An integrated effectiveness framework of mobile in-app advertising

Considering mobile in-app advertising as a subject of its own, this study examines the roles, goals, and controlled factors of all participants to create an integrated framework for mobile in-app advertising. The main emphasis is on the app publisher - who has earned the least publicity in the advertisement literature, almost absent in previous effectiveness frameworks, mobile and non-mobile. However, their aim of optimising revenue often contradicts other participants. This study ultimately aimed to identify the publishers-controlled factors and evaluate their impacts on mobile in-app advertising effectiveness. It also aimed to construct an integrated effectiveness framework for mobile in-app advertising and evaluate the moderating effects of factors controlled by advertisers, consumers and ad networks on the relationships between publishers-controlled factors and the mobile in-app advertising effectiveness. Consequently, in this study, four publishers-controlled factors are detected and used to assess the interactive effects. An online experiment was set up to test the research's conceptual model. A common goal of participants and a common outcome metric were also formulated in this study. An integrated effectiveness framework was subsequently built around that common goal. Enhancing the common outcome metric is to enhance the effectiveness of all participants. The framework was tested successfully with the data of more than 15,000 ad impressions, more than 800 ad clicks from thousands of mobile users in more than 160 countries worldwide. This study employed both proportional z-test and analysis of variance techniques to test the main effects of publishers-controlled factors in the data analysis phase. To test the moderating effects, both Structured Equation Modelling-based Multigroup Moderation Analysis and regression-based Moderated Regression Analysis techniques were then used. The use of more than one statistics technique is called method triangulation. Its purpose is to cross-check each other technique's results and improve the credibility of the findings. Mobile in-app advertising is a new subject. This study is one of the first attempts to dig into this promising area, searching for new knowledge about its participants, its roles, its goals, its outcome metrics and its factors. Considering mobile in-app advertising as a subject of its own, theoretically, this study contributes with an integrated effectiveness framework, including new conceptual constructs and relationships. Practically, the study suggests newly integrated advertising strategies associated with publishers to enhance the effectiveness of mobile in-app advertising further. By which, this study could help to increase the global mobile in-app advertising revenue significantly higher by balancing the benefits of all participants involved.