Publication
Gamified Ads: Bridging the Gap Between User Enjoyment and the Effectiveness of Online Ads
Maximilian Altmeyer; Kathrin Dernbecher; Vladislav Hnatovskiy; Marc Schubhan; Pascal Lessel; Antonio Krüger
In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings. ACM International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI-2019), May 4-9, Glasgow, United Kingdom, ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05, ACM, New York, 2019.
Abstract
While the use of ad blockers prevents negative impacts of advertising on user experience, it poses a serious threat to the business model of commercial web services and freely
available content on the web. As an alternative, we investigate the user enjoyment and the advertising effectiveness of playfully deactivating online ads.We created eight game concepts, performed a pre-study assessing the users’ perception of them (N=50) and implemented three well-perceived ones. In a lab study (N=72), we found that these game concepts are more enjoyable than deactivating ads without game elements. Additionally, one game concept was even preferred over using an ad blocker. Notably, playfully deactivating ads was shown to have a positive impact on users’ brand and product memory, enhancing the advertising effectiveness. Thus, our results indicate that playfully deactivating ads is a promising way of bridging the gap between user enjoyment and effective advertising.