1. The Effectiveness of Mobile Advertising on College Students Matthew Abadie, Kelsey Alcide, Sofia Morales, Caroline Smith, Ryan Teng

2. Executive Summary Objective: Identify what would improve the effectiveness of mobile ads among college students Recommendation: To increase effectiveness advertisers need to improve particularly in the following areas: Targeting Interference with what students are doing Placement on the smartphone Make the advertisement relevant to what application the students are using Get better data on the demographics and psychographics of people downloading different apps Place ad on the top or bottom of the page, not a pop-up.

3. Background on research method • R1: Why do college students find mobile ads annoying? • R2: How effective are mobile ads in influencing shopping habits of college students? • R3: What would improve the effectiveness of mobile ads? • Methodology: Survey, convenience sample

4. Smartphone ownership is wide spread

5. “Mobile ads are annoying.” • Responses to the statement above: • 36 percent strongly agree • 41 percent agreed (consistent with literature review) • Male vs. Female Response • 47 percent of females strongly agreed • 28 percent of males strongly agreed • When rating experience with mobile ads, only 1 percent said they would love to see more.

6. Why are mobile ads annoying? • Top five reasons: • Interruption – 35% • Waste of Time –12.5% • Take up screen space –12% • Irrelevant products –11% • Other –7% “They are annoying because they limit my productivity and interfere with my overall search query.”

7. Frequency and pervasiveness of advertising influences attitude towards mobile ads • 6.7 percent commented on the frequency of the ads “Ads are already so prevalent on TV and the Internet. Having them on my phone too, interrupting my games gets old.”

8. Intrusive nature of advertising creates negative perception • Cell phones are for personal use • Used to communicate with family • Invasion of privacy

9. Ads often take up the whole screen • Ads take room of an already small screen • Interrupted activities

10. Targeting is not effective • 10.83% of respondents found mobile ads not relevant to their needs

11. Mobile shopping is not prevalent • Although students tend to be more “tech-savvy,” mobile shopping is not as prevalent as many think • 59% have never made a purchase on phone

12. Items bought using mobile phone range across different categories

13. Effectiveness of mobile ads is questionable • 90 percent of users own a smart phone, but: • 11 percent say ads are not relevant • 89 percent have never clicked on an ad

14. Applying our findings • Mobile Advertising needs to improve in many ways in order to be more effective. • Targeting: if improved, relevance will increase and users will be more likely to click on ad. • Advertisers should do more research on what apps college students are downloading

15. Applying our findings • Interference: avoid having pop ups when users would find them inconvenient • Sponsorship: sponsor games instead of advertising on the games • Students don’t mind ads if they provide a free service

16. Applying our findings • Relevance: if add is going to run with an app, make sure it is closely related to your product. • Ex: Pandora could advertise for speakers

17. Applying our findings • Big is not always best: keep ads small vs.

18. Applying our findings • Positioning: Try to put them as a banner on either the top or bottom of the page to be most efficient

19. Opportunities are endless • Mobile users will increase 49.6% to 90.1 million in 2012 • Forecasted to grow to 148.6 million by 2015 • Smartphones sales overtook laptop sales this year • Millenials spend more time on their phones than watching TV, reading the paper, etc.

20. Executive Summary Objective: Identify what would improve the effectiveness of mobile ads amongst college students Recommendation: To increase effectiveness advertisers need to improve in the following areas. Targeting Interference with what students are doing Placement on the smartphone Get better data on the demographics and psychographics of people downloading different apps Make the advertisement relevant to what application the students are using Place ad on the top or bottom of the page, not a pop-up.