APVSys

Since we launched our new site a few days ago, we’ve asked a few people what they’d like to see from us. Clearly, we weren’t wrong about people loving the free entry competitions to enter online at itv.com, it seems that everyone likes those ridiculously easy questions to answer to get their chance to win big. In fact, the only prize they seem to offer is huge – even the daily Dickinson’s Real Deal competition runs in to the thousands of pounds.

The way it works is that the TV shows (usually the daytime weekday ones) run a new prize draw each week, often just as the daytime ITV shows go to an ad break. Presumably this keeps the viewers busy while the channel’s exec’s count the money they’re raking in from the ads during the break, while at the same time distracting those very viewers from those ads by encouraging them to spend money entering a competition via extortionate phone numbers or text short codes. Talk about a focus on money!

Of course, the prizes have to be huge to get the attention, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re making a lot more than the prizes cost to give away. In a recent week, we counted a total value of the prize draws to be over £250,000, although part of that was a holiday home which was probably at least part paid by the company that sells them in exchange for getting on TV.

What a lot of people seem to miss with these prize draws is that there is almost always an opportunity to lodge a free entry as well as using one of the paid routes. More often than not, this is online, so you just head over to the ITV website, and find the appropriate entry form. For example, the Real Deal one we referred to earlier is found here.

It does beg the question, why are so many of these competitions run during the daytime shows? I suspect it is due to the target audience of those shows, which is probably house-wives and house-husbands who are watching while the kids are at school. It may be a little cynical, but that seems likely also to be the households on the lower incomes, who are also likely to be drawn to the dream-like trailers they run for these competitions, often featuring expensive holidays on sandy beaches.

Here’s an example we found on YouTube of the types of competitions you can typically see during the day on ITV:

Everyone enters competitions from time to time, but you only ever seem to hear people talking about how they never win. So, do the winners exist? And if so, where are they?

Let’s start by addressing a common misconception, the competitions you commonly see are very likely to be genuine, as they’re likely to be run by companies that have a lot to lose if they get caught breaking the law. Yes, that’s right, if you run a competition, legally the prize must be given away.

So, what are the competitions you’re likely to stumble across?

Think TV, think magazines, think pubs. You can hardly watch a show on ITV these days without seeing a silly question to answer for your chance to win a massive cash prize, car or holiday. There’s magazines like Take A Break that have surfed on the competitions wave for years and the hospitality industry are continually running survey style competitions to find out what you think of them.

These types of competitions will almost certainly generate regular winners, but they’re also the ones with the longest odds. That’s to say your chance of winning are tiny. There are so many people entering that the winner will likely beat odds of thousands to one of being victorious!

If the chances of winning are so small, why bother entering?

Quite simply, the trick is to enter lots of competitions – as many as you can find! There are websites like Money Saving Expert with forums full of people helping each other to maximise the number of competitions they enter. The fact is, carry on long enough and eventually you’ll win something, even if it takes a very long time. Going back to the question, there’s a good reason to enter the really big competitions, and that’s that someone has to win. Yes, it’s unlikely, but if you are the luck one, you might win very big. For example, ITV competitions on daytime shows have been known to give away upwards of a quarter of a million pounds in cash to a single winner. I’m sure you’ll agree, that would make a year or two’s worth of entering well worth the effort!

That’s where our APV System comes in – we are here to help you connect with competitions. Take a look around!