In the last decade we have seen rapidly increasing automation in our industry, often helping us to achieve faster and more accurate results.
With innovation being Cint’s main driver, we look at new technologies and consider what will be next. What will be the next challenge? What does innovation mean for the market research industry?
Our surroundings are becoming increasingly high-tech, capable of monitoring our activities and gathering a steady flow of data on a daily basis. Everything is becoming ‘smart’; our watches, our phones, even our fridges.
The ‘smarter’ a device is the more likely it is to be collecting information, turning our everyday machines into a vacuum for behavioural data. Soon, every piece of technology that we purchase will be able to discover our habits, preferences and common behaviours. Even verbal conversations in the presence of a smart device are now showing up in targeted ads on our online social media platforms.
Although it might become easier to collect behavioural data, however, there is still a limit to what technology can do. Human opinions and ideas are too unpredictable for machines to define and predict, so the most efficient way for us to understand what people are thinking is to ask them.
This “self-reported data” – what we generally think of as surveys - has evolved throughout the years from paper and telephone collection, to online and mobile techniques. It is highly valuable, and it helps companies build better products and services to serve their customers. Through self-reported data it is possible to find out things like whether or not a predictive model is on target or if an online advertisement was effective.
In order to work, though, data needs to be relevant. You need to ask the right questions to the right audience and that’s when pre-profiled demographics can come in handy. This data is still self-reported, but it focuses on specific aspects like age, sex, education, employment and income. This information is precious, and Cint’s advanced software is able to capture it on a daily basis.
Businesses today also have to be able to turn data into a valuable resource. For example, projected behaviour can help organisations understand and predict consumer choices by feeding stored data into models. Algorithms like these have the power to solve many problems within our industry.
And, frankly, we need all the help we can get. Today’s data ecosystem is a jungle. The number of marketing technology tools keeps growing and we’re now up to 7,040 solutions on the 2019 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic. These solutions are vital in helping marketing technology companies bring data together, yet – so far – no single solution has been able to cross-platform solutions that can read through thousands of databases. Cint’s technology backbone gets us closer to this goal by providing an automated solution that leads the world’s most innovative insights companies to successful outcomes. In this way, the right technology can support your business to help you face the challenges within our industry.
