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Alternatives Emerging to Buying Direct from Traditional Research and Advisory Firms
By Louise Garnett
September 10, 2007
Important Details: A new type of product has emerged as an alternative to buying from traditional research and advisory firms. Our research indicates that the research and advisory model is holding up well, so we do not see these new alternatives as something disrupting or eroding the market. Rather, these new services tap into the market of professionals who cannot afford the higher prices of research firms, or professionals who can afford to buy the research but are looking for new ways to search for analyst information across a number of research companies.
- In search, Northern Light launched its new paid search Analyst Direct product, which we covered a few weeks ago.
- Another new free search service in beta is all-the-analysts.com which currently searches across a small list of 40 analyst firms’ web sites. The beta site is in development and membership will be required once the site is live. The site is advertising supported at this point, and it appears membership and paid services will be part of the model once it is fully functional. The firm appears to be based in the UK, but little information is available about who is behind it; see an analyst relations commentary by Hill and Knowlton from late May about this new start up.
- We have also seen a couple of new approaches to getting IT research information for free or at a lower price point through an alternative type of product. itanalystreports.com says it was “started by a senior Silicon Valley marketing and product management professional who was tired of fighting the constant battle of securing market data to support his plans and strategies without a significant budget for market research.” This company searches the web looking for paid sponsored research that has been legally licensed for distribution and then notifies people that the research is available.
- Another company we recently wrote about is TechNavio, which provides a product for IT sales and strategic planning individuals at $500 per user per year. This product is based on primary and secondary research but then validated against publicly available analyst information as part of their research process.
Implications: At the core of some of these products is the use of analyst information obtained by scraping web sites and redistributing it, even though it is copyrighted. This issue came up a few years ago. In August 2004, JupiterMedia filed a suit against eMarketer, claiming the eMarketer violated copyright of its Jupiter Research division publications. eMarketer took the position it had done nothing wrong by using copyrighted material freely available in the web. The suit went to court with the most recent filing in the case an order dated August 8, 2006 in which a timetable of pretrial events was laid out. At that point it looked to be going to trial. However, there were no subsequent filings, and there should have been according to that schedule. We contacted both JupiterMedia, which filed the original claim and has since sold off the Jupiter Research division, as well as Jupiter Research. The company declined to comment on the case, and we suspect that the case has been settled out of court - which in some ways is a shame since it would have provided a legal precedent on the the re-use and aggregation of copyrighted research obtained from open sources.
That said, it is important to note that the practice of using and sourcing analyst information from press releases and analyst web sites continues to pick up momentum and it is a good news/bad news story for the analyst firms. Most analyst firms release the information to generate leads and to position themselves as authorities in the field. Prior to the web, this technique provided information to the press to cite in articles, and to introduce analysts to the press. The same practice continues today, but the web gives the secondary market a whole new way to re-use this information, by making free aggregated research or less expensive research available to those who can’t afford to buy more expensive services. Although the analyst firms may lose a sale or two here and there, the practice also provides an additional public relations engine as this released information grows legs and travels beyond the typical PR channel to the press. This extra PR may make up for a few lost sales by spreading the brand name, as well as create leads from folks who need more in depth research in a particular area. It is definitely a two-edged sword that the research firms need to be aware of as they release and make public on their web sites top level research information.