A short while ago, someone plastered the cars in my parking deck with flyers about how to "make $75 cash for your opinions." Naturally, I looked into it. No scam here: last night, I spent two hours watching potential beer commericals that might get aired during the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks. Me and 399 other people were going to influence which of these ads actually saw the light of day. I watched and rated 30 commercials; some were funny, some were dumb. Then we broke into smaller groups to talk about the good and bad points of some of the commercials with a representative from the beer company. And then I walked out with $75 in cash.
It may seem amazing, but if you think about it, the beer company paid out $30,000 (plus administrative and overhead fees) to determine how best to spend millions for the ad time during the game. Everybody wins.