uSamp Blog

In Part I of our Mobile Research Trends series, Don’t Mess with the Geofence, our Director of Mobile Products for uSamp, Allen Vartazarian lays the groundwork for geofencing. Here, he explores some of the various applications, and we begin to see how geofencing might be the best way to capture in-the-moment insights.

One of advertising’s greatest pain points is measuring ad effectiveness from the point of impact to the point of purchase. What if we said that geofencing could link an ad’s influence to purchase behavior? Geofencing is a powerful tool that can provide this feedback while adding a whole new dimension to mobile research. Here are some ways that we are using geofencing to provide valuable insights today:

• Out-Of-Home Ad Effectiveness: By setting geofences around out-of-home advertisements, we know when someone in our Mobile Army™ (our robust mobile audience), is nearby and “exposed” to the ad. By setting geofences around specific businesses, agencies can better gauge ad effectiveness by comparing store visitation of exposed consumers to those who were not exposed.
• Real-time Feedback: Whether it be a trip to the grocery store, or a movie that just came out, its imperative to gather feedback as close to the time of the experience as possible. With geofencing, we can trigger an alert as someone enters or exits a location with an invitation to answer a few questions while the experience is still fresh in one’s mind.
• User Behavior Monitoring: We can track store visits, time on site and other key metrics vital to retailers and advertisers. Combining this with other collected data, i.e. web-browsing and purchase activity, helps identify the true impact of the OOH ad exposure.

These are just a few examples of geofencing applications. Imagine how geofencing can apply to competitive analysis, field research and in-store missions. The opportunities will continue to grow with the technology and methodology. Geofencing is truly an innovative method for gaining insight into customer behavior because researchers no longer have to rely on a user’s activation since surveys can now be automatically triggered.

Our final post will explore some of the challenges seen with geofencing, what can be done to address them, and why 2013 is the year of mobile maturity.

by Matt Dusig, Co-founder & CEO

Every once in a while, I like to rock the boat. With this blog title, it seems I’ve just predicted the demise of one of the core functions of sample delivery and it’s not only a challenge to the MR industry, but to uSamp as well. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop recruiting panelists into surveys using our email sampling systems — that would mean cutting off the lifeline of the millions of panelists that come through our systems every month. But, having experienced many technological changes in my life, I have become more adept at recognizing the decline of traditional methodologies. And in this case, the next casualty of panelist recruitment and engagement will be email delivery.

Technology eclipsing itself is nothing new. Look at the terrestrial radio industry and the constant decline of listeners and advertising revenue to online and satellite streams. Over-the-air broadcast radio still works and millions still use it, but it’s on the decline and the industry is undoubtedly changing forever.

Market researchers may not being dealing with the loss of radio listeners, but they can certainly learn a lesson from their peers in the music business. The writing is on the wall: Over time, email-based sampling and recruitment will diminish in value.

When I started in sampling in 2000, email response rates were high and email marketing was a valuable way to drive web traffic for lead generation and monetization. But today, just like radio, response rates for email continue to decline.

So what’s next?

Read the rest of this entry »