The advert industry is striving to keep TV and cinema viewers’ attention during the breaks but the gamewriter Charlie Salem came up with a possible solution:
advertisers could use the viewers’ mobiles to get them engaged in something positive during that time, like playing a game and winning a prize.

Salem has developed Text Miss Cellulite. TxTMsC will work across the web, TV and text, and will have a supporting cast to look like a proper soap.

According to ad agencies contacted by The Guardian, getting people to text or do anything other than look at the screen during an ad break is counterproductive.

But the American television industry has shown interest. “Mobile is just taking off in the US, and the people who are interested in mobile are the television networks,” says Salem. “They want to do things that are a lot more complicated than just voting for your favourite pop idol; they want to do things that have serious amounts of content, that can test characters, add depth to a story, that have a lot more substance.”

All the details in The Guardian.