New InsightExpress Research Reveals Impact of Mobile Advertising

STAMFORD, Conn. – InsightExpress, a leading digital marketing research firm, released Mobile InsightNorms through Q4 2009, including a comparison of mobile media types and verticals. Benchmarked to the impact of online advertising, these findings continue to show the power of mobile as an advertising channel.

The study used norms developed in online ad testing as a benchmark to draw conclusions around the performance of advertising on mobile devices. InsightExpress compared the two using InsightNorms, the company’s normative database containing over one thousand online ad effectiveness campaigns and over one hundred mobile ad effectiveness campaigns. Mobile InsightNorms are based on InsightExpress’ flagship mobile brand effectiveness solution, Mobile AdInsights, which employs a test/control design to measure the brand impact of mobile advertising campaigns.

InsightExpress found mobile campaign norms were 4.5 to 5 times higher than online norms against measures of unaided awareness, aided awareness, ad awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent. “Online campaigns continue to offer exceptional reach, flexibility and variety,” said Joy Liuzzo, Senior Director of Marketing & Mobile Research at InsightExpress. “However, the high levels of engagement, the explosion in technical capabilities, low levels of clutter and the novelty of mobile advertising all likely contribute to increased brand impact.”

A comparison of three different mobile media types (Mobile Internet, SMS and Mobile video) revealed that Mobile Internet is the current powerhouse. Mobile Internet campaigns resulted in increases of 9 percentage points for unaided awareness, 9 percentage points for aided awareness and 24 percentage points for ad awareness. SMS is also effective at increasing upper level purchase funnel metrics such as awareness measures. SMS campaigns generated increases of 5 percentage points for unaided awareness, 10 percentage points for aided awareness and 18 percentage points for ad awareness.

Mobile video is still emerging, but shows campaign impact on par with SMS across most key brand metrics. This channel drove especially strong results against brand favorability. With an increase of 13 percentage points, compared to 12 percentage points for Mobile Internet and 7 percentage points for SMS, mobile video is demonstrating promise as a way to move the important brand favorability measure.

The analysis next examined mobile brand metric norms by vertical (CPG, Entertainment, Automotive, Travel, Technology and Retail) to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the campaigns. Once again comparing mobile norms to online norms:

Mobile CPG Purchase Intent effect is 3 times higher than online CPG Purchase Intent
Mobile Entertainment Purchase Intent effect is 4 times higher than online Entertainment Intent
Mobile Travel Purchase Intent effect is 5 times higher than online Travel Purchase Intent
Mobile Technology Purchase Intent effect is 7 times higher than online Technology Purchase Intent
Mobile Automotive Purchase Intent effect is 4 times higher than online Automotive Purchase Intent
Mobile Retail Purchase Intent effect is 8 times higher than online Retail Purchase Intent
“Our research gives advertisers across a wide range of verticals yet another reason to be incredibly excited about mobile today,” added Liuzzo. “The impact that mobile campaigns have on key brand metrics proves that mobile continues to move quickly from supporting player to co-starring role in the digital advertising universe.”

About InsightExpress

InsightExpress is a leading provider of high-quality, digital marketing research and plays a preeminent role in the measurement of advertising effectiveness across online, mobile and other media. Through its patented technologies, proprietary solutions, world-class expertise and time-tested research principles, InsightExpress transforms the way advertisers, agencies, publishers and researchers optimize their marketing activities. InsightExpress is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.insightexpress.com or call 203-406-3233.