The theme of this year’s conference is, ‘Content is King, and he is one of us’, a 360° view of media research and measurement to drive relevance, creativity, and innovation in advertising and media planning, now and in the future.

In line with this year’s theme, the GeoPoll team; Business Development Lead – Global Key Accounts and Custom Research, Matt Angus Hammond and Client Services Manager -Media, Akinyi Okulo shall present a paper titled ‘Audience Wars: OOH Media Takes a Stand’ on Wednesday 30th August from 11am- 11.30am local time.

The GeoPoll PAMRO Presentation Summary
In the battle for the African consumer’s attention, OOH has had one major weakness putting pressure on its prominence in advertising budgets. Last year, Max Richman (GeoPoll) and Daniel Cuende (Cuende Infometrics) presented an audience measurement solution using ESOMAR-specified best practice and placing it in a modern African context. Through the use of satellite and mobile phone technology, OOH audience measurement data, using the same units of currency (reach, frequency, GRP’s etc.) is now available in South Africa and Kenya, and will soon arrive in Uganda, Tanzania, and other markets. But an important question remains: What does the data tell us?

PAMRO Gala Dinner: Welcome Drinks Session
On Tuesday evening, GeoPoll shall host all conference attendants at the Aquarium for a welcome drink and interactive session which shall be followed by the PAMRO Gala Dinner. This shall be an opportunity for other media stakeholders to engage directly with the GeoPoll team in an informal setting regarding media and Out Of Home (OOH) audience measurement products and services.

The PAMRO conference is a great opportunity to explore the latest developments in media research from across Africa while networking with industry figures from across the continent and beyond – in a luxurious setting.  This is the 4th year that GeoPoll is participating and sponsoring the annual media research conference. Get the full conference concert and list of speakers.

GeoPoll’s audience measurement services

GeoPoll’s Media audience measurement is currently in 8 countries in Africa as well as in Afghanistan collecting overnight audience media ratings data. The GeoPoll Out Of Home (OOH) audience measurement service launched in 2016 is currently available in South Africa and Kenya. 

The post GeoPoll goes to PAMRO 2017, A Conference on Media Research in Africa appeared first on GeoPoll.

The Strata conference certainly lives up to its own billing and name.  O’Reilly Media stresses that “Strata is more than a conference. It’s the essential training and information source for data science and big data—with industry news, reports, in-person and online events, and much more.”  Strata attendees are offered layer upon layer of trainings, talks, and tutorials over the three day conference. In practice, “making data work” for many attendees means using creative math and engineering to quickly answer questions from large, often streaming real-time data sources.

For vendors and many attendees at the 2014 Strata conference, “Big data” is not merely a business buzzword but their central infrastructure and intellectual challenge.  There were talks from the biggest in the business on how “big data” impacts everyone, and what specific companies are doing with it.  For example, Google engineers have built a 10-layer neural network that they claim can do any task that a human can do in 0.1 seconds, such as simple image classification.  Twitter talked about the custom stack they have built to maintain and update 220 million time series  every minute, making historical research possible in real-time. The exhibition halls featured hundreds of squawking vendors hawking their wares to representatives from a wide variety of high-transaction industries.

I spoke as part of the Connected World track.  Other Connected World talks provided useful frameworks for gaining insights by asking good research questions and creative ways to increase impact by encouraging colleagues act on your research insights.

Building on the other talks about research and data, I was excited to present some of the insights we have gleaned from the millions of polls we have sent on GeoPoll platform. In a nut shell, my talk covered three game-changing tools for reaching the billions who are “offline”: surveys, dial-pads, and SMS.  These tools are invaluable when organizations are trying to understand and assist audiences in developing worlds, who often do not have access to the Internet, and are hard to reach for in-person.  I also discussed the current methods being used to collect data through surveys around the world, and, finally, what we’ve been learning at GeoPoll about the best ways to collect data from hard-to-reach places around the world.  For example, in regions with low literacy like Afghanistan and Niger, we have found success using voice recorded surveys.  In general, we have found that sending SMS surveys in mornings and evenings, as well as Sundays, to be among the best times to survey.  Throughout my talk, I emphasized that while partnering directly with carriers and sending surveys through mobile phones can be tricky, by constantly testing, piloting, and running experiments we are building powerful panels to help our clients make informed decisions.

After my talk, I had some great conversations with people working in similar markets reflecting on common challenges and opportunities.  Many thanks to those participants and the organizers for making my week in Santa Clara so enriching.

The post GeoPoll at Santa Clara Strata Conference 2014 – Infrastructure, insights and impact appeared first on GeoPoll.

The goal of the second Iraqi Peace Tech Camp was to bring international and local technologists together, along with representatives from civil society groups and non-governmental organizations, to learn new approaches on how to utilize technology in support of their missions. There were individuals from across Iraq present, and some seriously smart folks in the room. Some of the local volunteer technologists had recently set up the first hacker space in Baghdad, and others had expertise in areas such as women’s rights, but were less well-versed in mobile and web technologies. Given the diverse audience, translations were provided between English, Kurdish, and Arabic.

The first day focused on new ideas and defining addressable problems. The morning began with rapid speed ‘geeking’ sessions where participants got a flavor for various new technologies. As always, I was blown away by the tech-savvy local and international volunteers leading the speed round. Mustafa Adil, an IT Administrator from Erbil, showed participants how to quickly and easily set up their own WordPress sites, dispelling myths that running websites is expensive and difficult for everyday web users. Sean McDonald from FrontlineSMS discussed how groups around the world are using affordable mobile technology to get direct feedback from program beneficiaries, and Anahi Ayala Iacucci of Internews showed where mapping tools are being used to collect and document examples of sexual harassment. I talked about GeoPoll’s pre-election mobile surveys in Tunisia and Afghanistan, and the impact they had in raising awareness around elections and helping local organizations target their efforts. These are but a few of the many technology topics we covered in the speed round.

From the speed rounds, it was clear that participants were interested in learning about surveys and data analysis more generally, so I provided subsequent training sessions on those topics. By the end of the sessions, participants walked away with more knowledge about question design, sampling, choosing survey modes, and how to collaboratively prepare and share results, particularly using free tools like Google Forms and Google Spreadsheet. After a full first day, participants had also developed dozens of definitions for possible addressable problems that breakout groups would tackle the next day.

On Day Two, participants volunteered to lead popular breakout groups and I joined a group focused on NGO coordination, a huge challenge everywhere in the world. Local civil society representatives co-facilitated the morning and afternoon sessions while I listened through a translator and offered occasional suggestions including examples of contact lists and “who’s doing what where” tables. The day, and the camp, wrapped-up with the group expressing their goal to build an alliance among their six organizations, and discussing next steps on how to grow that network beyond Peace Tech Camp.

While there was not much free time at the conference (especially since I was battling a cold for most of it), a few of us did manage to visit the Qaysari Bazaar in central Erbil. I was amazed by the ubiquity of mobile phones sellers and airtime agents there; you could scarcely take a step without bumping into one. Many prominently displayed stacks of Iraqi dinar at their kiosks, as though to prove their reliability as a vendor through the number of bills they had. In one part of the bazaar, around a hundred young men stood around viewing new phones and bargaining for airtime purchases. Prominent billboards all around the rapidly urbanizing and growing city encouraged residents to join their mobile networks. In urban Erbil, mobile phones were everywhere, and Android smart phones and iPhones were quite common among the wealthier populations

Overall, the experience was rewarding and enriching. Erbil is a beautiful and booming city. Seeing the passion of the local volunteers and participants was inspiring, and a few of the ideas that came out seem to have real momentum, including creating a database of photos highlighting life in Iraq in a positive light, which is often drowned out by images of violence in the media. The whole GeoPoll team looks forward to helping out at future Peace Tech Camps!

The post GeoPoll at the Second USIP Iraq Peace Tech Camp appeared first on GeoPoll.