Brands such as Skullcandy, EMMA cosmetics, Traeger Grill, True Gentleman and Swoob are partnering with recently launched gaming application gameit, where users answer trivia questions based on advertising content to win prizes, leaving a lasting marketing impression while driving sales.

The goal of the app is to compel consumers to engage with advertising content so that it makes a real impact, while driving sales of featured products with discounts, rather than consumers overlooking the ads. The advertisement shown is from the same brand offering the prize for that particular challenge, and consumers must answer questions fast and correctly to gain the most amount of points to win the product for free or a discount on purchase.

“Direct consumer engagement is the key benefit for brands on gameit,” said Bryce Johnson, CEO of gameit. “Companies are increasingly aware of the fact that advertising is a broken process. In fact, I experienced this directly when trying to market my own consumer brands, while working previously as the CEO of Zarabees, a natural products brand.

“Most ads are skipped or ignored outright,” he said. “With gameit, the opposite is true, consumers directly engage with the ads on the site, offering a tremendous benefit to the brands.

“Our users on average watch the brand video 2 to 3 times, and play the trivia game multiple times in order to compete for deals. In fact, we have seen many instances where more than 100 brand-related questions are answered, essentially making our users experts on the brands as they play.

Gameit has just exited the beta phase of the project and is now available for free on iOS devices. It is coming soon on Android.

Consumer attraction
Mobile services such as RetailMeNot are a big draw to consumers, due to the consolidation of all brands and deals in one place. Gameit takes that same idea, but also adds a gaming feature, hoping this will be an even bigger attraction as gaming is one of the most popular activities on mobile.

Similar to many mobile apps, there are prizes available from numerous brands as well as sponsored prizes and games from Skullcandy, EMMA cosmetics, Traeger Grill, True Gentleman and Swoob. Sponsorships mean these products and challenges are easier for consumers to find.

Users play against each other by accumulating points due to their performance in that particular trivia challenge. The player with the most points in that challenge wins the product for free, while the other contenders still receive discounts for the product, relative to their ranking.

There is a greater draw for users when something is available for everyone. Although prizes create a huge attraction for consumers, unobtainable prizes suggest that consumers are likely to drop out.

However, tiered prizes mean any entry has a chance to win something rather than having slim chances, making more users inclined to get involved.

In the future, gameit plans to create a greater social media engagement plan as well as a way for users to get involved with their friends. Gameit also plans to develop enhanced tracking abilities for sponsored brands to measure ROI by consumer engagement and retention.