Pulse vs Ipsos

On Ipsos.Digital, research takes only minutes to set up, from concept, ad and creative testing to FastFacts DIY surveys and omnibus studies, which suits a brand or insights team that runs quantitative studies of its own. Members of i-Say, Ipsos's own panel of 4.5 million members across 50 countries, take surveys through a panelist website or an app dashboard. Ipsos guards the quality of its online data with fingerprinting, multi-factor authentication, bot detection and speeding checks.

A team that wants AI-moderated interviews and a researcher to interpret them can get both from Ipsos. AI-Moderated Interactions return topline results minutes after fieldwork ends, and where interpretation matters as much as fieldwork, a team can connect with an Ipsos expert, which suits a brand whose stakeholders want an expert's reading as well as the data.

Where an insights team runs its interview program inside its own research operations, Pulse connects to the tools those operations already use, and its public API wires studies into the rest of their systems. Single sign-on through SAML or OIDC can be switched on for enterprise-plan teams that ask for it, so research operations keep one sign-in for every study. Interviews held on video bring Pulse's video insights, which read behavior and emotion on screen as participants answer.

1. Start with the recurring interviews. List the studies the team buys from Ipsos, from omnibus questions to AI-Moderated Interactions and Ipsos UU groups, and start with the customer interviews it repeats, such as a regular check on why customers leave. Each becomes a Pulse brief with its question, topics, audience and screener, and Pulse builds the interview from it.
2. Describe the i-Say audience as a profile. Where a study relied on i-Say or SampleOnly sample, set out who that audience is and the screening questions it should pass, and Pulse recruits to that profile, business and expert audiences included. Where the study is about the team's own customers, upload their list or share a link instead.
3. Put the next concept into an interview. Where the team has tested ideas and concepts through Ipsos's InnoTest, the next concept can be shown to participants during a Pulse interview, where they react to it on screen and the moderator follows up on what each of them says about it, before the concept goes back to the business unit that owns it.
4. Move the quick counts across. Where a business unit used FastFacts or an omnibus question for a quick count, run a Pulse survey alongside the interviews, for the times the question is how many customers hold a view rather than why they hold it.
5. Send the readout, then keep it. Send the business unit that commissioned the study its readout, and keep the findings in Pulse's insight repository. When the unit comes back about customers the team has already heard from, the team can search the earlier studies before any fresh fieldwork is commissioned, and start the new brief from what those customers already said.

• Ipsos alternatives