Quality and Fraud - A look for 2023

As we enter 2023, it's vital to address the issues of fraud in market research. The primary problem we face is "Ghost Completes", which is a simple form of URL manipulation that has been prevalent since the earliest days of internet fraud.

However, our industry is still susceptible to it.

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1.?????"Ghosts Completes"

In 2023, our main priority should be to combat Ghost Completes. The solution to this problem is not difficult, but it requires the cooperation of many players.

Server-to-Server and Hashing are two options to tackle this issue.

The easiest way to explain this is that every time a completion occurs, it should be registered via server call, or hashed, and your partner/supplier should secretly confirm it.

We all need to get this done.

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2.?????VPNs and Proxies

We must also take a stance on VPNs and Proxies. Our industry has two choices:

• Either allow them and deal with higher rejection rates and deal with false negatives.
• Or, don't allow them at all, and deal with false positives.

Currently, we have one foot in each philosophy, which is causing issues such as poor conversion, lower margins, and confusion.

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3.?????Probabilistic vs. Deterministic Models

Lastly, we need to consider the move from a deterministic world to a more complex system that includes the risk of false positives. There is a tension between buyers and suppliers regarding the threshold for false positives. Buyers are willing to tolerate a higher threshold due to the low cost of rejecting respondents, while suppliers have a lower tolerance due to the already low prices of many completes.

Where do we all want this balance to be?