Research

Strategic acquisitions can play a big role in corporate growth strategy. And recently, we’ve seen a number of them in the market research industry, especially in the panel sector. Since GfK Knowledge Network’s acquisition of Garcia Research’s Hispanic panel, Cada Cabeza, in 2010, there have been several large companies acquiring Hispanic panels to bolster their Hispanic sample offerings. Nielsen, Research Now, and most recently, Maru/Blue’s acquisition of the Hispanic panel, Tú Cuentas, just to name a few.  By Mario X. Carrasco

Recruiting enough workers to fill the hundreds of thousands of temporary positions needed to take the 2020 Census won’t be easy, given the current economic climate, but the Census Bureau is more than up to the challenge.

Do gendered social norms influence survey reports of “objective” economic outcomes? This paper compares the earnings reported for husbands and wives in the Current Population Survey with their “true” earnings from administrative income-tax records.

Across nearly all business verticals, marketers reported large shifts in how they evaluate, measure and budget across media channels. Our recently released Nielsen CMO Report 2018 sheds light on the strategic and organizational challenges CMOs face as they adapt to unprecedented change in the marketing landscape.

Millennials expect more from brands. From the shoes they wear to the coffee they Instagram, brand choices are increasingly used to project values in public and online, elevating the need for brands themselves to be value-conscious.

Setting your team up for success is tougher than ever. One reason is that, at many companies, the individual players aren’t using the same playbook. As a result, they’re working at cross purposes like the runners in Monty Python’s “100 Meter Dash for People With No Sense of Direction.”

Community Marketing & Insights (CMI) has released its 12th Annual LGBTQ Community Survey® report. 40,460 respondents from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities in 151 countries participated in the 12th annual survey. 200+ LGBTQ media, events and organizations worldwide partnered with CMI in this year’s study, helping to gain wide representation from across the community.

The music industry is in the midst of a growth spurt that has led to 15-year record revenues for the major label groups and continues to break new consumption records for the first half of 2018. Total album equivalent consumption, which includes physical and digital album sales, song sales and on-demand audio and video song streams are up 18%.

Audio plays an important role in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, and the listening audience of radio is as diverse and varied as the fabric of the American melting pot itself. In fact, radio is America’s top weekly reach platform, both overall and with Black and Hispanic consumers; 75 million of whom tune in each week. In the first quarter of 2018, the radio reached 92% of Black consumers each week and 96% of Hispanic consumers.

Marriage looks a lot different today in many ways than in years past. As our nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, so are married couples.

Marketing expenditures on sponsorship have increased considerably over the past several years, but progress in measuring and assessing sponsorship’s business impact has been marginal, according to a new study.

NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises released the groundbreaking study, “La Ola de la FIFA 2018” as part of the most comprehensive World Cup research initiative in the U.S. around soccer fandom.

Following the release of the new How Disruption Can Fuel Brand Growth report Bill Pink, Head of Brand Guidance Analytics in North America, and I have been mulling over whether big data is likely to inspire disruption. Our answer is that to do so you need more than just data, big or small.  by Nigel Hollis

The shifting of advertising budgets into the digital space brings a number of great opportunities and efficiencies, but it also brings many complexities. Without question, targeting audiences across digital channels is a challenging feat for advertisers, agencies and publishers. And it is not getting easier.

The implication: as more consumers avoid ads, marketers need to examine how they manage ad campaigns today and in the future, particularly if they are targeting groups with a higher propensity to do block ads or have relied on linear TV.

The data reflects the world people know and experience today. Patterns in that data may reveal opportunities for optimization, better steering behaviors in favor of a specific brand, but are unlikely to reveal opportunities for disruptive growth.  by Nigel Hollis

Young adults today are marrying at lower rates than previous generations, and self-reports suggest that a lack of economic security plays a role in the decline.

Approximately half (51.4 percent) of the nation’s 531 counties that were getting younger between April 2010 and July 2017 were in the Midwest, according to newly released 2017 population estimates. Out of the counties that were getting younger, the South also had a high proportion (32.4 percent) of the counties that experienced a decrease in median age — the age where half of the population is younger and the other half is older— followed by the West (14.1 percent), and the Northeast (2.1 percent).

The mantra fail fast, fail often, was popularized by a book of the same title which encourages readers to suspend their fear of failure and let their enthusiasm to guide them. Sadly, when it comes to marketing this advice is simply a recipe for wasted marketing spend if you do not know things are not going to plan.  by Nigel Hollis 

From our AUDIENCExSCIENCE stage, Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising & Client Partnerships at NBCUniversal and Megan Clarken, President at Nielsen Watch, share their unique perspectives on media currency and media measurement. Most importantly: their shared emphasis on getting to reliable measurement of outcomes asap.