Topic 2: Survey Fraud is a Factor to Manage
Blog | January 30, 2023
This is part 2 of the “What is Data Quality?” series. Click here to read part 1: https://www.opinionroute.com/dataquality/what-is-data-quality-and-how-can-i-improve-it/
The survey sampling ecosystem has become highly automated in recent years. Yesterday’s norms of deep validation, ongoing community management and responsive survey takers are long gone. Those methods have been replaced with programmatic engines, reverse auctions, and flawed feasibility assessments.
In this grounding, it is vital you have a strategy for identifying fraud intrusions in every survey. Fraud is common and erratic in an ecosystem that has replaced validation with automation. Here are a few data points to illustrate the prevalence:
- Using a typically high-quality, double opted-in panel source, fraud represents 10-13% of all clicks into a typical consumer project.
- In an Insights Platform that has API connected single opt-in traffic sourcing, fraud commonly can escalate to near 20% on typical consumer projects.
So, what do we mean by fraud? While fraud is commonly bucketed as “bots”, the truth is way more sophisticated than that. Organized Click Farms, use of standard tech (VPN, Datacenters) for malicious purposes, misused Residential IP Proxies, and deep-tech device masking techniques are all commonplace now in the survey world. Not surprising when you realize online sample is a multi-billion dollar, highly automated, global marketplace.
Because of its sophistication, data reviews on their own aren’t sufficient as an isolated fraud strategy. To effectively diagnose fraud, robust prevention technology can help add device level attribute data to the decision-making process. The best technologies flag and block known fraud in real-time. We recommend our CleanID.
Next, we recommend you Measure what Matters.
Please click here for Part 3 of 5.