NEWS15 September 2009

AskYourTargetMarket unveils ‘research on-demand’ service

North America Technology

US— Beta testing is underway for an online, on-demand survey tool called AskYourTargetMarket.com that allows users to quiz its consumer panel for as little as $29.95.

The firm claims that its new service is the “web’s first self-service market research tool” – different from such DIY survey tools as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang in that it also provides sample.

Users are able to submit their own questions and choose which demographics take part in the survey, splitting them by age, salary, location and sex.

Respondents are sourced from a panel built through sister website InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which has around 40,000 registered users, 10,000 of which use the site regularly and are invited to take part in surveys.

Reminder emails are sent to respondents who do not reply to initial invitations, and depending on the package purchased, some questions will be repeated within a few hours to check that respondents give the same answers.

David Handel, AskYourTargetMarket’s managing director and co-founder, said: “We set out to create a service that heretofore didn’t exist. There are web applications offering self-service affordable email marketing, on-demand printing and online advertising. But none that provide the same inexpensive self-service on-demand benefits to target market research.”


Update – 16.09.09

An AskYourTargetMarket spokesman has come back to us to clarify some points following our discussions with them yesterday and the publication of the above report.

“Respondents are sourced from a panel built through sister website InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which has around 40,000 registered users, 10,000 of which use the site regularly and are invited to take part in surveys.”

We have an average of tens of thousands of users in our consumer panel, average of 40-50k unique visitors to ICS site per month and 2.3 million  completed surveys so far.  

“Reminder emails are sent to respondents who do not reply to initial invitations…” 

On InstantCashSweepstakes.com, we allow users to answer five [surveys]. After they wait 3 hours, they can begin taking surveys again. We do this because users accumulate ‘lottery tickets’ by answering surveys that go into a drawing for cash. So we let them answer five at a time, then we send the reminder email to them that they can come back and answer surveys again. So users come to InstantCashSweepstakes.com of their own volition, we do not as of yet send out emails about available surveys but we are working on other ways to approach and engage them when they are away from their computers. 

“…and depending on the package purchased, some questions will be repeated within a few hours to check that respondents give the same answers.”

This is correct, referring to the Doublecheckd feature on AskYourTargetMarket.com, but is completely unrelated to sending out emails to people on ICS to let them know they can come and answer surveys again. Also, users of ICS specifically request to be sent reminder emails of when they can play again.

James Verrinder

North America Technology

@RESEARCH LIVE

3 Comments

Steve Taylor

15 years ago

"Respondents are sourced from a panel built through sister website InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which has around 40,000 registered users, 10,000 of which use the site regularly and are invited to take part in surveys." So 10,000 sample in a country of 300 million people. That's 0.003% of the population and let's face it, people going to "InstantCashSweepstakes" are quite unlikely to be high income, high worth respondents. So it's a DIY service with low worth sample which will probably stop even more people turning to research professionals to commission quality research. Can anyone else hear the clanging noise? They're nails being driven into the coffin of our industry. Why Research thinks it's worth publicising this is beyond me.

Like Report

Brian Tarran

15 years ago

Steve, I think it would be remiss of us not to report on such developments, given that you - and no doubt others - consider such DIY services to be a threat to the business of professional market researchers. If there is demand for such services in the marketplace is it not better for professional researchers to be made fully aware of them so that they may develop more competitive positionings?

Like Report

Dan Rockwell

15 years ago

"So 10,000 sample in a country of 300 million people. That's 0.003% of the population and let's face it, people going to "InstantCashSweepstakes" are quite unlikely to be high income, high worth respondents." This is pretty much the standard take on any online / crowdsourced type panel of research- we can't believe the demographics and or we work hard to discredit them. Replace "instant cash sweepstakes" with "mechanical turk" and you get the same reaction from researchers. Even you tried to build a more authentic worth pool of people online you'd still get this reaction. Regardless you're correct in that your mileage will vary. Obviously this isnt the end all be all research tool/approach. It is however on trend with numerous tools in this emerging space of "hey lets tap people online to get them to give us insight". This happens everyday with people data mining sentiment out of the web, this offer is just playing on the known fact that these sites exist, have demographics, why not leverage them. The demand is there, the danger is there as well. The demand for fast at glance gut check insight will always be a thriving marketplace. The danger is using this data alone without doing other typically more comprehensive traditional methods. When i do any survey/qualitative work via mechanical turk, I know now that x% of my sample is gonna be crap- why do it? Its still faster and cheaper than the alternative. Its it my sole source- no, what is it good for, quick hit see if there is a pattern. Don't knock these guys for leveraging the web, before ya know it they'll figure out who replace the rest of the puzzle and then we're out of a job. Recognize the trend and ask why is it here, how is it evolving, who is using it, why, and what do they want?

Like Report

Featured company