2016 Tech That Will Make You A Market Research Blade Runner

In a fast-moving online culture, it seems like we’re always catching up to the next tech advance…or at least waiting eagerly for the next smartphone upgrade. In reality, though, technological innovations are a logical and natural continuum—sometimes long in the making and slow in the perfecting.

This progress could be the case for market research in 2016. Several technologies might finally bear fruit, though, instead of remaining as forbidden fruit no one can touch.

The issue is whether researchers notice instead of lingering in the already-halcyon days of phone polls and paper surveys.

Nobody knows that answer except 2017. In the meantime, here are some of the technologies that could potentially influence market researchers in 2016.

Eye-tracking technology: It’s doubtful this will make you a Blade Runner running around with the Voight-Kampff test, gleefully exposing Replicants trying to migrate to Earth. Yet this technology will get you much closer to deciphering participants’ intimate motivations in qualitative projects.

Eye-tracking technology is not only becoming accurate but also cost-effective, not something only the Tyrell Corporation can afford. As we reported:

The idea of eye-tracking technology on smartphone screens and other mobile technology was once deemed too pricey. This is no longer the case, with companies already offering eye-tracking technology for home devices at under $100. Samsung, as an example in the marketplace, has incorporated eye-tracking technology for a variety of its mobile products.

Automation: The word “automation” probably unnerves many researchers. It does evoke a notion of losing control, and that traditionally translates into wayward data. Yet companies with automating capabilities in their survey software—such as our sister company QuestionPro—can assist gaining insightful snapshots of consumers, as well as quick and often real-time feedback from respondents.

By no means does automation replace a robust research project or nurtured sample. Nevertheless, automation is beneficial for companies seeking “to find efficiencies similar to those enjoyed by media planners and campaign analysts.”

Quick, economical and easy when you need it…

Mobile: At qSample, it seems we’ve been beating this dead horse all 2015. It’s just too important of a stallion to ignore. Some have predicted online surveys completed from mobile devices to approach 50% in 2016.

Don’t get left behind like the career of Nicholas Cage after he did Left Behind.

Big Data: Sorry, but nothing to here see here, kids. Wait until 2017. Please let me repeat the quote from our executive that exemplifies what Big Data truly is:

It’s like teen sex. Everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, everyone thinks they know it, but no one is doing it.

If that’s not enough, here is telling research from Adobe explaining that “companies that embrace creative marketing are 3.5 times more likely to see their annual sales revenue grow by 10 percent or more compared with companies that exclusively rely on big data.”

Stay human, my friend.

Social Media Research: Social Media has been around almost as long as Big Data, but at least the former may potentially be harnessed in 2016 by market research. Sure, the age of organic social media is gone; yet that just means that companies like Facebook can corral their demographics in far more tidy ways. It’s a matter of market research listening better and leveraging automation in the right way for real-time data mining (and again, not replacing traditional research projects but complementing them).

As Fernando Anzures, Liquid Thinking Group CEO, recently said:

From Fan Pages to Brand Communities, it’s time for brands to go further and use social influence to create real conversations between brands and ambassadors. Co-creation at the center of social interaction. Social Media at the center of market research. Moving from ethnography to netnography, every aspect of a brand will be observed and determined by monitoring human behavior on social media.

Honorable mentions: Virtual Reality, wearables, and the Internet of Things. These three technologies will likely boom in the next year and beyond—or at the very least blossom—and already they have become vehicles for a sensible amount of market research.

In the meantime, don’t pass up the mentioned technologies in 2016. If not, even the Tyrell Corporation will not be able to save your data slipping away like a Replicant after a badly-conducted Voight-Kampff test.

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Analysis Finds Content About Tech Trends Draws Attention to Ads About Anything

Technology has improved our lives in many ways, and we now rely on it for everything from work to entertainment, education and productivity. It’s no surprise, then, that technology is a very closely-followed industry, and advertisers have found many ways to capitalize on that society-wide interest.

But, what exactly can advertisers do to make the most of this hungry audience? Sure, they can advertise on a tech news site or with retailers like Best Buy. But, beyond the obvious techie crowd, there is a wealth of opportunities left uncovered.

Let’s take a closer look at what that means. Looking back at dozens of Fortune 500 companies' advertising campaigns last quarter, Taykey’sReal-Time Trend Report revealed that tech trends clearly dominated the most successful ads. When I say “trends,” I mean any topic that drives attention and engagement across any number of online sources. So the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, for instance, is a trend that may have emerged out of news articles announcing its release date, tweets from tech leaders and gadgeteers, blog comments on a review or replays on a promo video.

The trends about tech produced one out of five real-time advertising impressions last quarter, and drove outstanding engagement with ad content. In fact, ads placed around technology topics performed an average of 70 percent over industry benchmarks, with some ads performing up to 925 percent over.

Related: Marketers Should Consider These 5 Tech Trends in the Coming Year

What’s interesting about these trends is they have very broad-reaching impacts beyond the tech industry. For instance, ads about food and beverage goods, consumer products and retail items enjoyed the very same boosts in ad performance that tech gadgets did. People were more likely to click on a food and beverage ad when it was displayed near content about Oculus Rift or Apple Pay, over something about Lay’s new Wasabi Ginger flavor or David Guetta’s MUMMS champagne partnership. While it may seem counter-intuitive, technology brings eyeballs to even the most unrelated campaigns.

So, we know that jumping on technology topics yields the greatest value for an ad campaign. But, that’s still a vague starting point, with “technology” spanning anything and everything from mobile devices to gaming, to content streaming and social media. The natural next question is exactly which tech trends brands should target, which ones they should avoid.

Ironically, the least effective trends were those that many likely assumed would have had the greatest impact last quarter. For example, Apple’s iPhone 6 release was arguably the largest tech event of Q3, making it a desirable trend to target ads around. Yet, it performed only slightly above average. iPhone 6 trends performed only 13 percent better than aggregate Android phone trends, likely at a much higher per-click price point. Plus, specific brands like Nokia and HTC saw their trends performing two to three times better than Apple iPhone trends. Sure, you could argue that these brands were also active in the news during Q3, but they certainly didn’t spark as much discussion as the iPhone 6 did. 

Evidently, hype doesn’t necessarily mean advertising success.

On the flip side, pulling ahead of the pack and showing the greatest promise for success were personal devices, accounting for 30 percent of real-time engagements. Narrowing it down even further, wearables were the top-performing device category overall, more than 200 percent more effective than industry averages.

Related: As Wearables Get Hot, These 6 Industries Are Poised to Capitalize

No one could have guessed that wearables would give advertisers the biggest bang for their buck, but perhaps even more surprising was the number-one tech trend, which was also the top trend overall. No ads performed better than those that were placed alongside the launch of LG’s G Watch R, enjoying a whopping 925 percent increase in ad engagement. Go figure!

Clearly, the most impactful trends are not always obvious to advertisers. Plenty of other unpredictable stories topped the list for top trends in Q3: Apple’s reaction to the iCloud Breach, pre-orders of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and J.J. Abram's tweets about the Millennium Falcon for Star Wars Episode VII, to name a few. Like the tip of an iceberg, a lot of these stories probably went unnoticed to the average consumer, though underneath it all, lay massive potential.

There is a natural inclination to target ads around major, eyeball-grabbing happenings, especially those that can be planned for, like the Super Bowl or the Olympics. But, taking a presumptive approach to advertising often means missed opportunities. The top performing trends might not be what the marketing team expects, but the fact is that unpredictable micro-trends can, and often do, have a significantly greater impact. That means better media performance and better ROI on campaigns.

Ad inventory, campaign budgets, and demographic analysis are all crucial to any ad campaign, but without the ability to pinpoint direct routes to audience engagement, they can only get you so far. By following trends and conversations happening in real-time, advertisers can better navigate these unpredictable but extremely valuable routes to more direct audience engagement.

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Technology Transforming the Fashion Industry

Last week after a nice lunch with my sister, niece, brother-in-law and cousin, I got corralled into following them into Nordstrom’s in downtown San Francisco. I quickly realized that with only two magazines, a book, and a smartphone, it would be a challenging afternoon.

And once my niece pulled about a half-dozen outfits off a rack and said “I just want to try on a few things,” the situation became untenable. Elevated heart rate. Accelerated pulse. Beads of sweat on forehead. If the store had started playing Slim Whitman songs, my head would have exploded, similar to what happened to the little green Martians in Tim Burton’s campy Mars Attacks.

Quickly gave everyone a hug and said I was dashing out to Ghirardelli’s for a sundae (dark chocolate hot fudge; medical studies have indicated dark chocolate’s good for you, ergo, Ghirardelli’s sundaes are healthy. Bit of twisted logic but effective for assuaging any guilt feelings).

But while scraping away the last nanometer of ice cream, it got me thinking about how technology has radically changed the fashion industry in just a few short years.

“Technology is now completely ingrained in our interaction and relationship with fashion retail,” said Arabella James, a futures consultant at The Future Laboratory. “It’s now part of every shopping moment, from inspiration and production to purchase decision and transaction.”

A few examples:

Forbes recently estimated that 3D printing will be a $3.1 billion industry by 2016; $5.2 billion by 2020. Models have already started wearing 3D-printed couture. And Apparel predicts the day will soon be at hand to see it, buy it, and print it shopping – “a consumer will spot a must-have article of clothing, complete the checkout transaction in seconds, and sit back and watch as their personal 3D printer whips up a custom fitted version right in the comfort of his home.”

And Anish Singh, CTO of Fashion GPS, added that we’ll soon see designers in offices, apartments and garages developing accessory prototypes or implementing full-on production sans middlemen.

“Imagine designers creating scale models of – well – of models wearing the designs they’ve created; how might those scale models be used to popularize and sell fashion? The possibilities are endless. The impacts will be enormous,” said Singh.

News.com.au recently wrote about C&A, a Dutch chain of fashion retail clothing stores that launched a campaign combining online and in-store consumer decision making. Dubbed FashionLike, whenever someone ‘likes’ an item of clothing online at the C&A website, the ‘like’ “gets totaled on a screen embedded in a clothes hanger on the rack in store. Consumers can then decide whether they want the more popular clothes with the larger number of ‘likes’ or opt for the ‘less liked’ pieces.”

And designer Rebecca Minkoff opened two tech savvy stores in New York and San Francisco this month. As reported by Elizabeth Holmes in The Wall Street Journal, each store has a large screen where customers can browse merchandise or request items in specific sizes to try on.

The store also texts shoppers when a fitting room is free and inside the room, a touch screen mirror is available to get more items or ask for assistance.

“Merchandise tags equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology track which items customers try on, and provide the store with a precise, real-time view of inventory. Meanwhile, employees use iPads to handle shoppers’ requests and check out from anywhere in the store,” said Holmes.

We’ve also seen innumerable stories about wearables – especially watches – over the past 12-18 months. But there have been a few recent developments with other types of wearables that are generating some buzz.

One of these is MICA – My Intelligent Communication Accessory. The $495 intelligent bracelet (announced Nov. 17) not only has precious gems and Ayers snakeskin, but includes two years of AT&T wireless data service provided by Intel. Opening Ceremony, an international retailer, designed the bracelet; it was engineered by Intel. Intel says the accessory will be available next month at Opening Ceremony New York and Los Angeles, select Barneys New York locations, and online at Openingceremony.us and Barneys.com.

And earlier this year, Cuff rolled out a nine-piece line of wearables, including bracelets, necklaces and, for the men, a key chain, all accompanied by the CuffLinc device. The Cuff app alerts people wearers designate as “first responders" when help is needed. Cuff sends an SOS to people you choose, and it doesn’t stop until someone responds. Designated people receive your location, live audio, and other relevant information to get you (or a loved one) any required assistance.

Lastly, renowned international designer Diane von Furstenberg unveiled Made for Glass – a designer collection for Google Glass.

Von Furstenberg best summed up the mind meld of fashion and technology:

“The definition of fashion is ‘l’air du temps,’ –the essence of the time we live in, so it is absolutely normal that it meets technology.”

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