Audience Cloud Improvements

Decode now has an Audience Credits section inside Settings that shows how many credits are available, how many are reserved against active studies, and how many have already been used. Usage analytics show how credits have been consumed over time, and a purchase flow lets teams buy more credits directly from within the platform instead of tracking spend separately.

Study setup now includes a step where researchers choose how to recruit participants — through Decode's Audience Cloud panel, or through Self-Recruit, where researchers share the study with their own participants instead of using a panel. As audience criteria are being configured, a live order summary and credit estimate now show the expected cost as filters and sample size are entered, before the study is published.

Before a study can go live, Decode checks whether enough credits are available for the configured audience. If credits are insufficient, the researcher is notified at that point and can purchase more directly, rather than the study failing to publish without explanation.

Vendor controls have also been added. Cint and Dynata are enabled by default as recruitment vendors, and clients can now turn individual vendors on or off depending on which providers they want to use for a given study.