Viggle, the mobile entertainment marketing and rewards platform, has become the crucial link that finally bridges the relationship between media content developers and media consumers. Whether for information or entertainment, watching television and listening to music has become a daily activity for almost every American. But until now, no one has ever created a loyalty program that has allowed people to collect rewards by engaging the entertainment media they already enjoy.
Enter Viggle.
Via an app, Viggle users can earn points simply by watching TV and movies, listening to music, purchasing songs, or even viewing certain online videos. Once enough points are collected, users can redeem them for real rewards including more of their favorite TV shows, music, movies, and a host of additional options.
“We’ve really branded ourselves as an entertainment rewards program that -gives you points for everything you are consuming in entertainment and lets you get real world rewards for that,” Greg Consiglio, President and COO of Viggle, explained to Loyalty360. “And our exchange of value is there because we have this great data set on what people are watching and listening to, and we’re able to make that data set available to advertisers.”
By downloading and checking into the free Viggle app, users earn one point for every minute of media consumed on television. Many shows include bonus point opportunities where viewers can often earn 2x, 3x, or even 4x points. The “What’s On” section lets users learn about new shows they may like and also discover where the best bonus points can currently be earned.
“The proposition, really, is you don’t ever have to pay for a video on demand movie on your cable provider again, if you just let Viggle know what you’re watching during the week. Then you can get free a movie on the weekend,” Consiglio added.
Users can earn additional points by taking surveys or playing real-time online games.
Historically, this type of loyalty program has been out of reach to marketers due to the limitations in technology. However, with the advent of smartphones and tablets, everyone increasingly has access to a device that lets them not only watch TV and listen to music, but also allows them to share data about the types of content they consume.
The Viggle app uses automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to recognize what someone is watching. Viggle effectively creates what it refers to as a “digital entertainment footprint” that is matched through a cable provider to continually build a more accurate user profile. Viggle can quickly become very smart about the personalized recommendations it uses to enhance customer engagement.
In addition to actively engaging customers, Viggle also hopes to solve the media fragmentation problem that has increasingly plagued advertisers. Not only are media consumers blitzed with an almost endless stream of entertainment options from countless content creators, but technologies such as the DVR make it easy for consumers to avoid advertising messages altogether.
Viggle sees a way around this dilemma.
By delivering the ads straight to a smartphone, Viggle’s unique points-reward system will incentivize users to click on the ad. As a result, Viggle has acquired a click -through rate that is much higher than the industry average. And Viggle often sees ad completion rates approaching 100%.
What’s more, Viggle also has the ability to offer its comprehensive data sets to advertisers so they can gain a much better understanding of exactly what people are consuming and how to more effectively target those audiences.
“We really have built an end-to-end entertainment marketing rewards program that gives people rewards for something they are already doing and allows TV networks and advertisers a very highly addressable platform to reach consumers, based on what it is they are watching and listening to,” Consiglio explained. “It’s as if we are taking television advertising and making it interactive for the first time.”