Things won’t be easy for mobile ad purveyors. A survey by Dartmouth College has come up with seven factors on why smartphone and tablet users prefer to skip such ads.
1. For 72 per cent of the respondents, it all boiled down to the fact that the screen was too small.
2. 70 per cent claims they are far too busy to spend time viewing such ads.
3. After clicking on the ad and being directed to a page, 69 per cent complained it was difficult to return to the content you were reading or watching earlier.
4. 60 per cent claimed that it is difficult to connect to the Internet using mobile phones.
5. For 54 percent, the experience gets too frustrating when mobile data consumption is interrupted by ads.
6. Ads take too long to load, and that is according to 53 per cent of those polled.
7. Consumers are just not in the mood for ads, say 42 per cent.
Praveen K. Kopalle, a professor of marketing at Tuck and lead researcher on the study, said: “This study has profound implications for how advertisers target consumers. One of the major reasons consumer behaviour is qualitatively different on mobile devices than on large screen devices is how they are used.
“The consumer uses large screen devices for web browsing, while mobile devices are used for two kinds of interactions: browser-centric and app-centric, with apps accounting for a majority of mobile usage.”
An important conclusion of the study is that users are primarily engaged in information-seeking tasks (email, search, news) on the computer, while they are doing “life tasks” on mobile (games, chat, banking transactions, recipe searching, etc.).
Anindya Datta, CEO of Mobilewalla, the Seattle-based mobile analytics firm which measures audience behaviour, said: “Non-related content delivered during a life task session on mobile is 70 per cent less likely to register with a consumer than in an information-seeking session. For advertisers to plan successful campaigns targeting mobile consumers, they will need to focus on coverage on volume not the intent-based advertising strategies that have been used in display.”
The differences in behaviour show that ad campaigns must be planned in a new way. “Intent-based advertising used in display will not work in mobile, which as a medium has powerful potential [by] offering advertisers more engaged users. What is important is wide audience coverage done through demographic targeting, not content-based advertising,” Datta said.
