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Methodology
DigitalMediaIX's methodology combines college student's brand affinity, their engagement
with online media, and the brand's
activity with digital media.
The DMIX Top 50 digital brands include products sold to college students that fall in the following categories: consumer
packaged goods, fast food, technology hardware, and automobiles. While there are many more brands related to personal
care, retailing, software, clothing, and services that could be considered, the initial list did not include these products.
Three main factors were considered: brand preference, digital media engagement of consumers with the brand category,
and brand digital media activity. DigitalMediaIX developed an algorithm to combine these, which results in our DMIX/R
metric.
Brand Preference
Students were surveyed on 11 different product categories, each important to the
sample market. They acknowledged preference in categories where they likely had
a single brand (for example smart phones) or rank, in segments where they had
multiple preferences (for example fast food). These were normalized to reflect
overall brand affinity.
Digital Media Engagement
In each of the 11 product categories, students were surveyed on whether they
engaged with digital media related to the specific category. For example, they
were asked if they engaged with a company web site, Facebook page, brand video,
downloaded a brand-sponsored mobile app, were a Twitter follower, or did not
connect to the brand with digital media at all.
Brand Digital Media Activity
DigitalMediaIX has relied on common industry metrics to measure how active a
brand is with various forms of digital media. The prime reference points are
Facebook "Likes", YouTube Channel Views, and Twitter Followers. Each has a
factor applied to establish its relative importance. For example, a Twitter
Follower is much more valuable than a Facebook Like. DigitalMediaIX relied on
statistics from its college student brand survey and industry metrics in
December 2013.
Photos Courtesy of UW-Madison Archives
