CEO Monthly Reflection April 2025: Taking a Deep Breath
Monthly Reflection | April 21, 2025
By: Terence McCarron, CEO
There was a Quality Explosion this month.
Two major events sparked the conversation:
- Insights Association held a Data Quality Day in New York. (I’ll address this at a later time)
- While that event was happening, a small sample company closed quietly. Then the next day, it was revealed why. The major players at this company were indicted on fraud charges relating to survey data stemming from an inside scheme to fabricate survey responses.
My phone has been on fire ever since, only resting during the Easter weekend. Through many hours of conversations, people are asking a few common questions related to the indictment news:
- What does this say about the sample business?
- Would I have seen this with OpinionRoute Tech?
- How could they be this stupid?
- Should we abandon programmatic and just go back to panels?
First, let me just say that this indictment is just that. No one has been convicted yet, and I’m a huge believer in “innocent until proven guilty.”
This whole situation is a tough one for me. I had personal relationships with some involved here. There are families affected, and I don’t feel like piling on something that’s an awful stretch for innocent parties.
That being said, I have also personally invested so much of my family’s resources to solve a very complex overall data quality issue for the industry. It’s surreal for me to consider to think that past colleagues from another era may have been intentionally creating these problems that I was spending millions to solve.
This feeling of betrayal is shared by many researchers. They now feel lied to, compromised, and are left wondering who, if anyone, they can trust. When we feel like this, I find it easy to run away with that emotion. But it’s so important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If you are in a market research agency and feel fear over this, I want you to know that you have a tremendous amount of power in the broader landscape.
Q: What does this say about the Sample Business?
A: Not too much, but we can learn from this.
With all the ramped-up chatter about fraud in the survey ecosystem, it’s natural to ask this question. To me, it’s very important not to conflate normal survey fraud with an allegation like this. VERY different scenarios. But we can learn here.
I can attest that I talk to many sample companies who feel they are doing things “the right way”, but constantly lose on bids to low-quality suppliers over 15-50 cents per complete. A few years back, upon launching one of our advanced quality technologies, I had a respected industry veteran call me specifically to advise me to stop spending my money on things like this. That (end)clients will never care enough to pay a penny more for this.
Do you think that’s true? If it is, where’s the incentive to improve? I feel like our clients have rewarded our investment in data quality. But are we an outlier?
Big picture, Slice was a small player with minimal impact overall. It’s hard to feel that way if you’re an MRA flying blind and trusting what you’re told. Everyone sounds the same. Like with everything, there are good and bad vendors for every project. The presence of fraud is not a sign that sample companies, in any real volume, are perpetrating it themselves. But this story does reveal that if a company is, you CAN identify problems using the right tools.
When it comes to vendor strategy, trust, BUT also verify.
– Terence McCarron, CEO of OpinionRoute
Q: What have we seen in our Tech?
A: “Their fraud scores jump off like a red dot on a white wall”. – Rich Ratcliff
If you are an OpinionRoute services client, you wouldn’t have been exposed to Slice. But from our tech clients who have utilized Slice, we can see that OpinionRoute’s CleanID has a remarkable record of flagging fraud from this vendor. In the past 6 months of CleanID data, this supplier averaged a 38% block rate. That rate is obscene in our data (3-4x higher than most vendors) and demands an immediate call to action.
As Rich Ratcliff, our CTrO, described to me, they stood out like a “red dot on a white wall”. Their fraud methods were visible. As a result, we have been warning our clients to avoid them, and we are fortunate they trust us enough to listen.
The Navigator Quality ecosystem protects our clients from things like this.
Q: How could they be this stupid?
A: If true, they had to believe their clients would never catch them.
I think it’s fair to call this alleged scheme stupid. However, the accusation exposes a major hole too many MRAs have in their process. In my view, the only reason someone would attempt something like this is because they KNOW most MR firms buy sample with no security in place.
I talk regularly about the misalignment between sample company motivators and MR firms’. If we buy blindly and don’t secure the survey, the risk skyrockets. No number of vendor vetting questionnaires will prevent this. There must exist a true security layer around client surveys and data.
The drum I will continue to beat until my days with OR are done is this: When it comes to vendor strategy, trust, BUT also verify.
Q: Should the industry abandon programmatic and just go to panels?
A: Programmatic tech exists because panels couldn’t keep up with demand. I don’t think this has changed.
I’ve spoken many times before about the tech evolution in sample originating from a place of necessity. We have gotten HUGE as a sector versus pre-online times. The ability to scale quickly in quant was directly impeded by the general failure of panels once they hit a certain demand level. We are in an attention economy, and there are practical competition-for-time realities we face. Many of the recruitment sources that fill the programmatic funnels are stealing time away from a gaming app, for example. It’s a practical, efficient way to expand the pool from the limited number of consumers who are willing to double-opt in to a community for surveys.
As with most things, we are living in an era of nuance. It’s a “both/and” type of situation. Yes, give more double opt-in a chance, but also yes, expand the psychographics for surveys while we wrap security systems around client surveys and data. In this combination of approaches, we can find comfort only when we invest in the right solutions to verify the best available supply.
As a client of ours, we are grateful that you care enough about Data Quality to grow with us. Thank you!
If you’re not yet a client and want to explore how you can transform your vendor accountability system affordably, hit us up! We’ll help you audit your current situation.