Reach in small markets

How to get reliable brand tracking data for small or traditionally hard to reach markets

40% of global consumer spending, or roughly $20 trillion, happens outside of the world’s biggest markets. Countries like Norway, Kenya, Bangladesh, Peru, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and many others present large and often untapped growth opportunities for many global brands, but getting reliable brand perception metrics for those markets can be very difficult and expensive.

The reason for this is that such data is almost always generated using online (consumer) panels, who typically provide access to less than 0.1% of a country’s adult population. That is enough to do solid research in a country like the UK, but in a country like Norway, with an adult population of only a little over 4m people, this means that the effective sampling frame is often only a few thousand people (the same is true for many emerging economies with a relatively small middle class).

Having access to such a limited number of people makes brand tracking research very difficult because:

• Only one or two waves per year are feasible due to exclusion criteria that prevent respondents from completing a survey on the same brand repeatedly.

• It can take weeks or months to reach a sufficient number of relatively widespread consumer groups like household purchase decision-makers or car owners.

• Margins of error are often very large because the limited sample size makes it difficult to correct for sample composition bias.

As a result, tracking brand perception in small markets is often expensive, slow and unreliable.

Using in-ad surveys to access to 3 billion people around the world per day

To generate reliable consumer insights in small markets, we looked beyond the classic panel-based data collection approach, and ventured into ad-based data collection. That is, we designed a digital interactive ad that enables people to answer questions right from the app or website where they are already in.

In order to generate valuable insights through in-ad surveys, we went through a number of steps:

1. First, we re-designed the survey to create an optimal user experience on mobile so that people answer questions without the need for an incentive (thus also eliminating the need for anti-fraud protection).

2. We then modularized the survey structure so that questions can be answered independent of each other, which enables us to generate insights even if people drop-off without completing the full survey.

3. To correct for acquiescence and other common types of survey biases, we developed a quality score based on click behavior.

4. Finally, we developed direct integrations into large demand-side platforms (DSPs) that enable us to automatically place digital ads in any country, region or city where we want to collect data.

Through our DSP network, we’re currently able to access over 50 billion ad impressions that reach over 3 billion consumers across the world per day. In Norway, for example, we currently have access to over 40 million ad impressions per day that reach about 1.4 million people. With an impression to response ratio of 1%, this gives us the theoretical ability to conduct 420.000 interviews per day, which is over 100 times as many as what would be possible through an online panel.

Using an ad-based approach to survey data collection enables us to:

• Generate insights for almost any geographic region in the world, including over 190 countries, as well as 2,000+ cities, regions and designated market areas.

• Conduct over 50.000 interviews per market and year at no cost premium over larger and more easily accessible markets.

• Get high-quality insights, reliable segmentation and monthly updates in small markets like Norway and even Nepal.

Book a demo of Latana here.