Always-On Synthetic Panels

When you buy panel-based sample for your research, you specify qualifications for whom you want and quotas for how much you need. Your choice of sample provider depends on whether they can meet your specifications and at what cost. It also depends on how much confidence you have that their panel members are who they say they are and how engaged they will be during the research exercise.

Panels of synthetic respondents can also meet your specifications for qualifications and quotas, but at a lower cost and with near-instantaneous turnaround. Their “panel members” give you their undivided attention no matter how arduous the task. Human panel-based research is vulnerable to bot attacks, but the bots on synthetic panels are the research rather than a threat to it.

However, if you don’t believe in the quality of the responses digital twins and synthetic audiences provide and doubt their relevance to your business context, none of this matters. To increase relevance, robustness, and precision, innovators have developed synthetic populations from a range of sources, including their own primary research, proprietary client data, behavioral data, census data, hybrids of these, and more. 

Skepticism is healthy, but it works best when informed.