May 2006 GMI Newsletter

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Welcome to the May 2006 edition of our newsletter.

GMI secures $35 million in venture capital

Deal paves the way to GMI's Enterprise Research Management vision and continuing panel expansion

In a Series C financing round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), GMI has successfully closed a $35 million venture capital funding deal.  Series C co-investors and existing VC investors, FTVentures and Voyager Capital, are electing to increase their respective stock holdings in GMI in this financing.  In addition, Greg Stanger, venture partner of TCV and former Chief Financial Officer of Expedia, will join the company's board of directors.

“The rapid mainstreaming of online market research, as well as the growing use of the Internet as a platform for market research management, makes this investment decision an easy one for TCV,” said Stanger. “GMI has done an amazing job of recognizing the critical pain points and challenges that market researchers experience, and has developed a tiered offer that puts them squarely in the driver's seat of their real-time global research processes.”

"For GMI, this is a significant investment from a world-class venture fund, and we are delighted to welcome Greg Stanger to our board,” explains Rob Monster, Founder, Chairman and CEO of GMI. “GMI is well-positioned to reinvent the $22 billion market research industry with our Enterprise Research Management (ERM) platform at the core of our vision for the future of market research. In pursuing this reinvention, GMI remains committed to its enduring partnerships with the full-service market research firms that leverage GMI's technologies and global panels.”

“GMI is not a market research firm, will never become one and will not be acquired by one,” continues Monster. “We strongly believe that to deliver great research, clients will need to be able to draw on the consultative insights of trained research professionals who have domain expertise in the client's business. By providing the software, global panels and off-shore production capacity, GMI enables researchers to focus on being great researchers.”

In the coming months, GMI will be showing further evidence of the various ways in which the company is uniquely positioned to create the “operating system of market research,” a single, unified platform linking research buyers, research suppliers and respondents in real time, on a global scale, and with unprecedented efficiency.

Over the past year, GMI has expanded its technology offering through a series of acquisitions, as well as significant business wins - including implementing its ERM solution for one of the world's largest software manufacturers - and expanded its global footprint to offer the most globally diverse panel in the world. A significant proportion of the funds from this series C round of financing will be invested into accelerating the global growth of GMI's online specialty panels, including youth, medical and IT.

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Hotspex Research selects GMI solutions

Founded in Toronto, Canada, by President Shane Skillen in 2000, Hotspex differentiates itself from other market research firms by its innovative proprietary research methods and processes resulting in faster time to market, lower product development costs, improved new product success rates and increased profitability. Serving prestigious Fortune 500 clients in such various industries as CPG, telco, automotive, retail and financial to name just a few, Hotspex was looking for an integrated market intelligence solution that would help the company meet its customers' increasing demand for global research and sustain a rapid growth rate of over 150% over the past three years. Hotspex currently employs 33 market research and technology professionals, and has offices in North America and Asia-Pacific.

Using GMI's Net-MR^® software suite and global panels, Hotspex hopes to considerably shorten the lifecycle of its research studies, accomplish seamless global scalability, and continue this growth trend. Hotspex is looking to create a highly scalable technology infrastructure that can handle unified project management, multi-language study design, and increased data collection capabilities.

“Out of the four vendors we evaluated, we selected GMI for two reasons: its powerful, leading-edge market research software suite Net-MR, and our shared vision of the whole market research industry,” explains Skillen. “At Hotspex, we are passionate about finding the right respondents to participate in our studies, and we strive to fairly compensate them for their time and opinions. As Hotspex is often coined as ‘The Google of Market Research,' we require partners that can keep pace with our growth and innovation, and offer advanced technology platforms that enable us to build proprietary research technologies and solutions.”

“Hotspex has consistently won projects over larger global market research firms based on its innovative research methodologies for new product/service development, package design, advertising testing and tracking, and market mapping,” concludes Skillen. “Our clients are highly interested in replicating this success by working with Hotspex in all the countries they do business in, and the adoption of GMI's solutions is instrumental in taking us to that next step.”

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• For more information on Hotspex, please visit www.hotspex.biz

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Interact one-on-one with panelists, in real time, during GMI online surveys

New iModerate tools add in-depth qualitative data collection to standard online surveys

Seeking faster and better ways to gauge respondents' feelings and opinions, GMI has incorporated new tools from iModerate Research Technologies, the innovative Colorado firm. iModerate tools use instant messaging capabilities to allow an online research moderator to lead real-time, one-on-one interview sessions with respondents who are already engaged in an online survey. It does not require the use of unwieldy computer downloads or annoying pop-ups.

The qualitative data taken from individual 10- to 12-minute sessions helps to give clients a more complete picture through real-time responses to the moderator's questions. An alternative to open-end responses, these sessions improve the quality of research results by providing clients with thorough, insightful data achieved through deeper, more specific questioning.

Joel Benenson, CEO of iModerate, comments: "GMI's commitment to first-rate research fits perfectly with our charge to get clients closer to their consumers. The benefits of this ground-breaking solution will be marked, and we look forward to continuing to push the envelope of innovation."

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New Net-Panel module streamlines email communication with panelists

Download and manage email to and from any POP3 email account, on a panel-by-panel basis, with the new Customer Service Module (CSM) in Net-Panel 2.0. Manage email message translation, and compose, edit, search, filter, download or export any or all communications. Fully integrated with Net-Panel 2.0, the new CSM gives you flexibility and control.

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May Net-MR Product Release

Download a copy of this month's release notes detailing the latest new features and improvements in Net-MR's Analyzer, Net-CAPI, Net-CATI, and Net-Panel 2.

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TechSay.com to launch in four more languages

In June, TechSay.com goes global with translated and localized sites in Japanese, French, German, and Portuguese. GMI is carving out a global presence among IT professionals, giving you access to tens of thousands of IT panelists worldwide - from IT professionals and managers to CIO-level decision makers.

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• Request a quote for your next project

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BBC World Poll, powered by GMI, predicts China will be biggest economy in 20 years, if...

An international poll commissioned by BBC World and powered by GMI reveals that the world expects China to be the top economic superpower by 2026. The U.S. is expected to hold second place and India third. The survey of 10,000 respondents in 10 countries, the largest-ever conducted for BBC World, supports the Emerging Giants series broadcast the week of May 22. Political stability and democracy were considered essential for success, however.

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Enterprise installation or ASP solution? Desktop tools or an integrated software suite?

Which market research software is right for your organization? Now there's one central place to start, no matter what kind of solution you need. Get a quick overview of our wide range of solutions -- from integrated MR software suites (Enterprise or ASP) to do-it-yourself survey software.

Would you like consultation? Contact us now!

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Psst...Americans: the World Cup is in GERMANY!

U.S. corporate giants are investing up to $420 million in event sponsorships to gain global brand awareness. Yet more than half of Americans surveyed in the latest GMI Poll don't know where the 2006 World Cup will be held or who the sponsors are.

More than 95% of all global fans plan to follow the Cup on TV (only 11% of US fans will “definitely watch” it.) Worldwide TV viewership for the tournament is estimated at 32 billion, with coverage in 189 countries. That should pay off handsomely for U.S. companies seeking global exposure. But if they hope to reach U.S. consumers, that's a different story.

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Wall Street Journal: "Innocents Abroad"

Can a little guidebook published for business travelers by "Business for Diplomatic Action" help stem rampant anti-Americanism in the world? Simon Anholt, author of the Nation Brands Index – powered by GMI – shares his opinions in this article by Martha Bayles for Wall Street Journal.

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Net-MR Tip of the Month

Create data filters in Research Analyzer.

Research Analyzer enables you to create powerful filters for your data. The built-in wizard makes this a breeze!
 
Use the simple wizard for creating basic filter expressions with a single value. Or, create more complex filters by combining your basic expressions.

See this tool in action (PDF)

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BEST PRACTICES: A fuller picture

Use online ethnography to learn from respondents' actions and words

Traditional ethnography in market research – observing consumers in their own environments – is a powerful but slow, labor-intensive, and expensive technique. It's so intrusive that respondents are difficult to recruit. This article, reprinted with permission from the May 2006 issue of Quirk's Marketing Research Review, explores a new online approach to ethnography. Researchers can pull sample from online panelists who are accustomed to taking surveys. Using diaries, digital photos, and interaction with moderators, it can accomplish in a few days what traditionally takes months.

Talk to GMI about implementing an online ethnography study using our Global Panels and Net-MR software capabilities.

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Who's new at GMI?

GMI welcomes seven new hires this month:

• Keith Worthy - Account Manager, Los Angeles
• Anna Stahl - Sample Manager, Minnesota
• Cindy Kao - Account Manager, Boston
• Andreas Wittenberg - Sales Director for Central and Eastern Europe, Germany
• Anita Balogh-Pheiffer - Account Executive, Germany
• Jian Zhou - Panel Operations Manager, Shanghai
• Due Feng Bai (Ian) - Web Designer, Shanghai

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