Partner Improvement Program FAQ

The Partner Improvement Program (PIP) ensures Cint Exchange (formerly known as Marketplace) supply partners maintain high standards for user response quality and fraud prevention.

Cint proactively monitors data trends to identify any supply partner with negative reconciliation rates that are significantly higher than platform average. This program ensures our supply partners are aware of high reconciliation rates so they can act quickly to mitigate any respondent quality or fraud issues, in addition to creating trust among buyers and researchers.

Cint analyzes per-country reconciliation rates for all Cint Exchange supply partners during both a mid-month and end-of-month audit. As a standard, supply partners must have reconciliation rates below 10% and/or not exceeding double the platform average for any given country. Partners who do not meet our standards must discontinue sending traffic into the Cint Exchange until they take appropriate steps to identify and resolve quality issues.

Negative Reconciliation Rate = [Completes Reconciled to Term] / [Total Completes]

Supply partners can monitor current and past negative reconciliation rates by accessing the reconciliation pacing dashboard within the supplier portal. This dashboard can be used to compare a supply partner's negative reconciliation rate to the platform average, by country, and ensure supply partners are within healthy metrics.

If a supply partner has a country-specific reconciliation rate that is two or more times the platform average for that country, this places them “at risk” for pausing traffic. If a supply partner has reconciliation rates that fall within the “at risk” range, there is typically a respondent quality issue that needs immediate attention.

1. Scenario 1: A supply partner has a reconciliation rate that is 10% or greater in one or more countries.

   Result: The supply partner must immediately pause traffic in the country of violation.

2. Scenario 2: A supply partner who was previously flagged "at risk" now has a reconciliation rate two or more times the platform average in the same country of violation.

   Result: The supply partner did not meet the PIP requirements and will be required to immediately pause traffic in the country of violation.

Should a supply partner receive three mandatory pause or four PIP (at risk or mandatory pause) communications within a 12-month period for a specific country, they will be subject to a 3-month pause in that country.

In order to resume traffic, the supply partner must:

1. Partake in a security and processes audit conducted by their Cint account team.

2. Provide Cint with a formal plan of action (POA) documenting the root causes of and action steps taken to address respondent quality and/or fraud.

The POA document will be reviewed by Cint and, upon approval, the supply partner is eligible to soft launch with gradually increasing traffic into the Cint Exchange.

Supply partners eligible to resume traffic must soft launch by gradually increasing traffic volumes over a period of four weeks. A maximum amount of daily completes must be adhered to during soft launch, as specified below. Pending no further quality escalations, a graduated increase in traffic volumes during the soft launch period will proceed with the following schedule:

Soft launch caps

*This number will be provided to the supply partner by their account team and is calculated using the supplier’s average daily completes count into our Cint Exchange over the previous three months.

Cint Exchange supply partners must have a minimum reconciliation rate of 4%, 100 completes, and 100 negative reconciliations within a specific country in the past month to have their reconciliation rates audited. Partners in all regions are subject to this program, as Cint maintains high quality and respondent expectations for all supply partners, regardless of their geographical location.

1. Confirmation: Confirm receipt of email with a reply to trustandsafety@cint.com. In the case of a traffic pause requirement, Cint Exchange supply partners must also confirm they have ceased traffic by no later than the end of the week in which they were first notified.

2. Next steps: Reach out to your Cint account team for next steps and a remediation plan. This will include the previously mentioned security and processes audit and plan of action.

3. Overall: Maintain a negative reconciliation rate that is within an acceptable range of the platform average. Specifically, supply partners “at risk” will need to maintain a rec rate that does not exceed double the platform average in the country flagged for the current month (month in which they are notified).

Special considerations for paused supply partners

• Tracker & wave studies: Supply partners who support tracker and/or wave studies may still send respondent traffic to those surveys.

• Recontact studies: Supply partners who support recontact studies may still send respondent traffic to those surveys.

• Third party partnerships: Supply partners that source or send traffic via third party partnerships or integrations are responsible for coordinating the pause in respondent traffic.

Cint reserves the right to require traffic pauses into the Cint Exchange at any time.