Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Tom H. C. Anderson of Anderson Analytics talks to Dan Shapero of LinkedIn and Sean Bruich of Facebook about leveraging social media for marketing and market research.

By Tom H. C. Anderson - Published in the October 2009 issue of Research World: The magazine for marketing intelligence & decision making

There are different options of recruiting samples and each Social Network Site (SNS) represents different key demographics, ie Facebook for US 18-24 year olds, MySpace for specific key markets (Music), and LinkedIn for SVPs of Human Resources from Fortune 500 companies.

Some networks are exploring selling sample directly to researchers, although banner ads and pop-ups are the most common way to source sample. On networks such as Facebook, purchasing traffic directly from application/widget developers is also possible (PeanutLabs was early in leveraging this opportunity). Others, including Anderson Analytics, have developed their own proprietary applications/widgets to survey or recruit sample.

Until now, text analytics has been limited to syndicated subscription services or rudimentary blog mining and screen scraping products but by the time they are built and implemented, Web 2.0 and SNS have changed drastically. More interesting possibilities will come from combining new data-mining methodologies such as text mining and linking analysis with traditional online methods, such as the following two new areas of social network research:

Ad-Hoc Text Analytics: Using natural language processing (NLP) software offers a great opportunity to leverage consumer generated media on SNS sites. Instead of monitoring the ‘blogosphere’ for specific keywords, more in-depth studies are being conducted, allowing researchers to tackle specific issues on specific sites. For instance, public pages on a network can be selected based on certain pre-defined target criteria, screen scraped, coded using NLP and then analysed. Many services also push data using RSS feeds and Taking a deeper dive can provide more interesting and actionable findings than the more simplistic buzz monitoring services typically utilised by corporate communications and PR staff.

Combining user behaviour and link data with survey-type data: By combining user-level data provided by social networks, creating applications/widgets which collect data, or thinking differently about sampling and survey instruments, you can leverage the fact that individual respondents within the sample connect to each other. Respondents can be asked questions about how they view themselves vis-a-vis their peers, or whom among their contacts they are most likely to seek out for advice on a particular purchase decision. You can also measure how much others value this respondent’s advice and what impact if any it will have on their purchasing decisions.

For marketers who are willing to embrace new technologies and adapt traditional research methodologies, there are plenty of opportunities to gain a competitive advantage over their competition.

Below is an excerpt of a recent discussion between Tom H. C. Anderson of Anderson Analytics, Dan Shapero of LinkedIn and Sean Bruich of Facebook about leveraging social media for marketing and market research. Find more insights from Anderson Analytics, LinkedIn and Facebook at ESOMAR’s online conference, to be held from 26-28 October in Chicago.

Tom: Tell us what you do and who is using Facebook and LinkedIn.

Sean: from Facebook’s Monetization Analytics group and I focus on measurements for our Facebook’s monetisation products, ads on Facebook pages primarily. Facebook is the world’s largest online social network. We just passed our 250 millionth userand have about 60 million users in the US. Facebook started out as a college networking site, but we opened up to the general population and have seen tremendous growth across all demographics, so we’re pretty representative of the overall internet population.

Dan: I’m general manager of the LinkedIn research network and director of Enterprise Solutions, responsible for the businesses we have around helping companies conduct research. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with approximately 43 million members across the globe, about half outside the US. We represent a broad cross-section of the information worker on a global basis, and our network is growing at over a million-and-a-half members a month.

Tom: How do people use LinkedIn and Facebook?

Dan: Number one is to control their professional identity on the internet and to learn about other people’s professional lives, whether it’s colleagues that they have or people they’re about to meet. People also use it as an information resource to do business research. You have access to the members directly connected to you, but you can also reach out to people in your broader network and leverage those people for business contacts, business insights or to find out about a job opportunity.

Sean: For many people, Facebook is really their online identity, where they present themselves, connect with friends and write about themselves. The feature called News Feed allows you to see all of your friends’ activities on Facebook. So the big purpose is staying connected and updated about friends. A key goal for Facebook is to enable sharing across the web and a lot of the tools enable you to post pictures and share articles and stories with a group of your friends.

Tom: What about your monetisation strategy?

Sean: Facebook sells advertising through a couple of different channels. There’s an ad on the homepage and there are ads on the right-hand side of the profile pages. We have an enormous reach and an extremely active user base, so it’s a great channel for advertisers to reach consumers. And since we know so much about Facebook users, both in terms of who they are and their interests, it’s an opportunity for advertisers to reach people that they want to reach, such as people who are interested in cars.

Dan: LinkedIn’s portfolio of strategies falls into four groups. Members can upgrade their accounts for more functionality through the Premium Subscription feature. We also have advertising in media offerings, and we allow people to purchase display advertising as well as the more interactive advertising capabilities and we have very specific professional-level targeting. In addition, our solutions for HR departments help them source and attract candidates matching the background that a particular job requires. Finally, we work with research departments to help them conduct very targeted, professional B2B research through the membership.

Tom: Can any of your services be used to offer companies a better understanding of customer needs and have you thought about market research as a revenue stream?

Sean: It’s critically important for our platforms to provide insights back to advertisers. Social networks are a great place to do that, because we have a lot of information about our users. And the ideal is feeding targeted information back to advertisers to enable them to make better advertising. People say they don’t like advertising but what they really don’t like are bad and disruptive ads. Good ads are engaging and advertise products you’re interested in. Advertisers get better ROI, users get a better user experience, and of course, it’s better for the platform.

Dan: About a year ago, LinkedIn decided to enter the market research space and after speaking to about a dozen market research organisations about how we could add the most value, it became obvious that we could be a very effective B2B sample provider. So we’ve been working with some of the world’s largest research firms as a provider for very specific B2B-oriented research efforts, spanning everything from customer satisfaction to market outlook to brand perception. That’s been a very effective growth area for us.

Tom: The average age of users is rising monthly - how will this affect how the networks are used?

Sean: The average age is definitely rising on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean that growth among younger users is slowing down. What we found is that as the population has grown, it’s become more interesting. One of the strongest drivers of how active users are is how active their friends are. It’s a virtuous cycle where as people share more, you’re more compelled to share. People will get more connected and have more channels in which they can share important parts of their lives.

Dan: As LinkedIn has grown, we’ve also experienced a fairly diversified set of ages, geographies and professional interests, and that reflects the fact that professional networks for the individual really have no boundaries. Whether connecting to former bosses, mentors or colleagues around the world, there are no niches to how people think or who they connect to in their professional lives. And our goal is to make sure that regardless of who or where they are, professionals will be able to become more successful and productive as a result.

ESOMAR Keynote Roundtable Bios

Tom H. C. Anderson is founder and managing partner of Anderson Analytics, a next generation research firm which leverages new technologies such as data and text mining with traditional market research techniques.

He received an MBA with honors from the University of Connecticut, and a Masters in Economics with honors from Lunds Universitet, Sweden.

Daniel Shapero is the General Manager of the LinkedIn Research Network where he oversees day to day operations of LinkedIn’s B2B research and sample business. Prior to LinkedIn, Dan was a Manager at Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, where he assisted technology companies and investors in making strategic decisions by intelligently leveraging qualitative and quantitative primary research. Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins University.

Sean Bruich leads Facebook’s measurement programs for its monetization products, including Facebook advertising. His focus has been on developing fast, scalable measurement products to better understand how advertising impacts user’s behaviors and perceptions.

Before joining Facebook, Sean was with Google’s Customer Labs and Quantitative Marketing groups, where he managed Google’s quantitative advertiser research and later developed ad effectiveness measurement tools for advertisers.

Previously, Sean studied Cognitive Neuroscience at Stanford University, utilizing tools such as fMRI and EEG.

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