YouGov Buys Synthetic Response Pioneer Yabble

YouGov has announced the acquisition of New Zealand agency Yabble, a pioneer in the field of synthetic research data. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The two companies have been working closely together over the past year on the development and launch of a first client-facing AI product, YouGov AI Qual Explorer, and will continue to integrate Yabble's technology into YouGov's core Data Products to accelerate the global firm's development of AI-enabled features. The new tool is used to capture unprompted, top-of-mind opinion on everything from ads and campaigns to brand messaging, sifting through unstructured data from large audience surveys, extracting key themes and sentiments, and presenting them alongside subthemes and quotes in a dashboard interface.

Yabble has been developing genAI tools for research since 2019 and currently has thirteen employees. Founded by Kathryn Topp and Rachel O'Shea (pictured) and originally known as The Thinking Studio, it has hit the headlines on regular occasions in the last two years, notably with the launch of synthetic respondent option Virtual Audiences, and the addition earlier this year of a facility for users to upload and integrate their own proprietary datasets to tailor the personas of AI respondents to suit their business.

The firm uses proprietary algorithms, custom fine-tuned models and complex prompt engineering to deliver tools tailored for each stage of the market research process, and was listed as a GRIT Top 50 Most Innovative Supplier list for 2023.

YouGov, which yesterday announced the appointment of Marc Ryan as its Chief Product Officer (CPO), operates the 'Living Data' platform, which draws on analysis of feedback from 26 million registered panel members worldwide, and feeds into its Profiles, BrandIndex and CategoryView products among others.

CEO Steve Hatch comments: 'Generative AI is transforming the insight landscape and with the acquisition of Yabble, YouGov is strongly positioned to take advantage of this change. Early adopters of Yabble's pioneering technology include some of the most data-savvy brands. I have seen how powerful the combination of YouGov's data and Yabble's technology is, and I am excited for more clients to experience this. This acquisition will transform the way our clients derive insights from YouGov Profiles' two million datapoints and gain maximum value from YouGov's unique dataset'. He adds: 'We have been building towards this acquisition over the past six months and we're excited to welcome Kathryn and Yabble's team of world leading prompt engineers, machine learning experts and data and analytics professionals to YouGov'.

'The best AI runs on the best quality data' says Topp, 'and YouGov's proprietary panel is the gold standard in attitude and opinion data. The combination of Yabble's cutting-edge AI tools and YouGov's quality dataset will provide clients with the best, fastest, most effortless insights available. But this is just the beginning. Yabble has the largest domain expertise in the space, the most sophisticated technology and algorithms to be able to get at the best answers. When combined with YouGov's increasing volume of best-in-market behavioural data, it provides a blueprint for the future of what research and insights should be'.

Details of the new tool are at https://business.yougov.com/product/ai-qualitative-explorer , while Yabble is online at www.yabble.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.