Difference between Programmatic Sampling & Online Panels
It’s evident that technology continuously reshapes our methods, including how marketers, insights professionals, and product development teams collect data for market research and strategic planning. Nowadays, numerous techniques make research simpler and more efficient, but we’ll focus on two key ones.
We’ll be discussing surveys, online sampling, and the introduction of innovative programmatic sampling. Programmatic sampling comes with its own set of pros and cons. Before we explore them, let’s briefly define programmatic sampling and how it is gathered.
What Is Programmatic Sampling?
Programmatic sampling involves using a platform that tracks user behavior across various internet mediums, such as websites, social media, affiliate sites, online panels, and more. Data is captured by an API (Applied Programmatic Integration), which can be stored for future use.
The goal of this technique is to automate the process of collecting samples and forming panels for more detailed market research. Often, combining both traditional and newer research methods is the best approach, but before you start your planning, it’s crucial to understand the benefits and challenges of programmatic sampling.
The top benefits of programmatic sampling include:
– Faster Data Collection – Reach a Broader Range of People – More Cost-Effective
The main drawbacks of programmatic sampling include:
– Subpar Experience for Respondents – Greater Difficulty Ensuring Panel Quality – Harder to Create Niche Communities
Pro: Faster Data Collection
In today’s era of advanced marketing and innovation, streamlining processes is often a priority for marketers and insights professionals. This is why programmatic sampling is a promising market research method, especially compared to older techniques.
This type of platform can collect data continuously, and the best part is you can run these projects with minimal to no intervention from managers. Ultimately, this means you don’t have to waste time or personnel on simple tasks, freeing up more resources to improve other business practices.
It also reduces the chance of errors when retrieving and transmitting data, which is extremely helpful when seeking quick answers about your target audience.
Pro: Larger Target Audience
Programmatic sampling is fully automated, allowing you to track a vast sample of people without individually reaching out to everyone. You can sift through data from millions of respondents, eliminating the need for traditional online samples that focus on smaller niche groups and take longer to collect data.
Pro: More Cost-Effective
Overall, online surveys and sampling can be quite expensive. Besides tailoring specific surveys, you or your sample partner need customer support personnel to answer questions and ensure the process runs smoothly from start to finish.
With programmatic access, sample teams can connect to your target audience in just minutes without wasting valuable resources. Instead of needing managers at every stage, your team or partner can simply let the program run and collect results when needed, making it a much more affordable alternative to traditional panels.
Con: Subpar Experience for Respondents
One downside of programmatic sampling is that it doesn’t provide as good an experience for respondents. The interactions between respondents are greatly reduced because there isn’t the same sense of community. Moreover, respondents receive a basic label rather than being categorized into more specific subsections. Although it’s easier for professionals, you may not get the best responses from participants.
Con: Harder to Ensure Panel Quality
Bots and fraudulent results make it difficult to ensure panels are entirely reliable. With traditional online panels, respondents go through a series of quality control checks, giving a better idea of whether they will be a good fit for the panel.
These panelists usually take five to ten surveys per year, improving overall quality. In programmatic samples, respondents are less likely to take more than one or two surveys. However, the routers continuously generate new online traffic, providing more opportunities to gain traction from respondents.
Con: More Difficult to Create Niche Communities
With traditional online samples, you have much more control over the community, allowing for custom-tailored market research panels that answer specific questions and help collect more detailed data about your consumer base or target audience.
Since programmatic sampling involves embedding a platform that tracks user behavior across various internet mediums, it’s more challenging to categorize respondents into meaningful groups. Although data collection is faster than traditional methods, you’ll need to do more work to draw conclusions from specific audiences.