So in the past year it seems that a number or newspaper and other news sites have implemented a feature whereby the article is greyed out until you complete a short survey. Sometimes it’s one question, sometimes 2 or 3 questions. Once you complete the survey, they then thank you and tell you that you can view articles on their site for a certain number of days. Of course you can always pay a nominal fee and avoid all surveys in the future.
There’s not one specific newspaper site I view regularly, so I normally just click the first answer listed in the survey responses. I never even read the question. Just so I can get to the article. I would assume that others do the same. Maybe I’m wrong, and people actually take the time to thoughtfully answer the survey questions.
So what is the value of the survey data, if others are like me and just click the first response or any response, without really regarding the question asked?
I guess the news site is getting paid regardless by someone else for the data they are collecting, but what is it really worth to any sort of market research firm?
I just don’t read them. Any story worth its salt is going to be picked up by multiple publications, and I do not want to give money to this crap. It’s not even worth the trouble to circumvent the javascript.
It started out being something that skeevy places would do, and the survey would wind up forcing you to buy something. Google saw that people were bewilderingly willing to do this, and got in on the action. And since Google did it, a lot of people didn’t realize how skeevy this is.
The flaws you mention are there. Plus there’s the fact that the questions are clearly targeted, which makes the survey even less useful. And then there’s the fact that you’re targeting people willing to do surveys. Surveys need to shoot for randomness to be valid.
I put up with places like this board because I can block the bad ads. But adblockers seem to be reluctant to block surveys. I’d assume it was Adblock Plus’s relationship with Google (they largely bankroll them through the “unobtrusive ads” program). But that doesn’t explain other ad blockers.
It’s not like it’s hard, like layered popup ads (you know, when a something on the page blocks the content, asking you to like or subscribe or look at another article), which are different on every site. The surveys are all Google-powered surveys now.
There’s only one website I’ve encountered that throws this up on a regular basis — I think it’s the Christian Science Monitor. The questions are usually innocuous enough that I’ll answer them. If I started seeing this more often, I’d probably make an effort to avoid them in the same way that I avoid Yahoo “news” stories that force me to watch a video.