Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jan 22, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 27, 2025 - Mar 24, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 4, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Population-Level Dissemination of a Smoking Cessation Smartphone App: Quasi-Experimental Comparison of Values-Based Messages in Social Media Advertisements
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cigarette smoking is prevalent in many countries worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, presenting an urgent public health challenge. Disseminating freely available smoking cessation treatments that effectively decrease cigarette smoking globally are urgently needed.
Objective:
Identify the highest impact and most cost-effective values-based social media advertisements (ads) to disseminate our smoking cessation smartphone application (app), “iCanQuit”, among adults living in seven major cities of India. Values represented in the ads included family, relationships, self-care, health, and self-control.
Methods:
Ad exposure impact on app engagement was measured via several metrics, including click-through rate (CTR, i.e., the likelihood of user clicks on an ad after seeing it), the number of app installs (i.e., a user opening the app for the first time after downloading it), and the number of app sessions (i.e., app utilization). Cost efficiency was measured via cost per click and cost per install for each ad.
Results:
Overall, the CTR was 5%. The app was installed 5,111 times. The average cost per click and cost per app install across all ads were $0.006 and $6.43, respectively. The ads with the lowest cost per install (range: $4.83 to $5.16) and highest CTR (between 6% and 9%) focused on the values of family, health, and self-control. Ads focused on the values of relationships and self-care had modestly higher levels of engagement.
Conclusions:
Ads focusing on the values of family, health, and self-control had the highest potential reach at the lowest cost. Overall, these findings provide insights into the reach and cost-effectiveness of values-based messages in social media advertisement, guiding future outreach efforts for population-level dissemination of smoking cessation apps. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier, NCT02724462
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Copyright
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