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Mobile advertisements (ads) based on rich media are the de facto standard (Son et al., 2017). Almost all the countries in the world right now have affordable 4G mobile services (Hanif et al., 2018). The presence of smartphones at low cost has enabled consumers to have multiple apps on their smartphones (Om & Tucker, 2018). These developments have created a huge mobile app market (Tam et al., 2018). App acceptance is very high among consumers (Malik et al., 2017). Cellular services such as SMS and Voice calls are limited in terms of media richness (Farooq & Raju, 2019). Cellular services-based ads are disliked by a large proportion of consumers (Iqbal et al., 2017). Consumers simply ignore or delete SMS ads (Dix et al., 2016). In-app ads is the preferred way of communication with general consumers (Pouyioukka et al., 2019).
With the huge acceptance of smartphone apps, it is logical for mobile ads to shift to in-app ads (Truong et al., 2019). These ads are commonly referred to as in-app ads since they appear within an app (Michelle et al., 2015). Considering the significance of apps in enabling in-app ads, it is logical to consider app features as influencing the acceptance of in-app ads (Azila et al., 2014). However, literature is very limited on this front. Most of the app features studied are similar to those of web browser apps which were studied a decade back (Li et al., 2018). Very few studies exist in which modern app features have been studied (Kapoor & Vij, 2018; Ray et al., 2019).
Collaboration is a very promising app feature. Collaboration can be between app developers, advertisers, service providers, payment handlers, and delivery providers (Degirmenci, 2020). Collaboration can be also with an end consumer. Collaboration is the opposite of competition. Laws exist on anti-competitive strategies. These strategies may harm consumers due to the excessive linkage of service providers. The low competition also decreases the need for innovation and stops bringing new products/ services. Among the most prominent factors influencing intention to interact with mobile ads is incentives a consumer receives for interacting with mobile ads (De Silva & Yan, 2017; Lee & Shin, 2017). For underdeveloped markets, incentives have both positive and negative implications. Incentives are often considered fake (PTA, 2017). Incentives are the reason consumers do not accept mobile ads due to their experience of fraud (PTA, 2017; Shaheen et al., 2017). Often these ads were received through the SMS channel. SMS messages can be sent by fraudulent numbers, and it is difficult to confirm the authenticity of SMS ads. In-app ads are quite different from SMS ads. Very little research exists on Pakistani consumers’ acceptance of in-app ads especially considering their views on authenticity and perceptions about collaboration and incentives offered in in-app ads. In this research, relevancy of incentives and collaboration in case of implementing in-app ads are studied.