TenHunt is a timed internet scavenger hunt that sends users through sponsored links and on to other websites looking for topical information. It’s an interesting ad model emerging at a time when everyone is trying to find effective and reputable ways to drive consumer engagement with online brands. Scavenger hunts are as old as time but people are more familiar with navigating the web and more ad money is being spent online than ever before.
TenHunt is a project of serial marketing entrepreneurs Michael Taggart and Walter Burch, whose company Webco.tv has launched lots of affiliate marketing projects. Affiliate marketers often get a bad rap, but I like the way these guys are running TenHunt.
Users register for the scavenger hunt with nothing but a contact email address. At the designated time, all participants are given a series of increasingly difficult questions based on the content of sponsors’ web sites. The first person to complete all 10 questions in the contest wins that week’s grand prize – this week it’s a 30GB video iPod. Taggart and Burch say that their aim is to offer progressively larger and larger prizes and populate the site with photos of happy winners to prove that it’s for real. Prizes are sent by next day air the morning after the contest ends. Most of us are rightly skeptical of things like this, but at launch at least I think this project looks more reputable than scores of marketing efforts littering the web.
Email will only be sent to notify participants of upcoming contests and probably to announce the winners, with short promotional messages from sponsors in the end of the email that the TenHunt creators emphasized would be as unobtrusive as possible.
The combination of time constraints, simultaneous activity with other users participating and a degree of challenge will hopefully create a compelling user experience. If the prizes awarded do get bigger and better and if there are truly no strings attached, I think users could happily participate. I wrote here about the Jellyfish Smack timed reverse auction on Tuesday and that was a lot of fun to watch happen. Xuqa is a successful game based ad model we’ve covered here; Xuqa users play online poker and can take market research surveys to build up points in the game. I think TenHunt could be another example of a quality blend of advertising and game playing.
What makes this most interesting to me is the engagement with brands. Advertising consumption is generally passive, but technology like contextual pay-per-click is changing that. TenHunt is an interesting example of a potentially powerful way for advertisers to drive thoughtful engagement with their online properties. What advertiser doesn’t want that?
This could end up being awful, but I’m going to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Advertising is changing on every level and I think some affiliate marketers are going to get it right.
Pretty soon you’ll need a Ph.D. in physics, an MBA, and a JD degree to be able to figure out the business models of these websites and to try to understand how you’re supposed to use them.
This sounds like an interesting way to test your online research skills.
And how are they going to make money giving away these free prizes?
Mik, the pages that people are sent to are paying to be the site where you find the answers to the questions. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Mmm…Glad you think it could be good, but I’d have to say this isn’t interesting to me, and I imagine there are many people like me. Who has time to play games with the chance of winning? One needs cash, guaranteed. The only gaming model that has awards that I even sometimes utilize is Moola.
True, it may not be for everyone, but I, for one, would much rather play a game online for an ipod rather than sign up for a dozen credit card offers and product mailing lists that I could care nothing about. I think it’s a unique idea, and is much more intellectually stimulating than watching a stupid person skateboard off a roof.
Welcome to web 1.0. Am I stuck in time or it’s deja vu? My bet it’ll disappear within a year or sooner.
I think it is not a bad idea, although I would wonder about the demographics of the users.
There was this website iPodRaffles.com where users did “small” offers like signing up for a mailing list of something to get a chance at winning a prize. I think they did give out some prizes, but it only works with a lot of people. I guess we’ll see how many people are interested in spending time on this, even if there’s no guarantee of winning.
I think the idea is not bad. in this world, there are always a number of people who don’t know how to kill time. in my opinion, the crucial factor to success is the quality of question Tenhunt is asking. Tenhunt should cowork with their clients to design interesting question cluster so that the hunters will not feel their wisdom are not insulted by boring and stupid questions. another suggestion is: normally, people prefer cash more than goods. so the prize type should be well designed.
I agree, the questions should be challenging. I would have different prizes for different skill levels. Easier questions could be for smaller a scavenger hunt and much harder ones would be for a big prize or cash. I think some would enjoy the challenge and the time it would take to finish, while others might like the rush to finish quick cheesy questions for a prize. They should let people choose. I’d like to try it but I’m a bit of a skeptic so i’m waiting to read what people say next week about it. Looks fun though.
Thanks for all the comments and questions and thank you Marshall for writing this piece. I just wanted to address a few previous questions.
1. Users will not be forced to sign up or buy anything in order to complete a question. The questions/riddles ask for specific phrases, words, or numbers that will be found somewhere on the site corresponding with that question.
2. Someone will win. There is no ifs, ands, or buts and there are no hidden catches like “Congratulations you’ve won now pay us for shipping” There will never ever ever be any cost to the users.
3. The questions themselves get increasingly difficult and may require extra clicks to find the answers. Also, the questions themselves utilize a rhyming riddle style format and many of them will require the user to think a little outside the box in order to find the correct answer.
Jackie, the prize recommendations are great and something we are looking into. In the future we would like to run different prizes and people can choose which TenHunts they would like to play for. I know my mom for instance would rather play for a gift certificate to Target than an iPod.
Hope you guys like the site and if you are playing then best of luck. This whole concept was born out of the idea that we should make something fun for people to compete in real time on the internet. The community will determine the overall success of the site.
can’t sign up using Gmail or yahoo (didn’t try others)
Is it just me?
“There were errors during signup
That email seems to be invalid
Please try again.”
when i was growing up in israel there use to be a game in the newspaper called signs.
the same thing. it made u go through the articles (web 000000.1)
it reminds me of cover songs hoping no one will know there was ever the original.
shame on them.
@ Michael Taggart
I’m sure you’ve researched the following question in determining the feasibility of TenHunt.com … in relation to convincing advertisers of the “value” that TenHunt.com brings to them in exchange for their precious advertising dollars.
Specifically, “What demographic will TenHunt.com attract / cater to?”
Said differently, users who (1) have cash and (2) who are likely to spend that cash are desirable. Conversely, those who don’t have cash to spend or who are not likely to spend what little cash they have would not be attractive.
It’s my assumption that the majority of users in the prior category are less likely to use TenHunt.com due to “time constraints” in their busy lives, and that the majority of users in the latter category are more likely to use TenHunt.com since they might have “nothing better to do” … but nonetheless, they might not be inclined to “purchase?”
If you could enlighten me on this, I’d be appreciative
(I suppose my real question “hinges” on “how do you convince busy individuals – the ones who have the most value to advertisers – to exchange their precious time to be hit up by advertisers when the benefit is an unlikely scenario of actually winning an iPod?”)
David,
You bring up great questions. Let me start from the beginning.
First, the demographic that TenHunt will attract is largely dependent on the prizes that will be offered through the site. For instance, my mother would rather play for a Pottery Barn gift certificate than an iPod. As time goes on, we are planning on offering a variety of prizes throughout the week for people to play for to encourage a broader demographic.
Second, I feel your assumption that only people without cash would play TenHunt is fundamentally flawed because the only reason people are playing is not simply for the prize. While it is a huge factor in someone signing up, the heat of the competition is something that will be a lot of fun for players. How many executives do you know of that kill some time online by either watching videos, finding jokes, reading Digg, etc? Judging by the amount of forwards I get from people like this, I think it is safe to say that even high paying individuals would be interested in competing in a TenHunt game as part of their leisure time.
We are currently developing systems such as groups (so you can see how you fare against your friends) and overall ranking stats (so you can see where you stand in the community). These types of things will help increase the fun factor related
The goal for the advertisers of TenHunt is to expose as many people as possible to their unique offer. This may be letting people know they carry a certain product or getting the word out about a contest. While we are not expecting people to stop playing the game and buy something at that moment, the player has now received a unique, positive message about that sponsor. In the future if they have a need that one of the sponsors can fill they may think of that sponsor first because they already have established a “relationship” through the game.
If you still have any other thoughts or questions I would love to hear them.
Michael:
I appreciate your personal response / explanation … you’ve definitely helped me come to understand TenHunt more clearly
Michael,
All I can say is that was invigorating. I came in 7th today and I loved the questions.
One question i didn’t see addressed: If I get one wrong am I out? or can i keep on guessing? or is there any penalty for getting one wrong?
Thanks David, glad to help out.
Jimmy, thanks for playing. To answer your question, if you get one wrong the system simply tells you that it was incorrect and then you have to try again. You won’t be booted out for answering wrong. I am glad to see you enjoyed the game, we sure had a lot of fun watching the race from the office. Please let us know if you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions in the future.
I submitted some suggestions after I was done.
How about a leaderboard once the game ends?
Yep, the leaderboard will be up on the site soon. We have been developing it and it will be able to go live now that we have data for it. Thanks for the input.
stuck on ten
great idea i should say..
Hey Michael, good to hear from you and Walt on this one. Heck, it’s always good to hear from you.
One suggestion. In looking at the site this morning, it’d be great to look at the last game and not only see the leaderboard, but also, see the questions, the related websites, the answers and the average time to get each question right. First, I think it’d just be kinda’ cool, but second, as an advertiser, I love the idea of lingering exposure…
Obviously, from my perspective, I care most about positive brand exposure and ultimately conversion and ROI. From reading here it sounds like the experience was positive, so you’re definitely off on the right foot.
BTW, I know the model may be tough to swallow for some, but look at Myspace and YouTube…
Cheers!
Hey eat,
Great ideas. There are many things we’re in the process of implementing.
Thanks again for participating as a sponsor last night. I know the winner wfcentral from TX will appreciate it when his video iPod arrives on Tuesday. We sent him an email just after he won. Here was his response, “Hey Michael, Thanks for the GREAT FUN – I felt like I was in a 100 meter dash racing an invisible pack of athletes… Please send the iPod to…”
Feedback from the players has been a great help. One player wrote, “Just a suggestion….don’t make the game be on Friday night! We’re all computer geeks enough; we don’t need to emphasize that by playing games on Friday night by ourselves. -Patrick” … so the next TenHunt starts next Thursday night at 6:33pm PST, thanks to Patrick. We know if the players continue to drive TenHunt, there’s no limit to the fun factor… not to mention how big the prizes will be.
Talk soon.
Walt
Hey Guys! just wanted to pop in and thank Techcrunch (this is where I heard about the scavenger hunt). I had a great time hunting and solving the riddles – I am real excited about the iPod video that I’m getting from TenHunt and will be telling all my friends about the next Hunt!
Robert
Wow, I’m looking through my ideas folder and found a nearly identical ‘online scavenger hunt’ idea that I outlined back in 2001. Brings me back. I seem to remember some of my concerns relating to gaming the system simply by being handy with a search engine (ie. testing who has the strongest google-fu). Hope it works out, glad to see someone bringing the idea to market!
Thank you for all the information. I was quite leary signing up, but the questions asked on this page and the great answers have eased my worries. cant wait to start
Glad to see you are playing Crystal. Tonight at 6:33 PM PST we have another TenHunt for an Xbox 360. We’ve upped the difficulty this time around, so anyone that completes this TenHunt will be in a random drawing for a new iPod Shuffle. Best of luck to everyone.
BTW, using a search engine isn’t really going to help you all that much as the riddles require intelligence to figure out. Simply going to a page and doing a find for a phrase in the question isn’t going to give you anything.
sure don’t understand how to do this.am i stupid
When and how often are they going to be conducted.