WARC Online Conference: Final Thoughts

Starting around 2009 MR conferences have increasingly been dominated by papers and presentations focused on the use of social media as a source of insight about brands, consumers, and markets. The combination of declining cooperation and rising costs in traditional methods; widespread concerns about basic panel data quality, representivity, and the long-term sustainability of the panel model; increasing global Internet penetration, especially in emerging markets; and the rapid adoption of social networking has created the sometimes compelling argument that research methods rooted in social media are the next big thing. This conference was typical of many with its overwhelming focus on social media, some mobile thrown in, and just a dash of online quant.

The takeaway in this case starts with the clear sense that MROCs have risen to the top of the social media food chain. Communities are arguably the most established of the social media methodologies and when executed by experienced agencies can be effective sources of consumer opinion and feedback. Beyond that it's still the "wild west." There are lots of other interesting ideas, the most promising of which are probably somewhere buried in the massive online analytics overviewed expertly by Francesco D'Orazio. Mobile has its attractions, but remains pretty much a niche technology, and even when Web-enabled devices begin to dominate the balance between the platform's limitations and its substantial potential will require researchers to reinvent what they do in significant ways. This may sound a bit self-serving, but simply because of the sheer dominance of online quant research in client spend and integration with their research programs the future of panels or some similar form of online quant is the biggest question of all. It's not clear that anyone knows the answer.

The most intriguing question of all was posed by Neils Schillewaert: what does the future of online research look like? He chose to talk not about methodology but about how we need to engage with both respondents and clients. On the respondent side it was refreshing to hear someone talk about engagement without also talking about Flash. And the call for more impactful research, for research results that surprise clients and get them thinking, and for establishing an ongoing dialogue with clients rather than a series of one night stands is a future we all long for. Getting there is the hard part. If researchers don't quite know how to start there also was clear evidence at this conference that at least some clients aren't particularly interested to begin with.

In the end, conferences like this almost always seem to come down to figuring out how to strike a balance between the quality of the evidence and the utility of the insights generated from that evidence. As someone who spends way too much time at these events, it's not clear to me that we're making a whole lot of progress.