Effective mobile display advertising: The impact of product involvement and creativity

Abstract: Mobile advertising is rapidly becoming one of the most important media channels, but research is scant and the effectiveness contended. Not all product types are proven to be effectively advertised in the mobile phone, as attention in general is believed to be low. At the same time, advertising creativity has been a field, which has attracted research focus over the past years as a tool for achieving higher attention and information processing. The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of mobile display advertising, investigating the effectiveness for both higher and lower involvement products, something that is contended. Furthermore, we look at how creativity impacts advertising effectiveness in the mobile medium. A large quantitative survey-based field experiment with 13,824 respondents was conducted. 13 known brands were recruited to advertise high and low involvement products with three different content types produced by professional advertising bureaus. The campaigns ran in Sweden's most popular mobile news feed, Aftonbladet, and effects on brand attitudes and brand purchase intentions were measured. The results showed significant positive effects on purchase intentions and attitudes for lower involvement products and on attitudes for higher involvement products. Furthermore, lower involvement products showed larger effects on purchase intentions. Perceived creativity was not found to have a positive effect, but results rather suggest that it might actually have a negative effect for lower involvement products. The results empirically support that both higher and lower involvement products can be successfully advertised in the mobile phone, where advertising in the mobile phone reminds the customer of previously encoded information and existing needs. However, creativity may have less favorable effects, something which needs to be researched further.