More than half of college students would consider accepting text-messaged ads on their cell phones if they got something free in exchange.
That’s the finding of a conducted by advertising professor and mobile marketing researcher Michael Hanley at Indiana’s Ball State University. Hanley found that 56.3% of student respondents said they would permit ads if they came with an offer of free content. About 37.4% said the offer of a free ringtone would be enough, while 21.4% would rather have a discount or a coupon redeemable at a local restaurant, movie or grocery store.
And 21.4% said they would expect free mobile minutes, service upgrades, music downloads or access to the mobile Web as a trade-off for being targeted with SMS ads.
“Just a couple of years ago, few college students accepted ads on their mobile devices because they felt it was an invasion of their privacy,” Hanley said in a release. “Now all y9ou have to do is offer free ringtones, cash or access to the Internet because this age group has grown up with cell phones and other mobile devices.”
In fact, collegians were generally less concerned today about how businesses got their mobile contact information than they had been in 2005. In that two-year span, the proportion who said they were “very concerned” about marketers getting that contact information dropped by 25%, while the group who were “concerned a little” shrank by 33%.
Hanley’s research found that 36.7% of college students received a text-message ad in 2007, a 13% increase from 2005.
Other discoveries about student cell phone use contained in Hanley’s research:
* 33% more college students had video cameras in their phone in 2007 than in 2005.
* 50% of respondents downloaded a ringtone in 2007, up from 8.5% in 2005. Twenty percent reported downloading wallpaper or screensavers to their phones, up 18.1% from 2005.
* 40% reported sending photos via cell phone or e-mail, up 10% from 2005.
* 10% sent videos to another cell phone or e-mail inbox in 2007, up 7%.
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