A Great Milestone for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette started using a CIVICSCIENCE iQpoll on their home page in the fall of 2010 as a "pilot" to see whether our crazy story about optimizing user polls actually held any water. Over the next several months, they slowly begain adding new polls on their different section pages, their premium content sites, and even their Facebook page. That data started rolling in and never stopped.

Then, last week, we caught a quick snapshot of cool milestone in this process...The Post-Gazette logged their 1 Millionth unique poll respondent using our polling application. These users have answered over 10 Million questions, the results of which have helped the PG refine their content strategy, inform advertisers about key consumer trends, and even earn new revenue from the reports they generate from that data. For a site that reaches just over 3 million monthly uniques, cataloging 1MM poll respondents is a great feat.

Here's to the next million. Congratulations Post-Gazette! 

Our First Attempt at Pegging the Gallup Tracking Poll

Some dude that works with us starting geeking out about the daily Gallup tracking poll a couple weeks ago and dove into some of our data about President Obama's approval rating. This is a new field for us so we figured it wouldn't hurt to see how our daily numbers matched up with such a long-standing reputable study.

So, we looked at daily numbers from April 18th through May 2nd, just to get a flavor of things. We regularlly collect about 1,245 responses daily to our Obama approval question (or 18,683 during the two-week timeframe below). Our scores were based on a three-day rolling average. 

 

With very little reweighting (gender and age), we were surprised to see how closely we compared given a few key differences. For example, our Obama approval question does not include a "Not Sure" option, which Gallup does. We force people to make a choice, which might explain why our "disapprove" numbers were slightly higher than Gallup's. And, despite, some daily fluctuations, it's worth noting that our linear score during the time period was exactly the same as Gallup's -- 46%.

Anyway, we're just starting to explore these kinds of things in our data, so ideally the numbers will get more refined over time. We will keep you posted.

Special thanks to the "dude" Taylor Griffin at Hamilton Place Strategies for doing all this awesome analysis. 

Top 10 Reasons We’re Excited About Google’s Survey Product

We’ve had a ton of calls from media and industry types about Google’s new Consumer Survey product, given its striking similarities to our business. Yes, we deliver brief polls to web users, sell questions to market researchers, and share proceeds with websites. That’s where the similarities end.  

We're actually excited to welcome Google into the market and here’s why:

#1-We’ve been at this for over three years. We already have hundreds of websites under license agreement (compared to the 20 sites Google referenced when they launched), and a stellar list of current and past data customers including, among others, Google.

#2- Google entering the space is a great validation of our business. It turns out that Google doesn’t dabble in small market opportunities. And, when their model mimics yours, you chalk it up as flattery.

#3- Google’s survey wall is bad for web users. For a company that brags about its user experience, their survey model is decidedly out of character. Forcing people to answer polls to access otherwise-free content doesn’t seem so user-friendly. It may even impact a site’s traffic over time. CIVICSCIENCE polls are 100% voluntary and we allow users to see the results, engage with them, and learn.

#4- We have a much more valuable solution for web publishers. Time will tell whether the nickels Google throws at websites offset the traffic and ad revenue they lose from walling off their content. Google’s approach is to ‘rescue’ websites, rather than giving them tools to support themselves. Survey data can be hugely valuable to media companies as they fight to regain the revenue they lost to the likes of Google and others. They’re giving that data to Google for a pittance.

While CIVICSCIENCE offers a revenue share to the sites that use our platform, the insights and tools we provide are far more valuable. We are empowering publishers to increase their traffic, ad revenue, and self-sufficiency. This is a clear conflict of interest for Google.     

#5- Google’s results are unreliable. When we tested “forced” polls like Google’s, we found that an alarming number of users get annoyed and simply click random answers to get through. Plus, the 45% of consumers who don’t find Google at least “somewhat trustworthy” (N=90,462) or the 23% who believe Google is at least “a little evil” (N=14,580) may respond incorrectly just to mess with them. Google’s demographic inferences are also frequently inaccurate.  We directly ASK people demographic questions and then we validate them.

#6- Google gives its customers a limited level of insight. Google can correlate one question with a small number of respondent attributes (age, gender, location). But, as one of our Fortune 100 customers recently wrote:

“The amazing thing about [CIVICSCIENCE] is that they can identify a single user’s responses to any number of their other poll questions which that user has previously responded to which then allows you to get a large enough sample size to crosstab your responses by basically anything you can think of.”

We can also target questions to specific groups of respondents WITHOUT requiring screening questions. Maybe you only want to target female Verizon subscribers who make less than $50,000 per year or dog owners who drive hybrid cars. We can do that right now. Google can’t.   

#7- Google is pushing the limits of privacy and ethics. We assume Google’s master plan is to eventually combine people’s online behavior with their poll responses. But when does this finally start to get creepy? Can we expect people to give an honest opinion when Big Brother is watching? There’s a reason we close the curtain behind us on Election Day. 19% of people already worry that Google does a poor job of protecting their privacy (N=59,985) and it’s getting worse. 

CIVICSCIENCE only stores and analyzes poll responses that people willingly share. We let everyone easily access the answers they’ve given, change whatever they don’t like, and opt-out altogether.

#8- Google is relying on outdated intelligence. When Google’s Quantitative Marketing Manager (and the individual credited in their white paper for developing Google’s methodology) was on our Scientific Advisory Board a few years ago, he learned the ins and outs of our micro-survey techniques. Our business and our technology have evolved immensely since then.   

#9- We can peacefully co-exist. There are already examples of CIVICSCIENCE polls and Google’s survey-wall living on the same website, like the NY Daily News or Press Enterprise. If Google does succeed, there is no reason that our polls can’t live inside of the content Google is blockading.

#10- Google’s success rate with new business units has been less than stellar.  Whenever they stray outside of their core competency, they struggle. See:  Google Wave, Dodgeball, Google Music, Jaiku, Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Answers, Google X, and, most recently, Google Plus. We like those odds.

How Are Consumers Reacting to Google's New Privacy Policies?

A couple months ago, one of our crabby engineers (is that redundant?) loaded a question into our system testing Google's famed "Don't Be Evil" mantra to see if anyone actually believed they were, well, evil. We were particularly interested in looking at whether these numbers moved once Google implemented its new privacy policies. 

Google would be happy to know that when we weighted the first six weeks of results, we saw that, overall, people have a positive view of the search engine behemoth (N=8,878). Only 20% fell into either "evil" category. 

 

But then we took a look at the results since Google's new privacy policies took effect on March 1. Since that time, opinions seem to have shifted somewhat (N=5,846). In the 5-plus week period since March 1, Google's "Evil Rating" jumped to 26%, a 30% increase over the earlier numbers.  

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Tiger Woods' Reemergence And Fan Reaction

After Tiger Woods' victory at Bay Hill this past weekend, we wondered how consumers felt about Tiger's reemergence following his troubles two years ago. Did he poison his image permanently? Do people still admire his greatness and want to see it in full bloom again? Or do pragmatists simply root for him because they know it makes the PGA all the more interesting to watch?

So we ran a pretty simple question immediately following his win this past Sunday. The results were fairly straight-forward as you can see below (N=1,832). When weighted to represent the US population, it appears that a majority of golf followers are NOT rooting for Tiger. One-third of those who DO root for him, primarily do so because it makes the sport more interesting.

We were surprised though by the cross-tabs we looked at by Gender. We would have thought more women would fall into the "I used to root for Tiger but not anymore" camp, given his marital indiscretions. But that does not appear to be the case.

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