Young people are the most likely to download mobile apps. They also spend lots of time every day on mobile media, which gives advertisers good reasons to broaden their advertising campaigns to mobile platforms such as news apps.

This approach has been met with success. The first impact measurements of campaigns on the mobile news Web sites from Het Laatste Nieuws and De Morgen show that these campaigns do better in terms of recognition and attribution than the average online campaign. The impact of these mobile advertisements is most predominant for young people.

Impact measurement: advertisers want to know if their campaign works

Measuring the impact of advertising is nothing new. De Persgroep Advertising has been giving scores to their advertisers for recognition and impact of campaigns in print and online for years. The arrival of mobile advertisements was followed quickly by demand for evaluation of these campaigns.

There are few differences from existing impact measurements for print and online campaigns in terms of approach and methodology. The day after the advertisement’s appearance, a group of at least 200 respondents fills in an online questionnaire. The group is a randomly selected sample and is representative of visitors to the mobile site or app. Participants can fill in the mobile impact questionnaire on their smartphone.

The respondents are asked if they visited the homepage of the mobile site or app, if they remember seeing advertisements on the site, if they saw the specific advertisement (recognition), and if they also know what brand the advertisement was for (attribution). The end impact or effective score of the advertisement is the percentage of respondents who saw the advertisement and attributed it to the correct brand.

A mobile panel was set up specifically for the mobile impact measurement.

Participants give permission to receive questionnaires through their smartphones. The mobile panel for Het Laatste Nieuws and De Morgen already has more than 37,000 participants.

In addition, the questionnaire was also shortened and made responsive to adapt it for mobile phone use. This seems to have been a good move as the response to mobile impact measurements is now six times higher than for the traditional online questionnaire.

Initial results:

1. High recognition and attribution for mobile advertisements.
   
   The initial measurements on Het Laatste Nieuws’ and De Morgen’s mobile sites show that recognition of mobile advertisements is particularly high, higher than was measured on online advertisements: 50% of respondents on average remembered having seen the advertisement on their mobile devices, while advertisements measured on Web sites were recognised 33% of the time. The recognition of mobile advertisements is up to 60%.
   
   Attribution, or remembering the right brand, is also a bit higher – 65% on average for mobile advertisements and 52% for Web sites. The differences in this area, however, are being measured between very well-known and less well-known brands.
   
   In an impact measurement for a niche brand, the general attribution was lower because not everyone knows the brand, while in the case of an advertisement for a well-known retailer, 89% of respondents attributed the brand correctly.
   
   This means that an average effective score is 35% for mobile advertisements versus 18% for online advertisements (this is the percentage of those who saw the advertisement and correctly attributed it).
   

   

2. Higher impact scores among young people.
   
   All the mobile advertisements measured score particularly well in the 18-to-34 target group. Naturally, this is the case for campaigns specifically targeted at this target group, but advertisements for a wider audience also had a higher impact among younger age groups.
   
   The graph below shows the results for a retailer advert aimed at a wide audience. The campaign scores very well on all aspects, but the results are particularly strong in the youngest group.

Be sure to remember:

• Advertisers who want to reach out to young people cannot neglect mobile news Web sites and apps.
  
  
• The initial mobile campaign measurements show high impact scores in comparison to online campaigns.
  
  
• The impact scores are the highest in the younger target group (18-34).
  
  
• This is the case for campaigns not only for brands aimed at young people but also for general brands.
  
  
• A questionnaire with adapted content and format gets a higher response in mobile data collection.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .