Commentary
Speaking Of Value Exchange ...
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, April 2, 2018
Hope you’ve been enjoying your free Research Intelligencer trial. We’ve been enjoying publishing it. As you can probably tell by now, our main focus is on uncovering the best research, data and analysis explaining the values exchanged in advertising, media and marketing.
Sometimes we do that by simply reporting on …
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Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
What a concept! NON-sponsored content. Love it.
Well, if we're talking methodology, I think your pie chart should be a bar chart, unless you call the rest of it $493.05 cents and call it "cost for all the other days." :)
@David Cooperstein: I don't follow your logic. What's the methodological issue? The pie chart is a visualization of data. The data is the cost of an annual subscription ($495) and the cost of paying for one day ($1.95). You can subscribe either way.
Joe: Some initial reacitons. One item that concerns me about most research reports published on marketing/media sites...non-projectable sample sizes. It's hard, for example, to consider a study of 127 B2B and B2C marketers as anything beyond probable wind direction, 10 days out. And, sampling error figures should also be reported as a matter of standard practice. Sampling practices are woefully under reported. Convenience samples are NOT preferred...but it seems that they are widespread and given coverage.
One litmus test: Is the data actionable or just a nice to know. If nice to know or too general, then value drops. A distinct positive is access to the data or extensive crosstabs...although that might prove problematic. Crosstab that study of 127 by B2B/B2C respondents and you get an n of less than 65 per cell! Not going to the bank with that.
I also prefer stories/analyses that include back links to more detailed report/data.
@James Smith: If that's hard for you, my recommendation is that you should not consider coverage of anything with sample sizes that don't meet your criteria. We disclose as much as we can about everything we report on, or point readers directly to boilerplate. In case it hasn't been clear so far, Research Intelligencer is not a "research organization," it is a publication produced by journalists who organize information from a wide variety of sources, utilizing a spectrum of methods and samples, to produce market intelligence.
Our mission is to unearth what we consider to be the most important and potentially market-moving intelligence by reporting on data, analytics, insights and research we can gain access to. As a journalist who has covered research for more than four decades, I often cover issues involving methodlogies, sample sizes, etc., and that will continue to be part of RI's mission, when appropriate, and especially when they have the potential to impact advertising, marketing and media markets involving our readers. But I also know there is all kinds of market-moving data and research in the world.
Sometimes it's Research with an upper-case R, and sometimes it's research with a lower-case one. We will always disclose the criteria and the source and it should be up to our readers to determine the validity, applicability and actionabilty of what we report on. Our job is to report on what we believe to be meaningful. Sometimes, the most meaningful intelligence is data based on a sample of one, sometimes it's enumerated to the U.S. Census. We are utilizing journalistic criteria to determine what we cover and how we report on it.
Lastly, we disclose as much in every edition of the Research Intelligencer newsletter. It's the boilerplate at the bottom, which was crafted by long-time media and marketing research authority Gabe Samuels for us more than a decade ago. We revived it for this newsletter, because I think it still captures teh spirit of our intentions and is still the appropriate disclosure.
Pasting the disclosure here, for convenience sake:
We use the term research in the broadest possible sense. We do not perform an audit, nor do we analyze the data for accuracy or reliability. Our intention is to inform you of the existence of research materials and so we present reports as they are presented to us. The only requirements we impose are that they are potentially useful and relevant to our readers and that they pass the rudimentary test of relying on acceptable industry standards. We explicitly do not take responsibility for the findings. Please be aware of this and check the source for yourself if you intend to rely on any of the data we present.