Market research & insights provider Cint reported that survey fraud significantly impacted their revenue in Q4: “The increase of reversals in Q4’22 versus Q4’21 negatively impacted revenue growth by approximately 5 percentage points.”
Survey fraudsters impacting Cint’s results
Publishing its 2022 results, the CEO of Cint Group AB (STO:CINT), Tom Buehlmann, announced the company closed 2022 with a weak Q4 due to a combination of macroeconomic factors and a high rate of reversals (completed surveys not paid for by clients due to survey fraud). Cint Group, which is publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, has seen its share price plummet 80% in the last 12 months.
Commenting on the survey fraud issues in the year-end-report:
“Fraudulent behavior increased substantially during the last quarter of the year. This has been an industry issue for some time but has worsened recently. Like with all fraud, the perpetrators evolve their methodologies continuously, making previous technical stopgaps less effective. As an industry leader, Cint is at the forefront of quality in our industry. To that end, we are bringing together relevant parties in the industry to address this issue. We are also actively enhancing our technical and partner solutions to better identify and prevent fraud, which will get us back to normalized levels of reversals.”
Cint panel size
According to the year-end report, the total number of “connected consumers” from Cint, and the unique number of Lucid platform entrants (new and active in the last 12 months) was 266 million users. Note that these users are not necessarily active members of a panel managed by Cint, but represent Cint’s theoretical reach based on their proprietary panels AND connected 3rd party partners.
Cint’s panel-size “connected consumers”: 266 million (proprietary and 3rd party panels combined)
For more context, check our overview of Cint Group Panel Sites.
