Mobile viewport tracking as means to measure (incidental) ad exposure
(A2019-8453)

AUTHORS

Lennard Schmidt, HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management; Erik Maier, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management

KEYWORDS

mobile marketing; incidental ad exposure; eye-tracking

ABSTRACT

Mobile ads are increasingly used to raise consumers’ awareness, but managers need to assess exposure to optimize these ads. Means to measure ad exposure from practice (clicks, exposure count) or research (eye-tracking) are limited in that they ignore incidental information or are difficult to administer. We introduce viewport tracking as novel approach for measuring expo-sure on mobile phones, which has equal predictive power than eye-tracking, but offers more information. This novel method allows to continuously capture objects visible on consumers’ phones through a simple script (available from us for replication). Viewport tracking is not only valuable for research on digital advertising and incidental exposure, but can help to an-swer several calls research calls (e.g., on mobile browsing), by offering a measurement tech-nique that provides granular information and works also in field settings. Viewport tracking also allows customer tracking without clicks (e.g., for retargeting).