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I tried to sign up to the IPSOS system in order to try out their surveys as their offers sound quite interesting. Their website claims that they take people from across Europe to create their user panels, who can express their opinions on various matters of interest.

With their system, as with other similar systems, members of the panels are chosen to receive invitations. Those that do might undergo further vetting and then take part in a survey, provided by some company or other that wants a piece of market research taking out on their behalf.

With the Ipsos system, you earn points for each survey that you take part in. The number of points is roughly related to the complexity and the time taken to complete the survey. When you have acrued enough points, you can then request that these points are cashed in, exchanging them instead for gift vouchers from well known high street chains.

Ipsos do ask for details of everyone in your household, with the intention that in the future, they might be requesting that your child, partner and others living with you might be the person who is selected to receive a questionnaire. Whether you actually want all of these people being requested to complete online surveys is another question, and whether they themselves want their contact details giving to the panel yet another good point. But that’s the way the system works.

This does mean that the signup form can get a little long winded. For just a three person household, by the time it had refreshed the screen to show me the new options every time I selected from a drop down box. For example, having to twice select the correct occupation category and then find the best fitting occupation within that, followed by doing the same to find the company’s type and matching that to the nearest fit. Both of these took a few attempts to find the correct option from the first list in order to bring up the most suitable second option. Having to repeat for every member of the household, when it is only myself wanting to take part in the surveys, was a little annoying.

Worst of all, unfortunately after spending a good 5 minutes filling in the entire application form I was then told that I was from an unsuitable demographic group and no more people like me were wanted in the system. A bit annoying after spending the time and effort to complete the form. I can understand the company having limits, but why did it take so many questions to tell me that?

Overall, looks a good system and I have heard good things about it from other people, but as I was unable to join, I can’t say from personal experience.