MUMBAI: It was not just Fantasia Barrino that came out on top of Fox's recently concluded music based reality show American Idol.
Research conducted by America's Claria Corporation which specialises in online behavioral marketing in conjunction with its Feedback Research division shows that advertisers AT&T and beverage conglomerate Coke were the major gainers through visibility.
Claria measured the online user behaviour of several American Idol related Web sites including the official one www.idolonfox.com. Of Claria's 43 million plus users over 390,000 viewed Idolonfox.com between 16 March and 16 May 2004.
The Idol site advertisers generated high awareness levels and drove Web traffic to their sites. AT&T Wireless had the highest level of aided awareness among online advertisers with a figure of 56 per cent. Ford and benverage conglomerate Coke got levels of 52 per cent.
Meanhile on television the unaided recall for advertisers was greatest for Ford at 23 per cent. Coke was second at 19 per cent. Aided recall for TV advertisers was greatest for AT&T Wireless at 42 per cent. This was followed by Coke with 40 per cent. Interestingly 23 per cent of people watching the telly were also online while the show aired.
Claria had conducted a survey among those who
were viewers of the American Idol Web site and viewers of the TV show to gauge
their voting patterns and awareness levels of Idolonfox.com sponsors and
American Idol TV advertisers. Weekly surveys were administered between 27 April and 26 May 2004 beginning at 9 pm after the show had aired.
More information on web traffic. The week with the highest overall traffic to Idolonfox.com during the study period was the week of 11 April when film director Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill was the celebrity judge.
As far as the method of choosing was concerned 90 per cent of people polled voted by phone while 19 per cent voted by text messaging. 51 per cent of respondents also stated that in the future they would prefer to vote for the contestants through an online voting system.
