Duane Varan CEO MediaScience 

This is in response to @RogerDooley’s recent article on the shutdown of the majority of Nielsen’s Neuro Division: Naturally, the pandemic poses challenges for many business sectors, and lab-based research is no exception.  Our immediate response back in March was to close our labs in Austin, Chicago, and New York City. But at @MediaScience, we’ve managed to navigate a path forward that has enabled us to safely use neurometrics both in the lab and at home.  Rather than retreat, we’re committed to significantly growing our business in exciting new ways. 

Specifically: 1. Our labs have re-opened for business – with extensive new protocols to protect staff and panel members. We’ve invested heavily in re-building the labs, installing safety plexiglas barriers throughout, completely rebuilding staff work spaces (including the kitchen), re-designing traffic flow (creating a new path to exit), spreading workstations, and re-crafting rooms to facilitate better social distancing. 

We’re in the process of expanding our office space to better spread staff out and facilitate work-from-home for staff who don’t physically need to be on-site.  And, most important, we have extensive protocols for staff and panel member safety, including advanced screening, temperature checks on-site, new gloves for each test session, masks for panel members, and masks and face shields for staff. 

We engaged in extensive dialog with panel members about our protocols and have been tracking their responses after re-opening mid-summer.  Since then, we’ve already run over 1,000 test sessions – and the feedback from panel members has been overwhelmingly positive. 
In a follow-up survey with 393 of our lab participants, 88% were comfortable participating again. And 87% were comfortable using biometric sensors. As one participant stated,  “I appreciate the steps that this facility is taking to ensure the safety of media panel members. Thank you.” 

2. We’ve moved all non-neuro research in-home with our new StreamPulse research platform. This includes our own private, fully addressable OTT channel allowing us to run controlled experiments over television sets in home – together with mobile, desktop and cross-platform research.  StreamPulse is proving to be a huge hit with clients, including a recent study with Hulu – both because of its cost savings, and natural viewing context. 

3. Together with @Shimmer, we’re conducting a major in-home pilot program, facilitating measurement of galvanic skin response and heart rate. As we work through the new protocols, we’ll be expanding this panel over the coming months. 4. We’ve launched HARK Connect (HarkConnect.com), the world’s most advanced online qualitative software for focus groups, bringing new analytical tools to for live in-home qual research, including real time transcription, immediate clip extraction with mark-up tags, as well as click to video transcripts, and live translation into 60+ languages (including Klingon). @Elissa Moses, former head of neuro at Ipsos, is leading this initiative.