All along we have been led to believe of the (potential) power of mobile and social media advertising. Afterall, considering the reach of both mobile devices and social media, it is only logical to expect that advertising here will work. Yet, marketers need to be a bit cautious, if some recent studies reported by eMarketer are any indication.

According to results from an Advertising Age survey, while users (US users, mind you) were more favourable to ads in magazines, newspapers, TV and out-of-home, they had extremely strong dislike for advertising on mobile phones, e-mail, social networks, and even websites. E-mail and mobile phone advertising had the strongest ‘dislike’ factor among users surveyed. We suspect it is because of the perceived intrusiveness of advertising in these media.

Focus on informative and relevant ads
What does this mean for digital marketers? Well, as a study by Yahoo! and The Nielsen company shows, focus on creating ads being more informative and relevant to users rather than graphical and multimedia aspects. Another suggestion is to pay closer attention to ad formats and placements.