Online Anthropology naturally combines high-volume quantitative analysis of online conversations with the rich context and depth of qualitative insight, through social listening.  Listening carefully to peoples’ choice of topics, tone, and language over time helps us better understand the “why” behind their decisions and assumptions, and to identify opportunities to better connect with them.

Social media dashboards offer a self-serve way to track real-time activity using keyword-based metrics across certain social platforms. They’re built for social teams to monitor campaigns, manage crises, and observe trending topics using basic social metrics like sentiment and reach estimates.

In contrast, Pianosa’s Online Anthropology is a full-service approach which delivers strategic insights into consumer  attitudes, behaviors, and unmet needs through deep analysis of online interactions. This is distinct from dashboards in three key ways: 

1) Breadth and custom inclusion of relevant data sources and platforms, and curation of key consumer cohorts and segments.

2) Proprietary tools that facilitate sophisticated quantification and advanced linguistic analysis to take advantage of the richness of long-form content, including audio.

3) A dedicated team of consumer insights professionals with deep market research and insights backgrounds.

One major hidden cost of dashboards is the internal staffing required to generate real insight. Dashboards are great for monitoring, but when organizations need deeper understanding, more sophisticated data analysis, and insights which drive business decisions, organizations tap Pianosa Insights.

Output is a powerful blend of quantitative context supporting qualitative insights and examples of consumer discussion which bring the consumer experience to life.

Download an example which illustrates how this approach blends quantitative scale and qualitative insights: Download A Sample Report Here.

2-4 weeks is typical. Our clients love our Interim Workession, where at about halfway through the process, we walk you through what we’re seeing in the data and brainstorm additional hypotheses, questions, or areas to probe further.  The result is a final report with no surprises (well, no bad surprises!).

All studies are flat-fee. Pricing is dependent on objectives and population to be studied, but a typical range is $15,000-$65,000. Many clients update the analysis on a regular cadence, to ensure a steady stream of consumer insights and intelligence.

Conversation activity is sourced from open-access platforms with public viewership. We directly ingest feeds from major social APIs and crawl particular sources.

We create unique datasets for each analysis to allow us to best focus on key segments of interest, sourcing from platforms most relevant to each client’s business objectives. These platofrms may include Reddit, other vibrant online forums, X, Bluesky, Substacks, Instagram, TikTok, or even podcasts.

We use proprietary software which allows us to quickly manage, organize, and analyze high volumes of unstructured data (public online comments or open-end survey responses).  We deploy graph-based algorithms to map networks and clusters of consumers.  We also create unique visualizations over the data to explore consumer conversations and uncover insights. This is how we can get to insights others cannot.

Yes, consumer activity is analyzed using a combination of AI-assisted pattern and thematic recognition, keyword-based quantification of themes and emotions. However, it’s our manual examination of high-yield posts for nuance, narrative, and insight that’s unique to Pianosa Insights.

In Italian, “piano” refers to music played "softly,” at in low-volume. In the context of consumer insights, this approach refers to being quiet, creating space to listen to what people choose to talk about and how they express themselves in order to learn more deeply.

Listening to people, rather than directly asking them questions, allows insight development with more depth and emotion and makes room for better discovery of unanticipated findings.