Opt2In reads your Instagram export and shows you what is in it.

1. Ask Instagram for a fresh export.

   You do this in the app, in your own settings. Asking takes two minutes, and it is a normal feature Instagram offers on purpose. Pick JSON, and set media quality to low. The export guide has every screen.

2. Run it here.

   Drop the ZIP in exactly as it downloaded. It is read inside your own browser tab and your report appears.

3. Answer this week's questions.

   They are about your own report, once it is on screen: whether the number of ads and advertisers it counted sounds right, anything in it that looks wrong to you, and which of the brands it names you recognise, follow, or buy from on purpose.

4. Get paid.

   The week is credited when you submit your answers. A fresh export on its own earns nothing, and so do answers with no fresh export behind them.

It pays up to $5 a week. A week pays $3 for the study, which is a verified fresh export and that week's questions together, and $2 more for keeping a streak from the second week onward. A first week is $3.00, a consecutive week $5.00, and a missed week starts again at $3.00.

We pay by hand, about once a month, by PayPal or through Tremendous, whichever you pick. Nothing is paid automatically, and no money moves inside the iOS app.

There is one thing you can do on top of a week that is not money, and we would rather be plain about it than have you assume. In the Opt2In app for iPhone you can grade a single ad from your own report. That earns one attention point. A point is not money: it moves no week, credits nothing and has no cash value.

The report comes first, and it is the same free report anyone gets. It counts the companies holding your information in order to target you with ads. Under that it shows the brands that paid to reach you, how much of your feed was advertising, the interests that were guessed about you, what your attention is worth at real ad rates, and the apps and sites that reported your activity back. Every number in it comes from your own file.

The study is then a conversation about that report. It puts your own figures in front of you and asks whether they sound right, and it asks which of the brands it found you actually recognise. Your report can show back a short summary of the findings you confirmed.

What the study does not do is mark you. No screen tells you that an answer was right or wrong, because a guess is a useful answer here and a graded one would stop being honest.

Your export file never leaves your device. It is read inside your own browser tab, or on your phone inside the app. It is never uploaded and never stored, so there is nothing of it for us to keep, lose or hand over.

What does leave is the report you already save, plus your answers. Your answers are stored under your email address, apart from your saved reports.

No brand ever receives your identity, your answers or your report. What a brand could ever be shown is a finding across many people, with the number of people behind it and the number excluded from it, never a person. Nothing here is sold, and Opt2In is not affiliated with or endorsed by any brand named in your report or in a study.

These are the exact words you agree to before anything is written, on the join screen in the app and on your account page. Nothing is recorded until you tap the last control.

Quoted from the join screen itself, word for word, including the two boxes you tick. The two amounts are printed from what the panel actually pays, so this box and the money cannot drift apart.

Opt2In is for adults. You must be 18 or over to take part in paid research, and joining asks you to confirm it.

Places are limited by a panel cap and a budget, so joining is open only while there is room, and nobody is owed a place. Paid research opened on September 10, 2026.

It is voluntary and it is not a job. You can leave whenever you want, from your account page or from the app, and leaving costs you nothing you have already earned. The report stays exactly as free whether you join, refuse or leave.