Interactive Audience Measurement

I am very excited to be posting my first blog entry for the HASTAC community.  I am currently studying for my qualifying examinations at UCSBs Film and Media Department and working as the Graduate Student Researcher for the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media.  At the Center I am collaborating with scholars and entertainment industry veterans on projects that concern the convergence of new media technology and entertainment business practices.  My blog posts will usually reflect my interest in these topics and the projects of the Center.

To this end I present, RewardTV (www.rewardtv.com), an example of convergence culture that has intrigued me during the past few weeks.  RewardTV is a website that has existed in various iterations since 2001.  Recently it was purchased by the Nielsen Corporation and for good reason.  The site quizzes users on their viewing tastes and memory of commercials and content.  The information gathered from the quizzes resembles the measurement strategies that Nielsen has used to interpret audience behavior for years.  In exchange for providing this raw data participants are given points that can be redeemed for cash and prizes.

The format of the quizzes assumes a flow logic.  Flow, famously described by Raymond Williams, is a broadcast strategy in which content, commercials and interstitial material are presented in an uninterrupted stream of images, meaning and ideology.  Quiz questions ask users to recall narrative events, advertisement messages, brand slogans and user preference for marketing strategies.  The focus on flow is clearly a decision based on new media anxiety.  Before each quiz begins, the questionnaire asks the user how they watched the media text; via live broadcast TV, on demand, DVR/PVR, or other.  The quizzes seem to reward traditional types of viewing (without using timeshifting technologies) while simultaneously testing the effectiveness of marketing on the digitally empowered.

RewardTV offers a type of interactivity typical of entertainment industry efforts on the internet.  The website attempts to give users a game service related to their cultural interests in exchange for market research information. Lawrence Lessig and Scott Donaton have described the ways in which traditional media companies must change their business practices to meet the sharing economy expectations of the digital native. At its best a service like RewardTV can accumulate data that will make for a more reactive culture industry but unfortunately its dedication to a flow logic restricts its potential and makes it susceptible to manipulation.  For example, the multiple choice format of the quizzes allows those of us that are familiar with television and advertising conventions to guess the correct answers.  A media savvy person could guess enough correct answers on the quiz to suggest that they intently watched each segment of a programs flow instead of fast-forwarding through all the commercials.  Despite its interactivity and reward system for audience labor, RewardTV seems to repeat the measurement mistakes of past Nielsen strategies.