YouGov

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YouGov is an international internet-based market research firm launched in the UK in May 2000 by Stephan Shakespeare (now Chief Innovation Officer) and Nadhim Zahawi (CEO). In 2005 the company opened an office in the Middle East, and in 2007 it further expanded by acquiring market research firms in the USA, Germany and Scandinavia, which are now part of the YouGov Group [1] YouGov is a member of the British Polling Council.

YouGov's Chairman since April 2007 is Roger Parry, replacing political commentator Peter Kellner who now serves as President of the company.^[1] When YouGov floated for £18million in April 2005, Kellner owned 6% of the company.^[2]

1 Methodology
2 Accuracy
3 Criticism
- 3.1 Attacks on Yougov polls by Ken Livingstone
4 Business
5 Market place
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Methodology

YouGov's methodology is to obtain responses from an invited group of Internet users, and then to filter these responses in line with demographic information. It draws these demographically-representative samples from a panel of about 250,000 people in the UK.

As YouGov's online methods require no field-force, its costs are lower than competitors that employ traditional face-to-face or telephone methods. YouGov has exploited its cost-effectiveness and speed to conduct more polls for newspapers and television programmes than any other organisation. Its media clients include the The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Economist and Sky News.

Panel members, volunteer members of the public, are credited with 50p for each simple survey they complete (up to £ 2 for more time consuming ones). They are sent a cheque when the amount accrued reaches £50. In addition there is a monthly prize survey, the completion of which enters the member into a prize draw, and other occasional prize surveys.

[edit] Accuracy

YouGov has contended that its opinion polls in recent UK elections, e.g. the 2001 general election, have been consistently more accurate than traditional opinion pollsters who repeatedly over-estimated the Labour vote.

This pattern was repeated during the 2005 general election campaign, when most traditional polls reported Labour's support in the range from 38 to 41%, compared with the 36% it achieved on polling day. In contrast, YouGov's nine polls during the final three weeks of the campaign all showed Labour on 36 or 37%, although NOP (published in The Independent) gave the most accurate forecast in their final poll in 2005.

In the 2008 London Mayoral Campaign, YouGov was the only pollster to accurately predict that Boris Johnson would win the election comfortably, down to the percentage of his lead over Ken Livingstone (6%).[2]

[edit] Criticism

Critics argue that, as not all of the public have access to the Internet, its samples cannot accurately reflect the views of the population as a whole. YouGov counters that they have a representative panel and they are able to weight their polls/surveys appropriately to reflect the national audience that they are aiming to poll.

It is a function of their internet panel approach that YouGov isn't able to pick up turnout factors to the same degree as other pollsters and they exclude it from their methods. However, traditional polls use widely differing methods to take account of turnout, and these produce equally varied "corrections" to the raw data. No consensus has emerged as to what, if any, "correction" has greatest validity.

The public are enticed to take part in YouGov surveys with small payments stored in their account for each survey completed. YouGov rules require participants to have earned £50 worth of survey completions before any money can be released to the participant. This can require up to 100 surveys to have been completed by the participant before he receives his reward. Surveys are offered to individual participants infrequently (typically two to four per month) and it could therefore require two years or even longer before they get paid.

[edit] Attacks on Yougov polls by Ken Livingstone

During campaigning for the 2008 London mayoral elections, a YouGov poll placed Boris Johnson 13 points ahead of the incumbent Ken Livingstone. Livingstone's campaign team branded the poll "fundamentally flawed", arguing that it failed to take account of London's larger ethnic minority population compared to the rest of the country, and saying that it would complain to the Market Research Council of Great Britain.^[3] Ipsos Mori and ICM polls put the candidates neck-and-neck.^[4] A subsequent poll was derided by Livingstone as "a transparent attempt by the Evening Standard/YouGov to give Boris Johnson a more credible lead".^{[citation needed]} However, Livingstone never made the official complaint that he had announced, and in the event, YouGov's final poll turned out to be the only accurate prediction of Johnson's fairly comfortable win, besting the other pollsters, who were reporting small leads for Ken Livingstone.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Business

In YouGov's business year from August 2006 to July 2007 turnover rose by 51% above the previous year to £ 14.3 million and profits before tax rose by 39% to £ 5.7 million. At around 40%, YouGov's net margins are amongst the highest in the industry, compared to the usual 10 - 30% range that most of its competitors produce.

The acquisition of Polimetrix has been completed and the funds from this investment are to be used to bring YouGov products to the American and Candian market and to expand Polimetrix's capabilities through the cross-licensing of technology and intellectual property. A joint selling arrangement now allows YouGov to sell Polimetrix's products internationally, excluding the USA and Canada, and Polimetrix to sell YouGov's products, including BrandIndex(TM), in the USA and Canada.

[edit] Market place

In the UK, around £1.2bn is spent every year on market research. Just over a tenth (£150m) of this is online market research. This is expected to grow at around 30% per annum based on the USA experience. European online research growth was 31% in 2004 (ESOMAR).