Tag: Interactive Advertising Bureau

Half of adults use mobile commerce before heading to stores

| December 7, 2015

The results of a recent Interactive Advertising Bureau study showed shoppers research before making the trip.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has now released the results of a recent study which revealed that about half of all adult consumers are using mobile commerce to look into products before they head to brick and mortar shops.

This insight could be exceptionally important to retailers that are hoping to draw shoppers into their stores.

Many people do their product research ahead of time using mobile commerce tools, but still want to be able to see the product in real life before they actually make their final purchase. The practice is known as “showrooming” and it is quite popular particularly among shoppers in younger age brackets. This practice can occur when a customer has already decided that they want to buy a product after having read about it on a mobile device but they’d like to see the physical item before actually purchasing it, or it could happen the other way around.

Showrooming also involves customers seeing an item in-store and using mobile commerce to find a better price.

Adults use mobile commerce before going to storesInterestingly, although many retailers have felt threatened by this process as they believe people will simply come to the shop to check out the item but then buy online at a place that sells it for a lower price, the research found that this was not necessarily true. The IAB study indicated that shoppers will typically end up buying the product from within a physical store location after having looked it up online.

The important thing to note is that while they may have looked at a product in store and used m-commerce to find better prices, the store in which the showrooming has happened is not necessarily the one where the purchase has been made. Sometimes customers will visit the most convenient location to look at the item but will then travel to another shop if they find a better price for it there, through the use of their mobile devices.

Millennials are especially in the habit of using this mobile commerce technique. Over two thirds of shoppers in that generation use showrooming. Still, they are more likely to head to another physical store to buy the product than to stay in the current one if they can find a better deal. Shoppers in older generations will often stay within the same store unless the deal offered elsewhere is especially enticing.

Mobile ads aren’t impressing women

| August 15, 2014

Recent research is showing that overall, female smartphone users are indifferent to advertising.

According to the results of a lengthy study that has been observing the responses that women are having to mobile ads, it has been determined that it is actually quite challenging to be able to consistently connect with female consumers.

The IAB, itself, has now released a statement that has said that this is actually a very difficult goal to achieve.

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is usually a strong proponent of virtually every kind of digital and mobile ads in their various technologies and formats, but it has stated that “it’s a challenge to find consistent mobile advertising success stories, when it comes to the women that they recently asked after a study that has been running for over half a year. It partnered with the Real Women Talking Community from the MXM (Meredith Xcelerated Marketing) agency near the end of 2013, in order to be able to better understand the responses that women have to smartphone advertising.

There were approximately 100 women who were asked about the responses that they had to mobile ads.

Mobile ads - Women are unimpressedThese women were asked their opinions about various types of advertising and were asked to provide a screenshot of the actual mobile advertisement that they were seeing. What was found was that a number of the smartphone ads were either not functioning properly or they were simply not connecting with the women who saw them.

Many of the women who participated in this research essentially stated that the only thing that they liked about banner ads that were displayed on their mobile devices was that it was easy to either ignore them or to simply get rid of them. One women pointed out one of the true struggles that are associated with the typical type of interruptive ads on smartphones and the way in which they differ from the PC banner experience. She said that “When I’m on my phone, I’m needing to do something quickly and [ads] can get in the way,” meaning that they are not only being ignored, but they’re being actively disliked.

Similarly, another woman pointed out that mobile ads are a technical failure on small device screens because they take up too much space and at the wrong times. She will then blame the advertiser for the inconvenience and builds a negative impression of that brand or product.