There’s no such thing as free—especially with smartphone apps, according to a new study.
“Ads in ‘free’ apps drain your phone’s battery faster, cause it to run slower, and use more data,” says William Halfond, co-corresponding author of the study.
When compared to apps without ads, the researchers found that:
- Apps with ads use an average of 16 percent more energy—but up to 33 percent more. That lowers the battery life of a smartphone from 2.5 to 2.1 hours on average—or down to 1.7 hours at the high end of energy usage.
- A phone’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) is like its brain—and ads eat up a lot of that brain power, slowing it down. Apps with ads take up an average of 48 percent more CPU time—22 percent more memory use and 56 percent greater CPU utilization (the amount of time the CPU was used).
- Because the ads themselves are content that has to be downloaded, apps with ads cause smartphones to use much more data—up to 100 percent more, in some cases. On average, these apps use around 79 percent more network data, costing an estimated 1.7 cents every time they’re used (based on the average cost per MB charged by AT&T).
Together, these frustrations and expenses led users to rate apps with ads lower—costing them an overall average of .003 stars on a five-star rating scale.
“In absolute terms, this is very low, but in the crowded and competitive world of apps it’s a huge difference,” Halfond says. “It can make the difference between your app getting downloaded or going unnoticed.”
