Background/Purpose:

CDC is pilot-testing a multi-modal marketing campaign to promote self-management education (SME) as a chronic disease management strategy. The campaign targets adults ages 45-75 with any chronic condition, including arthritis. The campaign includes both earned and paid media (i.e., radio, out-of-home, print, and digital advertising) with a call-to-action to visit www.cdc.gov/LearnMoreFeelBetter to learn more about SME.

Formative audience research indicated that consumers preferred “ongoing” over “chronic” to describe their health condition, but paradoxically, they used “chronic” when describing their condition.

One element of the paid media campaign strategy is the presentation of digital ads (similar to pop-up ads) to desktop computers, tablets, and smart phones to consumers likely to have chronic conditions. Digital ads were used in the first 9 weeks of the campaign pilot-test (January 23-March 26, 2017).

The purposes of this observational study are to determine whether: 1) “ongoing” or “chronic” terminology in ads is more productive, and 2) ads presented via desktop computer or mobile device (tablet, smartphone) are more productive.

Methods:

Two versions of the digital ads were produced; ads were identical except for the use of “ongoing” or “chronic.”

A commercial vendor distributed the digital ads to consumers likely to have a chronic disease using a proprietary algorithm that used demographic and consumer spending data to identify consumers likely to have chronic conditions.

Ad productivity was defined as visits to the campaign home page and data was collected using Site Catalyst, a web analytics software program.

Productivity was measured in 3 ways:

1. Click thru Rate: Percentage of people who clicked on the ad out of all exposed to ad;

2. Cost per Click: Total costs to run ad to the device divided by number of clicks;

3. Minutes on Site: Average number of minutes spent on the site by those who clicked through from ad to campaign website.

Results:

A total of 8,887 visits (from all sources) were made to the campaign home page during the first flight of digital ads. The following table reports productivity of digital ads by Click-Thru Rate, Cost per Click and Minutes on Site for ads using “ongoing” or “chronic” terminology.

Conclusion:

Results were consistent across all 3 measures of productivity. Although audience research suggested that consumers prefer “ongoing” to “chronic“ in describing their health condition, ads using either term were similarly productive in prompting consumers to visit the campaign home page. Ads can use either “ongoing” or “chronic” to describe long-term health conditions with equal effectiveness.

However, ads appearing on mobile devices were nearly 3 times as productive as ads appearing on desktop computers across all 3 measures. If dollars are limited, placing digital ads on mobile devices, rather than desktop computers, will be a better investment.

« Back to 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/if-mobile-advertising-is-the-future-the-future-is-now-productivity-of-digital-ads-by-terminology-and-delivery-device/