Is The Long Online Panel Quality Nightmare Over?

Today, almost half of the quantitative research in the US is being conducted with online panels. While online panels provide vastly lower costs and increased speed, they also create heartburn and anxiety for market researchers because of the lack of confidence in online panel quality due to selection and respondent bias. In other words, are the hard to identify people on online panels' representative, and are they who they say they are? To date, major associations and vendors providing online panel samples have not generated coherent standards to enhance panels' transparency that would allow buyers to judge for themselves. Thankfully, this is all about to change with two major initiatives introduced by Peanut Labs and MarketTools.