Yesterday MediaPost covered a case study/mobile ad campaign from Continental Airlines that appeared on WhitePages.com's iPhone app and its iPhone mobile website. Continental and WhitePages had expected ad performance (as measured by CTRs and bookings) to be better on the app than on the mobile website.

But that was not the case. In fact the iPhone mobile web version of the same ad creative performed better than the app.

I reached out to WhitePages to get more insight and information. The company shared their slides about the campaign with me. Here was the ad creative shown on the WhitePages mobile website and in the company's iPhone app -- essentially identical:

Here's what WhitePages and Continental found in terms of consumer response to this same creative in the two iPhone environments:

How did the WhitePages and Continental attempt to explain the outcomes of this campaign; and what other insights emerged?

• Task oriented utility app users don’t want to leave the app
• Top banner ad placements performed better than bottom ads
• Day part targeting has potential (heavy travel searches late in the day)

As the bold bullet above asserts, they observed and inferred a reluctance by users to click on the app ad and potentially leave the app environment. This is a very interesting finding and requires more investigation. 

There were also some open questions that WhitePages, Continental and its agency partner said needed further study:

• Is mobile is best for reaching, servicing and up-selling existing customers?
• Are bigger incentives needed to drive ticket purchases in the mobile environment?
• Are mobile internet users still hesitant to purchase high consideration/price items?

This study should not be too broadly generalized; it's one campaign. But it raises interesting questions about in-app vs. mobile Web advertising and how they might be used differently or in complementary ways -- assuming similar results or outcomes are observed by others.

I'm grateful to WhitePages for sharing this data because marketers are still in a largely experimental stage with mobile advertising and the marketplace still needs a great deal of education about "best practices" and successful case studies.