Delvinia scores two in ARIM funding round

Delvinia Interactive Inc. has scored funding for two projects from CANARIE Inc.’s Applied Research in Multimedia (ARIM) fund to push the envelope in broadband research. It has received $200,000 toward a total project cost of $400,000 to study the role of broadband connectivity in connection with market research with partner Millward Brown Goldfarb. It has also been awarded $200,000 toward a total project cost of $398,000 toward examining the role of broadband in informing voters about the process of municipal elections in tandem with the Town of Markham. Delvinia principal Adam Froman says the market research project will hopefully help market research clients become more comfortable using broadband-enabled surveys and other tools to evaluate consumer attitudes toward products and services. Froman says current market research is grounded in tried-and-true methodologies developed by firms such as Millward Brown, techniques that are often tied to costly recruiting across disparate geographic areas and in-house focus group labs. As an alternative, he argues, companies wishing to conduct research could use rich-media online tools to evaluate the effectiveness of, for example, advertising campaigns, in a more effective fashion. But, he says, clients still don’t trust online tools - a bias he hopes to overcome with evidence from the CANARIE-funded project. To test the effectiveness of broadband online market research, Delvinia and partner Millward Brown will assess a third-party television advertisement using traditional survey methods, a dial-up online experiment, as well as a broadband test. At the end of the day, Froman hopes the test will prove the effectiveness of broadband research." have evidence in a parallel situation using established methodology that this tool - and what I hope what turns out, and if it doesn’t then this is all in the interest of research - what I hope turns out is that it says, you know what, the online was even more effective. In a shorter period of time we were able to recruit more respondents, which gave you better data. People really preferred using the interface - the tool itself, helped people guide them through." The second project, Municipalities on Demand, will test the use of broadband-enabled communication to increase voter turnout in a municipal election. Though Delvinia had originally tapped an enthusiastic City of Toronto to take part in the experiment, distractions due to SARS forced the city to pass on this year’s vote. Delvinia found an enthusiastic champion in Markham’s chief information officer, though, and the company has been awarded Markham’s communications budget surrounding the poll. The experiment will explore whether the use of rich-media online tools can better educate voters about the voting process with an eye to increasing the number of people who cast a ballot - numbers that are abysmally low across the province, often in the range of 25%. The test ties in well, Froman says, with Markham’s ongoing search for alternative delivery channels for municipal services. The project will be broken down into three components as Delvinia develops metrics to determine whether the test has been a success or not, a production component for materials related to the voting process, as well as a recruitment process to encourage people to visit, use and provide feedback on the broadband-enabled site. As an added bonus to the Delvinia experiment, the Town of Markham is also committed to holding its advance poll online, which will likely make the 2003 municipal election in November closely watched by city officials across the country. Froman says the company won’t be stretched by the two projects, though he does call them considerable wins for the interactive research firm. Many of the technologies being employed, he says, are components the company has already developed.

Delvinia scores two in ARIM funding round

News | 06/13/2003 4:00 am EDT

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