Abstract
TV advertisements are less and less watched as most viewers turn their attention to the smartphone during commercial breaks. Therefore, broadcasters are facing a novel challenge: how to improve the engagement between viewers and TV commercials. In this paper, we investigate whether gamification can be a winning strategy. Indeed, despite some strategies that have recently been proposed (e.g., cross-media, use of specific mobile software), an effective approach to improve the engagement between viewers and TV commercials is yet to be found. We designed a game that involves the commercial break and the smartphone: during each TV advertisement, a simple question (e.g., “What was the color of the car?”) appears on-screen and the answer must be given through a special smartphone app. A player earns points if she answers exactly, otherwise she loses points. Results obtained from two different experimental assessment (within-subjects and between-subjects) revealed that a well-designed gamification strategy improves the marketing memorability (i.e., a measure of engagement) from 44% (no game elements) to 75% (with game elements). Therefore, gamification might be exploited by broadcasters and advertisers to improve the engagement between viewers and TV commercials.
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https://goo.gl/QX97Xy—Shazam Launches New TV Metric.
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com—Content Marketing Institute.
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The authors wish to thank all people who played the game and the anonymous referees who contributed in improving the quality of this paper.
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Furini, M., De Michele, R. On improving the engagement between viewers and TV commercials through gamification. Multimedia Systems 26, 107–123 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-019-00625-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-019-00625-9