Effectiveness of In-app Advertising in the Context of the Chinese Market: A Study of the App “RED”

Mobile advertising has been discovered as a promising industry worthy of billion pounds. Mobile devices and applications are permeating into consumers’ life in all aspects and keep enlarging their influences. Go with the global tide of mobile development, in-app advertising has become the fastest growing area with enormous benefits. Hence the effectiveness of in-app advertising is of great research value and the key is to measure consumers’ attitude. However, most existing studies focus on other forms of mobile advertising which have long histories but decreasing influences. There are not many academic studies about in-app advertising particularly. Some studies have researched the influential factors behind in-app advertising effects but in different contexts. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of in-app advertising in the Chinese market. “RED” is chosen as the research app due to its large user numbers and rich in-app advertisements. Based on previous literature, an integrated research model is proposed. This model is examined with survey data of 272 respondents and a revised model is proposed after the examination. The revised model can explain about 70 percent of consumers’ attitude towards in-app advertising. Specifically, seven factors are examined and four factors are identified to be important. They are Informativeness, Irritation, Interactivity, and Permission, ranking by the strength of influence. Besides, three demographic factors are also taken into examination for deeper interpretation of consumers’ attitude. Implications of this study are discussed both theoretically and practically