briefd: Market Research & Insights (5-28-26)

Welcome to briefd: Market Research & Insights – your weekly intelligence briefing on the market research industry. Each week, we scan leading MR publications, blogs, and news sources to surface the developments that matter. Please note, briefd is AI-generated and may occasionally make mistakes.

Edition Summary: Market Research & Insights Trends (May 22 – 28, 2026)

Productized AI, platform consolidation, and a sharper industry debate about trust, defensibility, and what researchers should do next.

AI and Tech Innovations in Market Research

Ipsos Launches Product Studio Across Eleven Markets. Ipsos introduced Product Studio, a product-testing platform built with input from global consumer goods manufacturers. The offer centers on getting performance data back in hours rather than weeks and combines multimodal AI, AI agents, synthetic augmentation, video, observational methodologies and dynamic meta-analysis. The bigger signal is that large networks are now shipping AI-enhanced testing as a packaged operating system, not a sidecar feature.

quantilope Turns Historical Research Into a Searchable Knowledge Layer. quantilope added quinn Search to its AI assistant, letting teams query project metadata, survey questions, reports and dashboard summaries in natural language. The product is notable because it positions "institutional memory" as a core MR workflow problem, rather than a generic enterprise knowledge-management task.

Circana Pushes Harder Into Social Commerce Measurement. Circana launched Social Commerce, promising daily intelligence on product performance, shop activity, engagement and sentiment in a channel it says traditional point-of-sale measurement has not captured well. This looks like another example of research and analytics firms building purpose-built data products for fast-growing, previously undermeasured digital behaviors.

Displayr Says the Industry's AI Bottleneck Is Trust, Not Curiosity. In Displayr's The Trust Gap white paper, reported by Research Live, 67% of respondents said they were only "somewhat confident" in AI output accuracy and still double-checking everything, while another 20% said outputs felt inconsistent; only 10% said they were very confident. The study also found that 41% believed truly trustworthy AI would free them to spend more time on insight work, reframing verification and reproducibility as the next adoption battleground.

GEEIQ Raises Fresh Capital for AI-Powered Virtual Worlds Analytics. London-based GEEIQ raised $6.8 million to accelerate product development, expand partnerships and move into new verticals and territories. The company framed the raise around AI-powered planning and measurement in gaming and virtual worlds, underscoring how newer digital environments are becoming a more formalized insights category rather than an experimental side niche.

B2B Market Research Developments

Automotive Insight Partners and Regit Build a More Actionable Auto Data Stack. Automotive Insight Partners partnered with Regit on AutoGraphics, a tool that lets brands explore attitudes, behaviors and purchase intent by the car a respondent actually drives, including fuel type, switching propensity, make and model, insurance group and mileage. It is a strong example of B2B insight products becoming more vertically specific and more tightly fused with first-party operational data.

Futurum Pulls ETR's Enterprise Intent Data Into Its Intelligence Platform. By acquiring Aptiviti, parent of Enterprise Technology Research, Futurum Group is combining ETR's predictive quantitative data engine with its own analyst expertise, media properties and intelligence platform. ETR's Technology Spending Intentions Survey draws from a vetted community of nearly 10,000 enterprise technology leaders representing more than $2 trillion in spending, showing how B2B intelligence providers are bundling forward-looking spend signals with narrative context.

Behave Expands Into Germany and Rolls Out Behave.AI. Serviceplan's behavioral consultancy Behave launched in Germany with a Munich-based team led by Karin Immenroth and Minh Nguyen, while simultaneously introducing Behave.AI, a suite built on a proprietary knowledge base of behavioral-science principles. The move suggests that behaviorally informed consulting is being packaged more explicitly as software-enabled capability for enterprise clients.

Kadence Americas Invests in the Infrastructure Behind AI Training Work. Kadence Americas hired Phurba Sherpa as a data engineer specifically to strengthen the data infrastructure powering its AI training work. For B2B-focused agencies and consultancies, this is the more interesting signal: backend data engineering is becoming a client-relevant growth capability, not just invisible operations.

Partnerships, Mergers, and Acquisitions

Ampere Analysis Buys PlumResearch and Takes Goldenpeak Backing. Ampere Analysis acquired Polish streaming data and analytics company PlumResearch and also received a majority investment from private equity firm Goldenpeak. The combination adds audience-measurement capabilities to Ampere's market sizing, consumer behavior and title-level data, while also giving the company fresh capital for further organic growth and targeted M&A.

Rep Data Acquires OWL Solutions to Tighten the Research Workflow Stack. Rep Data bought survey-programming specialist OWL Solutions, adding programming expertise to a broader ecosystem that already includes Research Defender, ReDem, Research Desk and SightX. Strategically, the deal reinforces Rep Data's effort to connect sample, fraud prevention, programming and analysis into a more integrated execution layer.

Comscore's Movies Divestiture Revives the Rentrak Name. On May 27, Comscore sold its Movies box-office measurement business to Advaya Capital, which will immediately revive the Rentrak brand. The reported $70 million price was less than 10% of what Comscore paid for the company a decade ago, making the deal look less like a routine transaction and more like a portfolio reset.

Industry Leadership & Organizational Changes

Esomar Promotes Patrick de Regt to Chief Executive Officer. Esomar named Patrick de Regt CEO after six months as COO and said it is also creating a new Chief Profession and Advocacy Officer role. The combination of moves puts standards, advocacy, AI and responsible innovation closer to the center of the association's next phase.

dunnhumby Names Jamie Samaha as Incoming CEO. Retail data and loyalty specialist dunnhumby said Jamie Samaha will become CEO on July 20, replacing Josh Bottomley. Samaha arrives with experience spanning customer intelligence, commerce media, loyalty, payments and consumer engagement, which fits where dunnhumby increasingly competes: at the intersection of retail media, data and activation.

Comscore Hands the Top Job to Matt McLaughlin. One day after its Movies divestiture, Comscore named Matt McLaughlin CEO with immediate effect, replacing Jon Carpenter, who will remain involved through October. Given the timing, the appointment reads as part of a broader strategic reset rather than a standalone people story.

OvationMR Brings in Ian Roberts to Strengthen Insights and Strategy. OvationMR appointed long-time Nebu sales leader Ian Roberts as SVP, Insights and Strategy. The hire matters because Ovation has been building outward through acquisitions, including Qualibee and Ethos in 2024, and Roberts gives it additional commercial and technology-side leadership as that portfolio matures.

Dynata Adds a New Senior North America Sales Leader. Dynata appointed Dana Sergenian Hingtgen as SVP, Sales, focused on brand clients in North America. It is a straightforward commercial hire, but also a reminder that first-party audience and data businesses are still investing in top-of-house sales leadership while the industry narrative is dominated by product automation.

Expert Insights & Thought Leadership

Quirk's Says AI Is Not Eliminating Researchers but Reallocating Their Value. In Quirk's, Liam Hickey argued that current researchers may be the "last generation" doing the work the old way, with AI shifting the center of gravity away from process-heavy execution and toward synthesis, judgment and influence. That is less a prediction of disappearance than a reframing of what high-value research labor becomes.

Research World Warns That AI Can Be Technically Right and Behaviorally Wrong. In Research World, Manuel Garcia-Garcia argued that AI often fails while being "correct" because it misses context, uncertainty, emotion and what users are really asking. For insight teams, the key implication is that decision quality depends not only on accuracy and speed but also on trust, empathy and interpretive friction.

MRS Forum Discussions Push Agencies Toward a Decision-Partner Model. In Research Live, Paul Griffiths wrote that agencies need to move from research delivery toward advisory partnership, owning the space of "decision confidence" rather than defending a narrower definition of primary research. He also emphasized that winning work increasingly depends on shaping the client's problem earlier, before formal procurement begins.

Research Live Questions Whether the Sector Is Talking About AI Too Much. In another Research Live opinion piece, Louise McLaren argued that the industry risks becoming overly consumed by internal AI debates—qual at scale, synthetic data, AI probing—and not reflective enough about ideas and impact. It is a useful counterweight to a week otherwise dominated by automation stories.

MRS Webinar Coverage Frames AI as a Chance to Elevate Insight, Not Just Accelerate Tasks. Reporting from an MRS webinar, Research Live said panellists described AI as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for the sector if it helps researchers move beyond raw information and strengthen the distinct value of insight in decision-making. In other words, the optimistic case for AI is not cheaper outputs; it is a bigger strategic role.