MSR App Review
The MSR app is a platform to monetize your data in different formats, such as allowing you to track your browser usage. The more data you share through the app, the more you earn. Measure Protocol, the company behind the app, promises complete control of your data and fair rewards. We have reviewed the app to see if this promise holds.
What’s the concept?
The starting point is excellent: Give people complete control of their data and fair compensation. In reality, it’s a lot more complex to make it work well. First of all, you need clients to fund data tasks. And to get clients, you need a critical mass of users. But users will only sign up if they have enough well-paid tasks. The MSR app is stuck in this conundrum, as the paid opportunities seem few and low-paid.
Types of data tasks
MSR claims you’ll be able to earn from sharing different types of data tasks such as:
- Online Surveys
- Sharing browsing history
- Taking screenshots
- Submitting receipts
- Allowing app tracking
- Validating your profile
This is all good, but in reality, we were mostly offered survey opportunities. And the payment level is very similar to rewards sites offering 3rd party programmatic surveys. In other words, MSR has a lot of potential but still relies on offering mainly survey-related tasks.
Is the MSR app legit?
The MSR app is run by a legit business called Measure Protocol, based out of London, UK. This is a real company with brick-and-mortar offices and real employees. According to its website, they are working with several well-known market research agencies such as Hall & Partner, Kantar and Nielsen. We’re confident that Measure Protocol is trustworthy and that you’ll get paid the rewards as promised through the MSR app.
What can I earn on the MSR app?
We like this statement from MSR on their webpage:
“Measure’s mission is to democratize data by giving individuals control over their data in a permissioned and privacy-by-design environment where they are compensated fairly, and data buyers, users and society can benefit from clean data of the greatest possible quality.”
This is entirely in the spirit of HuginX, advocating for ordinary research participants to have more control of their data and fairer compensation. However, there are a couple of things to consider. First of all, there needs to be more transparency when it comes to payment. There are a lot of generic marketing messages like this; “Receive premium rewards for completing data tasks, as well as surveys. Your data is valuable; get rewarded fairly.” That does not help people understand if signing up is going to be worthwhile or not. Is the compensation for completing a survey $0.50 or $5? What’s the value of their MSR points? What is the minimum redemption level? All these are questions essential for survey takers.Â
In our experience, the vast majority of surveys are issued by 3rd party partners and pay around $0.50 on average. A few premium tasks will pay more than $1, but it’s far between each opportunity.Â
You’re compensated with their virtual currency “MSR points” when you take surveys. 100 MSR points are worth $1. Once you’ve earned 1000 points, you can redeem them for various gift cards like Amazon, iTunes, etc. The only cash reward available is through prepaid Visa cards. If you’re unable to accumulate as many as 1000 points, you’ll be unable to exchange them for real value rewards.Â
Is it worth signing up?
It’s a decent app worth testing, but it could be better. We feel that the MSR app has a lot of potential, but it’s not entirely living up to its ambitious marketing messages about “democratizing data”. We wish there would be more transparency around reward payments, and we would like to see a higher level of compensation per task. For example, sharing your app and browser usage will earn you a few bucks, but you’ll give a massive amount of data to Measure Protocol. Data that they can sell several times over to multiple clients. Instead, a fair way of compensating users would be to give them a commission from actual sales. Hopefully, the MSR app will evolve over time and offer more transparency and a fairer share of the actual revenue generated from users’ data.