Effects of Message Characteristics, Age, and Gender on Perceptions of Mobile Advertising – An Empirical Investigation among College Students

A tremendous opportunity emerges for marketers to push effective advertisements to target audiences. One forecast suggests mobile advertising will represent one-fifth of the global Internet advertising revenue by 2011, generating $14.4 billion of revenue. Hence, the need for knowledge advances in this fairly young area is warranted. A study of 344 U.S. college students was conducted to answer two questions in the context of mobile message advertising via SMS: i) How does a mobile advertisement's message length affect the receiving mobile user's attitude toward the advertisement? Ii) Are there age and gender differences in the evaluation of SMS-based mobile advertisements? A PLS-based data analysis offers support for the positive effects of mobile ads' message length on the perceived informativeness and entertainment of the mobile ad, which in turn positively influence both attitude toward the mobile ad and the mobile user's intention to click through it and learn more about the advertised brand. Gender effects were found regarding perceptions of a mobile ad's informativeness. Specifically, women reported higher levels for all dependent constructs, i.e. informativeness and entertainment of the mobile ads, attitude toward the ads, and intention to click through and learn more. Also, age was shown to negatively influence the attitude toward the mobile ad, i.e. older users reported lower levels regarding the mobile ad's value, their attitude toward the ads, and their likelihood to click through than younger users. Implications for both theory and practice are also discussed, including an expanded model regarding mobile advertising effectiveness with high explanatory power (i.e. 69% of the variance in the attitude toward mobile ads and 54% of the variance in the behavioral intention to respond to the ad by clicking through was explained).