Important facts about Mobile Rewarded Surveys

At present, Rewarded Surveys are gaining a lot of popularity in the apps and websites developers community, and are becoming a decent app monetization channel. Particularly for games and apps that have their own in-app reward/incentive mechanism and virtual economy, Rewarded Surveys are an excellent choice for boosting revenue in an existing monetization plan.

Developers that have a first introduction to monetization with market research rewarded surveys, usually misunderstand the potential and find it difficult to understand how this new monetization method works. Several fallacies and false expectations result in disappointment and frustration, since developers compare their initial experience with monetization with surveys, with the ad industry and how they used to work all these years.

In an effort to better understand rewarded surveys, we have listed some misconceptions of developers below, some basic facts about monetization with Rewarded Surveys in order to help developers, better understand how this monetization method works and what to expect from it.

 

1. Survey will not always be available for every user all the time in the app

 

This is one of the largest false expectations that developers have. Monetization with market research is quite different from monetization with CPC ads and terminologies used there like fill rates, ARPDAUs, DAUs, eCPMs and others do not actually apply since surveys work differently. Rewarded Surveys are distributed based on research buyer or research buyer needs as they come and go to the survey platform in an ad-hoc unpredicted way in order to use the DIY survey tool and create their surveys. Under this scenario when surveys go live, some survey respondents may not be able to see a survey on their devices while other survey respondents of the same app may see a survey due to demographic details filled by the user. This happens because surveys are served based on the targeting criteria of the research buyers.

To understand, Let’s say a male living in California is trying to see a Rewarded survey on his app integrated with rapidoreach rewarded survey SDK. In the meantime, a research buyer visits the same survey platform and requires 1000 responses from men in California. Survey goes live and runs for 24 hrs and surveys are distributed on devices of men in California. At that point of time, that man is not eligible for that survey and if no other research buyer targets him, he will not be able to see a survey. Other research buyers may target him later on if he is active in the app if surveys get available. 

Developers should be patient. Surveys can become quota full for proportions of their app’s user base based on their profile data and demographics and targeting criteria provided by researchers. Having their apps/sites exposed to that survey inventory when campaigns go live, is quite important in order for Developers to assess right the opportunity of monetizing with surveys.

 

2. Shows surveys popup and placements only when a survey is available

 

Most rewarded surveys marketplaces provide some kind of api or feature to check whether a survey is available or not for the user for example RapidoReach provides isSurveyAvailable hook to check for the availability of surveys. Developers should not prompt survey dialogues to survey respondents in their apps to take a survey unless a survey is available. Prompting survey respondents to take a survey without a survey being received, creates frustration to the survey respondents and can result in bad reviews. Also try to encourage users to fill their profile information properly, so that they get the surveys which are only matching their profile data points. 

Developers should push surveys to survey respondents only when a survey is actually received on their device and there is an opportunity for a survey completion for that user and a revenue opportunity for the publisher. 

3. Quota Full Issues/Survey Campaigns can start and stop at any time.

In general survey campaigns require between 100-1000 completed surveys. For an average survey network, this kind of campaign may get completed and expire within minutes or hours. For that reason, surveys are not saved for completions by a specific user on the devices since those surveys can expire and become out-dated after a while. Research buyers want campaigns to finish quickly and accurately.

Surveys are available on a first come first served basis to survey respondents that meet the targeting criteria/demographics of the survey campaign when it goes live. Developers compete among each other on who will get the most surveys completed. Having a strong active user base can actually make a difference revenue wise, for the developers when campaigns go live through their apps.

4. Dynamic CPIs are normal in rewarded surveys  

Surveys are expected to have dynamic CPIs(Cost Per Interview) on every different campaign since buyers pay for a campaign based on their targeting criteria, type of screening and qualification questions added and other options. Developers should listen to relevant S2S postacks, redirects, or notifications provided in code within their apps that inform them on reward  earned by the user on survey completion and make a decision if it is worth it to bother their survey respondents with that survey. This level of accuracy and transparency in details allows developers to make their own real-time decisions on how much virtual currency reward they should pay their survey respondents for completing a survey within their apps/games/sites. 

5. Demographic info are necessary

Almost all survey platforms, community based apps or even majority of the apps out there require some basic demographic info like gender, age, Income etc in order not only to be able to properly target survey respondents but also provide that info as targeting options or as filters in the survey results page to their developers and buyers.

If developers have access to that kind of information they should provide them for sure to the survey platform programmatically in order to avoid unnecessary disqualifications for  survey respondents.  

6. Survey respondents should be informed on what happened to the survey like screen out or complete!? and rewarding should be done with the help of s2s callbacks and redirects

 

Monetizing with market research can be quite confusing especially in the rewarded approach. Even if a survey is received on a user's device, the user may become ineligible for the survey while completing it owing to responses to certain questions (known as screening questions) or if there is any discrepancy with previously submitted profile data.

Let's imagine a user is prompted with a query about whether or not he has a dog. When the user selects No, the survey ends. That user was not eligible for that survey campaign in that situation. That individual was not relevant to that campaign and was eventually ruled out on the fly by the research buyer, who was targeting and looking for dog owners. Clients on most survey platforms pay only per completed survey, so that user will not receive any compensation.

Developers should send an informative notification to screened-out survey respondents, explaining what happened and being as transparent as possible in order to keep survey respondents interested in future surveys.

Server-to-server callbacks and url redirects are informative callbacks or notifications sent to the server of the publisher when a user completes a survey. This type of callback is used in the gaming industry, especially for rewarded videos, and has become the industry standard for preventing user fraud and ensuring that only trustworthy and quality actions/completions are rewarded.

S2S callbacks are not enabled by default, and developers should activate them and implement the necessary logic within their apps so that survey respondents are only rewarded when they receive those callbacks after completing the survey.

7. Survey respondents like taking surveys and they can be used also for getting in-app feedback

Another common misperception among developers when they first learn about market research monetization is that no consumer will ever spend time on a mobile device to complete a survey. That is just incorrect. Survey respondents not only take part in them, but they also prefer them to other forms of monetization.

More than 1,000 survey respondents were questioned if they prefer compensated surveys or rewarded movies in a recent poll. The results were pretty intriguing, and they demonstrate the monetization format's potential.

Mobile Rewarded Surveys are a tool for research buyers and marketers to reach out to mobile consumers, but they may also serve as the voice of app users to the publisher. Developers should use polls included in their apps to get real-time feedback from their users for their own reasons.

Asking questions like, "What feature did you dislike in the previous release?" or "What feature would you like to see in the next release?" might help the publisher save money and time before starting a new development cycle.

8. RPU (Revenue Per User) is higher than other formats. 

As previously stated, the market industry is distinct from the advertising sector. When a user receives a survey, it usually pays far more than any other ad style. Traditional ad formats pay up to 20x more than Rewarded Surveys, and Rewarded Videos pay up to 5x more. When Rewarded Surveys are presented in an app's store/shop area or in an offerwall, they may be prioritised as the first option given to survey responders because they will pay significantly more. Developers' conversions and rewards can drastically increase in this manner. 

To summarise, monetization through market research and incentivized surveys differs significantly from standard ad monetization. To get the most out of this new monetization structure, developers need to become familiar with it, follow best practises, and understand what to expect. When utilised correctly, Rewarded Surveys can generate significant income, engage survey respondents, collect in-app feedback for the publisher, and serve as a valuable revenue supplement for mobile apps. 

Do you want to distribute your survey? RapidoReach offers you access to millions of targeted consumers to get survey responses from $1 per complete. Launch your survey today.