ChaCha (UR mobile BFF) says that a poll of its users, primarily teens and young
adults, who asked questions during the Super Bowl last night showed that
their favorite commercials were for Doritos. The ones they disliked most
were for Go Daddy and the one most talked about, as measured by text
traffic, was Denny's, mostly asking where was the nearest location of the
restaurant to collect their free meal on Tuesday.
Inquiries about the teams involved also skyrocketed with 60,000 (about 10x
the norm) asked throughout Super Bowl Sunday.
Methodology: During the Super Bowl telecast people who asked ChaCha
questions were asked to text back after their game with their favorite and
least favorite commercials. About 900 gave us their favorite and 650 voted
for their least favorite. Denny's generated the most overall conversation
as measured by queries to ChaCha.
Yesterday was a record day for ChaCha,
which answered well over a million mobile and online questions. Big events
often drive higher user interaction with the two-year old service.
Among
drivers of its' biggest query days recently were the NCAA football National
Championship, celebrity deaths such as Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and
Billy Mays and inaccurate rumors of deaths such as Johnny Depp and Taylor
Swift. Scandals, such as Tiger Woods and Brangelina, also increase
questions to the free service as do holidays when friends and family gather
like Thanksgiving, and 4th of July. News about teen idols such as Robert
Pattison and Justin Bieber and teen movies such as Twilight, Transformers
2, and Avatar, especially as a theatrical release approaches, drives higher
than average questions as do awards shows including the Oscars, Grammys and
the like. Interestingly, major college coaching changes also drive strong
interaction with ChaCha.
"Our core audience is teens and young adults therefore, anything that
happens in their world, from the earthquake in Haiti to the celebrity rumor
of the day, spikes the number of questions to ChaCha. The Super Bowl was no
exception," says Scott A. Jones, Chairman and CEO of ChaCha." Teens are the
heaviest texters on the planet and they are doing more of it all the time,
with an average of nearly 3000 texts per month. ChaCha has grown to be the
friend they turn to for all the answers, live interaction, and
up-to-the-minute information."
Some 83% of U.S. mobile teens use text-messaging and 56% use MMS/picture
messaging. The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of
2,899 text-messages per month compared to 191 calls. The average number of
texts has gone up 566% in just two years, far surpassing the average number
of calls, which has stayed nearly steady. (Nielsen June 2009 "How Teens Use
Media").
Frost and Sullivan, the research firm noted recently, "Services such as
ChaCha -- that generate millions of mobile search queries from the youth
segment -- are ideal to provide insights into things on top of mind of the
youth segment."
ChaCha.com became a Top 100 website in 2009, according to Quantcast and is
also one of the fastest-growing websites, ahead of NFL.com, NBC.com,
FoxSports.com, and Time.com. ChaCha has emerged as the single best place to
reach the teen market (in ANY medium). Between its site and mobile
platform, ChaCha reaches over 10 million users every month and has answered
over 400 million questions in the past two years.