Tag: sampling
This post was also featured on Adotas.com.
Working in research, I often catch myself quoting stereotypes but only because they end up being true. Minivans are more likely to be driven by moms, Neiman Marcus shoppers are higher income. And in the world of research, survey takers are more likely to be women and more likely to be older.
In research speak, we refer to it as non-response bias or self-selection bias. Essentially, certain segments of the population (e.g. men) are more likely to be non-responders to surveys.
It’s the reality of what happens when you invite someone to fill out a survey and, typically, it’s not a big deal. If I’m looking for a sample of 50 men and 50 women, I could take the proactive step of inviting more men than women to fill out my survey, understanding that fewer men will be willing to take the survey and at the end the numbers will even out.
However, taking that proactive step is not always possible….
Continue April 19, 2012
(This post was also featured on Adotas.com.)
As I explained in an earlier InsightfulAnalytics blog post, what makes online ad effectiveness measurement work is the use of an experimental design. I’ve also mentioned in earlier posts that while experimental design is a fantastic approach and one we recommend, for a variety of reasons clients prefer to run quasi-experimental studies. One of the important aspects of putting together a good quasi-experimental design is to create a control cell that is as equivalent to the test cell as possible. Unfortunately, and if you’ve read some of my other posts you’ll realize this is a trend, that’s just not how things work online.
When I first started doing online ad effectiveness research in 1997 there was no such things as ad server delivered tags. Everything we did for sampling a campaign was hard coded to a page, including the advertising. This made for an extremely easy design. Since there was no complex ad server to worry about, I could randomly redirect visitors to either the page with the test ad or the page with the control ad. It doesn’t get much better than that – pure random assignment of the respondent pool. However, with the advances in ad serving the survey sampling code moved into the ad server and thus began the era of the pop-up and the dreaded bonus inventory.
Continue April 12, 2012
Last week at the IIR’s The Marketing Research Event, I was asked a question about marketing effectiveness and ROI that I’ve heard many times over the years:
What works best?
Unfortunately the short answer is:
It depends.
But now for the long answer…
Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to review hundreds to thousands of marketing accountability projects (aka Marketing Mix Models, ROI analyses, ad effectiveness, price elasticity, CRM, attribution modeling, etc.) across almost every imaginable major brand and numerous marketing strategies. Just as Einstein may have been inspired by his work as a clerk at the patent office and getting a bird’s eye view of the latest stream of new ideas in a way others could not, in an equally impressive way (just kidding), here are the linkages I’ve noticed on effective marketing.
The Top 10 Marketing Tactics
Continue November 17, 2011
One of my personal gripes about the field of market research is that a very small percentage of the population knows the essential lessons of how to conduct good research. Yet, I consistently find that most people feel they know everything they need to know about how research works.
Then again, how can I blame them?
It’s much too easy to run your own Twitter poll of your friends, or to even create your own survey online and collect responses. How many of us have tried to hone in on an opinion from a friend, only to turn to a 10 point scale? “Come on tell the truth, on a scale from 1 to 10, do these pants make my butt look big?”
After all, isn’t market research just questions and answers?
Obviously the answer is no, at least I hope so; if the answer were yes, I’d find myself quickly becoming obsolete. The reality is that there are a lot of things that need to be considered in any research project. As a supplier of research services, our team often finds themselves in the role of educator as we work to teach or clients the nuances of setting up a study to achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves. Granted, while we’re often working on highly complex solutions that require some advanced statistics to complete, the truth is that everyone could use an understanding of the basics of research. Viola! Research in a Minute. While this series of posts may seem remedial to some, I hope that someone finds value in them….
Continue January 28, 2011
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