Senior Product Manager Oliver Spall shares findings from testing new digital projects with ±«Óãtv Taster.
First: Quizzes rule! There's something about the clear reward mechanic that is always a hit for audiences. Our research shows that from the multiple formats of quiz we tested, they were all in the top percentile of ratings, moreover the trend of data via Taster, showed quizzes in the top quartile of traffic.
Second: Enjoyment and memorability aren't necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to short-form interactive content. Gross-out projects like , mostly involving interactive gifs of A&E / Jackass level calamities hit (unsurprisingly) a note in people's memories, but not many said that they were 'enjoyable'. The takeaway here is that if you got that balance right between mild provocation and fun stuff, the audiences we surveyed got on well with the content. Get it wrong, though, and it acts as a pretty powerful turn-off.
Third: Give people meaningful stuff to do in your experiences. When we analysed the research to see which pilots people were more likely to try again, indexed above average in this metric. Comparing this to the data on Taster, we saw that the game mechanics in the pilot drove both significantly higher traffic and ratings than average, but also strong engagement within the pilot itself. This is a great example of how using clear and meaningful mechanics brings people into the experience and drives engagement. - a classic from our back catalogue - gives users a clear, enjoyable and rewarding role, and is the Taster top rated interactive pilot of all time.
Overall, what's interesting, across all of the pilots that we studied, is how critical it is to think about technology and the editorial concept as symbiotic things. We saw that concepts that didn't resonate with audiences reduced the impact of the tech. Similarly, where the tech limited what audiences could do, people just couldn't get into the story. - an experience that allows you to customise your listening experience between two different programmes - is a great example. Where audiences connected with the content, they tended to enjoy the pilot more overall, while those who didn't enjoy the content at all, would still seek out the same technology format, just with different content.
It's always exciting when some collaborative work generates far more insight than just the combination of resources, and the collaboration between ±«Óãtv Audiences and ±«Óãtv Connected Studio to develop a pilot research framework has been one of those experiences. We're looking at ways to incorporate what we've learnt from this experience into how we create digital content in future, and hopefully these pointers help you too. Next up, we'll be looking at some stuff we learned about immersive formats. That's , and audio. Warm up your headsets, folks.