Some of you have noticed some new things happening on the Survey Draw. Please bear with us… We’re experimenting.

Last summer I wrote about the issues we’ve had with the Survey Draw. It was set up to make use of Google’s own supply of surveys, but a while ago, those dried up… Google are still silent about why.

In May this year, new data protection law is coming into force which is more stringent on how companies collect and use data. This is quite a boring and complicated subject, but feel free to Google “GDPR” (actually, why not Bing it instead?) FPL is funded by advertising, most of which appears automatically based on what Google and other “Ad tech” businesses know (or think they know) about you, or at least the person using your browser (“3rd party data”). A lot of this information might be unusable after the new legislation is introduced.

We believe that the solution to this is for websites, like FPL, to get to know their users better directly (“1st party data”), so that when advertisers say they want to advertise to, say, dog lovers, we can put their dog product ads in front of the dog-loving FPLers. No information changes hands, but the advertiser reaches the right person, the right person sees relevant ads, and we (hopefully) get paid. FPL getting paid means bigger and more free prizes. 🙂

(And if you don’t have a dog you won’t be annoyed by a dog product ad.)

This is likely to be a long process so don’t expect any big changes just yet. We are currently trialling our own surveys on 50% of you, which should explain why some people are commenting about the new surveys, and some about the lack of surveys. If there are no problems then we’ll roll this out to the rest of you.

Also, we’ve allowed Pollfish to let “3rd party surveys” through. This means that they can direct you to surveys that are not served directly through their platform. You should continue to get your 20p bonuses and entries to win the amazon vouchers, but the experience might be a bit different. This is also an experiment so please let us know if something unpleasant (or pleasant) happens.

Sorry for any surprises or irritation that any of the above might cause. We’re working on it, and will keep you updated.

In the meantime please rest assured that we never have and never will share any information from you without your consent.

Cheers!

Chris 🙂