Susan Wall.
The AdNews end-of-year Perspectives, looking back at 2025 and forward to next year.
And see the AdNews 50 plus page state of the market report, Forecast 2026
Susan Wall - Director and Service Line Lead UU, Ipsos Australia.
It’s clear we are witnessing a new era in qualitative research where AI integration is a ubiquitous aid in uncovering insights more efficiently. Clients are asking us questions that have us questioning ourselves! Can AI do this faster, better, cheaper? Do I need you or will a bot suffice?
We only have to look to history to see some nervousness around game changing tools. In the ‘70s when the first handheld calculators arrived, people were worried we’d all become hopeless at maths – the inverse happened, society mathematically upskilled and solved more complex problems. PowerPoint came, typing pools diminished, secretarial roles morphed into graphic designers and visual storytellers.
AI is to the researcher what calculators were to mathematicians or a computer to the typist. Used properly AI makes us better qualitative researchers, and the insights richer than ever before. But, used in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or without fresh human input, we are on a path to vanilla.
The human is not ready to step out of the loop! Qualitative research at its core is about “understanding real people in their real lives”– people with all their glorious cracks, crevices and contradictions. It is these contradictions that have the greatest power to fuel innovation.
Ipsos, as the world’s largest qualitative business, has leaned into exploring “how the human and AI each perform, when given the same tasks” via robust research and experimentation. We have found that human Intelligence brings imagination, curiosity, judgment and context in a way AI cannot. People bring the important stories and colour. The gift of AI, however, has been efficiency, inspiration and scale.
Ipsos research, that has included AI versus human “twin studies” shows us that without fresh human inputs AI can quickly have us dealing in a generic middle ground. Ipsos’s award-winning ESOMAR paper outlines how AI has a homogenising effect, causing a gravitation towards the same or the ‘vanillafication’ of the insight.
AI can rub off the edges, the fringes and fail to capture individuals’ unique stories - the counter-intuitive, the unexpected – which is where the magic that fuels solutions lies in qual.
It’s not just the fringes within us that are important to uncover, it’s ensuring we are capturing unique voices. Talking to the people at the edge of the bell curve, who simply do not show up in the data, has also never been more important. Never forget – there is no average human, don’t be tempted by the middle.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.