Apester, the visual interactive storytelling platform, partners with Time Inc. for the second consecutive year to poll their readers as a part of the TIME 100 project. Voting begins March 28 and it will end on April 17 at midnight ET. The TIME 100 list will be announced on April 19. The list that is about to reveal the 100 most influential people in the world across five categories: pioneers, artists, leaders, titans and icons. This year, Time polls its readers for the first time using the new Apester story format, a format that allows a mobile optimized multi-slide gallery experience with custom made interactive buttons.
As the final list of influential individuals is exclusively chosen by TIME editors, Apester’s TIME 100 poll echoes readers’ voices and opinions, that consequently places the editorial list in an intriguing context. In contrast to the TIME 100 influencers list, the TIME 100 poll lets the audience rank the candidates and provide a notion about their popularity and for a place in the rankings.
This year, readers will be able to vote for a distinct list of people that includes activists such as actress Ashley Judd, Parkland Students, and The Dreamers that plead for the DACA immigrants; Hollywood figures such as Patty Jenkins, Chadwick Boseman, Frances McDormand and Gal Gadot; TV stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, Kris Jenner, Tiffany Haddish, and Kumail Nanjiani; musicians such as Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, and Rihanna; statesmen such as Donald Trump, Carmen Yulin Cruz, and Prince Harry; athletes such as Roger Federer, Chloe Kim, and Cristiano Ronaldo; and business and tech moguls such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bob Iger.
Last year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, that ran an intensive campaign against drugs at the time, won the TIME 100 poll. He was followed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Pope Francis, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. In 2016, Democratic senator Bernie Sanders won the reader poll, while Russian President led the top of 2015 poll.
In 2017, the Apester TIME 100 poll achieved immense impact, with 191,000 voters extending their time one site for about 2 minutes on average while filling out the poll. The poll also resulted in significantly high click-through rate (13%), high completion rate (42%), and social share rate that included a third of all voters who had completed the poll.
Apester’s long-term partnership with Time Inc. also includes the TIME Person of the Year poll, as well as daily partnerships with the group’s brands in the US and the UK such as Time.com, CNN, Entertainment Weekly, People, Essence, Trusted Reviews, and NME.
The Apester platform empowers publishers, enterprises, and content marketers worldwide to create, contextually distribute, and monetize visual interactive content experiences for mobile devices. Its platform allows content creators to transform text-heavy content into visually engaging and easily shareable content with a simple-to-use editor. The platform offers tools such as polls, quizzes, interactive videos, and a story format that propels the story experience from social networks into the mobile web. In addition, Apester creates exclusive content tailored for selected publishers.
