Hammers and Nails

• Entry by Tom Webster | September 1, 2010 11:01 AM
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Here at Edison, we use a lot of tools to generate the best consumer insights possible for our clients. When we started back in 1994, most of our work was telephone-based survey research and focus groups. Since then, we have incorporated Internet surveys, online qualitative research, consumer exit polling, social media monitoring and dozens of other methods into our repertoire. The Internet, in particular, has changed our business irrevocably, and made available a wide variety of options to reach consumers where they work and play online.

Yet, we still do a lot of telephone work here at Edison, and though our Exit Polling back-end systems would rival NASA's for complexity, the heart of that particular effort is still thousands of local interviewers with clipboards. The key for us is to be able to deploy "boots on the ground," even if the "ground" is online, to capture opinions whenever and wherever they occur.

I note this because there have been a lot of recent innovations in mining unstructured online data for market research purposes. As social media monitoring tools like Radian 6, Trackur and Social Mention continue to expand their coverage and capabilities, using those tools to discern what consumers are saying and doing online is becoming a more viable source for consumer insights, and one that no competent CMO or brand manager should ignore. We recommend social media research and use these tools on behalf of our clients whenever appropriate.

Social media research is attractive on many levels, not the least of which is that on some of those levels it's free. Anyone can set up Google Alerts or use other freely-available tools to begin mining the social web, and even the paid tools available aren't onerously expensive for the vast majority of companies. Because unstructured data online is "free," and free is good, it's easy to make the leap to thinking that social media research is a replacement for other methods and tools. Like any tool, however, social media research is great at some things, and lousy at others - just as telephone surveys are. The key is to focus on the best way to achieve your research goal - period - and not the best way you can use a given tool.

Historically, new technologies sometimes obviate the need for old ones, but just as often they cause the old ones to elevate their game and get better. Focus groups, for instance, will never be the same - they aren't going away, but they have certainly changed for the better, and are now just as likely to take place in the field or online as they are behind a two-way mirror. The Internet has made our jobs as researchers different (not easier) and gives us the tools to provide richer insights for our clients, which makes us all better. We have to be careful, however, not to fall in love with any one of these tools.

I write this because lately we have gotten requests from some companies not to provide them with consumer insights, or decision support, but to give them an "online survey," or some other specific tool. I actually got back from one prospective client that they didn't choose our proposal because we didn't employ a punch card system (!) they were accustomed to using. If an online survey is the best way to attack a given research problem, we recommend it. If it isn't, we don't. It's a balance, of course, between the needs of the client, the client's budget and the standards for quality research, but this balance is always best achieved when we start with the end goal in mind, and not with a specific tool.

Still, many companies are definitely doing it right. For instance, we are thrilled to have a partnership with SeeSaw Networks, a leading place-based media company, who just yesterday announced a solution to reach Moms wherever they go with messaging that is synchronized to their activities and the venues they are frequenting. Measuring place-based media and other out-of-home advertising is a tricky business, and in this particular case the best solution is a surprisingly "low-tech" one - we employ the same network of over 10,000 trained interviewers we use for the National Election Exit Polls to conduct methodologically sound, rigorously sampled place-based research. Again, it's about capturing consumers where they are, and in this particular partnership, that's at shops, grocery stores and fitness centers and anywhere else they shop, work and play.

One of my favorite cliches in the world is this: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Relying too heavily on mining unstructured data, self-selected Internet polls or even telephone surveys can very easily lead you down this path. Not everything is a nail.

Senator Blanche Lincoln Headed for a Historic Defeat

• Entry by Joe Lenski | August 27, 2010 9:17 AM
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Last week Rasmussen came out with a poll showing Senator Blanche Lincoln trailing by 38 points in her re-election campaign in Arkansas. Pollster.com and Fivethirtyeight.com each currently estimates that she is trailing her opponent Representative John Boozman by 32 points. I took a look at those numbers and asked "Has this has ever happened before?"

Well, with a little research thanks to our old reliable references - America Votes and Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections - I found the answer. No, it never has.

If Blanche Lincoln does indeed lose in November by over 28 points it will be the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent senator in a two-party race since Americans first started voting for senators after the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

I put together the following list of all of the incumbent senators who have lost a race for re-election by 17 points or more.

Incumbent Senators Defeated by Largest Margins in a General Election:
1914-2008

There are a few interesting things to note about this list.

First, the list is actually kind of short - only 29 senators have lost by as wide a margin as 17 percentage points in 48 election cycles covering more than 1,000 re-election bids. That's less than 3%. When incumbent senators lose they usually lose by small margins. And with the advent of modern polling, when they realize they are heading for a big loss they tend to withdraw from the race first. That is probably why the only recent name on the list is Rick Santorum in 2006.

Second, the largest margin on this list belongs to Jacob Javits in 1980 with an asterisk. Javits had already lost the Republican primary to Alfonse D'Amato and continued running as the Liberal Party nominee in November, finishing third more than 33 points behind. There are five senators on this list who had lost a party primary but continued running as a third party candidate in the general election. It makes you realize what a rare feat Joe Lieberman pulled off in 2006.

Third, the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent senator who had been re-nominated by his party was Wesley Jones, Republican of Washington, who rode Herbert Hoover's reverse coattails in 1932 to a 28 point defeat. Amazingly, Jones had won election four times before that.

And just because I like to point these things out, there is a father-son combo on the list - James Glenn Beall and his son John Glenn Beall of Maryland hold that distinction.

So on election night the question of whether Senator Lincoln is going to be re-elected is not likely to be in doubt, but you may want to keep an eye on the final margin. It could be a record.

A Potentially Record-Breaking Number of New Senators

• Entry by Joe Lenski | August 25, 2010 1:09 PM
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With the likely defeat of Senator Lisa Murkowski in yesterday's Alaska Republican Senate Primary, there will be at least fifteen new senators elected this November. This is the highest number of new senators in any election since 1980 when 18 new senators were elected.

Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and West Virginia all have senators who are either retiring, or have been defeated in the primaries. In addition, at least eight other senators have serious challenges to re-election in November: Lincoln-AR, Boxer-CA, Bennet-CO, Vitter-LA, Reid-NV, Burr-NC, Murray-WA and Feingold-WI.

If at least six of these incumbents are defeated in November, there will be the biggest change in personnel in the U.S. Senate since popular vote for senators was instituted in 1913. The most new senators in one election was 21 in 1946, with two of those senators having previously served. The most first-time senators elected in one election was 20 in 1978. Both of these marks could be broken this year.

Podcasting in 2010: The Calm Surface Obscures The Roiling Depths

• Entry by Tom Webster | August 13, 2010 10:05 AM
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I'm really excited to be presenting a significant session at this year's Blogworld entitled The Current State of Podcasting. This one's going to be a little different than what you've seen in previous years, where I've gone in and done my traditional bucketful of numbers augmented by folksy analogies. We've been tracking podcasting at Edison for five years now, with yearly reports on the growth and composition of the podcast audience, and even some work on the effectiveness of podcast advertising. Over that time, two things have happened, oddly simultaneously. First, podcasting from the audience perspective has grown steadily every year, from 11% of Americans having ever listened to an audio podcast in 2006, to the current figure, just under one in four. Second, however, podcasting as a "business" has changed in a somewhat counterintuitive fashion. In 2006-2007, when I first presented our data in places like the Corporate Podcasting Summit and the Podcast and New Media Expo, there were scores of startups in the podcasting space - content creators, aggregators, ad networks, specialty hosting companies, measurement companies and consultants. Chris Brogan and Christopher Penn started PodCamp as a way for independent podcasters to get together and learn from each other. Hardware and software makers alike converged on podcasting, and there were all manner of devices, podcatching software and specialist portals created to serve the space.

Today, the podcasting-specific conferences are gone. Blogworld has absorbed the best of the old PNME, of course, and this year's excellent Digital Broadcasting track reflects the finest the field has to offer for podcasters of all stripes. Look, however, through the lens of the trusty wayback machine, at the sponsors from the 2006 PNME. How many are still in business? And, of those that are, how many remain podcast-focused? Even the venerable (in Internet years) PodCamp really isn't about podcasting anymore, as it too has morphed into more of a generalist's gathering of content creators of all stripes, with - of course - the obligatory heavy focus on social media. Yesterday's podcasting experts are today's social media gurus. This isn't a knock - it's an observation (and, of course, the social media space has become a significantly bigger market in a much shorter period of time than has podcasting, so for most it has been a smart shift.) In the words of BT, the only constant is change.

Yet, podcasting has never been more popular, never touched as many lives, and never made as much money as it does today. Though there have been dozens of Podangos, Todd Cochrane has built a pretty nice business with RawVoice. ESPN and NPR have taken podcasting to new heights of mass-appeal awareness and acceptance. Consolidation was inevitable, yes, but today there are success stories with advertising-supported models, sponsorship models and premium content models to be found all over the Interwebs.

All of which leads to this innocuous-looking graph. The story this graph tells is one of calm, steady ascent - not exponential growth, but not a flatline either. In short, a nice, steady picture of incremental growth for podcasting as a medium. This graph, however, describes the calm surface over what turns out to be a far greater "sea" change below. For while the overall audience numbers show gradual shifts, the makeup of that audience has changed in some subtle, and some not-so-subtle ways. The podcasting audience is not only bigger than they were in 2006, they are different. In 2006, the podcasting world was full of bright thinkers with big ideas to capture the nascent podcasting audience. Today, many of those initial entrepreneurs have moved on to the next, new thing (and, in some cases, to chasing the same elusive early adopters that proved to be unmonetizable in podcasting's early days.) Yet, if you dive below the surface of today's podcast consumers to understand just how this audience has changed as it has grown, there is enormous opportunity for those willing to take a fresh look at the space.

Today, podcasting is generally seen as part of a channel strategy - a valid part of a multi-platform digital buy. Yet the shifts in podcasting's audience - those roiling depths beneath the calm trend line of that graph above - suggest that there is yet another act in podcasting's play, for those who truly understand the trends and can capitalize upon these latent opportunities. That's why I am genuinely excited about my session at Blogworld (and not just in the Press Release version of "excited," either). Instead of only presenting a snapshot of data - the 2010 podcast statistics - I'm going to be doing a deep dive into five years of our data, and five years of covering the space as an analyst, to really uncover the shifts that have taken place beneath podcasting's surface over the past half-decade. I promise you, you will leave this session with new ideas, new action items, and maybe even a new perspective on an "old" digital medium.

I hope to see you there.

Let's Go To The Preshow

• Entry by Melissa DeCesare | August 12, 2010 3:43 PM
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Going to the movies is something that just about everyone does. Whether it is the go-to plan on a rainy afternoon, or the spontaneous event while on a trip to the mall, movies will always draw us in. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), 67% of the U.S./Canada population age 2 and up went to the movies in 2009.

So while going to the movies has mass appeal, it is not by any means a cheap venture. With ticket prices averaging almost $8 and concession snacks selling at all time highs, it is refreshing to know that we should start to see an improvement in the preshow entertainment come September.

Screenvision, a provider of in-cinema advertising, is on a mission to liven up the typical movie going experience of trivia, static ads and stock music with new blocks of what they are calling "advertainmnent." Each 20-minute segment will focus more on pop culture entertainment and celebrity interaction rather than the same stale word scrambles and dancing popcorn that we've all come to know.

For instance, Timbaland will appear in mini videos throughout the new segments, discussing his musical influences. Paula Abdul is said to be a part of the new preshow, too, but her role has not been disclosed. Nascar will also be on board to provide video that will be sponsored by advertisers.

One of the biggest hopes for Screenvision is to create a lasting impression on the audience through active participation and interaction with mobile devices. It is unclear just how they will pull that off, but it does seem like a worthwhile cause. The company cites in its own research that 23% of moviegoers are in their seats for about 16 minutes before the trailers start and 50% of the audience is seated 10 minutes before showtime. This means that marketers are graced with a large window of time to engage the audience, all of whom who have voluntarily paid money to come sit in that theater and watch the screen. If you are an advertiser, it doesn't get much better than that.

Even with the less than stellar preshow clips that we see now, as a spectator you still find yourself playing along and paying attention. Imagine what would happen if they were actually fun and interesting. I hope Screenvision takes this approach in the right direction and disguises the "ad" as best they can creatively. While we are all for being entertained and amused before the show, we don't need to be bombarded with more obvious ads. We get enough of that everywhere else like TV, online etc. We go to the movies to escape from the everyday for a bit and it should stay that way.

I'm curious to know how Screenvision will rotate and when they will create new segments, since I can't imagine that the "oh wow" factor will last if the same ones are run again and again. With some consumers being regulars at the theater, they could become desensitized very quickly if the segments aren't replaced frequently enough.

Keep an eye out for these "advertainment" blocks to hit your local theater in September. My favorite part of going to the movies is watching the trailers, but if Screenvision pulls off this feat, I could see myself becoming a fan. Along with some great trailers, it would be another consolation if the actual movie was a bomb.