In-app advertising involves advertising products and services using apps installed on our smartphones and sites we visit on social media platforms when we are watching commercial breaks in the middle of TV programs. The topic also focuses on the effect these adverts have on the youth, who are the main audience on this platform, and how it affects society, personal spending, and the economy as a whole.
Marketing using digital platforms is fast growing, with an average youth spending at least three hours on a daily basis on smartphones; one-third of this time is usually spent on the apps on the smartphone. This creates a whole new platform for developing new apps and advertising formats to be used in the apps. Estimates have been made projecting that mobile advertising reaches more than six billion individuals on a daily basis. These advertisements, however, should be affordable and effective as they have quite a huge impact on the youth’s attitude and their overall purchasing power. Credibility, entertainment, and informativeness of the app play a huge role in the mass usage of the app, as they form a positive attitude towards the app, the advertisements, and the overall intentions of acquiring the product or service being offered.
The consumer’s attitude and intentions in purchasing a product hold a significant prediction of how well the new service or product will be accepted in the market. Consumer attitude also has a big impact on how the consumer can create a whole new chain of awareness among his peers and social groups who are most likely to adopt the new product as it is being referred by one of the members. The majority of consumers judge a product on the basis of entertainment, which is the enjoyment of being associated with the said message (Shklovski, 2014, pp.2347-2356). Information focuses the ability of the advert in delivering timely and up to date information pertaining a particular product. Irritation means over-manipulation of the consumer, which usually leads to a negative and significant relationship between the consumer and the advertised product or service. The credibility of the advert is one of its key constructs as it establishes the consumer’s perception of the believability and truthfulness of the advert. It also has a great influence on the advert value and overall expense to be incurred.
The wide use of smartphones has brought a huge revolution in the industry of app development. Consumers usually use apps about their utility; thus, brands try to reach out to these consumers through banner ads or by creating unique specific apps for the brand. This provides a very fast platform and also an economical way of communicating with potential consumers, compared with other direct media like direct mail or telephone. Youths have an affinity attitude toward technology; there is high disposable income as a result of adopting new tech faster as they download all kinds of apps for entertainment or utility. The youth market is the most sought market; this motivates the use of well-known and famous athletes in an attempt to gain access to the intended audience. In modern society, influential speakers are being drowned by sports celebrities as they are attractive and also have likeable qualities (Park, 2011, pp. 438-446). This position is quite desirable to the youths who try to idolize these athletes by keeping up to date with what they are doing, the hairstyle on the play, and the shoes or attire they are wearing so that they can keep up with the trend.
The effectiveness of using celebrities on endorsements is that the consumers usually have a preconceived image of how the celebrity looks on the advertised brand. They, in turn, relate the product to their image as the product has gained the customer’s trustworthiness, likeability, believability, and persuasiveness. The idea here is to create a link between the consumer and the product so that when the consumer sees, follows or has an engagement with the celebrity, the advertised product also comes to mind. For example, when there is mention of men’s underwear going by the brand name Hanes, many consumers will automatically think of Michael Jordan as the face of the advert; thus, this image usually influences the consumer when procuring the advertised product.
The well-being of youths is a major task. The topic going around is how these young individuals are usually influenced, and it is undergoing a lot of examination (Chen, 2013, pp. 196-203). An example is the effects these adverts have on decisions on food purchasing. This makes youths a target of advertising agencies and firms. The adverts have a lot of effects on the youths, and they usually define the masculinity of many youths. It is estimated that youths usually spend around $153 billion annually on computers, clothes, and cars. This is mainly for consumers’ socialization in society, and it is also by which youths acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills relevant to their day-to-day functions as consumers in the available marketplace. The influence and impact of adverts and exposure to media can be seen through the purchasing power they have in the market.
A study done on cigarette adverts and their effects on the youth is very prominent. There are a lot of concerns that many individuals are starting to smoke due to much exposure to these adverts. The study shows that a significant number of youths will view advertisements for cigarettes in magazines, social media, and in-app ads. It’s not conclusive enough to say that cigarette companies are aiming at the young generation with their adverts, but the influence these adverts have on the future attitude of the young generation is quite strong (Shen, 2015, pp. 2317-2321). The influence these ads have on youths making good and appropriate future decisions is not much emphasized, but it only focuses on the negative impacts the ads have on the young generation.
The study has shown that a lot of exposure to the media usually creates a certain reaction in individuals. These create a lot of concerns because it is not only the individual form at stake but also the well-being of the whole society in general. The study shows that many of the youths are influenced easily by these ads in media and the overall impact they have on culture and its economics (Moschis, 1982, pp. 279-286). The purchasing decisions made by youths account for a significant and huge amount of cash. This is one of the main reasons why ad companies usually target this young generation. In addition, using celebrities in their adverts creates a further and much-lasting influence on the younger generation.
The problem that has not been addressed is whether these adverts affect the young generation in terms of their materialism in the real world. This is something which can be observed easily. The problems come when images of celebrities are used to mediate the ads, does this increase the teenage materialism. The question is, will the appearance of these celebrities in the adverts increase the young generation’s materialistic behaviour while relating to desires they have for the product? The association of the young generation with their celebrities usually affects the way they respond to the adverts featuring the celebrities.
Many adverts use manipulative tactics that have an influence on her even without the consumer realizing it. Despite trying to ignore them or coming into contact with them and how much effect they have on the young generation. We come into contact with ads every day, whether before watching a movie or be it on the web page, commercial breaks in the middle of the television shows and they are felt like interruptions (Wakefield, 2003, pp. 229-247). Many individuals don’t want to see this as the case because they have to lead themselves to believe that they are actually in control of the choices they make. These adverts usually create something moving and more complex, with cinematic messages designed to make significant memories about the particular product. The memories are created whether the adverts create a positive or negative as they can trigger the emotional response, which usually has the profound effect the ads have on the choices the youths make. Not all ads have a negative impact, but there is no possibility of avoiding them whenever we are on our phones.
In conclusion, we see that the effects of in-app advertising are very damaging to the young generations. This is because most of the judgment made when purchasing goods or services is not based on the quality of the product or service but by just how it was advertised or just because he/she is a fan of the celebrity used as the face of the brand, product or service. This implication also has a lot of effects on the economy as the young generation is spending much of its resources on products and items they are not going to need in a couple of months or years.
Reference
Shklovski, I., Mainwaring, S. D., Skúladóttir, H. H., & Borgthorsson, H. (2014, April). Leakiness and creepiness in-app space: Perceptions of privacy and mobile app use. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2347-2356). ACM.
Park, B. W., & Lee, K. C. (2011, April). The effect of users’ characteristics and experiential factors on the compulsive usage of the smartphone. In International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Multimedia Applications (pp. 438-446). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Chen, Y., Zhu, S., Xu, H., & Zhou, Y. (2013, September). Children’s Exposure to Mobile In-App Advertising: An Analysis of Content Appropriateness. In Social Computing (SocialCom), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 196-203). IEEE.
Shen, G. C. C. (2015). Users’ adoption of mobile applications: Product type and message framing’s moderating effect. Journal of Business Research, 68(11), 2317-2321.
Wakefield, M., Flay, B., Nichter, M., & Giovino, G. (2003). Effects of anti-smoking advertising on youth smoking: a review. Journal of Health Communication, 8(3), 229-247.
Moschis, G. P., & Moore, R. L. (1982). A longitudinal study of television advertising effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(3), 279-286.
