The views presented here, along with those of a host of other industry leaders supported by detailed data on the industry’s segments, were included in ESOMAR´s Continued Evolution of the Data, Analytics and Insights Industry report for 2020. A look at the past, present and future of the industry, and an essential tool in the management’s toolbox, this report is available at esomar.org/evolution-of-insights.
ESOMAR’s collaborator Jackie Rousseau-Anderson interviewed Tom Hale, President of SurveyMonkey, about the state of matters on the Insights Industry, with particular attention to the DIY Research Platforms segment. Other interviews in this series include a take on Established Research, by Kantar’s Nathalie Burdet, one on Enterprise Feedback Systems by Fuel Cycle’s Eran Gilad and Rick Kelly, one on Consulting Firms by McKinsey & Co.’s Tamara Charm, and Candace Lun Plotkinand one on Digital Data Analytics by Salesforce’s Anouska Post.
Q: How would you categorize your company?
A: We are a platform first and foremost. We have three pillars of focus and value. One of those is market research. The second is customer experience and the third is more broadly written feedback. There are plenty of people who aren’t necessarily research professionals but still need to gather feedback from their customers and constituents, and enabling that has always been central to what we do and central to our role as a DIY platform. For our research customers, our goal is to make them more effective and efficient, to support them with software, panel, automation, data, analytics, AI and ML. DIY isn’t about making it easy, it’s about making it good and doing it more efficiently. We’re here to provide all the tools they need to flip the agency model on its head and bring research services in house.
| Top-5 largest companies within the DIY Research Platforms segment | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ranking | Name | Headquarters | 2019 Turnover (US$m) |
| 1 | Qualtrics | Provo, Utah, USA | 569 |
| 2 | SurveyMonkey | San Mateo, California, USA | 307 |
| 3 | Confirmit | Oslo, Norway | 86 |
| 4 | QuestionPro | Austin, Texas, USA | 52 |
| 5 | Vision Critical | Toronto, Canada | 49 |
Source: ESOMAr’s Evolution of Insights 2020
Q. What impact, if any, has the pandemic had on your business?
A: We’ve had consistent 15-18% year on year growth in responses collected on the platform for many years. That number is up 40% with a pretty direct correlation to roughly April 1st, 2020. People have always needed to collect feedback from one audience or another but now that need is even more relevant. Everyone wants to know how customers are feeling or what they’re doing, and DIY tools give them a great way to do that.
Q. What are some of the key trends you’re seeing in the industry right now?
A: I think one major trend is how technology is changing the way customers are executing projects, the intersection of modeling and market research. We’re now able to define a set of market research problems or processes and leverage software to automate 80% of the process. For example, we recently released our expert solutions for concept and creative testing. The process of concept testing is clearly defined. Instead of needing to turn to an agency to conduct a costly study, clients can now design and execute the study and source sample all within the platform. You used to pay $100,000 for a project like that and now you can log in to SurveyMonkey, get 1,000 responses on your product idea, package design, or ad creative, and get your results in an hour. That’s pretty transformative! We’re not the only ones doing this. The many tech-enabled service companies that we see popping up in the industry are peeling off one or a couple of these use cases and building software to support it.
Source: ESOMAR’s Evolution of Insights 2020
Q. What do you think the ultimate impact of that trend is on the industry?
A: You might have some value disruption, but I think ultimately the most critical, the most valuable, most difficult, most challenging-to-model research still gets done by the highest level of experts, but technology is increasing the amount of research being done. More things get tested, more ideas get validated, more concepts get reviewed, more feedback is gathered, and it happens in a faster time. Software companies are going to have a real advantage here because they’re used to scaling to support this type of volume.
About Tom Hale
Tom joined SurveyMonkey in July 2016 and oversees engineering, infrastructure, product, product marketing, user experience and growth, including international expansion. Before SurveyMonkey, he spent six years at HomeAway, first as Chief Product Officer, then as Chief Operating Officer, leading the company through IPO and acquisition by Expedia. Tom sits on the board of Cars.com and holds an AB from Harvard University.
President, SurveyMonkey
