New tests have proved that while full-screen, “disruptive” mobile ads drive above average click-through rates (CTR), they also produce sky-high levels of complaints.
Conducted by mobile ad platform Opera Mediaworks, a new report suggests that full-screen placements boast healthy levels of engagement and can be a powerful tool in the mobile marketer’s artillery.
However, advertisers may have to put their reputations on the line if they want to venture down this route, as dominating a user’s entire screen carries certain repercussions.
Clicks for complaints?
To provide a picture of how intrusive brands can be with their mobile advertising, Opera Mediaworks examined data from over 15 million impressions driven by fully and semi-disruptive advertisements. Both forms expanded from standard banner adverts and saw their effectiveness judged by CTRs as well as the number of customer complaints filed against them.
Fully disruptive ads were lauded for their general performance in the tests, achieving a CTR 381% higher than standard banner advertisements. Semi-disruptive ads generated a similar return, but in hitting a rate 351% above standard, were found to be driving fewer clicks than their full-screen counterparts.
Unfortunately this performance came at the expense of reputation, as disruptive ads caused over ten times as many complaints from their users as semi-disruptive placements.
For the advertisers that went full-screen with their activity, they were forced to deal with one complaint for every 127,267 impressions.
As for those who settled for the semi-disruptive approach, they had the advantage of dealing with one complaint every 1,267,144 impressions.
Opera Mediaworks concluded that while fully disruptive ads generate “super-normal CTRs”, ads that cover fewer pixels can deliver similar results but with better satisfaction from the customer’s angle.