“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
