Why quizzes are an opportunity for media

While they might seem just for fun at first, quizzes represent an opportunity for media to gain insight into your audience, collect data for your advertisers and drive revenue for your company.”

Matt Coen, Second Street

You have probably seen quizzes all over the BuzzFeed homepage or making the rounds in your Facebook News Feed.

(One that keeps popping up in my world is: How Well Do You Remember Dialogue From "Star Wars"?)

While they might seem just for fun at first, quizzes represent an opportunity for media to gain insight into your audience, collect data for your advertisers and drive revenue for your company.

Here's a great example from WDAF-TV in Kansas City that ran during the World Series – where the Kansas City Royals faced the San Francisco Giants.

Within one day of launching, the quiz was taken over 20,000 times! Plus, look at all the engagement WDAF received on Facebook.

Royals player Billy Butler even took the quiz (and got himself!) and shared his result with 83,0000 followers on Twitter. Talk about expanding your reach!

Here are 4 reasons quizzes benefit your media company and your advertisers:

1. Quizzes are fun for your audience AND your advertisers. People love to take these quizzes – it's a great way for you and your advertisers to be at the center of a timely, visual and fun promotion.

2. Quizzes are incredibly shareable. According to KISSmetrics, quizzes are by far the most engaging type of content on Facebook. But people don't just love to take quizzes. They also love to share their results. Just look at how many times the Royals quiz above was shared on Facebook and Twitter in the first few hours it was live.

3. Quizzes connect sponsors with an engaged, highly targeted audience. This type of promotion can connect an advertiser to an engaged audience. A bank could sponsor a "What Kind of Dog Are You?" quiz to associate their name with a fun promotion focused on something people in their audience love. The bank would also benefit from having their brand shared over and over as the quiz spreads virally.

4. Quizzes are native content that can solve advertiser challenges. If you are looking to develop native advertising programs for your advertisers, quizzes could be an exciting alternative or complement to other types of native content. A local Ford dealership might attach their name to a "What Kind of Car Should You Drive?" quiz, which would collect data about a targeted audience for the advertiser to market to. The quiz results could also center around Ford vehicles – if the answer is "pick-up truck," the associated image might be a Ford F-150, while the image for "convertible" might be a Mustang V6 and "fuel-efficient sedan" might be illustrated by a Ford Focus.

Matt Coen is the president and co-founder of Second Street, a leading provider of private-label online promotions platforms and partner success services for media companies based in St. Louis, Mo. He can be reached at (314) 880-4902 or matt@secondstreet.com.