October 22, 2013
Why Don’t Mobile Ads Work?
A new study by researchers at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College showing the differences between how people interact with smartphones and tablets vs. personal computers points out some of the issues that marketers face when trying to advertise to consumers via mobile.
"One of the major reasons consumer behavior is qualitatively different on mobile devices than on large screen devices is how they are used," said Praveen K. Kopalle, PH.D, professor of marketing at Tuck and the lead researcher on the study, in a statement. "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."
Dr. Kopalle said people with mobile devices use them to perform "life tasks" and that there are a number of obstacles to engaging consumers with ads on smartphones and tablets.
The top four reasons are:
- The screen is too small (72 percent);
- Having something else to do with their device instead (70 percent);
- Difficulty returning to their original page after a click (69 percent);
- Inability to get online (60 percent).
BrainTrust
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Discussion Questions
What do you think are the biggest reasons that mobile ads do not work? Are there fixes you could recommend to make ads via mobile devices more effective?
Poll
Mobile ads are ineffective because they are disruptive in a very negative way. Mobile devices are considered to be much more personal than even laptops, notepads, and certainly televisions. Disrupting a phone call, or a text message, or some other personal activity is unacceptable to consumers, and in addition, the other reasons mentioned in the article are also true; it’s way too difficult and inconvenient to act on a mobile ad. It’s also difficult for the advertiser to say something catchy enough or credible enough in such a small space to merit the click.
Consumers accepted advertisements on television as the content was free. Along came cable and satellite service where the consumer is paying for content and still getting advertisements. Next we have the internet, again viewed on a large screen and advertisements. Consumers are told they are paying only for access; the content is free so they accept advertisements. Consumers see the advertisements and ignore them, as with television.
Tablets are the next evolution of the laptop computer. Here consumers also are getting applications the individual wants and uses. The e-book category is a good example. With tablets, consumers will accept some advertisements when they browse the internet as before and some social network sites as they are fee. But when it comes to the cell phone, the game changes. The cell phone is not a work computer, but a personal tool. Advertisements here are just a pain as it takes up space on a small screen.
I use my iPhone a lot throughout the day and I had ads on my mobile phone. They are the height of interruption marketing. While we found ads on TV a bit annoying, it’s not like we were trying to access something directly.
Ads on mobile, however, are distractions on very small screens and one accidental finger movement results in being taken away from your task to the advertiser. That means the potential buyer arrives at your site at least as many times upset they are there as ones who are glad they are there. I haven’t seen anyone do this effectively yet.
I take issue with the premise of this article – that mobile ads don’t work.
Mobile ads are simply different than web ads. Different format, different usage patterns, different size, and often different objectives. Google recently did a study showing that 88% of clicks on mobile search ads were incremental to organic clicks. And certain ad extensions (like a click-to-call button) can drive immediate, context-appropriate action from a mobile phone.
In short, asking people whether ads work is a poor substitute for *measuring* whether ads work.
That’s easy; it’s because we have them blocked.
I agree with Ben that saying mobile ads don’t work because they’re annoying is like saying TV ads don’t work for the same reason. There is plenty of evidence saying both are effective if done well. And, of course, it’s all in the doing.
Thinking through the mobile ads that I’ve clicked on, it seems that relevance and the proper context are important elements. For example, I have purchased “deal of the day” ebooks when using my Kindle. (Yes, it’s a bigger screen than a phone but I think I would respond similarly if the deal had been offered when I was using my Kindle app for iPhone.)
I did not, on the other hand, click on the Saks ad that displayed at the foot of my Weather Channel app this morning, even though it said there was a store “1 mile away” (in fact, not at all true – they got my location wrong).
I believe it’s early in the mobile advertising evolution and companies are just figuring out how to engage people on this form factor. Many advertisers are trying to use what works on larger form factors here rather than tailoring their efforts to what works best on this device.
SMS is a common capability and one that will eventually become better leveraged in mobile advertising. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), will also improve over time. And I have seen the next step beyond MMS called Rich Media Messaging (RMM), that clearly raises the bar on where mobile advertising is today.
Its early in the mobile advertising evolution and while this will require a different approach than web advertising, it will evolve to become a common form of reaching consumers because too many powerful interests want it to happen. In 2+ years, the title of this article will be moot.
Methinks that Dr. Kopalle had best conduct some longitudinal research that includes different categories of merchandise and different segments.
Based on the Prosper Monthly Survey, as recently as January, 2011, only 22% of Boomers had a smartphone, 41.3% of Gen X, and 48.6% of Millennials carried the device. The October, 2013, 47.0% of Boomers have a smartphone, 70.9% of Gen X, and 82.3% of Millennials have smartphones.
This device is only going to play a larger influencing role in people’s lives. The more that adults use the device, the more they will adapt to it. Mobile ads are playing a larger role – both in video and banner form. As broadband pricing comes down, consumers will be there in greater force.
Marketers will follow those consumers in an effort to engage and influence them. Those promotional efforts will be more engaging, as the messaging becomes more compelling.
Among the mythologies of the web has been the idea that advertising to people in lean-forward moments would be more effective. Online it’s not proving true. And I think that’s a big part of what’s happening here.
When people lean forward, they’re on a mission to find something. Advertising faces a far higher challenge when attempting to break through that mind-set – to take them off-mission.
The same thing is happening when they are using their small screen mobile, the vast percentage of that time is “mission time” – time when they aren’t receptive (at all) to advertising.
Ben from Google states what immediately went through my mind when reading this headline: What does “work” mean? Whether or not mobile ads ‘work’ depends on what the advertiser is trying to accomplish.
That said, ads on smartphones are clearly more interruptive, disruptive and annoying vs. other information transmission tools (whether digital or not), which is especially aggravating when one is trying to accomplish something or even ‘just browsing’. Kind of reminds me of walking into a store to kill some time and ‘just browsing’ around…but at least you can let the sales person know you’re ‘just browsing’ and they will generally leave you alone. Mobile ads don’t.
As with any ad-supported medium, the single most important factor to successful consumer response is relevance. Mobile advertising is in its infancy. The first Web ad was delivered in 1994, and it took several years for marketers to understand how a different consumer-medium interaction required a different kind of targeting, content, and creative appeal.
Mobile has the potential to allow advertisers to deliver the most relevant content of any medium, because mobile users are tracked not only in the digital world, but also in the physical world. If I’m using a grocery list app, and “toothpaste” is on that list, and I’m standing in a Kroger, that impression should be extremely valuable to Colgate and Crest.
Consumers will be receptive to relevant advertising and offers that save money or time or both. Over time, marketers will have better ways to leverage data to better target and serve more relevant content.
Well-crafted ads that leverage the medium appropriately for specific types of products targeted at specific consumers do work. Advertisers utilizing mobile ads need to leverage all of the consumer data and analytics at hand to determine who responds and to what types of messages. The advertisers who utilize analytics and personalization capabilities to deliver relevant messages to the right individuals will be rewarded. Those who don’t will grouse about how mobile advertising doesn’t work….
Why don’t mobile ads work on smartphones? Because most of them were designed as web ads for computer screens.
The right question is: “what makes an effective smartphone ad/promotion”?
Bill Davis has provided an excellent summary of the evolving technology to reach consumers via smartphones: SMS, MMS, RMM, not to mention NFC (Near Field Communication)
Mobile advertising will require different media and approaches versus web advertising. Case in point, Dell has sold millions of dollars of computers by just using tweets … an ideal medium for smartphones.
There are a number of key reasons why mobile ads currently do not work:
- Smartphones are very personal devices – much more than PCs. When ads appear, users often feel that their personal space has been impinged upon, creating a more negative reaction from the outset, regardless of the value or content of the ad being displayed.
- Smartphone users are much more task-oriented than traditional PC users. Often they are looking for directions, weather or conducting some other time-sensitive operation and react more adversely to distractions that delay the completion of those tasks.
- Smartphones lack the tracking ability of PCs, both in the browsers and the apps. This results in very little targeting and the presentation of irrelevant and annoying ads.
Additionally, the current state of location-based advertising is pretty coarse. They can tell you are near a corner in a city, but they have little personalized or purchase intent information to guide the ad to be presented. It’s akin being confronted by a carnival barker.
Undoubtedly, this will change and improve. But currently mobile ads are both more intrusive and less relevant than we’d like.
(Side note: These studies need to start with the understanding that smartphones and tablets are two completely different experiences. They should not be lumped together under the heading of “mobile” and treated as a single, monolithic category. Not breaking out these two different types of devices and their different characteristics confuses the results, making the conclusions almost useless.)
The problem isn’t the device. The problem is the message and how it is told. Advertising used for e-commerce can be traced to TV screens. This is a problem when transmitting for 60 inch screen observation goes to 9 inches or less. When a company invests to provide advertisement for tablets and smartphones, the message should be designed and developed separately for the media intended. Until we see a change in design the present methods will continue to largely fail when distributed through compacted media.
Whoa, wait a minute, I’m with Ben here: how did we suddenly get to “mobile ads (don’t) work”? I don’t necessarily reject the premise – certainly skepticism rather than irrational exuberance is welcome – but it’s still just that…a premise, not a fact. As for the reasons cited: “inability to get online…” gee, that WOULD be a problem, wouldn’t it?
At least from my view, they are 99.9% of the time an annoyance rather than a value. Retailers tend to use these ads much in the same way as e-mail – the scatter-gun approach. They shoot out a bunch of wide spread buckshot and they see if any of it hits a potential target.
Few retailers understand how to connect with a consumer in a meaningful way in any form electronically.
Just because I made a less than $20 purchase from a retailer, doesn’t mean I want an e-mail every single day from that point on. In the same way, I don’t want repeated, irrelevant annoyances due to my location or any other factor. The same factors apply whether it be a smartphone, tablet, or any other means of connection.
Don’t send me noise. Send me value or don’t send it at all.
Based upon which study you read, I’m not so convinced that mobile ads don’t work. MediaPost has an article that states, among other things, that mobile ad spend will approach $40B by 2018 from $13B today.
The obstacles mentioned in the Tuck study can, and are being overcome as we speak by innovative merchants around the globe.
Mobile ads are simply irritating when you trying to do a task on your phone. It often takes you to a different page either on the same browser or a different one, and it’s usually outside the app. This breaks the flow of the task one is doing and it’s often difficult to get back to where you were. The power of mobile is that it helps you do tasks faster; ads slow you down, and with the small screens they add to the clutter. Often most ads, with bad resolution, look untrustworthy.
Mobile ads are not effective for me because of how disruptive they are. Mobile ads have a long way to go in terms of optimization before they’ll reach their full potential. As with any new channel, a lot of testing needs to be done to see what works, and a lot of the problems need to be addressed, such as the ones listed above (disruption, irrelevance, difficulty navigating between the ad and the original content etc.).
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Mobile ads are ineffective because they are disruptive in a very negative way. Mobile devices are considered to be much more personal than even laptops, notepads, and certainly televisions. Disrupting a phone call, or a text message, or some other personal activity is unacceptable to consumers, and in addition, the other reasons mentioned in the article are also true; it’s way too difficult and inconvenient to act on a mobile ad. It’s also difficult for the advertiser to say something catchy enough or credible enough in such a small space to merit the click.
Consumers accepted advertisements on television as the content was free. Along came cable and satellite service where the consumer is paying for content and still getting advertisements. Next we have the internet, again viewed on a large screen and advertisements. Consumers are told they are paying only for access; the content is free so they accept advertisements. Consumers see the advertisements and ignore them, as with television.
Tablets are the next evolution of the laptop computer. Here consumers also are getting applications the individual wants and uses. The e-book category is a good example. With tablets, consumers will accept some advertisements when they browse the internet as before and some social network sites as they are fee. But when it comes to the cell phone, the game changes. The cell phone is not a work computer, but a personal tool. Advertisements here are just a pain as it takes up space on a small screen.
I use my iPhone a lot throughout the day and I had ads on my mobile phone. They are the height of interruption marketing. While we found ads on TV a bit annoying, it’s not like we were trying to access something directly.
Ads on mobile, however, are distractions on very small screens and one accidental finger movement results in being taken away from your task to the advertiser. That means the potential buyer arrives at your site at least as many times upset they are there as ones who are glad they are there. I haven’t seen anyone do this effectively yet.
I take issue with the premise of this article – that mobile ads don’t work.
Mobile ads are simply different than web ads. Different format, different usage patterns, different size, and often different objectives. Google recently did a study showing that 88% of clicks on mobile search ads were incremental to organic clicks. And certain ad extensions (like a click-to-call button) can drive immediate, context-appropriate action from a mobile phone.
In short, asking people whether ads work is a poor substitute for *measuring* whether ads work.
That’s easy; it’s because we have them blocked.
I agree with Ben that saying mobile ads don’t work because they’re annoying is like saying TV ads don’t work for the same reason. There is plenty of evidence saying both are effective if done well. And, of course, it’s all in the doing.
Thinking through the mobile ads that I’ve clicked on, it seems that relevance and the proper context are important elements. For example, I have purchased “deal of the day” ebooks when using my Kindle. (Yes, it’s a bigger screen than a phone but I think I would respond similarly if the deal had been offered when I was using my Kindle app for iPhone.)
I did not, on the other hand, click on the Saks ad that displayed at the foot of my Weather Channel app this morning, even though it said there was a store “1 mile away” (in fact, not at all true – they got my location wrong).
I believe it’s early in the mobile advertising evolution and companies are just figuring out how to engage people on this form factor. Many advertisers are trying to use what works on larger form factors here rather than tailoring their efforts to what works best on this device.
SMS is a common capability and one that will eventually become better leveraged in mobile advertising. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), will also improve over time. And I have seen the next step beyond MMS called Rich Media Messaging (RMM), that clearly raises the bar on where mobile advertising is today.
Its early in the mobile advertising evolution and while this will require a different approach than web advertising, it will evolve to become a common form of reaching consumers because too many powerful interests want it to happen. In 2+ years, the title of this article will be moot.
Methinks that Dr. Kopalle had best conduct some longitudinal research that includes different categories of merchandise and different segments.
Based on the Prosper Monthly Survey, as recently as January, 2011, only 22% of Boomers had a smartphone, 41.3% of Gen X, and 48.6% of Millennials carried the device. The October, 2013, 47.0% of Boomers have a smartphone, 70.9% of Gen X, and 82.3% of Millennials have smartphones.
This device is only going to play a larger influencing role in people’s lives. The more that adults use the device, the more they will adapt to it. Mobile ads are playing a larger role – both in video and banner form. As broadband pricing comes down, consumers will be there in greater force.
Marketers will follow those consumers in an effort to engage and influence them. Those promotional efforts will be more engaging, as the messaging becomes more compelling.
Among the mythologies of the web has been the idea that advertising to people in lean-forward moments would be more effective. Online it’s not proving true. And I think that’s a big part of what’s happening here.
When people lean forward, they’re on a mission to find something. Advertising faces a far higher challenge when attempting to break through that mind-set – to take them off-mission.
The same thing is happening when they are using their small screen mobile, the vast percentage of that time is “mission time” – time when they aren’t receptive (at all) to advertising.
Ben from Google states what immediately went through my mind when reading this headline: What does “work” mean? Whether or not mobile ads ‘work’ depends on what the advertiser is trying to accomplish.
That said, ads on smartphones are clearly more interruptive, disruptive and annoying vs. other information transmission tools (whether digital or not), which is especially aggravating when one is trying to accomplish something or even ‘just browsing’. Kind of reminds me of walking into a store to kill some time and ‘just browsing’ around…but at least you can let the sales person know you’re ‘just browsing’ and they will generally leave you alone. Mobile ads don’t.
As with any ad-supported medium, the single most important factor to successful consumer response is relevance. Mobile advertising is in its infancy. The first Web ad was delivered in 1994, and it took several years for marketers to understand how a different consumer-medium interaction required a different kind of targeting, content, and creative appeal.
Mobile has the potential to allow advertisers to deliver the most relevant content of any medium, because mobile users are tracked not only in the digital world, but also in the physical world. If I’m using a grocery list app, and “toothpaste” is on that list, and I’m standing in a Kroger, that impression should be extremely valuable to Colgate and Crest.
Consumers will be receptive to relevant advertising and offers that save money or time or both. Over time, marketers will have better ways to leverage data to better target and serve more relevant content.
Well-crafted ads that leverage the medium appropriately for specific types of products targeted at specific consumers do work. Advertisers utilizing mobile ads need to leverage all of the consumer data and analytics at hand to determine who responds and to what types of messages. The advertisers who utilize analytics and personalization capabilities to deliver relevant messages to the right individuals will be rewarded. Those who don’t will grouse about how mobile advertising doesn’t work….
Why don’t mobile ads work on smartphones? Because most of them were designed as web ads for computer screens.
The right question is: “what makes an effective smartphone ad/promotion”?
Bill Davis has provided an excellent summary of the evolving technology to reach consumers via smartphones: SMS, MMS, RMM, not to mention NFC (Near Field Communication)
Mobile advertising will require different media and approaches versus web advertising. Case in point, Dell has sold millions of dollars of computers by just using tweets … an ideal medium for smartphones.
There are a number of key reasons why mobile ads currently do not work:
Additionally, the current state of location-based advertising is pretty coarse. They can tell you are near a corner in a city, but they have little personalized or purchase intent information to guide the ad to be presented. It’s akin being confronted by a carnival barker.
Undoubtedly, this will change and improve. But currently mobile ads are both more intrusive and less relevant than we’d like.
(Side note: These studies need to start with the understanding that smartphones and tablets are two completely different experiences. They should not be lumped together under the heading of “mobile” and treated as a single, monolithic category. Not breaking out these two different types of devices and their different characteristics confuses the results, making the conclusions almost useless.)
The problem isn’t the device. The problem is the message and how it is told. Advertising used for e-commerce can be traced to TV screens. This is a problem when transmitting for 60 inch screen observation goes to 9 inches or less. When a company invests to provide advertisement for tablets and smartphones, the message should be designed and developed separately for the media intended. Until we see a change in design the present methods will continue to largely fail when distributed through compacted media.
Whoa, wait a minute, I’m with Ben here: how did we suddenly get to “mobile ads (don’t) work”? I don’t necessarily reject the premise – certainly skepticism rather than irrational exuberance is welcome – but it’s still just that…a premise, not a fact. As for the reasons cited: “inability to get online…” gee, that WOULD be a problem, wouldn’t it?
At least from my view, they are 99.9% of the time an annoyance rather than a value. Retailers tend to use these ads much in the same way as e-mail – the scatter-gun approach. They shoot out a bunch of wide spread buckshot and they see if any of it hits a potential target.
Few retailers understand how to connect with a consumer in a meaningful way in any form electronically.
Just because I made a less than $20 purchase from a retailer, doesn’t mean I want an e-mail every single day from that point on. In the same way, I don’t want repeated, irrelevant annoyances due to my location or any other factor. The same factors apply whether it be a smartphone, tablet, or any other means of connection.
Don’t send me noise. Send me value or don’t send it at all.
Based upon which study you read, I’m not so convinced that mobile ads don’t work. MediaPost has an article that states, among other things, that mobile ad spend will approach $40B by 2018 from $13B today.
The obstacles mentioned in the Tuck study can, and are being overcome as we speak by innovative merchants around the globe.
Mobile ads are simply irritating when you trying to do a task on your phone. It often takes you to a different page either on the same browser or a different one, and it’s usually outside the app. This breaks the flow of the task one is doing and it’s often difficult to get back to where you were. The power of mobile is that it helps you do tasks faster; ads slow you down, and with the small screens they add to the clutter. Often most ads, with bad resolution, look untrustworthy.
Mobile ads are not effective for me because of how disruptive they are. Mobile ads have a long way to go in terms of optimization before they’ll reach their full potential. As with any new channel, a lot of testing needs to be done to see what works, and a lot of the problems need to be addressed, such as the ones listed above (disruption, irrelevance, difficulty navigating between the ad and the original content etc.).