For the second year in a row, Apester, the visual interactive storytelling platform, partnered with Time Inc. to poll their audience for the TIME 100 collection. TIME provided their readers with a visually engaging and innovative poll experience that fostered interactivity and shareability.
Korean boy band, BTS, fuelled by their fandom ‘army’ was the top winner of the poll. Accruing four times the votes than runner up Korean president Moon Jae-in and 6.5 times the votes for third place finisher, former President Barack Obama, BTS enjoyed international success by securing the top spot in many countries around the globe.
Top 10 Liked people
| 1 | BTS | 15.96% |
| 2 | Moon Jae-in | 4.10% |
| 3 | Barack Obama | 2.51% |
| 4 | Parkland Students | 1.93% |
| 5 | Shawn Mendes | 1.81% |
| 6 | Chloe Kim | 1.78% |
| 7 | Pope Francis | 1.66% |
| 8 | Beyonce | 1.63% |
| 9 | Bruno Mars | 1.63% |
| 10 | Dwayne Johnson | 1.62% |
New this year, TIME polled its readers with a social media like story format, the Apester Story. Inspired by innovation in vertical storytelling, the Apester Story is a mobile optimized multi-slide experience enriched with images, text and customizable interactive buttons, such as “like” and “dislike.” The TIME 100 poll included a record number of slides, affording readers the ability to share their opinion of the candidate. The poll launched March 28th, running for three weeks with an end date two days before the publication of the official 100 list.
The results updated dynamically on a dedicated webpage, allowing readers to influence and impact the standings in real time.
Using Apester data, TIME can infer how voters in different countries feel toward the candidates. The engaging and long story format organically created above average monetization opportunities and above industry standard CTR’s, contributing to the overwhelming success of this year’s initiative.
For the full results, click on one of the options: