Gerry Philpott is looking to build his fledgling Encino company E-Poll.com into the cyber equivalent of Nielsen Media Research, and he has some powerful forces backing him up.
E-Poll has cut a deal with 20th Century Television, a division of News Corp., and Carsey-Werner-Mandabach Co. to help develop a new polling software program called “The Edge.”
While E-Poll has been conducting online polls for clients throughout its entire four years in business, the company believes The Edge could be just the thing to blow focus groups out of the water.
“It is an important next step for our company,” said Philpott, E-Poll’s president and chief executive. “The deal will give us the opportunity to develop a system that combines our software and access tools into one easy-to-use audience research platform.”
Under the deal, 20th Century and Carsey-Werner-Mandabach have agreed to commit their time and expertise to help refine the user interface, design and survey content of The Edge. In return, E-Poll has agreed to provide its development partners with a number of custom research studies, at no charge, in addition to syndicated data at discounted rates.
E-Poll plans to announce two additional development partners in the coming weeks.
“The industry has specific research and marketing needs, and our collaborative process with these organizations will ensure the delivery of a product that will provide immediate value and positively influence the way they do business,” said Philpott.
All surveys, all the time
After the initial development phase of The Edge is concluded at the end of June, E-Poll plans to market its survey services industry-wide. At that time, according to Philpott, subscribers would have access to all of the products and services, including a data center with advanced analysis that can be accessed online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
E-Poll has some 250,000 registered members in its database, each of whom has agreed to participate in online surveys in exchange for various incentives, including $5 for each poll in which they participate. The Edge will enable clients to specify the demographic and regional parameters of their desired population group, craft an online survey, attach secured video clips, peruse responses and analyze results all by clicking on a single icon.
Television industry executives seem enthused about the possibilities.
“We are in a year-round development process, and having 24/7 access to the opinions of our audience nationwide is extremely appealing,” said Joanne Burns, senior vice president for market research and strategic planning at 20th Century Television.
Burns said that E-Poll’s real competitor is the in-person focus group, which has been and remains the entertainment industry’s standard procedure for eliciting audience responses. E-Poll’s primary competitive advantages are speed and cost.
The Edge is being designed to be user-friendly, with a proprietary survey-writing module for clients to create and publish polls and surveys quickly, along with custom commercials and campaigns that include secure video testing and immediate feedback. Also included are e-score surveys to gauge the awareness and “likeability” of key talent or a concept.
After more than 20 years in the broadcasting industry, including executive positions at Multimedia Entertainment and ABC, Philpott left the business to found E-Poll four years ago.
In addition to being quicker and cheaper than traditional in-person focus groups and phone polls, online surveys typically enjoy a greater completion percentage than phone surveys, and yield an identical margin of error (plus or minus 3 to 5 percent), according to the National Council on Public Polls.
But the fact that many people still don’t have access to the Internet means that E-Poll’s population may not be as representative of the overall population as are other databases.
“As the Internet continues to grow in terms of usage, it’s going to have an impact on all survey research,” conceded Jack Loftus, a spokesman for Nielsen Media Research in New York. “At some point, when 80 to 90 percent of the public has access to the Internet, that becomes a very valuable research tool. I don’t think we are there yet in terms of usage.”
Philpott said the typical E-Poll involves a slate of eight to 12 questions sent electronically to a panel of up to 500 people, culled from its base of 250,000 registered members. Clients specify the composition of survey panels based on demographic profiles.
Funding starts flowing
After personally funding the company for the first two years out of his retirement account, E-Poll succeeded in raising $2 million in venture capital over the last two years, Philpott said.
The company’s client list includes CBS Enterprises/Eyemark Distribution and Columbia TriStar Interactive.
