Cost-efficient and representative recruitment to online panels is a persistent challenge for commercial enterprises and academic research alike. One method that is sometimes used is to take advantage of highlighting that the panel or the survey in question concerns a “hot topic” that most people are likely to find involving. This method can be exploited both with probability based recruitments as well as with opt-in recruitments. This study compares the consequences of “hot topic”-recruitment both for opt-in recruitment and for probability based recruitment. During the summer 2012 four different surveys was fielded by the University of Gothenburg concerning a local “hot topic”: the introduction of congestion charges around the city of Gothenburg. In total four different surveys are compared: one from a pop-up ad on the major local daily newspaper website concerning the congestion charges, one survey to an opt-in sample from a general recruitment to the University of Gothenburg online panel, one probability sample from a postal invitation highlighting the issue of the congestion charges, and finally one probability sample from a general postal invitation to participate in an online panel. The outcomes that are compared include: recruitment rates, cost-efficiency, demographic and attitudinal representativeness. Special attention is paid to the hypothesis that “hot topic”-recruitment might help recruit those that are normally not interested in social or political issues, which might improve sample representativeness.