Wireless Advertising Effectiveness Evaluation of an SMS Advertising Trial

Executive Summary Wireless advertising is a new, exciting marketing channel with unique features, still in its infancy. The ability to send out targeted, customised information directly to the pockets of the consumers is a very appealing concept to most advertisers. The predictions of future industry growth are skyrocketing and many players are eager to invest. However, many hesitate and some are even sceptical to the idea. The main concerns are consumer acceptance and the effectiveness of the medium as a channel for advertising purposes. The need for increased knowledge in these two areas is therefore substantial. Before companies commit to this industry they want evidence of acceptance and effectiveness. This study aims to estimate and explore the effectiveness of an SMS advertising campaign. This has been done by first evaluating its effectiveness on traditional communication effect measures. The measures are Ad Awareness, Brand Awareness and Attitude, Purchase Intention and Search for more information. Secondly, possible mediators of advertising effectiveness have been investigated, i.e. ad specific and medium specific factors that have impacts on the evaluation measures. The study is based on a trial conducted in Sweden in September 2000. The end-users had signed up for an advertising-financed news service on SMS (Short Message Service). The messages started with a short news update and ended with a 50-character long advertisement. The individual end-user received 2-7 messages in total during a two-week period. The results were obtained from a quantitative survey, with the use of a questionnaire. The study compares the results of two groups; a test group of 337 respondents that were exposed to the campaign, and a control group of 109 respondents that were not. The evaluation of the SMS advertising campaign showed that the campaign was effective on all evaluation measures except for Brand Attitude. Therefore the campaign did have a positive impact on Brand Awareness and Purchase Intention. Ad Awareness varied from 22 to 82% depending on the number of exposures. 12,8% of the target population searched for more information, a measure that could be defined as the mobile Internet " click-through " rate. Measured on the number of individuals stating Ad Awareness, the number was 25%. All the results were statistically significant. The relevance, the credibility and the level of entertainment in the advertisements were proven to play an important role as mediators of effects on evaluation measures. These aspects should therefore be carefully considered when designing …