Guns for Surveys - Is This a First?

In the US, Peanut Labs - which provides access to members of social networking sites - has partnered with online gaming community Acclaim Games to enable the latter's members to take market research surveys in return for in-game items such as weapons, clothing and character boosts.

Acclaim has more than five million registered players worldwide, who will receive 'Acclaim Coins' for every completed survey which they can then 'spend' on in-game items.

'By offering these surveys to our community, we can provide our players an alternative to using money in order to get the coveted items,' explained Acclaim Games CEO Howard Marks. 'Many of our members, especially the younger ones, do not have access to credit cards. Now when they take a survey, they will have one more option to get some of the items they want.'

Peanut Labs technology has been deployed into more than 70 publishing partners, including niche communities and social networks, as well as social applications found across all the major social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

The firm pays publishers based on number of completed surveys, usually a percentage of the amount that it receives from the market research firms - which Peanut Labs says is often 400% more than can be made with current click-through models.

Ipsos Interactive Services (IIS) recently partnered with Peanut Labs to improve its reach among the 13-34 year old demographic, otherwise known as Generation Y (Gen-Y).

Web sites: www.acclaim.com and www.peanutlabs.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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