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Rich more likely to appreciate mobile advertising concludes BBC study

BBC_WorldNews_Stack_Rev_RGB [Converted]Affluent readers are more open to seeing adverts on their smartphones and are more likely to view it as a sign of a dynamic brand than the general population, a study by the BBC has suggested.

A survey comparing the habits of 6,000 smartphone users in Australia and five other countries found over a third (36 per cent) of the wealthiest people are are happy to see ads on mobile websites, while just over a fifth (22 per cent) of affluent Australians surveyed said brands need to be on mobile to be modern and dynamic, compared to just 10 per cent of the general population who agreed with this premise.

BBC World News conducted the survey with Millward Brown to assess the engagement of its readership on its global news platform BBC.com, which the broadcaster claims reaches a high proportion of affluent consumers.

Carolyn Gibson, head of international ad sales for BBC Worldwide said the BBC carries a lot of brand advertising and was interested to see what that meant for mobile, and whether it was the right environment to reach an upscale consumer.

She told Mumbrella: “Most of the studies on mobile haven’t taken that approach so we wanted to look at something specific to upscale consumers around the world to find out how they prefer to access news. And critically for advertisers, how that advertising is resonating with those consumers, compared to the general population.”

Gibson

Gibson

The survey found just over half (51 per cent) of the highest 20 per cent income earners assessed in Australia, Germany, Sweden, India, Hong Kong and the US use their phones for business compared with 40 per cent of the general population.

However, in Australia that number dropped to 39 per cent, compared with 30 per cent of general users, however Gibson claimed it was still a significant finding for B2B advertisers.

“The broad messaging is that it’s a really important work tool,” she said. “Increasingly those upscale consumers are wanting to access news via mobile and are more likely to do so than the general population. So for us that was quite critical because it’s a really important part of our audience.”

The study also found 34 per cent of affluent Australians said they access news directly via news sites on their mobile phones rather than on apps (22 per cent). Globally this rate is 37 per cent.

In addition more than a third (36 per cent) of affluent Australians, said they were happy to see ads on free mobile websites, with the trend at 41 per cent globally.

Gibson said: “Because upscale consumers have the latest handsets, the advertising is resonating with them very strongly, and they are very engaged with the content compared with the general population.

“The critical piece that we wanted to identify is whether the brand message is getting across, are those brand metrics moving, and are upscale consumers likely to act on that advertising?

“And the results were very positive. We were able to look at that compared to general population, but also compared to desktop, and the really interesting fact was how much more effective mobile brand advertising is than brand advertising on a desktop for that group. Considerably more – four times more.”

This number is increased by 15 per cent for breaking news, while 28 per cent were more likely to read business or finance news.

Gibson said the BBC is also one of the most shared news sources on social media and it has taken advantage of this by sending out a daily blog and twice weekly video called BBC Trending, looking at the most shared stories and the reasons why they are being shared.

She said: “It’s taking the unique ability of the BBC’s journalistic resource to take a trend and strip it back and look at why and where it started, and turn that into a real piece of analysis presented in a way that works in social media, covering a myriad of different topics and distributed organically to over 5m followers on Twitter.

“An advertiser can associate that content in pre-roll sponsorship and have partnership with Twitter Amplify, so they can amplify that with a sponsor’s message.”

The survey also looked at the impact different devices have on news consumption and found those with the latest handsets are 10 per cent more likely to stream content or watch news videos.

Gibson said: “There are some really interesting facts about the latest generation handsets, and how the more you can do with that handset the more powerful the advertising is, so you can start to see the impact of the engagement levels with advertising being related to the level of technology of your phone.”

The findings follow BBC Worldwide’s 2012 study that found 59 per cent of affluent consumers expected to consume more news on their mobiles in the next five years. And it showed that compared with 2012, 34 per cent more people are reading news on their mobiles rather than using them to just scan the headlines.

Megan Reynolds

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