Audience Source

Every project has at least one Audience Source, which informs who can participate in your study.

What is Audience Source?

Audience Source determines where your project's participants come from. Highlight supports three types of audience sources, giving you the flexibility to run research with Highlight's own community of consumers, your own community of participants, or anyone you'd like to hear from via a shareable link.

Audience Source Options

Highlighter Community (default)

Recruit participants from Highlight's nationwide community of vetted consumers.

This is the default option and is available to all Highlight customers. Highlight handles all recruitment, screening, and fielding on your behalf. The Highlighter community is purpose-built for product research and delivers high completion rates and high-quality responses.

Learn more about Highlight's community of product testers →

Custom Community

Recruit from your own audience — employees, loyal customers, VIP shoppers, athletes, or any group you've brought onto the Highlight platform.

With a custom community, you onboard your own participants into Highlight and run research exclusively with them (or a mix of your audience and Highlight's community). You control profiling questions, eligibility criteria, and can even custom brand the participant experience with your logo and colors.

This option requires a custom community to be set up on your account. If you don't have one yet, reach out to your Highlight contact to get started.

Guest Link

Send a shareable link so anyone can participate in your project — no sign-up required.

Guest Link lets you collect feedback from people outside your established community by simply sharing a link. Participants can jump straight into participating in the project without needing to create an account. This is ideal for on-site testing, field studies, or reaching a specific group on short notice.

Note: Guest Link is only available to customers with a custom community set up on their account.