The Next Era of B2B Communities

The demand for fast, high-quality insights continues to grow, yet access to specialist business audiences remains limited. As a result, many organisations are turning to research communities to build deeper, ongoing relationships with the audiences they need to understand.

Research communities offer a powerful alternative to traditional research models. By bringing participants together in an ongoing environment, they enable brands to engage audiences over time, observe changing attitudes and behaviours, and generate richer understanding through a mix of research activities. They also create value for participants themselves by providing opportunities to connect, share experiences, and contribute to conversations that matter to them.

But as AI capabilities continue to evolve, a new question is emerging: how can organisations extend the value of community-generated data even further?

In this Ipsos Views paper, we explore the potential of community-trained digital twins and the role they could play in the future of B2B insight. Drawing on a real-world pilot conducted with an online community of Mexican shop owners, the study investigates how different types of data influence the quality, authenticity, and usefulness of digital twins.

In the paper, you’ll discover: 

• Why online communities provide a uniquely valuable foundation for building digital twins. 
• How different types of human data shape what digital twins can produce.
• What makes some twins feel more grounded, relevant, and authentic than others. 
• Why data curation may be just as important as the data itself. 
• What digital twins can and cannot reliably do in a B2B research context.

The paper moves beyond the hype to show what makes a digital twin genuinely useful, offering practical lessons for anyone looking to harness community data, scale insight, and apply AI responsibly in B2B research.

Download the full paper to learn how community-trained digital twins can help unlock more value from community data and make insights go further.