Here is How Mobile Advertising Impacts Consumers’ Minds

Mobile Advertising is increasingly at the heart of multiple stakes and experiences that require streamlined paradigms. 

Within this post, the findings of an in-depth neuroscience study that assessed multiple mobile advertising formats to determine which are most captivating for consumers and which could potentially cause aggravation. 

The “Captivate vs. Aggravate” study, conducted with neuroscience research firm MediaScience, analyzed consumers’ rational and emotional responses to four mobile ad formats within premium editorial environments. 

One can observe that, it tracked neurological reactions to various types of mobile ads via participants’ eye movements, biometric responses and attitudinal changes.

Key findings from the study include:

• Size is important for mobile ads, and bigger is not necessarily better.
• Interstitial ads, which pop up and block the entire mobile screen, are the most disruptive and intrusive. While “technically” viewable, the attention to this format after it is served by a viewer often drops dramatically.
• Consumers prefer ads that are in-stream than those that are placed in between mobile editorial content or above all other ads, likely because the engagement is user-controlled.
• Luckily, ad formats do not impact consumers’ opinions about the brand or the editorial content around the ad.