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PhD Defense - Jiaping Gui
Fri, Jun 15, 2018 @ 09:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Title: Utilizing User Feedback to Assist Software Developers to Better Use Mobile Ads in Apps
PhD Candidate: Jiaping Gui
June 15th
9am - 11:30am
SAL 322
Committee:
William G.J. Halfond (Chair)
Nenad Medvidovic
Chao Wang
Jyotirmoy Deshmukh
Paul Bogdan (EE department, outside member)
Meiyappan Nagappan (U of Waterloo, outside member)
Abstract:
In the mobile app ecosystem, developers receive ad revenue by placing ads in their apps and releasing them for free. While there is evidence that users do not like ads, we do not know what are the aspects of ads that users dislike nor if they dislike certain aspects of ads more than the others. Therefore, in the first piece of my dissertation work, I analyzed the different ad related topics of ad reviews from users. In order to do this, I investigated app reviews that users gave for apps in the app store that were about ads. I found that most ad complaints were about UI related topics and three topics discussed predominantly were: the frequency with which ads were displayed, the timing of when ads were displayed, and the location of the displayed ads. I also found users reviewed non UI aspects of mobile advertising, such as ads blocking or slowing down the host app's running. Then I quantified different ad metrics corresponding to both UI and non UI ad aspects that were complained about most by end users. In the end, I correlated these quantified ad aspects with app ratings. For non UI ad aspects, I found that complaints about these aspects were significant and could impact the ratings (on a scale of one to five stars) given to an app. For UI ad aspects, I found that lower ratings (with statistical significance) were generally associated with apps that had different visual patterns regarding ad implementation, such as ads in the middle or bottom of the page, and ads in the initial landing page of an app, Based on the results, a set of guidelines were distilled to help app developers more effectively use ads in their apps.
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 322
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
