Mobile ads study

The research question

Participants completed the survey on their own mobile devices, rating twelve ad types — banners, tiles, native units, expanding ads and full-screen interstitials — first individually and then head to head. Two fictional ad sets were used to check for content bias.

Method and sample

2,001 mobile ad-blocking users surveyed in 2018: 1,000 in the US, 500 in France, 501 in Germany. About 70% were aged 18–34 at the time, in line with typical ad-blocker demographics for that period.

Main findings

• —Four formats exceeded the 35% disruption threshold: the animated mid-content 1x1 tile, the animated expanding bottom-sticky ad, and the animated full-screen prestitial and postitial.
• —Eight formats fell below it, including all three native units (search, suggested tiles, in-feed) and the static 6x1 horizontal banners.
• —Participants named ad size and placement as the two factors that mattered most; animation mattered, content barely registered.
• —Ads in the browser on mobile ranked second only to online video as the most disruptive advertising people encounter anywhere.
• —Two in-content placements were not rated very disruptive, which the report reads as possible banner blindness extending to static mobile tiles.
• —This study’s results describe how users rated these formats in 2018; they are not the same as the Standard’s current formal requirements for mobile ads, which are set out separately. See the current Standard, §4 (Mobile Ads: Placement, Coverage and Size), and its related exceptions in §5–§6.

Rankings from three separate metrics agreed closely, which the report treats as evidence participants rated consistently.

Limitations and context

• —Three markets only, and no non-ad-blocking control group to compare against.
• —Video ads were excluded from the twelve formats tested.
• —Only one animation style was tested, so results may not generalise to all animated ads.
• —The two fictional ad sets were not fully neutral in subject matter.