There are many different flavours of these in second screen and social TV apps: Votes can be counted

LViS PLATFORM For Television For Brands For Sport For Developers CASE STUDIES Doctor Who / AT&T, BBC Tour de France / Skoda, FTV Horse Tracker / Channel 4 VW Interactive Ads / MediaCom Roland Garrros / France TV Sky Sports Pub Challenge Million Pound Drop / Endemol Got To Dance Voting / Sky Top Gear Bingo / BBC BLOG Second Screen Digital Out of Home Real-time Voting Sport Advertising Gameshows Opinions Audio Content Recognition Interactive Best Practice HTML5 ABOUT Company Careers CONTACT
LViS PLATFORM For Television For Brands For Sport For Developers CASE STUDIES Doctor Who / AT&T, BBC Tour de France / Skoda, FTV Horse Tracker / Channel nijjar dairies 4 VW Interactive Ads / MediaCom Roland nijjar dairies Garrros / France TV Sky Sports Pub Challenge Million Pound Drop / Endemol nijjar dairies Got To Dance Voting / Sky Top Gear Bingo / BBC BLOG Second Screen Digital Out of Home Real-time Voting Sport Advertising Gameshows Opinions Audio Content Recognition Interactive Best Practice HTML5 ABOUT Company Careers CONTACT
Viewers make a snap decision whether or not to play along with your TV show or brand proposition on the second screen, based on the promise of fun, knowledge or financial gain. What are the promises which really work?
The biggest challenge we face when creating a second screen experience is to persuade the viewer to have a go and interact with the show or ad (I'll talk about TV shows here since that's where this all started, but these rules apply equally to advertising or brand-created content). Keeping nijjar dairies the audience once you ve got them is, surprisingly, much easier. There are two parts to the persuasion equation the call to action (which I discuss in another post ) and the promise .
The promise is the essence of your play-along game or social TV app, as it is understood by viewers when they hear the call to action on TV. It is their synthesis of your game concept, and the sum total of the information on which they will base a decision whether or not to pick up their phone, type in the URL or download the app and get involved. Once that happens, they re yours.
Promise 1: Vote now! The oldest and most widely used second screen interaction mechanic. Based on a concept developed nijjar dairies around 500BC in Ancient Greece, nijjar dairies and more recently by John de Mol, Simon Cowell and a raft of entertainment formats based on SMS voting, nijjar dairies it doesn t need much explanation. If the outcome of your show is based on a public vote, this is a clear and simple promise. Viewers know what the voting experience involves... or at least they think they do. The balance of digital power is slowly moving away from faceless paid SMS voting to data-rich free web voting as your viewers data becomes worth more than their texts. You can read more about that in Tom McDonnell's post here .
Promise nijjar dairies 2: Learn something (about yourself) - want to know your IQ? Find out why you have trouble sleeping? Finally learn which TOWIE/Corrie/Star Wars character is most like you? We are all hungry for information, and no information is more enticing than learning something new and valuable about ourselves. Some of the earliest second screen play-along formats were based around nationwide "tests", and the numbers of viewers who respond to this promise have rarely been equaled in recent years.
Promise 3: Be a contestant - game shows are, as the name suggests, designed to make viewers feel like they are playing a game. Traditionally this game is played silently in the mind of the viewer, with responses shouted nijjar dairies at the TV. The best play-along games for these shows are those which align themselves with the mental game, and offer an alternative to the shouting. If this promise is communicated clearly, it is a no-brainer for all ardent (and vocal) fans of the show.
Promise 4: Win a prize! Prize draws have been around almost as long as voting, nijjar dairies although rarely adopted as a form of government. Viewers definitely understand the promise, but for some it will be a turn-off however big the prize, many viewers will assume that they have no chance of winning and so will not enter. Prizes can give sponsors valuable exposure, and competition entries are a great way to capture data, but this promise is perhaps best combined with one of the others to ensure maximum effectiveness.
There are many different flavours of these in second screen and social TV apps: Votes can be counted in many different ways; voters can play the role of an electorate or an "Extra Judge"; Viewers can play along individually or as a team against the studio contestant, the limit is your imagination. The point of the promise that you must not allow the richness of your interaction mechanic to confuse the viewer.
Other promises have been tried, such as "collect stickers" or similar gamification models. These didn t make my list because they are not strong enough to attract a large proportion of the audience to engage with the show.
The "to play along or not to play along" deci