Interesting idea. Google is already doing this (http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home) and they have solid relationship with big publishers. Question to founders -
1. How are you different from Google?
2. As a UX person, I'm not sure what sort of data I will get from these surveys. Is there anyway you can maintain the quality of responses? I assume in most of the cases users will give dummy data for the sake of getting away from surveys.
Thanks for the interest. Google Consumer Surveys does have a similar model to ours. There a few things that differentiate us now:
1. Our minimum spend is only $10 vs. $100 for Google; lower minimum brings in a group of people who want to get a "quick read" on an issue (e.g. ask 100 people an opinion on a new logo design or tagline)
2. Starting soon, we'll be offering advanced behavioral targeting. For example, you could select a target audience of active young mothers, Honda car owners, or online shoppers.
3. We're allowing multi-question surveys (up to 4 questions). Each respondent answers all questions in your survey, which enables cross-tabulation of responses (e.g. looking at how respondents who answered "Yes" to question 1 respond to question 3). Google is currently focused on 1-2 questions at a time.
In the coming months, we hope to differentiate ourselves in other areas, in particular data quality.
And I think the solid relationships with big publishers is the big part that's hard to replicate.
That said, you could probably more easily approach smaller (more local?) publishers that are more willing to experiment to get traction. Is that what you're planning on doing?
Would also say, there are tons of blogs out there with dedicated readerships in niche, but high value demographics (to advertisers). This is perfect for them.
While we hope to work with big publishers too, niche blogs are an awesome place to start. As you say, they provide a self aggregated group of individuals with a common interest. They're perfect for polling.
