Clients

Lightspeed Research

Lightspeed chose MARSC to run the core sampling engine for its online panel business. Sampling from the databases is a key activity for an online panel business providing the list of suitable panellists needed for every research project.

About Lightspeed

Lightspeed Research is the part of the WPP/Kantar Group which specialises in online market research. As well as the core business online it also provides sample to other research companies, and will operate custom panels for clients. More recently it has expanded its operations to conducting research on mobile phones.

The Lightspeed panels are general access panels but, as with all online panels, the members are characterised by being more technically inclined than the general population. It has several million panellists across the various country and specialist panels worldwide. The largest and most active of these panels is in the USA with approximately 900,000 panellists. Lightspeed employs 250 people worldwide with $60m of revenues and it has offices around the USA, Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Problem

Lightspeed had systems in place previously to do their sampling from the panels but the rapid growth of the business was stretching the capabilities of these systems, Also different systems were being used for some of the different country panels causing inconsistencies between the sampling in each panel. There was therefore a need to bring all the panels onto the same platform so that the sampling process would be consistent worldwide. It also needed the sampling to be better integrated into the other company systems to automate processes that were being done by hand.

Having spent some time considering and scoping an in-house solution, Lightspeed decided that it made more sense to purchase Centurion’s MARSC system. The tool already met many of their key system requirements and Centurion agreed to develop MARSC further to provide some additional specific features such as sample prioritising and collapsing quota cells.

Beyond the standard sampling tool, the MARSC solution also offered the chance to integrate core panellist data held in the panel databases with additional screener and quick-match panellist data held in a separate database system. This enabled sample selection to be based on a much richer set of panellist-based data which had not previously been possible.

The Solution

MARSC was implemented first for the European panels during 2006 with other panels following shortly after. The biggest challenge was the migration of the whole USA panel sampling operation across to MARSC - the busiest of all of them.

Lightspeed now has over 25 users of MARSC accessing the centralised databases from a number of offices round the world, the biggest sampling team being based in Bulgaria. MARSC is core to Lightspeed’s production capability and typically runs more than 200 samples each day from all the panels. The benefits of using MARSC have been felt for each panel as it has gone live in MARSC with increased efficiency of sampling and the consistency of design across all panels.

Lightspeed is now able to apply its business rules to all sampling efforts. These are policies about e.g. the number of surveys which can be completed or the number of surveys a panellist can be invited to in a certain time frame. Now these business rules can be used as a sales feature for the company because it can guarantee they are being implemented.

Next Steps

In the next few months Lightspeed is expecting to continue the process of integration of MARSC more tightly into the company’s other systems and to use MARSC to produce more detailed reports on panellist activity. This will allow them to improve their rules on what constitutes good and bad panellists, so that they can identify the bad ones and remove them.

"MARSC has been very much a success as it provided LSR with a platform that produces accurate results, is flexible, fast, and easy to use. Additionally, MARSC will allow us to manage our most valued assets in a way that will minimize the daily stress that our panels face, overuse and excessive waste. A tool with MARSC’s capabilities has been long overdue and thank goodness has finally arrived."
Peter Sterbenz - Director of Research - Technology