Is 2012 the year that mobile market research grows up? If you follow the money, the answer is yes.
I read with interest a recent summary on ESOMAR’s RW Connect of a report by Cambiar Consulting on 2011 capital funding in the market research industry.
Cambiar’s Simon Chadwick summarizes the key trends in capital investment by giving this advice to entrepreneurs: “you should be based in the United States; your product should have something to do with social media; and the word ‘analytics’ should appear liberally in your business plan.”
The report distinguished “analytics” companies from “market research,” noting that the former ($297M) saw significantly more investment than the latter ($138M).
But what really jumped out at me was a breakdown of investment in “new research modalities,” separating the two into categories, “winners” and “losers.”
Winners
Mobile $53M
Online ad measurement $46M
Sample/data collection $28M
Passive measurement $26M
Losers
Shopper insights $14M
Biometrics $2M
Qualitative $1M
Notably, Chadwick reported only $15M of investment in traditional full service research consultancies.
It seems investors are looking for a breakout year from the mobile market research sector.
I agree, and I think things will really come into focus at the Market Research in the Mobile World conference coming up in Amsterdam in April. I’ll be there, and I hope to talk in person with a lot of Research Access readers while I’m there.
Onward and upward!
About Dana Stanley
