Gamification for Media & Digital Publishing

Gamification means applying elements of challenge, competition, and interactivity alongside shorter feedback cycles to enhance user focus. For media companies, whether they’re in new media or legacy media, gamification can improve engagement for more effective recruitment, training, and marketing, and even be used to reshape their audience-facing content, to tell stories and communicate ideas in more interactive, more effective ways.

Multiple generations have now grown up playing video games – books, comics, movies, and even television have been made secondary, and with this switch, alongside the proliferation of social media, the way people absorb information is different. Not many millennials are going cover to cover through the daily paper with their breakfast before work like a baby boomer might. To reach younger audiences, from the millennials and counting down, interactivity and faster feedback cycles are key, and so digital publishers should look to gamification, which delivers in both of these areas.

Since 2003, publishers have been experimenting with newsgames: a type of video game that helps users understand complex situations that might be hard to convey in articles or podcasts. Offering newsgame-style gamification experiences that combine play with authentic details and facts can act as a gateway for publishers to get modern audiences interested in learning more about situations through articles and videos. The newsgame approach can work just as well for comms agencies and press offices as for news outlets.

Gamification has been used by old media for over a century to retain and reward audiences. Crosswords began appearing in newspapers in 1913, and puzzle games like Sudoku and Wordle have been regular highlights for returning, loyal readerships. Modern gamification can recreate these types of puzzles, along with sports games, and even multi-step experiences that can be unlocked with a code received with each new email newsletter or digital issue, incentivising continued subscription.

You can also use gamification to move more of your target audience past your publication’s paywall. Instead of the classic: “You’ve reached your 3 free articles for the month,” you could present visitors with an instant win game, giving them opportunities to win promo codes for a discounted subscription, or even a free first month. This also gives you an opportunity to ask for email addresses and personal details which can be used for subsequent retargeting campaigns.

Many media organisations work on behalf of other brands, either as service providers or on a project by project basis, such as in tech, PR, or communications. In these highly competitive industries, some degree of client churn can be inevitable, but gamification can play a huge role in client retention.

Personality Tests can be used to help identify ideal clients, or match prospective clients to appropriate service packages, and gamified experiences can be customised to aid in qualified lead generation. Retention problems typically come down to an offering that’s not competitive, or taking on clients that aren’t qualified – gamification can be a huge aid to businesses whose retention problem is due to the latter root issue.

When users read an article on your site, you can see statistics like unique visitors, total visits, and time spent on the page, but there’s ambiguity about how the content was interacted with. Podcast and video hosting sites have similar limitations. However, gamify a piece of content, and have a multi-step, playable story, and you can then export the data to see how users performed on each level. This means you can analyse not only totals and averages, but break down how users interacted with a piece, and fine-tune future gamification projects.