Omnibus surveys offer a fast, cost-effective way to gather market research insights without the hefty price tag of a full custom study. These multi-sponsor surveys allow organizations to purchase a few questions within a larger questionnaire—making them an ideal option for piloting research or testing quick ideas.
Because costs are shared among multiple brands and organizations, omnibus surveys are a budget-friendly solution for collecting reliable consumer data across a wide range of topics.
In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about omnibus surveys—what they are, how they work, the benefits, and tips for getting the most out of your investment.
At its core, an omnibus survey is a shared survey. Multiple companies buy space in a single questionnaire, which is then administered to a broad sample of respondents. Each sponsor receives data only for their questions, while sharing the overall cost of fielding the survey.
This collaborative model makes omnibus research a flexible and affordable option for businesses that need quick answers or want to test the waters before committing to a full custom survey.
Let’s say…
However, what’s different from typical surveys, is all of those seemingly random questions are asked in the same survey script.
Because an omnibus survey has multiple questions sponsored by different organizations, clients don’t receive data for all the answers collected for each question.
Instead, clients choose beforehand which questions they want to ask and therefore purchase as part of the much larger survey.
In most instances, multi-sponsor surveys are conducted in intervals (once a day, once a week, or once a month) so to allow companies to gather data as soon as possible.
The questions are then administered to large audiences and valuable data is collected.
Recommended Reading: What is the Difference Between Omnibus Surveys and Traditional Online Surveys?
Think of an omnibus survey like a timeshare property, except it’s not a complete scam and something you’ll be stuck with the rest of your life with a bunch of hidden fees and clauses.
That’s shady. And, in that way, it’s nothing like a timeshare.
But for the purpose of this example, let’s say a family was to buy a beach house along the Florida Gulf. To do so, they might end up paying over $1M for the home.
However, with a timeshare, the costs are spread out across 26 families who rent the house for 2-weeks per year.
So the cost of the home is now spread out across 26 families and it becomes much more affordable.
You can dip your toe into the market research pool with others, without having to pay for the pool.
You can pay for a membership and use the equipment at your local gym without paying full price for the treadmill, elliptical, and rock wall.
In essence…
An omnibus survey is a quick and cost-effective methodology that gets results for a topic without having to front all of the costs for market research.
It is a common approach used by public relations firms for PR surveys.
The process to run an omnibus survey is fairly simple. The step-by-step process below highlights the steps that are taken to engage with an omnibus survey firm, like Drive Research.
Sponsors of the omnibus survey pay a fee to buy a question or questions in the survey script. This can be as few as 1 question, or as high as 20 or 30+ depending on your needs and budget.
The questions could ask about awareness, perception, loyalty, or any other number of topics.
A few things to keep in mind for brands who sponsor an omnibus survey through a third party.
More of those details are explained in this section.
After the omnibus survey company learns a little more about your objectives and needs, they’ll put together a mini-proposal that highlights a few package options.
The packages typically vary by the number of questions and the number of responses. These are typically 1,000 or 2,000 survey completes.
Once the agreement page is signed and returned, you are off and running.
Recommended Reading: How to Create a Market Research RFP [Get a Free Template]
Next, your omnibus survey consultant holds a kickoff meeting with your team. In several cases, this kickoff meeting is skipped in order to get the survey rolling as quickly as possible.
If the kickoff meeting is skipped, there is some conversation over email. Skipping the kickoff meeting speeds the process along but is not always recommended.
The market research firm can add some new insights or expertise to your survey that you will likely want to take advantage of.
It’s pretty easy to add a question to an omnibus survey.
If you already know what questions you want to ask…
Many of our clients have the survey questions and objectives already outlined. In those cases, the document is sent to the omnibus survey firm to get started quickly.
If you don’t know what questions you want to ask…
If you don’t have any questions outlined, or you want to leverage the expertise of our team, have no fear.
Our team will explore your needs to understand and recommend what questions to ask as part of the study.
Very simply, we ask about what you want to learn from the research, and how would you like to use the results.
It helps our team construct the appropriate survey questions.
Regardless of whether you drafted the survey questions for your online omnibus survey or not, we will run a complete audit of the questionnaire.
It will include suggestions on how to ask questions, what type of questions to ask (multiple choice, grid, etc.), how to randomize the sequence, etc.
Most commonly the survey will include the following question types:
For more examples, here are 36 question types for your online surveys.
All of this value-added information is something our team builds into each and every project at our national omnibus survey company.
Once we complete our audit, our team will send you a revised draft for approval in Word, before moving to the next step.
Speaking of the next steps…
Once your team is satisfied with the survey questions, Drive Research moves on to programming. Our analysts take the questions and add them to our survey software.
Survey programming items include the following:
The survey programming process can be a tedious task. But! It is an important factor in collecting reliable survey results.
Our omnibus survey firm has found these coding tips to be helpful.
There are many demographic data points that can be added to your survey for analysis.
A benefit of working with an expert in this space is the option to append data that is already collected from respondents from previous surveys.
These are not questions you need to ask as part of your question package, as they can be appended to your results.
So you can ask one question but have options to append the following data points to run additional cross-tabulations in your analysis.
Options include demographics such as:
There are many more demographic questions to include, but it is important to choose wisely. Note that this information may entail some additional costs beyond your survey question package.
Our team can recommend the best demographic questions to include based on your objectives.
Once our research analyst programs your survey, our omnibus survey firm team runs extensive in-house testing of the questionnaire.
It typically includes circulating the link to 4 or 5 testers on the Drive Research team. Their job is to find errors or inconsistencies.
As part of this testing, comments may be left by testers on the online survey. Comments might include items or issues identified with skip patterns, grammar, spelling, sequence, etc.
It is to ensure everything is caught before launching to a national audience.
Don’t you feel safer now?
Now the survey is ready to field. Our next step is to field the survey to a small number of respondents nationally.
We review the initial feedback carefully to ensure the process is working correctly, and there are no issues.
As a part of the review, our team evaluates respondent counts and paths in the data file.
These checks give you peace of mind your questions are displayed as intended and to the correct audience.
The last thing you want is to discover problems with the survey in the middle of fieldwork.
After the soft launch (or test drive), the survey is fully employed. Results for your omnibus survey are census representative of all critical demographics among U.S. adults.
Depending on the package you select, it might include:
From start to finish, the project can move as quickly as 24 to 48 hours or less.
This large sample size allows more flexibility for the sponsor to slice data by age group, income levels, and other key splits.
Once fieldwork begins, Drive Research shares an online dashboard of live results with your team.
These reports provide a sneak peek and insider view of the final results.
The portal is passcode-protected and interactive, which allows clicking around to view comments, filter by date, and other functionalities.
Our online portal allows you to export results in Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, or Word documents.
You can select from demographic cross-tabs or cross-tabs based on custom questions asked in the survey.
This makes it extremely easy to work with the results offline for your presentation decks, internal documents, or other purposes.
Other reporting packages can be chosen beyond the online portal. Most commonly, organizations choose between a topline vs. a comprehensive market research report.
Omnibus survey projects can go beyond collecting statistically reliable data. Outside of using the insights for business and strategy, consider fueling your marketing efforts.
Here are a few data-driven marketing ideas that can be created with survey data.
Here is an example of an animated infographic created by Drive Research ? ?
Omnibus surveys are typically conducted with a general population audience, meaning all U.S. adults aged 18 and older qualify. There are no specific screening criteria—everyone gets a seat at the table. This inclusive approach is what keeps costs low, as multiple brands share the same pool of respondents.
However, just because the survey is open to all doesn’t mean you have to analyze everyone. If your brand is only interested in responses from a specific segment—say, adults under 45—you can simply filter your data to report on that group. For instance, if your total omnibus sample is n=1,000 and n=500 of those respondents are under 45, you can choose to only analyze that younger subgroup.
Why this works: While your brand may not care about the 46+ crowd, another organization buying into the same omnibus survey might. The shared-cost model benefits everyone involved.
The sample is sourced from large, pre-recruited online survey panels managed by major market research firms. These panels consist of people who have opted in to participate in surveys and are often incentivized with points, gift cards, or other rewards. Because these panelists are experienced and responsive, you get reliable feedback fast.
Just note—because you’re paying only for a portion of the questionnaire, pricing is based on how many and what type of questions you ask. Costs can range anywhere from $100 to $1,000+ depending on your targeting needs and level of complexity.
Scheduled runs for these studies vary by company.
The best omnibus survey companies will run your survey on your behalf quickly. Your fieldwork can be worked into the daily runs or run off-cycle, if necessary.
One of the best ways to make custom research less of an investment is by sponsoring an omnibus survey.
It is an excellent way to acquire maximum value from an online survey to a national audience without having to foot the entire bill.
Although there are many advantages to conducting omnibus surveys, there are five that emerge at the top of the list:
Each of these advantages is discussed in detail below.
We walked through our detailed 11-step process for omnibus surveys above. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all is the ability to get insights quickly.
In many cases, results can be turned around within 24 to 48 hours depending on the scope, the number of questions, and when the fieldwork cycle is being run by the firm.
If you need data or insights immediately, multi-sponsor surveys provide answers quickly. It’s really that simple.
The turnaround time is hard to match for more custom survey projects.
Because the survey is fielded with several organizations on each cycle, there are inherent cost savings through sharing a single questionnaire.
That’s because it’s easier for an omnibus survey company like Drive Research to send one survey and have respondents answer 25 questions at once rather than to send 10 separate surveys of 5 questions each.
If you need to conduct a small survey that involves asking participants only a limited number of questions, an omnibus survey makes this possible.
It’s economies of scale, and those savings are passed to you.
All while still getting to ask a custom set of questions specific to your objectives.
One of the pain points with a large custom survey project is waiting a week, two, or more to receive a full report.
With omnibus surveys, a portal is provided immediately after the survey goes live and fieldwork starts.
Your team can review up-to-the-second results through tabulated charts and graphs.
It’s instant access and allows your team to interpret the results and take immediate action.
This type of survey works well when the population you are studying is broadly defined.
Omnibus studies are considered general population surveys.
If you have a more defined target group, such as dads with children under the age of 8, then you will likely need to switch to a different mode of research, such as a custom survey.
It’s likely you may only receive a small number of responses among the 1,000 survey completes that fit that audience which limits your statistical reliability.
Omnibus surveys often serve as a solid foundation for future research when you’re ready to target more specific populations.
It is important to keep your future research goals in mind when phrasing your questions for an omnibus survey.
If you are launching a new product and unsure about which age group is the best to target, let the results from an omnibus survey guide you.
Through the general population targeting from an omnibus survey, you may learn those aged 25 to 40 are the most likely age groups to buy your product.
As part of the next step in your market research strategy, you now have some data and facts to guide you.
Therefore your brand may set up a series of online focus groups with those aged 25 to 40 to learn more.
Heck, we can’t be completely biased with this methodology, can we? There are always two sides to the coin.
So as a visitor to our site, you also deserve to know the concerns or potential pitfalls with omnibus surveys.
Disadvantages of an omnibus survey include:
Since there are often many paying sponsors buying questions for the survey, it is not unheard of to have an omnibus survey with 50 questions or more covering 8 to 12+ topics.
The fact is, this is not the greatest survey experience for the respondent.
We hate long and boring surveys at Drive Research and always want to keep the respondent experience top of mind.
If the survey gets too long, respondents get bored, disengaged, or worse, rip through answers.
How can you avoid this? Ask your omnibus survey company about their data quality checks.
This might include the inclusion of red herring questions, checking the time to complete, etc.
As we mentioned above, while the general population audience helps keep costs low, it can also work against brands looking to target specific consumers.
If you only sell to those who rent and do not own homes, you won’t be able to use one-third of the survey responses.
If your organization offers a product to females and you need to acquire feedback from an omnibus survey, expect half of the responses to be useless.
It’s always important to weigh your cost and methodology options.
In many cases, the omnibus survey may still win out if your audience is broad enough to collect at least 400 responses.
This gets you to a +/- 5% margin of error with a probabilistic random sample.
In our opinion, the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages when it comes to omnibus studies.
Recommended Reading: What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Omnibus Surveys?
There are lots of examples of these studies online. In many cases, the reader may have no idea that the data or feedback for a study was collected through an omnibus survey.
It may just appear to be a custom survey project commissioned by the sponsoring brand.
But if you were the organization commissioning the research you can take pleasure in knowing you saved thousands of dollars leveraging the omnibus process for the study.
Here is an example.
A consulting firm hired Drive Research for an online omnibus survey market research project concerning a household consumer product brand.
The survey was administered among the general U.S. population. It was census-balanced by age, gender, ethnicity, and region to accurately represent the national consumer market.
Several other organizations enrolled in the fieldwork cycle asked their own questions to the U.S. adult populations as part of this cycle.
But, more specifically, a series of questions concerning home water filtration systems were asked of each respondent for this particular paying brand.
The omnibus survey gathered honest perspectives on objectives through an unbiased third-party lens with the help of our market research company.
To address the objectives at hand, our market research company recommended using an omnibus survey to collect consumer feedback.
The omnibus survey was a single survey administered to many respondents who inquired about a variety of topics and questions. This included questions for the household consumer product brand and a variety of other brands.
The more sponsors there are, the greater the breadth of topics covered.
The omnibus survey provided the consulting firm and its consumer goods client with cost-effective means to ask consumers specific questions and collect fast results.
The omnibus survey took an average of 3 minutes to complete and included 15 questions for the client. It received 2,000 total responses. Fieldwork began and concluded in a single day.
The final deliverables included access to an online portal, an aggregate report, five crosstab reports, and a raw data file.
The report answered the following questions:
Conducting research is essential to any brand’s marketing and operational success.
The more research you get through conducting omnibus surveys, the more data you can collect, and the more data you collect, the more extensive it can be analyzed and interpreted for making smart business decisions.
But not all market research is one and the same, and this is particularly true of surveys.
There are a lot of national omnibus survey firms that can help your company, brand, or organization with a project.
The choice can be a difficult one as you try to differentiate one market research company from another.
Here is a quick checklist of factors to look for when choosing an omnibus survey company.
What does their cycle for omnibus survey fieldwork look like? Is it daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc.? Are they willing to run your survey off-cycle if you need feedback immediately?
The best companies are willing to work with you to get you what you need when you need it.
Part of using a market research firm for this type of study is the ability to leverage their experience and expertise.
Don’t look for a firm that simply asks you to send them the questions you want to ask.
The best omnibus survey firms will offer guidance on question wording, phrasing, style, and other parts of survey design to ensure you are getting the best results.
When you send the request in for your project and it takes the firm 3 days to respond, that’s probably not a good sign. Responsiveness ties to timeliness.
Find a firm that will treat you like a priority from start to end.
Some of the best companies have auditing and quality control measures in place on surveys.
This includes the following measures:
Examine the deliverables for each vendor you look at. Ask for an example report or dashboard. Not all deliverables are created equal.
Do you need help with creating a design or infographic? A press release to unveil the results? Social media shares or ads?
If those are all needs, find a company that can offer these solutions in-house so you don’t have to work with 3 or 4 separate agencies to share the survey results.
Ready to get fast, reliable insights without the high cost of a custom study? Drive Research makes it easy to add your questions to an upcoming omnibus survey and start collecting data from a national audience in just a few days. Our team will help you write high-impact survey questions, analyze the results, and deliver actionable insights. Contact us today to get started with your next omnibus survey project.
