Are online panels finished?

YES
Bob Chua
Chief executive
Pulse Group

Online panels have had a significant impact on the market research industry over the past decade. That said, social media is changing the game. Sites like Facebook and Linkedin have seen massive adoption and their stickiness – the amount of time consumers spend on them – will continue to grow.

These sites, therefore, are prime hunting ground for marketers and market researchers looking to gather consumer opinion. You fish where the fish are.

The sheer size of Facebook and Linkedin’s user bases provide massive reach and make sample recruitment both feasible and cost-efficient. You can target users based on their profile data and their behavioural data. You can reach respondents on multiple devices, like mobile phones and tablets, through a single platform. Clearly, social networks are the holy grail the industry has been waiting for.

Think about how online panels are built today: how the majority of recruitment is performed via traditional banner advertising, newsletter marketing and database acquisition. Multi-panel sourcing for surveys is also increasingly commonplace.

With Facebook we are recruiting sample from a single source, which allows us to have much more control over who we invite to our surveys. Better still, we are engaging with people in an environment where they like spending time and have a high emotional attachment.

We use apps on both Facebook and Linkedin to find the right people, however the respondent still has to opt in and go through the necessary screening to participate and complete a survey. The profile data we use to target survey invites could be extremely rich or extremely vague depending on the type of user we’re seeking to reach. A light Facebook user, say, simply provides basic profile information, while power users provide detailed profile information with various forms of demographic and psychographic details. But profiling could also take account of the user’s experiences, conversations, and paths to purchase – a very valuable source of information for marketers. Tools at our disposal allow for sentiment analysis and fan page profiling.

Some might question the representativeness of the social media audience as a source of survey sample, but representativeness is becoming a moot point. The recent Esomar Congress heard arguments from some major buyers of research in favour of panels that are fit for purpose rather than truly representative.

And what is more fit for purpose as a source of sample than Facebook or Linkedin? Their combined membership base is approaching a billion consumers. People spend significant chunks of the waking day on them. Their smartphone apps are massively popular, providing a means to reach people with survey invites when they are away from their PCs. All this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: the days are numbered for online panels.

NO
Gregg Lavin
President
uSamp

Social networks are a very compelling media, and definitely have their place in qualitative and quantitative research. However, when it comes to understanding detailed information and demographics of users, today’s sample providers are in a league of their own.

Where Facebook is limited to a few key demographics collected at registration, panel providers in many cases obtain hundreds of data points on a user. If an agency were looking to survey 500 iPad owners that use the iPad in a certain way who also have a specific occupation and income, I would argue that sampling from Facebook could not deliver. To screen through thousands of people would be highly inefficient, not to mention a really lousy user experience. But because of the rich, progressive profiling capabilities of panel providers, the hard-to-reach audience remains very accessible. And this capability is critical as marketers increasingly seek insights from niche audiences.

Online panels are a broadly sourced collection of engaged survey-takers, who are motivated and willing to participate in market research studies. Panellists are vetted, profiled and screened for attitudes and behaviours. Contrast this to Facebook data points, which are limited to very basic information either collected at sign-up or through real-time screening. Given this disparity, the breadth of practical research applications delivered on social networks narrows quickly to high-incidence, general population sampling. While solid for some things, social media sampling is simply incapable of more targeted insights.

Another thing to note is that online panel companies are not restricted by the size of their panels. They can utilise highly profiled panels when targeting is needed, while also having real-time river sampling to reach the broadest audience. River sampling allows recruitment across the web for in-the-moment surveys.

Upon agreement to participate, users are screened and electronically validated using a host of technologies and tools. Routing technologies then direct these respondents to appropriate surveys.

River sampling has been around for over a decade. It provides an advantage in engaging fresh survey takers who may not be willing to join a panel but are interested in sharing their views nonetheless. Frequently real-time river sampling draws respondents from social networks via advertising or apps, which helps broaden the sampling frame – creating highly representative online samples. At times, panel and river are used together to deliver high-quality sample that leverages the strengths of both. So this is the best of both worlds.

Panels provide a great deal of value, and are a requirement for some research. Social networks are an excellent place in which to engage potential respondents, but they are not a substitute or a panacea for problems facing panels. Smart sample providers simply need to pull the right tool from the toolbox.

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