Digital product sampling
Recruitment, targeting, purchase verification, content and reporting all run online. The only physical part is the customer walking into a shop and buying the thing.
What digital product sampling is
Digital product sampling is product trial that is organised, targeted and measured online rather than on a shop floor. The people are found through a database rather than by standing next to the shelf, the product is bought or claimed through a digital step, and the result comes back as data rather than as a tally sheet from a Saturday.
It exists because in-store sampling cannot answer the questions a marketing team is now asked. Who tried it. Did they buy it again. What did they say. What can we run as media afterwards. Those questions need identity, and identity is the one thing a folding table cannot capture.
theSalt runs the digital version end to end. Customers are matched from a community of 700,000+ real customers profiled across 70+ lifestyle data points, they buy through normal retail, proof of purchase is matched to the customer and the content, and the readout arrives with counts at every stage.
Everything measured at the point it happens.
Five steps, each of which produces a number rather than an estimate.
Brief
Product, audience definition and the outcome you need. Targeting is set here, not guessed later.
Match
An opt-in survey filters the community down to people who genuinely buy in your category.
Verify
They buy the product, and proof of purchase is matched to the customer and to the content they post.
Publish
The content goes out on their own profiles, labelled as advertising, with rights passing to you.
Paid and report
Organic performance selects what gets paid support, and the report shows every stage with its count.
Sampling you can put in a spreadsheet.
The reason brands move sampling online is not cost. It is that a demo day produces a number nobody can defend, and a digital campaign produces a funnel: matched, purchased, posted, amplified, clicked.
Counted on the day
- Shoppers approached, tallied by hand
- No identity attached to a single trial
- No way to follow up or re-contact
- No content produced
- One store, one catchment, one Saturday
Counted at every stage
- Audience matched against 70+ lifestyle data points
- Proof of purchase matched to the customer
- Content volume and organic performance both measured
- Paid amplification measured against the brand's own ads
- National reach without a store roster
What the numbers looked like.
Two campaigns where the reporting was the deliverable.
Kiwicare Weed Weapon
Customer content and brand paid ads ran in the same campaign window, so the comparison is like for like rather than benchmarked against someone else's category.
- 4,937 paid clicks at NZ$0.20 each
- 2.78% click-through on customer content, against 1.07% on brand paid ads
- 88% reach of the 25 to 54 band
Source: Kiwicare Campaign Report, January 2026.
Heineken Sol
A festive launch run entirely through digital recruitment, with trials verified individually rather than sampled.
- 482 verified trials
- 273 pieces of content in 48 hours
- 3.15x return in four days
What buyers want to know.
What makes sampling digital if the customer still buys in a shop?
Everything except the purchase runs online: the targeting, the matching, the verification, the content and the reporting. The in-store step is deliberate, because a real purchase in a real basket is what makes the trial worth measuring.
How is the audience targeted?
Community members are profiled across 70+ lifestyle data points and filtered further by a short opt-in survey written for your brief, so the people who take part already buy in your category.
What data do we get back?
Counts at every stage: how many were matched, how many purchased, how many posted, what the content produced organically, and what the amplified content did on paid. Trials are counted, not estimated.
Is any of this personal data shared with us?
No. Brands receive campaign results and licensed content, not the personal details of community members. Anything shared offshore is handled under the Privacy Act 2020, and the detail is in our privacy policy.
How quickly can a digital sampling campaign run?
Weeks rather than months. There is no stock to ship and no store calendar to fit into. One South Africa campaign produced 273 pieces of content within 48 hours of going live.