The InnovateMR Blog

There has been some recent buzz about a report entitled, “More Dirty Little Secrets of Online Panels.” This report, like previous ones released by the firm, Grey Matter Research, paints a rather depressing and alarming picture for the sample industry. The report suggested that up to 46% of the sample traffic furnished in today’s surveys should be deemed unacceptable; riddled with programmatic bots and other undesirable behaviors. While we don’t know which panel suppliers were used for this research, the report indicated that 5 of the 10 largest sample companies in our industry were used for the test. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the title of this report caught my attention and troubled me greatly.

InnovateMR's Chief Research Officer, Lisa Wilding-Brown, shares her Top 5 Tips for Vetting Your Sample Provider in this article published in Quirk's Marketing Research Review - Jan/Feb 2020 issue.

Participant engagement is the keystone of market research and utilizing the right incentive structure can impact the efficiency and accuracy of your data collection efforts. Beyond a simple economic exchange, incentives help signal the value of participation and promote a truly symbiotic bond between respondent and researcher.

I’ll long remember last spring for the time I spent working on GDPR compliance. The General Data Protection Regulation had a massive impact and required sweeping changes for countless market research companies, including ours. This was the largest regulatory movement in consumer privacy to date, and its enduring impact will be felt for years.

In the wake of several large-scale data breaches, participant trust – or lack thereof – has become a hot topic in the market research industry. Participants have become increasingly wary of the industry, especially when it comes to how personal data is used. Last year, I joined a panel of industry experts at the Insights Association Corporate Researchers Conference and again in a webinar replay to discuss why this is the case and what we can do to address it. 

Last year, Mark Menig and I took you on a scary ride through the dark web. We dove deep into the actions of fraudsters and cyber criminals in an attempt to burst the bubble of the market research industry and show what really happens in those hidden corners of the Internet.

Clients routinely ask us, “What makes InnovateMR better than ALL the other sample providers?”  We get it. As a buyer, you are overwhelmed with options. To say the sample space is saturated is an under-statement. 

In the last several months, I’ve spent a lot of time discussing participant engagement and its impact on the market research industry with industry cohorts. Recently, I wrote about the Trust Survey for 2018 conducted by GRBN that found only 27% of participants trust market research companies and that 70% have had a bad research experience recently.

Trust is the ultimate currency in market research.  Unfortunately, our industry has treated participant trust as an endless commodity, only to realize it is in fact, finite and depleting quickly. Dwindling participation rates coupled with increasing consumer reluctance to share information led to the production of the global GRBN Trust Survey for 2018, the results of which I was proud to co-present at the Insights Association Corporate Researchers Conference on October 8.

How Sample Companies Can Create Value from the GRBN’s ENGAGE MR Program

Blog Series: Truth Bombs in Research

A behind-the-scenes discussion on some of the sample industry’s best kept secrets. Join Innovate’s Chief Research Officer, Lisa Wilding-Brown as she exposes some of the industry’s unspoken truths and provides insights for nurturing our most important asset: survey participants.

New Blog Series: Truth Bombs in Research

A behind-the-scenes discussion on some of the sample industry’s best kept secrets. Join Innovate’s Chief Research Officer, Lisa Wilding-Brown as she exposes some of the industry’s unspoken truths.

An Exploration on the Inclusion of Mobile Audiences and Its Impact on Insights

For several months, I’ve been part of an effort spearheaded by GRBN to address the participant experience – to ensure that not only is it a pleasant and inviting experience, but that more people are enticed to participate.

I’m finally coming up for air after non-stop business travel over the last few months. I’ve been to Texas, Canada, New York, the UK and Ireland over a two-month period. Whew! Over the last 8 weeks, I’ve attended a few conferences, reconnected with old colleagues and made new industry friends as well.

Most recently, I attended the MRS Impact Week in London where I had the opportunity to present at The GRBN’s International Workshop Day. The workshop was focused on two initiatives: The ROI of insights and The Participant Engagement Initiative (PEI).

You’ve probably heard of the dark web. It’s that scary, hidden part of the Internet where criminals and fraudsters live, stealing data and breaking security protocols. It’s also an unknown quantity for most people in the market research industry.

The relationship we have with survey respondents is incredibly important, but in recent years has suffered. Why is this, and what can we do to improve on these issues and ensure a positive experience for everyone involved in the process?

Innovate MR’s team has decades of experience working with a diverse audience, allowing us to craft custom panels to fill the specific needs of our clients. That experience is reflected in everything we do, and we strive to document it on our website for easy reference.

Our Quality Resource Supplements contain several documents, webinar recordings, and podcasts designed to provide a detailed breakdown of our panel capabilities, quality best practices and tips, and insights into the state of the industry. You can access all these resources from the links below, or register for our mailing list and you’ll be the first to receive new releases as they are available.

Tracking studies can be especially helpful in identifying new trends, emerging competitive threats, in-market performance, and brand perceptions.  At Innovate, we understand how important it is to achieve consistency and stability in your longitudinal research. If changes occur in the data, you need to know unequivocally that they are natural and not artificially generated by changes in methodology or sample design.

At Innovate, we obsess over quality.  Why?  Cyber fraud is at an all-time high, impacting every industry, vertical and government agency that exists in the modern world. Earlier this year, Forbes Magazine cited research which predicts cyber-crime to cost 2.1 Trillion by 2019. Like a computer virus, fraudulent activity is evolving; new strains are surfacing every day.  Unfortunately, the Market Research community is not impervious to these threats. In fact, our industry is a major target due to the incentives offered to research participants.

Since the inception of our company several years ago, our philosophy has focused on layering in dozens of mechanisms to thwart online malicious behaviors. These layers are dynamically changing, outsmarting even the most sophisticated fraudsters.

Don’t Rely On Luck -  Transition Your Tracking Study For Greater Confidence

As industry veterans, we know the complexities of managing longitudinal research. Over the last several years, we have successfully transitioned over 1,500 tracking studies for our clients! 

As you review your plans for 2018, you may be considering a change in your sample suppliers for several reasons.  Whether you are facing inconsistent service levels, or your data is moving in unpredictable ways, the Innovate team has the experience and expertise to get your study back on track. 

One of the greatest challenges in this industry is to fully understand what constitutes realistic expectations. In a data-driven world, the risk of data-less claims about sample quality, survey processes, and incidences of fraud can be dangerous for your research and ultimately your bottom-line.

We’re proud to be part of the upcoming Insights Association webinar, Love in Turmoil: How to Win Back the Hearts and Minds of Research Participants.

Taking place on Tuesday, October 24 at 2PM EDT, this in-depth free webinar will feature many of the individuals we’ve partnered with as part of the Participant Engagement Initiative to discuss what it takes to truly engage with research participants and create lasting relationships.

There is a reason we see so many mergers – they offer a bevy of benefits for the companies involved. However, mergers can be problematic for the consumer and client by creating new challenges in communication, quality control, and administration.

The recent SSI and Research Now merger is a landscape-changing transaction in the industry.  Here are four things you should remember with significant mergers.

Last week, I had the honor of attending the Insights Leadership Conference in Palm Beach, Florida, and participated in a panel discussing the findings from the Participant Engagement Initiative research-on-research. Spearheaded by Andrew Cannon from GRBN, the research-on-research focuses on how brands can improve relationships with constituents and improve the overall user experience to ensure quality in research.

Improving the research participant experience has been one of the most important goals we’ve set as a company. That’s why I’m proud to be part of GRBN’s Participant Engagement Initiative, Research on Research, led by Andrew Cannon.

One of the fundamental challenges of good survey design is accounting for all of the different factors – data quality, fraud protection, mobile compatibility, and general user experience. In a recent episode of the Innovate Podcast, Mark Menig, CEO of True Sample, and I took a closer look at these factors.

To aid with hurricane relief efforts in Houston, Innovate will donate $1 for every survey completed on PointClub during the month of September to the American Red Cross. The promotion will run through September until October 1^st.

One of the most significant challenges in market research is ensuring that both quality and uniqueness in sample matches the specific needs of any given study. These challenges are only compounded due to the overlap of participants across multiple panels, and a lack of uniqueness for certain demographics.

Sourcing a difficult to reach audience starts at the very beginning — with recruitment. Most people recruit from the same online publishers, including loyalty sites with large populations of people that fit target demographics.

One of the great challenges of client-facing work is finding people who have the perfect mix of expertise, credentials, and culture-fit. It can be an arduous process and requires more than just a list of job interview questions pulled from Google.

Often, it’s more about gut instinct during an interview than the overall “on paper” pedigree of an applicant. It takes time as a manager to hone that instinct and understand how someone will realistically fit into a growing team.

Innovate has hired research veteran Brendan Russell to supervise the company’s European sales strategy.  The firm plans to make additional hires in the region to help service a rapidly growing portfolio of European-based clients.

This past May, we had the pleasure of attending events held by Women in Research across the country as a sponsor. George Llorens, Hilary Belletti and I attended in New York City, where Jessica Bennett, contributing writer for the New York Times and author of Feminist Fight Club joined a conversation at the LinkedIn offices.

Innovate has transitioned to a larger office located in Sector 44, Gurgaon, India.  The company has reported incredible revenue growth over the last 12 months and it has expanded operations in both the US and India as a result.  The firm also stated it will continue to execute against aggressive hiring plans throughout the remainder of 2017.

I sat down recently with Mark Menig, CEO of TrueSample for Episode 3 of the Innovate Podcast Series. At the top of the list for discussion was the recent spike in fraudulent activity affecting online publishing and advertising, and the impact it is having on market researchers.

At Innovate, we're proud of our panel, PointClub.com. So naturally we like to show it off a little. Our members make up one of the fastest growing, most engaged communities in the MR space... And they have a lot to say!

LOS ANGELES, June 12, 2017 – Innovate (www.InnovateMR.com), a global leader in audience sampling, has hired senior business development expert, Jeff Gerken to support the firm’s growing client portfolio, and plans to make additional hires in the coming months.  These strategic hires continue to build upon the firm’s client-centric model which aims to provide unparalleled industry expertise to Innovate’s global clientele.  

Episode 2 of the Innovate Podcast, featuring Lisa Wilding-Brown of Innovate and Mark Menig, CEO of True Sample recently went live, featuring an extensive conversation about sample buyer expectations. 

Lisa and Mark dive into a question that has come up increasingly in recent months related to perception of potential sample fraud, followed by a discussion of overall expectations about sample quality from buyers and what kinds of questions and concerns come in most frequently in the industry.  

In a recent webinar, we explored the perfect “mix” of leading-edge practices to bring your client service and internal research operations team to the next level. We shared our effective methods to create, evaluate, and educate your staff. 

The relationships we have with our respondents are headed to rock bottom. It’s a problem we’ve been facing for years, but we have the power to fix it. Without changes, however, we’re headed for a very real and very messy breakup.

So, what can be done to build a stronger relationship with respondents? Let’s take a closer look at the root of the problem, and how some of these issues can be addressed.

There are some very real issues facing the market research industry due to the less than stellar relationship we’ve had in recent years with respondents. I want to address three areas where we can build a strong, long term relationship with the individuals we rely on for key insights in the industry.

From making a strong first impression to building strong rapport and maintaining high levels of engagement, let’s look at the three areas that should be focused on to address the very real concerns growing in the industry.

Every project is different, with unique sample needs and potential challenges. You likely have many questions about your sample, so we’ve built a library of resources to answer them. 

We're excited to be launching the Innovate Market Research Podcast. The inaugural episode features Lisa Wilding-Brown of Innovate and Mark Menig, CEO of True Sample. The two sit down to discuss some of the most pressing questions and concerns related to sample quality in the industry. 

In partnership with my esteemed colleagues, I had the fortunate opportunity of developing one of the industry’s first online panels, The Harris Poll Online. Since then, I have built hundreds of panels. Mothers, gamers, business professionals, mortgage brokers, teens, high income earners, GLBTers, physicians and the list goes on.

Panel registration requires careful consideration of not only the people you want on the panel, with a keen eye for quality checks and fraud detection from the first interaction, but a strong emphasis on user experience. While it’s more important than ever before to screen and manage the recruitment process, building a strong relationship with panel members is equally important at several steps.

Good fraud detection process requires a careful understanding of the different tactics that might be used by those with nefarious intent. Many of these quality checks should be built into the process from the moment of registration, but also as part of panel quality control over the long term.

Data quality has been a top of mind issue in the market research industry for as long as data has been collected, but online surveys and an increasingly sophisticated pool of respondents has made it more pressing than ever. The risk of fraud is very real and the tools with which people can get around insufficient safeguards are more robust than ever before.

It’s a no brainer that panel building is more important than ever before. Good recruitment tactics, effective survey routing and strong communication with panel respondents are all vital elements in producing quality data. Here are four of the most typical problem areas and how they can be approached.

Diversification of Recruitment Channels

Diverse recruitment ensures a more representative panel, providing not only greater flexibility, but ensuring a better ability to fulfill hard to reach audience requests. We take this seriously and recruit from a spectrum of sources, including both online and offline publishers, social networks like Facebook, web and SMS databases, advertising networks, and through television ad placement.

LOS ANGELES, May 23, 2016 — When I was a child, my dad gave me some very sound career guidance that I still carry with me today... “80% of people suffer from deficits that will hold them back professionally  – make sure you are in the 20%, kid.”

LOS ANGELES, April 26, 2016 — Innovate MR's Lisa Wilding-Brown, EVP of Global Operations, was interviewed on RBDR today by RFL's Bob Lederer. The interview centered around concerns

Illustrating the parallel between hiring qualified staff and recruiting top-notch panelists.

LOS ANGELES, March 15, 2016 — Many years ago, while at a former company, I was asked to fill several key positions in the Operations department.

LOS ANGELES,  December 22, 2015 — As a professional working in the market research space for over a decade, I’ve been witness to some incredible change. In fact, our industry has probably changed more in the last ten years than the thirty years prior to that!