.com's traffic. Bill Tancer, general manager for global research at Hitwise, also commented on the behavior of those visitors:

According to Experian Hitwise data, over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are "new" users who haven't visited the domain in the last 30 days.

And concludes that it might be a mistake:

While Mr. Murdoch makes some strong points in his Sky News interview regarding the plight of the news industry and the perils of making all content free, as clickstream data demonstrates - blocking Google could isolate the Journal from potential new online subscribers.

He may well be correct. But I'm not sure we have enough evidence to be certain.

Like Mike Hudack, I think there is a counter argument here about there being much greater value (in terms of lifetime revenue) in the non-Google visitors. Anyway, it's nearly 2010. The decisions about content being free were made way back in the mid 2000's. It's healthy for the big content providers to experiment.

BTW, if anybody from News Corp is reading and would like help in figuring out what else distinguishes the Google visitors from the non-Google visitors, give me a shout, Crowd Science can help.

Six Internet Cookie Myths, BUSTED

Six Internet Cookie Myths, BUSTED

What exactly is an internet cookie? Just mention a "cookie" to most internet users and you're likely to get the same reaction: disgust and fear. Over the years, cookies have gained a rather unfortunate reputation. However, a cookie is really nothing more than one or more pieces of information stored as text strings on your machine.

Here are six of the top myths surrounding cookies, and the reasons these myths aren't true, according to the DailyBits Article, Internet Cookies Aren't Evil: 6 Myths Busted:

"Myth #1: Cookies are a form of virus or worm

Internet cookies cannot cause damage, unlike a computer virus or worm. In fact, cookies do not really have anything to do with your computer system, as it is only composed of text understandable by both your browser and the web server that sent it. In short, Internet cookies are composed of only data, not programmed or programmable code.

Myth #2: Cookies are spyware that give out your personal information

Internet cookies contain information like browser type, IP addresses, and some private information, like usernames, that you provided (out of your own free will, of course), and that fact makes you afraid of Internet cookies being spywares themselves. But fear not, for the reason why Internet cookies took such information about you is because they only want to customize your surfing activities to your own liking.

Myth #3: Internet cookies produce pop-ups or allow their entrance to your browser

This is definitely a “no-can-do” for Internet cookies. Simply put, pop-ups comprises an online advertising scheme that increase Internet traffic, as they are contained in a separate browser window once its link is clicked. I find it rather doubtful that an Internet cookie could be triggered, not to mention open a web browser and burden the fast-paced Internet traffic that has always been loaded with server requests and replies.

Myth #4: Cookies give way to spamming

Spamming, according to Wikipedia, is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. In relation to Internet cookies, this, certainly, is not one of the functions of an Internet cookie, especially since an Internet cookie is just a group of data, not a programmed or programmable code (this seems to be the best explanation for all the misconceptions people have against Internet cookies). Also, they can only serve as informative tools browsers use for the computer user and nothing more.

Myth #5: Cookies are for advertising purposes only

Cookies serve a lot of purpose other than advertising. While it is true that advertisers make use of the cookies’ ability to store browsing behaviors of users who click on their advertisements in a web page, Internet cookies are more than that. Actually, cookies care a lot about the consumers in this virtual market.

Like any form of media there is today, the Internet also runs on advertisements to make browsing websites free for consumers. Cookies allow advertisers to promote on different publishers’ websites for consumers. Through watching a consumer’s surfing behavior, the cookies ensure that, while keeping enough ads for advertisers to catch an audience and for publishers to generate income, consumers will not be bombarded by too much promotion.

Myth #6: The best way to avoid any damage caused by cookies is to disable and delete them

You don’t want to do this, believe me. Internet cookies make our virtual lives easier by giving us an option to remember all our seemingly repetitive details we keep on typing on websites’ textboxes."

All in all, cookies don't deserve the sinister reputation they have gained. They make our lives easier, keep our internet free, and certainly don't put us at risk for worms or viruses.

Check out the full article here Internet Cookies Aren't Evil: 6 Myths Busted

Crowd Science Twitter Study Continues to Generate Media Interest

eMarketer.com used Crowd Science's Twitter research study in their recent article Going Social Anywhere and Everywhere.

See our original discussion of the results here

Or, check out the summary graphics here

The End of the Audience Measurement Cold War

On Wednesday, October 28th, we will interview T.S. Kelly, The Media Strategist, and John Martin, Chief Crowd Scientist.

Click here to Listen In

Topics include:

• The end of "single source" vendor analytics

• Time has run out on a high value standard measurement

• The measurement arms race increasingly demands hybrid models

• The "Fall of Socialized Measurement"

We will put several key questions to both T.S. and John about how publishers and advertisers are challenged by the race-to-the-bottom caused by attempts at standardized single-source audience measurement.

Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the straight scoop.

Hybrid is the New Black - T.S.Kelly

Hybrid is the New Black

Part-time Crowd Scientist, T.S. Kelly, recently penned a post on his blog, The Media Strategist, that explores the "mixocology" going on in today's audience measurement marketplace. It's called Hybrid is the new BLACK -- which happens to be one of T.S.'s favorite sayings -- and it's definitely worth a read.