Google has enhanced its consumer research offering for pay-as-you-go users with the launch of a new Google Analytics Solutions product, Google Surveys. They’re touting the new service as a way to “get fast, reliable opinions” from representative samples of web users browsing on a range of device types. Pricing will start at 10¢ per completed survey.
The process is simple: the client designs a survey comprised of up to ten questions, they choose their desired participant demographics, the questions are posted and answered on third party sites, and Google Surveys then delivers the data and insights created to the client. Web users are enticed to participate in the surveys with incentives including Google Play credits and access to premium content on third party news, reference and entertainment sites.
Google Surveys only uses multiple-choice or star-rating questions, which will no doubt ensure a higher engagement rate from mobile and tablet users than a more complex survey. The service also lets clients open their surveys with screening questions, to weed out respondents who don’t fit in with the desired sample profile. The goal is attract diverse participants and thusly yield more representative data than a long-form survey in which clients are paid to provide detailed answers.
Demographic targeting is available by gender, region and age (18-24, 25-34, 35-44 and 45+).
Google Surveys is opening up survey-hosting partnership opportunities to website owners in eight countries, including the United Kingdom. The publisher agree to gate some of your content behind surveys, and in return they take a commission whenever a user fills completes a survey.
As the surveys will be very brief and simple, most web users should, in theory, be willing to participate in order to access the content they’re interested in. A web user accessing an article on a partner publisher’s site might be delivered a prompt to “Answer survey to continue reading this content”, along with a few multiple choice questions or star-rating questions. Could this be the new revenue stream beleaguered digital media have been waiting for?
Partnering with Google Surveys is currently only available “by invitation only”. You can apply to become a partner here.