YouGov eyes social media boost

POLLING firm YouGov is to roll out a new service that will help companies make sense of the ‘noise’ generated on social networking sites such as Twitter.

The pollster already has a panel of 426,000 people that it uses for its UK market research but it will soon start tracking their ‘tweets’ and other feed on social media to help brands and companies build a clearer picture of what is being said about them online.

The data will be relayed in ‘real-time’ which means it will be quicker than the traditional method of getting feedback by asking people questions and will include monitoring of Facebook, which can be hard for companies to keep tabs on.

But YouGov said its investment in this and other new products and overseas expansion had caused underlying profits to fall nine per cent to £2m in the six months to January 31.

This was despite a 21 per cent growth in UK revenues, where its recently launched online SixthSense reports business doubled in size and it worked with clients such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Peugeot and Superdrug