Two birds with one stone. Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, which ran an interactive contest during the just-ended soccer world cup, has claimed one million plus responses as well tracked viewership patterns for the chnanel.

The World Cup soccer SMS Contest Aaj Tak ran in association with Allwyn represented the first interactive contest on a mass scale with immediate and instant response tracking. On the first day of the contest, the channel claims to have received over 30,000 responses despite the fact that the contest wasn't advertised. Responses on subsequent days exceeded 100,000. Overall over 1.4 million messages were received for the entire period of the contest, says a company release.

The contest and the analysis of the data pertaining to the contest has thrown up interesting data pertaining to the viewership patterns of the channel. Although the 11 am - 12 pm time band resulted in the maximum responses from the viewers, the afternoon band also emerged as a significant time band, says the release. In the western region, Maharashtra, particularly Mumbai elicited the maximum number of responses, whereas in the north it was Delhi, followed by Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Indian viewers had to send the answers via SMS to the number 2424, enabled by ActiveMedia Technology. One contest question flashed on Aaj Tak at various times each day. Five lucky draws were conducted every day with winners being announced on the channel on the following days. Winners till 29 June are slated to get a 175 L Allwyn sensor refrigerator while winners for the question posted on 30 June will get a 250 L refrigerator.

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