She left her role as global CEO of online panel firm Lightspeed in June, handing the reins to David Day. At the time Research reported that Hedde had joined the Ipsos Group, but her role there was not known.

Hedde is based in Ipsos ASI’s Parsippany, New Jersey office. She made her first public outing in the new position today in her dual role as chairperson of the Association Collaborative Effort (ACE) – a joint initiative of US research and marketing bodies to get to grips with and solve the well-documented quality issues surrounding online research.

As a first step ACE has launched a wiki page which lists key definitions for terms used in online research, and researchers are being encouraged to sign up and give feedback and make their own contributions.

Hedde said: “Online research has been plagued by a lack of common understanding of terms. Clarifying and agreeing to one set of definitions is a foundational development that the entire industry can build on.”

ACE also revealed that Esomar and Canada’s Marketing Research and Intelligence Association have signed up as international partners in the initiative, joining founding members the American Marketing Association (AMA), Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), Council of American Survey Research Organisations (Casro) and Marketing Research Association (MRA).