Researchers take the measure of text appeal

As the votes are texted in for the second series of TV2's NZ Idol, Auckland University researchers are less interested in which wannabe pop star's career has just been terminated than in the voting process itself.

Dr Robert Davis, who lectures in mobile commerce in the university's business school, is attempting to devise a standard way of measuring the marketing effectiveness of mobile phone and television interaction - what he calls "loop" campaigns.

He is working with Txtstation, an Auckland-based company whose software for enabling live mobile interaction has been used as part of TV coverage of big sporting events in the United States.

"If we can develop a really good measurement model, then [Txtstation] can take that with them to the States" where there is a large appetite for media audience data, Davis says.

Txtstation's system was in action during baseball coverage by the CBS and Fox networks, letting viewers compete for prizes by answering trivia questions, and inviting their votes for most valued player and the pitcher they'd least like to face.

Txtstation director Krista Johnson says voting results were graphically displayed as they came in.

Apart from spicing up coverage and boosting viewer numbers - "we have proven using live graphics doubles results" - Johnson says the system collects texters' phone numbers.

In the United States, a nation of "voracious sports addicts", that opens up the potential for analysing audience taste for different events and types of promotion.

The work being done by Davis will help draw the relationship between TV ratings and interactivity, Johnson says, which will be of value to marketers.

NZ Idol - with which Txtstation has no involvement - could be "zapped up", Johnson says, by adding a live component to the voting. For example, viewers could be asked which contestant they most liked the look of.

She says there is a good reason for not disclosing the results of voting on contestants' performances as they're texted in.

"By keeping the votes quiet, you get more votes," says Johnson.

And each vote represents revenue, divided among the mobile phone company, the TV station and the voting system provider.

Davis has already drawn some conclusions about the willingness of people to interact with TV by texting. Such loop campaigns have been participated in by about 30 per cent of respondents aged 15 to 30, surveyed by his students.

People will take part if they perceive value in doing so, he says. In the NZ Idol example, the value the thousands of voters get is the idea that they can influence the outcome.

"They pay the money because they want to alter the content of the medium. And the media people have been talking about being able to change the content [in response to viewers] for years - it's been a key limitation of television. Now you've got the opportunity."

Aside from entertainment applications, he can see loop campaigns being used for democratic purposes.

They might catch on, for example, as a way of getting a "snapshot" of voter opinion on a particular issue.

But he warns that unsolicited advertising messages to mobiles - of the same sort that plague email inboxes - could ruin the effectiveness of such applications.

"The network providers, the Government and others need to have the uncompromising view that spammers should receive significant penalties. Otherwise it will destroy the channel for everyone."