Students Ready to Accept Cell Phone Ads - For a Price

Advertisers are increasingly using cell phones to reach college students, and they are finding a receptive audience, says a new study by Ball State University. A survey of 669 students at Ball State in November found a third of students are receiving ads on their cell phones, an increase of 9% from the initial study on the issue conducted earlier this year by Michael Hanley, an assistant professor of advertising in the journalism department.

"Cell phone ads to college students are growing at a rapid pace," he said. "Advertisers have a hard time reaching students using traditional media. The cell phone offers advertisers a direct pathway to students through a highly personal medium. The key is to find a way for an ad message to be accepted, not rejected."

The survey found students would not mind being paid to be easy targets for advertisers, an idea that would be highly controversial for many advertisers, Hanley said. The survey was conducted in cooperation with Ball State's Center for Media Design.

"Students are showing less resistance to receiving ads on their cell phones, but they still want to be able to control the amount and type of ads they receive," he said. "When we asked them what it would take to accept ads, they told us freebies or money. The pay-per-ad option got the best response."

The survey found that 40% of students would accept each ad for 25 cents or less, while 60% said it would take $1 or more per ad.

The online study of college students also found:

• About 96 percent have a cell phone.
• Nearly 70 percent have cell phones with Internet access.
• Twenty percent have received a cell ad from a person or business they did not know.
• Only one-third of students who received cell phone ads were annoyed to get an advertisement, down from 92 percent from the previous study.
• About 55 percent are less likely to purchase a product from a business sending a cell phone ad.
• Nearly 66 percent of the students would accept cell phone ads if they were paid to receive them.

Hanley said that as cell phones become more sophisticated with additional multimedia applications, so will the advertising industry.

"Advertisers who cater to the interactive and visual needs of college students will be rewarded," he said. "There will always be those students who don't want ads on their cell phones, but others will eventually accept ads that engage them and let them control the ad space. That, and a quarter per ad, will motivate students pretty fast."

Hanley's study is a follow-up to his February 2005 survey of Ball State students and their use of cell phones, text messaging and instant messaging."

Posted to the site on 12th December 2005