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.

中文翻译：

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关于通过游戏化提高观众与电视广告之间的参与度

随着大多数观众在广告时段将注意力转向智能手机，电视广告的观看次数越来越少。因此，广播公司面临着一个新的挑战：如何提高观众与电视广告之间的互动度。在本文中，我们研究了游戏化是否可以成为一种制胜策略。事实上，尽管最近提出了一些策略（例如，跨媒体、使用特定的移动软件），但尚未找到一种有效的方法来提高观众与电视广告之间的参与度。我们设计了一个涉及广告插播和智能手机的游戏：在每个电视广告中，屏幕上都会出现一个简单的问题（例如，“汽车是什么颜色的？”），必须通过一个特殊的智能手机应用程序给出答案. 如果玩家正确回答，则她会获得积分，否则她失分。从两个不同的实验评估（受试者内和受试者之间）获得的结果表明，精心设计的游戏化策略将营销记忆性（即参与度的衡量标准）从 44%（无游戏元素）提高到 75%（有游戏）元素）。因此，广播公司和广告商可能会利用游戏化来提高观众和电视广告之间的参与度。