How to Leverage Cutting-Edge Tools and Data Accuracy for Business Success

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Dive deep into the rapidly evolving world of AI and what it means for your business. As AI technology becomes more accessible and powerful, falling costs are making it a must-have tool, not just for tech giants but for companies of all sizes. We’ll unpack how organizations like DeepSeek and Alibaba are helping democratize AI, and why tools like max.ai are becoming industry favorites. But it’s not just about jumping on the AI bandwagon—businesses need to rethink their research strategies and focus on what really matters: data accuracy.

Get the latest insights on how companies are transforming their processes, major industry developments like the sale of Kantar Media, and Nielsen IQ’s massive consumer panel expansion.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: Goodness the pre-show folks every now and then I feel like we should just start recording 10 minutes early Lenny cuz it's fun We should probably get in trouble, but happy Friday everybody.

Lenny Murphy: We missed you last week.

Karen Lynch: Sorry. We were both sick. It was not good. Not good. Happy Friday. Happy last day of January. Go away . It's a crazy month.

Lenny Murphy: But because we missed a week, we got a bunch to cover, so. I mean, we really do, friend.

Karen Lynch: So we're going to get right into it, but we are going to start with the big story, which you may not even know what the big story is, friend. So we will tell you what the big story is, but you want to just start us off because you've been calling it this, here we are.

Lenny Murphy: Well, which one? I mean, there are so many big stories. The AI arms race.

Karen Lynch: You are not feeling it. I'm literally feeling like, you know what? NASCAR's got nothing on this because we are paying attention all the time. It is changing potentially hourly at this point. There were so many launches and so much happening. So let's just dig into what's been going on with AI in general, and then what that means for the industry. Because I think it's important for us, Yep.

Lenny Murphy: Together for people. So maybe we can get into the specifics. But here's the takeaway. The prices are coming down, infrastructure needs are coming down, but capabilities are expanding. That's, I mean, I think that's in real business use cases. So the business use case, the opening, I launch their agents or operator agents, along with everybody else, these whole agentic ideas, performing specific functions that anybody can train it to do. That's the gist. And those functions can be as simple as ordering your groceries, as complex, you know, business tasks.

Karen Lynch: We talk about AI agents from a professional standpoint, about what those agents can do for us as professionals. But as research professionals, we also have to look at what these agents will do for consumer behavior? How will consumers adapt to a world with agents acting as a proxy for you, how will that change consumer behavior and how will that ultimately affect decision-making and purchase decision-making in particular? This is really important to watch. It's huge and mind-blowing when you really start to think about it. It is. Actually, we're not going to cover it.

Lenny Murphy: We'll save it for next week, but just before this, I saw some new stats on adoption. And, they were very different from what we'd seen before on consumer adoption of these things.

Karen Lynch: But we'll, we'll save that for next week.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, there's already like three things that I didn't make the cut for. But yes, so that and the business processes component, and I have just heard a lot through the grapevine this week in multiple conversations with our friends in the full service arena, that Yeah, they're feeling the price pressure, the pain. Because the expectation is to, it doesn't take as many man hours to do specific things. And, but that's a real stress for business models, for companies, and also, even on the brand side, right? They're looking to adopt these things to increase efficiency. So huge implications about all that. And then the tie into that deep seek, or today, it's Alibaba, right?

Karen Lynch: I mean, and here's why I think what changed, what shifted in the last two weeks, certainly in my brain is, it used to be that it's like, oh, I'll try Claude for this, or, oh, I'll try ChatGPT for this, or maybe I'll go to Perplexity. And it seemed like we were driving, we were driving our own decision-making around which model to try. And then with DeepSea coming out, right, and Alibaba coming out, and Perplexity having another agent, which is like Operator, all of a sudden I have so many choices. And I am not equipped to navigate all of that choice.

Lenny Murphy: I will give a plug again for my favorite max.ai that I use because I have all the models right there. And, and actually discovered a feature this week, I can run up to four models on the same prompt at once and determine what I think is best. So anyway, shout out to max.ai.

Karen Lynch: And I have to bookmark them because when I'm dealing with this, that's not something I thought about. Are they anyway, we don't have to talk specifically about them. But that's what's going on because the competition is heating up out there. I am feeling the heat as a user of some of these tools. I have, you know, been tracking online for the developers that I follow. They are all like over the top excited about what the possibilities are. So I think that, you know, price wise, it's not necessarily, you know, the price of these agent builders aren't necessarily, you know, for for lay so to speak, or laywomen, you know, they're $200 a month is a lot steeper than $20 a month. So I'm not necessarily dabbling all that much in some of that, but I'm loving seeing what's happening out there. And I think we just have to recognize again in our field that these tools and platforms with so much choice going on, just when you think you need to learn about a new research platform, you need to be informed about what AI platforms are behind some of those research platforms and really be paying attention. It's not just a matter of where they get their sample from as one of your biggest questions, it's what is powering their AI. There's so many implications for you down the road.

Lenny Murphy: There are. And let's talk about the deep seek in Alabama for a minute. Set aside, you know, there's big questions about data security and privacy and all that stuff. Geopolitical implications, set that stuff aside. Fundamentally, what they proved is, that there, you know, you can decrease the footprint of a LLM, you can decrease the costs. And those can be edge applications that can run on existing infrastructure. Like literally, you could download it on if you've got a pretty good computer and run it on your own computer, which democratizes the so you combine that with the expansion of agent and use cases. Now we're getting to the place where the barriers to entry from a cost standpoint are decreasing, while we're expanding capabilities. And that is going to increase adoption across the board for average consumers, as well as small companies.

Karen Lynch: Which is no different from what happens with most like push to market, you know, and then the fast followers, like this is very typical. It's just applied in such a way that is slightly outside of people's grasp on some levels. So it feels bigger, but it is a very similar pattern of, you know, of product launch.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. And then, that's where we're at DeepSeek's new AI. I was looking at where Karley had posted the, what was also in a perplexity integrated, they have an AI assistant and they've also integrated DeepSeek for people who want to experiment with DeepSeek. And if you use perplexity as a search engine, although boy, calling it a search engine doesn't do it justice. Perplexity is so much for the search engine.

Karen Lynch: But yeah, so guys, although Yeah, and I mean, anyway, little sidebar for those of you who are in marketing for your insights companies. One of the things that happened for me this week was, you know, I got a little pop up in my chat GPT, where it said, Hey, do you want to use the extension in your Chrome browser for chat GPT. And then I was having Do I want to search? Do I want to do a Google search in Chrome or do I want to do a chat GPT question in Chrome? And it was all happening in my, you know, in my search bar. So I, first I enabled it and then I'm like, Oh no, not ready for that yet. So even people who are paying attention to the integrations and how this is going to be changing our search behavior, this is all like, we are at, we are at such an interesting time. So can I just shout out to Donovan, because Donovan Andrews, who spoke at our AI event in the fall, he's, you know, he's an amazing thought leader when it comes to AI in the, you know, he in the kind of, you know, big four consulting background, that's the mindset he brings to it. And so I'm paying attention to him and what he's sharing. And he's the one who shared a little bit about, you know, banning deep sea handling concerns and privacy concerns. And the reason why I wanted people to kind of pay attention to what he's doing is that he has this very much a relatable business mindset and not a developer mindset. So when you read what he is saying, things make more sense for those of us who are kind of in this corporate world. So, you know, anyway, that's why I kind of share this Donovan Andrews LinkedIn post. Karley, if you can grab it, it's in there. It's just interesting to pay attention to what he's talking about and how this has implications to us as professionals.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep. Boy, this isn't even worthy. You can't even bring the horse out. I mean, it can't be beaten anymore with this, guys.

Karen Lynch: The horse went to a sanctuary.

Lenny Murphy: So Lukas and I actually, in our support, we had a conversation this week about adoption. And we were talking about jumping on the train, right? It's like, we just wait for the next train. It's like, you can't. This is not the next train. The train's being built while it's in motion, in real time. It's one train and there is no jumping on point. It is just already going. It's just an early adopter.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, certainly what I'm feeling, what I think a lot of people are feeling is it's already going and it's going fast. And you know that feeling? When you're like, whoa, we are moving really fast right now. And you feel like you could lose your balance.

Lenny Murphy: I think that that is sort of the emotional analogy for how a lot of people are feeling right now.

Karen Lynch: We are.

Lenny Murphy: And to tie it into specific research in our industry, the theme I am hearing this month of every conversation that I'm having at all levels and all types of companies, both supplier side and client side is, it is all this topic. The companies are going to make or break this year's suppliers. There are some suppliers, companies that if they do not get a handle on the transformational impact and begin doing that this year, they may struggle very, very badly to catch up. And there are brands that have held off until now that are very much focused on. We need to identify these new partners and new capabilities, and they are leaning into them and aggressively pursuing, identifying companies that are leveraging these capabilities to drive new value creation for them. That is, it is happening, guys, because this is, that's my day job, you know, is having those conversations, I'm telling you. And the degree of hearing is different than it was a month ago. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree.

Karen Lynch: And Aneesha, we agree with you as well. The role of researchers will change now. You now need someone who can leverage the AI capabilities and then ask them to do design questionnaires. Like you need these people on your staff. So when we talked about needing to upskill your employees, yes.

Lenny Murphy: And if you haven't done that yet, you need to hire. Yes, quick anecdote, I was doing some pro bono, I sit on the board of a couple nonprofits to do some pro bono research work. And just out of curiosity, I loaded a set of tabs in the GPT 01. Yeah. And all I did was say, here is the topic. Yeah. What insights can you derive from these tabs from these tables? And I almost dropped an F bomb. It, it, it nailed it. So at one point, there was one data point that I knew when I looked at it that it didn't capture. And when I re-prompted, explore after that. And it was crazy. Now, was it deep insights? No. But did it save me an hour's worth of work of writing that up and it being accurate, capturing the high level information that was described in those tabs? Absolutely. So to your point, Aneesh, right, it's that the process is about leveraging the tools. It's not about the way that we used to do things. And we have to find more value, which is probably, can we jump to the PwC, Microsoft?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, let's jump. We have this huge brief today. I'm feeling skeptical about what we can do. But yeah, PwC and Microsoft are partnering, which is, again, back to these consultants and these consulting firms that are really going to be helping people navigate this change. I mean, my husband's in change management now, as you know, tech change management. And this is a very busy time for them because he's at the enterprise level and there's, you know, I'm sure plenty of people who do what he and his colleagues do. But the idea that the big consultancies and lots of change management consultancies are helping enterprises through what is happening right now. And here's kind of another example of a major part PwC and Microsoft partnering on this AI transformation.

Lenny Murphy: Well, and what I thought was really interesting when you went into that was specifically on deploying agents. So PwC would go into the company and say, oh, here's your business processes: you have a whole team of 50 people doing these things. Here's how to design and implement an agent that will streamline that process. So that, one, it's very, for a consultancy that is at risk of disruption to lean into, okay, we're gonna help guide the implementation of the disruption. It's very smart, PwC. But think about it, if that's happening in finance, right? It's happening to us too, guys. That is a cascade across the enterprise, looking at where it makes sense and forcing everybody else to then where's the human at the value. It's not in crunching numbers, that's what the systems are going to be for. It's going to be checking to make sure the numbers are crunched correctly. But yeah, we're there.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it's pretty cool. This one I think in particular that you found about Google, launching their generative AI accelerator to the tune of what, 30 million in innovation coming out of this accelerator. That's the plan. So, you know, here's another very obvious signal that this is where investments are headed in the future. I mean. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: If you don't believe us, then, uh, uh, Chamath, uh, I can't pronounce Chamath's last name, but if you watch the all in podcast, um, which is a big, podcast with him and a bunch of other, you know, tech entrepreneurs, VCs. I think he was, he was one of the early folks at Facebook. Anyway, on this website, you can pay a subscription and get a deep dive on the current state of AI, like as of this week, which was really, I did not pay the prescription. I got the condensed version.

Karen Lynch: Which is another thing. Probably need a prescription after all this.

Lenny Murphy: So we do our best to kind of look at all of these other people that are really paying attention to these things that condense it to bring it to our industry. There's an example of really heavy hitter, intellectual heavy hitters with deep experience in tech during assessments on these kinds of really in the weeds. Encourage you to check those things out. It's not the only resource out there. There's others, but that just crossed. And here's his takeaway: it's still early.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I know, I know. It's just we're on such a fast exponential curve that I think, I've just not seen anything like this before. And I was around for mobile.

Lenny Murphy: I was around the wrong line, right? I mean, the whole, the whole thing. So this is a whole different thing.

Karen Lynch: So, um, yeah. And I think, uh, you know, one of the takeaways is, you know, yes, adapt, adapt quickly, get your sea legs on because the boat's not stopping or the train's not stopping. I don't know what, I don't know what the train equivalent of sea legs is. Um, I spent more time on water than on trains apparently. So, um, anyway, I won't go down that road. I won't go down that road. Looking for the analogy. But if anybody knows what the sea legs equivalent for train travel is, get them going, folks, because, you know, we have to adapt. We really have no choice. So speaking of adapting, yes. Yes, like that's a good transition.

Lenny Murphy: Let's give us some examples, right in our industry, specifically, in our industry.

Karen Lynch: So there were a lot of product launches in the last two weeks, as we've, you know, as we've been saying, they're coming at us fast and furiously. And so many of them are AI based. So kudos to everybody that we're mentioning and that we're not mentioning. Talk to everybody first before we do anything else about these data subscriptions for AI training sets because that's something that you've been tracking that I wasn't tracking and I want to hear about it.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Well, we've been saying for a while that the panel companies had to shift to become data companies and that the real best use case was going to be for AI training sets. Go back, check. Probably our very first episode. I'm sure that I was on that soapbox and I'm not taking credit for this, but that's happening. And we saw two big, big announcements this week, Pure Spectrum and Scent, both the two biggest sample marketplaces now discussing that they are launching subscription, data subscriptions. Those are for AI training sets. Now there's still probably a whole lot we need to figure out in detail on those things. But I also know multiple other companies that are doing the same thing. A CEO series interview is going to be coming out here shortly with YouGov talking about the same thing. So as an industry, the implication here is that we have to think of how we fit into powering a custom LLM or LAM that a brand is building and being a data feed into them. Sample companies make an awful lot of sense because they capture an awful lot of data. But the same thing will apply to suppliers. And what's the long-term implication of that is they're building these AI training sets that will reduce the volume of research. But maybe not the frequency because they're going to try and answer the questions they can from the existing data first. That is the logical outcome here, and we're seeing companies that are doing that now. It's going to be about how to leverage the data more effectively rather than the project. We all have to get that through our heads. We've got to start, you know, as an industry, recrafting our thinking. We are in the data business, research projects are only useful as they are a mechanism to get data that's feeding a much bigger system.

Karen Lynch: And use it as a kind of a lesson in eliminating that frustration of anybody who's ever done a research project and has thought to themselves, gosh, don't we have this somewhere? Isn't this Intel somewhere? Or haven't we asked this question before? Like, just think of it as the opportunity for them, you know, really focusing your efforts on what you haven't gotten what answers you're still looking for, where the holes are, where are the opportunities to learn more in a different way, because you are maximizing and leveraging the work that you've already done. So kind of reframe your thinking. And it's all going to come down to, like with every other research project, what are our objectives here? And if your objective is to look within the data that we already have to find these answers, great. If your objective is that we need new learning and new thinking and ask questions we haven't asked before, there's still a world of opportunity. Out there for fresh research.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, which is a good, you know, as we look at the other the other announcements, well, let's start with our good friend will each who's been co host on here before we'll, you know, you think it's interesting that wills business of behavioral economics, how do you marry that with AI? Yeah, well, he did. So he's lost a new product that leverages behavioral science and, you know, allows you to do all types of stuff. Anyway, shout out to Will, check that out. But then we saw the SAPIO, Unveil's AI-powered survey storytelling platform, which is really cool. To make it better, we've talked about Dectopus, things like that in the past, and now we're getting to that visualization component where we can make our results more interesting. Picator, AI coding for text analysis, not, so it's coding. It is coding. It's not just doing, you know, kind of the higher end analysis that we're used to. We're getting codes now. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And then we have, we have Forrester unveiling AI powered research, HX, a human experience, right? So it's, you know, trying to break down those silos for lack of a better word and make sure that is talking to whatever your UX department, your market research department, and make sure that we are consolidating all of that information with the help of AI. So kudos to you at Forrester. And then an AI moderator, Yasna, right? So they have added voices too. So hats off to you as well, the team at Yasna, because I think that's the world of quality. Well, you know, like having voice as a part of that is also another game changer there, right? So I think all of these, you know, the ones we call out, this is not a complete and exhaustive list. No, we would be here for hours if we were trying. We'd be here for hours, but we specifically wanted to call out these, which were interesting because it's different use cases of AI. So again, imagine the possibilities. But also on some level, I would love to stop talking about AI product launches, but that's not going to happen because there are table stakes at this point. You really need to be figuring out how you are using AI in your product features to show that you are, A, ahead of the curve and not a laggard. What's going to be perceived as traditional is going to be old-fashioned pretty soon. That's what happens with those types of semantics. Traditional research messages will appear if we are not staying ahead of the curve of what's current, at least that's my sense there.

Lenny Murphy: So, you know. Yeah. And it's, it purely comes down to, like all of this is just about cost, cheaper, faster, better, always, right? So it's about cost and speed efficiency. And then increasing, you know, better can be defined in multiple ways. But, you know, certainly quality is a piece of that, that we should I also mentioned that all of this, AI training sets require good data. The risk of contamination is huge. So the emphasis on data quality is just going to continue, but it's going to maybe be directed in other ways. None of this is a new story, guys. It's just a new application of the same story, right? Yeah.

Karen Lynch: But you should ask me a question about training, and I do want to kind of answer what is at the top of my thinking about it. So Anisha's saying, you know, are there any AI training courses? And first and foremost, I'd be foolish working for Green Book if I didn't shout out our, thank you, Karley, our AI event from 2024, our IAX AI, we have on demand. And I think, Karley, maybe you can find that link, maybe you can't, for, you know, sign up to view all of that content on demand. If not, reach out to us and we will get you those links. There was some kind of one-on-one content that was shared as a pre-event learning day, which will bring people up to speed quickly on use cases within the research industry and lots of our content from that event. Donovan spoke at it, like I said, Barry Jennings from Microsoft spoke at it. So we have, you know, some amazing thought leaders who were at our own event, but then also, you know, Ray Pointer, you know, it's off to Ray. He's doing a lot of training in this space at NewMR. So you can look into that. I don't know who else, you know, that is the reputable, incredible Lenny that we would talk about.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, there's certainly not that many in our space. Eskimo is doing some stuff inside the association doing some stuff. I mean, that is the role of the trade associations. So check them out. But Ray, Ray is probably more out front than anybody right now. Yeah. Well, other than us, of course.

Karen Lynch: Well, other than us, yes.

Lenny Murphy: Ray always wanted to be a professor. I wanted to be a pundit. So it's a vision of, you know.

Karen Lynch: And me, the perpetual student. No, you're the, you're the talent.

Lenny Murphy: You're the real talent. Oh, no, I just love to learn.

Karen Lynch: I love to learn about all of this stuff. And I think that's what, um, because I learn, I can then, you know, articulate my thoughts. So anyway, enough gushing about all things us and Green Book and all of that. And, uh, good luck, Anish. You know, if you want to, again, have an email conversation anytime, that's fine. Um, let's just talk about some of the big moves before we wrap, because we have like three left. Cancer Media finally sold, right? It seems like, oh, yes. And there's other things to talk about, too. Yes.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. To HIG, which HIG also owns Suzy. So keep that in mind. Right. I don't know. I have zero visibility into that. I just always find it interesting when private equity goes into a specific category. Doesn't mean they're going to do anything with them. But, you know, Bain also merged Numerator with WorldPanel because they own them. Who else does Bain have a stake in? You know, Dyneda, the receipt. Again, I don't know anything. It's just interesting when you see these companies making these moves and because it opens the door for some interesting potential combinations. So yeah, Kantar Media went to HIG for a billion dollars. Yeah, billion dollar deal.

Karen Lynch: And IQ is NiqIQ.

Lenny Murphy: I still want to just call him Nielsen, but yeah. Nielsen IQ expanding their omni shopper panel. Right.

Karen Lynch: So, um, you know, they, they, speaking of the media, right. Haven't they traditionally been very media and an omni shopper necessarily been a part of it and here they are expanding two different parts of the business.

Lenny Murphy: There's always, it's the media business as a shopper business. Um, the shopper business has always been a pretty good chunk. Um, the, uh, this is the, the, the part that also acquired GFK. But their Omni Shopper panel, the world's largest consumer panel, it's collecting data on consumer purchase and attitudes, mostly purchase of paper. And Nielsen already has the Nielsen Data Cloud. They already have a subscription business. This is part of a subscription business. So they may not have called this out, that this will fuel AI training. Sets, but I will bet you anything that that's why they're expanding it. So that'll be fun to watch for. So, yep.

Karen Lynch: And I want you to talk about a friend.

Lenny Murphy: No, just to, you know, change is happening.

Karen Lynch: It's a woman in research as I am one. Um, and I'm also, you know, a volunteer for the organization and we'd love to support them, but they've restructured a bit, which I think is really interesting and also very timely and important. So, um, we have some leadership changes, uh, you know, they've brought on, and I'm not going to remember her name, I'm going to have to pull that up somewhere. But Michelle Andre is still very much involved, but moved into a developmental role. Jessica Sage, who has done lots of the programming, is now moved to executive director. So kudos for her. Of course, Kristen, still the founder and still heavily involved. And then they've bought a woman who is new to the organization who's going to be really digging into some of their programming. I mean, they are expanding their kind of networking events for women specifically into different cities all of the time. They are always heavily involved at IAX events. We love their happy hours, those of us who get to attend them, the night before we kick off our events. And they just offer a lot. And I've talked about it a lot. And I've interviewed them on the podcast. But they have a lot of services for women in the industry who, let's just face it, are still on an upward climb when it comes to networking and leveraging their networks for their opportunities. So hats off to everybody in that organization and all the hard work that you're doing and good luck in your new roles. Yeah. My God, we crammed two weeks worth of stuff into 30 minutes. We're so capable. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's it. Yeah. We'll talk to you. See everybody next Friday. Lenny and I are going to abruptly leave because we both have things to do and other calls to get on. But it was good to be here for half an hour. Have a great first weekend of February. Enjoy Groundhog Day in the US, and let's hope for an early spring. Yeah, it's warming up. Hopefully everybody's warming up a little bit. And we'll see you all next Friday. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye.

Links from the episode:

OpenAI Launches 'Operator' AI Agent 

DeepSeek’s New AI Model Challenges OpenAI 

Alibaba Unveils AI Model to Compete with DeepSeek 

Perplexity Releases AI Assistant Capable of Online Task Execution 

PwC and Microsoft Partner on AI Transformation 

PureSpectrum Launches Industry’s First Training Data 

Cint announces new strategy 

William Leach's Personalized Behavioral AI Market Research Assistant 

Sapio Research Unveils AI-Powered Survey Storytelling Platform 

Peekator Launches AI Coding for Automated Text Analysis 

PG Forsta Unveils AI-Powered Research HX 

AI-Powered Moderator Yasna.ai Adds Voice Responses 

Kantar Media Sold to H.I.G. Capital 

NielsenIQ Expands Omnishopper Panel 

Women In Research (WIRe) Restructures Leadership for 2025