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Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

techcrunch.com

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Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#2

Post by endianswap »

I think it's a great idea, especially in lieu of a paywall, but I honestly can't think of that many websites that have paywalls. Maybe I just avoid them naturally?

It also seems like this could be useful for free versions of iOS apps, as advertisement replacements (or supplements.)

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#4

Post by Ataraxy »

This has been done to death in the incentive based affiliate marketing world for some years now.

The quality of data that will be generated from these surveys is going to be extremely poor and I would be interested in seeing how they're able to sustain advertisers (market researchers).

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#6

Post by vailripper »

Ataraxy wrote: post #4

This has been done to death in the incentive based affiliate marketing world for some years now. The quality of data that will be generated from these surveys is going to be extremely poor and I would be interested in seeing how they're able to sustain advertisers (market researchers).

The article mentions some ways they plan to catch bogus data, but I agree that I'm a bit skeptical they can make it work consistently.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#7

Post by dm8 »

Interesting idea. Google is already doing this (http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home) and they have solid relationship with big publishers. Question to founders - 1. How are you different from Google? 2. As a UX person, I'm not sure what sort of data I will get from these surveys. Is there anyway you can maintain the quality of responses? I assume in most of the cases users will give dummy data for the sake of getting away from surveys.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#8

Post by ktsmith »

Ataraxy wrote: post #4

This has been done to death in the incentive based affiliate marketing world for some years now. The quality of data that will be generated from these surveys is going to be extremely poor and I would be interested in seeing how they're able to sustain advertisers (market researchers).

I'll second this, we put together a system that did this around 2008 and while it worked out well initially within less than a year it became a loss for our company. We couldn't charge much for the data as even with large amounts of filters and detection techniques for bogus data and users the results were so bad no one was willing to pay for them any more. Within a year we scrapped the project and ripped it out of our ad system. People are more than happy to answer a survey to get to paid content, they are also more than happy to supply bogus answers to the questions.

That being said, I'll be interested to see what, if anything, makes this different than all of the surveys running in the affiliate marketing/lead generation space.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#9

Post by MetalMASK »

No.

You probably don't need a degree in experimental psychology to understand that forced recruitment gives you invalid/biased/low quality data. These surveys are annoying to the users; more importantly, the data provided has little if at all value to the organization behind the survey. No matter how well you design your survey.

I don't even want to start on how bad/biased some surveys are designed.

The only way the survey business is still in business is because it is so distant from the revenue. If your ad campaign doesn't boost sale, you pull your ad away. Bad survey's uselessness are not so explicit so people still trust that "something can be gained".

No, stop creating useless data from online user. If you want insights on usage, do analytics on server logs. If you want feedback on user experience, do a serious experiments and plan to spend some ten thousand bucks on it.

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