Coming Full Circle in Research by Making Big Data Smaller. An Interview with Maru/Matchbox’s Bruce Friend

“Technology-enabled research is a trend in the marketplace,” noted Bruce Friend, President of Global Media and Entertainment, Maru/Matchbox. 

Harnessing the power of technology in the pursuit of research insights is something at which Friend excels thanks to his previous work at OTX and Vision Critical. Now, much of his effort focuses on “building capabilities that are platform-based [unlike] a traditional research company, which still tends to be very focused on one-off, ad hoc studies, employing different survey-based methodologies.” 

Friend helps clients create single source panels that leverage a company’s own consumer assets, essentially connecting behavioral data from their DMP and other data assets with survey-based demographic and attitudinal data to track over time. “Furthermore, we build custom panels where our clients own the panel members and all of the data collected on those members. So, we are helping them create their own insights platform and program that has tangible asset value.  This value then continues to grow, as the panel size increases and we collect more data on the members,” he explained.

Charlene Weisler:  So how has the custom research business changed?

Bruce Friend: We are seeing that companies want to work with research partners in an ongoing relationship - always on, always delivering in terms of data and in terms of thinking. That is where we are heading. We are doing so not only by continuing to partner with Vision Critical, which spun off the research consulting part of thir business to become Maru/Matchbox 2 ½ years ago but by also acquiring new companies that complement the part of the business that we are concentrating on as well as enable us to do things on a standalone basis, as well as on private panels and communities. 

Charlene Weisler: And the media landscape overall is changing.

Bruce Friend: It’s been an interesting time in this “pending merger world” that the media industry is in now. We are seeing (content) companies building out full capabilities to support the process from script-to-screen. And beyond script-to-screen, really – being able to control the entire ecosystem from the standpoint of developing content, marketing it, distributing it, continuing to build franchises and monetize the businesses going forward. It is also about the platform – not just the content anymore. Its about how we get the content to the consumers in different ways. We see that even from companies such as Amazon (Prime Video), Twitter (TV, Video), Facebook (Watch) and others, who are adapting to video being a new and  increasingly dominant content form. It always seems that it all comes back to video and we are certainly seeing that more and more in the online space.

Charlene Weisler: Yes video is important. But more people are talking also about voice.

Bruce Friend: Yes, obviously voice activation is going to be the norm. In the not too distant future, I see companies conducting surveys through Alexa and Google Home. There are certainly some privacy issues around that sort of thing and I am sure there will be ways of working through that. Probably by creating panels of homes where people will opt in. In addition to voice, audio is also making a resurgence. We currently work with four or five companies that are very audio-focused.  Just like with video, audio is finding many new areas where it can exist and thrive. The emergence of podcasting is only going to continue. It is an indication of where our business is heading, where people want to listen to what they want when they want to listen to it – just like video.

Charlene Weisler: In creating panels from a clients’ own dataset, it sounds like you are able to fully leverage first-party data. Is this a trend? And what if a company doesn’t have a lot of first party data?

 

Bruce Friend: We are leveraging both first and third-party data. Certainly there are many resources for third-party data. Obviously the first-party data is better because it is essentially a 100% match rate as we recruit customers directly from the client’s database to become panel members. But in some cases some people don’t have first-party data. In those cases, we look for third-party data matching opportunities. We also run our own panel here in the U.S. and in Canada – both have around 250,000 members – so we can leverage them, as well as look to match more data sources into them. Our panels can also be used to look at communities outside of the company’s own panel. If you want to look at competitive viewers and competitive distribution services for example, you can then leverage our panel in addition to your own. Clients don’t always want to talk to just their own customers. 

Charlene Weisler: Do you see any evolution in how online communities are being built and used?

Bruce Friend: When communities started, they were about better, faster and cheaper. Communities were the start of agile research. The client could control and use the platform as a DYI tool. Most of these panels were 5,000 to 15,000 members. The trend is now not to have these smaller siloed communities within one company and across different brands, but to build a mega-community or an enterprise-wide community. We can now put all of these communities together with an organization with 50,000 to 150,000 members across the organization. Going bigger is better and when you then connect your DMP or other specific first-party data. You then have a very powerful asset with enough scale to do some very interesting things with the data and with surveys on top of it to give you more strategic insights. Communities used to be “light tactical” research – most people were not using communities for very strategic work. What we are finding now with some of our larger clients, who have made the effort to build out bigger panels, some as large at 175,00 members, is that they can now do more strategic work on them. As a result, we are seeing budgets move from more traditional research into platform-based panel offerings, such as ours, where clients can better leverage their own big data. 

Charlene Weisler:  So where do you see research going?

Bruce Friend: I see this model where companies tie into technology with an embedded community where you can talk to someone today, talk to them again a week from now, and on an ongoing basis. The company owns the panel asset, is building out that asset, that asset really has (data) currency to them while they can still conduct large survey studies within the panel. But it’s really about the creation of a resource that links behavioral data, attitudinal survey data, qualitative data, etc. into an ongoing relationship in an ongoing data stream. Automation will drive a lot of this, as well as will A.I. We are making big data smaller, more contextual and more understandable because we are looking at data that is in a panel and is more representative of the audience or subscriber base that the client has. 

Charlene Weisler: Sort of bringing the data science and ethnography elements of research back together.

Bruce Friend: Yes. I feel that we are coming full circle, back to where we were years ago when I first entered the industry. At that time research and big data lived harmoniously within the same insights departments, and that must happen again in my opinion. Otherwise, companies today that haven’t already moved to effectively consolidate their research and data science teams into one, and build business intelligence assets that support their entire organization, run the real risk of rapidly falling behind their competitors that have.

This article first appeared on www.MediaVillage.com

Getting Insights from Online Communities. A Look at Vision Critical

As the media and entertainment industries move more into programmatic and big data initiatives, we now refer to consumer targets that go beyond the “proxy’ of age and gender and more into a “new-speak” of audience segments or communities. But there are insights and technology companies that have a long history of measuring audience feedback in the context of communities. One of them is Vision Critical, which bills itself as a customer intelligence software company. Over the past fifteen years, Vision Critical has developed online communities of behavioral segments that gather consumer feedback in real time to be used by their clients for ongoing feedback and insight. 

Jack Myers, chairman of MyersBizNet, speaks of “Emotion Tech,” where technology enables us to better connect consumer emotional responses to their motivations and actions. “The current wave of new research is transitional,” Myers believes. “It will be transcended by new neuro-based technology that will connect emotional responses to media and advertising, creating a completely new set of valuation insights. While this may be a few years away, once this data begins appearing, and it will, I believe it will make many of the current performance-based data sets moot.” Myers notes that “Emotion Tech will make panels such as those developed and managed by Vision Critical even more relevant, as consumers will be identified by their emotional patterns and responses in addition to their traditional demographics, psychographics and sociographics.”

I sat down with Bruce Friend, President, Global Media & Entertainment at Vision Critical, and asked him a few questions about his online community-based research service and its impact on the industry.

CW: How many different online community groups are there? How do you create new ones?

BF: We work with hundreds of businesses and organizations globally that interact with approximately five million people within and across all the Vision Critical Insight Communities. Specific to media and entertainment, we work with over two hundred brands today.

We launch Vision Critical Insight Communities every week. We work closely with our customers’ research, product, marketing and digital teams to build an engaging online community where members can interact with our customers. Once the online community is built, Vision Critical works collaboratively with customers to populate the community with members. Once the Vision Critical Insight Community is healthy with enough members--anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 people, customers can begin engagement activities to gather feedback and insight.

CW: Have your customers been able to get insight that’s been surprising to you? Surprising results or surprising applications of the results?

BF: Our customers engage with their community audience in a variety of different ways. I’m sure that much of the feedback is either interesting or surprising in some way and drives more informed decision-making. Aside from driving advertising revenue, online communities are playing a huge role in anticipating trends and preferences so that networks and publishers can deliver exactly what their consumers want, when they want and how they want. While in some cases we have visibility into how companies use their communities and the results, our software is created in such a way that companies can run with it on their own. We have great examples on the Vision Critical website with regards to how companies have used communities. The Allure, Discovery Communications and Yahoo customer stories on our website are all great!

More specifically, I think the most surprising and inspiring thing I see overall is our customers’ willingness to learn how to leverage their Vision Critical Insight Community and use our technology to run their own projects. The benefits here are that they realize they can turn projects around much faster (sometimes within hours) at a lower cost, when they run the projects themselves.

CW: Have your insight communities been used to make programming decisions and if so can you give an example?

BF: Yes, there are many examples of our customers turning to their communities to help make decisions surrounding programming. We’ve seen our customers launch new channels, come up with TV show names, inform new and returning show greenlight decisions and much more, as a result of working closely with community members. We have a case study available on the Vision Critical website, which highlights how Discovery Communications turned to its community to launch the Destination America channel—it was quite a success.

CW: What is the process in recruiting members for the online communities and how do you keep them engaged?

BF: Vision Critical works collaboratively with our customers to promote the launch of an online community through internal databases, social media channels and email lists (e.g., subscriber lists, loyalty programs, etc.) and so on. We’ve even seen customers promote their communities at public events. Through this promotional effort, people interested in being part of a community join and actively contribute. The members have a vested interest in the company and its success, so we find that they’re eager to share their feedback in order to help make business improvements.

The companies we work with engage their members in projects on a regular basis through dynamic questionnaires and discussions. We’ve also found that community members enjoy seeing how their insight has translated into decisions—so what we call “sharebacks” encourage ongoing engagement and satisfaction, as well.

CW: What kinds of metrics do your clients gather?

BF: Companies use the Vision Critical customer intelligence software platform to gather different forms of feedback and insight. Feedback from consumers via the insight community is captured, analyzed and reported in real-time. Our customers gather different attitudinal and behavioral metrics depending on the kind of information and insights they’re looking to derive from their community. For example, a lifestyle network may be interested in launching a new show targeting affluent women. In that case, this kind of network may want to target that specific audience via its insight community to learn about their behaviors, patters, purchases, etc. in order to deliver a more targeted show.

CW: How do your customers decide on what audience groups or types to target?

BF: Vision Critical customers decide who they want to engage for insight based on people they want or need to better understand, such as specific demographics (age, sex, zip code, etc.) and attitudinal groups. In further detail, our customers can also target and report on behavioral segments, based on their own passive first party data that is collected from various sources such as customer subscriber lists, sales transactions and even recently, digital media platform usage, including social, from both desktop and mobile apps.

CW: How does the data your customers gather relate to sales or content performance? Can you give some examples of how this data can be used?

BF: As mentioned, our customers use their communities in a variety of different ways. Some turn to community members for feedback and insight to dive new product development. Others turn to their communities to improve marketing efforts, such as ad campaigns. We know that feedback from Vision Critical Insight Communities has improved sales efforts and has support content efforts. However, we just can’t provide specifics here, as this data is our customers’ and as such is proprietary.

CW: How do you think your measurement will most benefit insights into cross platform consumer usage?

BF: In many cases Vision Critical’s platform is already enabling a number of our customers to measure usage, satisfaction, performance, etc. of their content and services across multiple media platforms or of those platforms specifically (including OTT services, MVPDs, Digital Radio, etc.). 

We only see this increasing, as more and more of our customers take control over their own product and content distribution data. This evolution of our community platform is really the Holy Grail for us and our customers. Our customers can now:

·         Build large scale communities, numbering tens and even hundreds of thousands of members,

·         Leverage Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform to capture passive consumer behavior data, which can then immediately trigger surveys and discussion forums to understand who is consuming and the “whys” behind those ongoing behaviors. 

What’s most exciting is that we are just scratching the surface of all the possibilities this new type of customer intelligence community can bring.     

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com