"Ad Hoc Crap Groups"

This month's Research magazine runs a special report on the future of market research and features an article I wrote about the uncomfortable relationship that brands have with online communities.  Like every other sector of the marketing services industry the research business is wrestling with new technologies which are making existing techniques look very tired.  A couple of articles from the report caught my eye.  Firstly, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's President in the US, which represents the interests of online advertisers, has challenged two of the big web measurement houses Netratings and Comscore, about their use of outdated panel measurement systems:  "A media measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago".  Secondly, a research project into the lives of young German mothers found that giving them access to a range of simple blogs and networked media to record their days and, "raising their status...to co-researcher", had dramatic effects.  "They started to reveal the most intimate details of their lives," described Eva Caspary, the MD of Insight, rather than the results from the, "artificial ad hoc crap groups that we all usually do".  Which must have delighted the guys in her ad hoc crap group department!