LAUSR

Many free mobile applications are supported by advertising. Ads can greatly affect user perceptions and behavior. In mobile apps, ads often follow a “native” format: they are designed to conform in both format and style to the actual content and context of the application. Clicking on the ad leads users to a second destination, outside of the hosting app, where the unified experience provided by native ads within the app is not necessarily reflected by the landing page the user arrives at. Little is known about whether and how this type of mobile ads is impacting user experience. In this paper, we use both quantitative and qualitative methods to study the impact of two design decisions for the landing page of a native ad on the user experience: (i) native ad style (following the style of the application) versus a non‐native ad style; and (ii) pages with multimedia versus static pages. We found considerable variability in terms of user experience with mobile ad landing pages when varying presentation style and multimedia usage, especially interaction between presence of video and ad style (native or non‐native). We also discuss insights and recommendations for improving the user experience with mobile native ads.