Tablet ads engage consumers

Warc, 21 May 2014

LONDON: Consumers engage to a significantly greater degree with advertising on tablets than on other digital devices new research has shown.

A study conducted for Newsworks, the UK's marketing body for national newspapers, tracked 20 campaigns across five key sectors – motors, retail & travel, finance, tech and entertainment – and found that the average tap rate with a tablet ad was 40 times more than the average online display click-through rate (0.79% versus 0.02%).

Further, consumers also spent an average of seven seconds with tablet ads, although both time spent and tap rates varied widely on the sector.

Thus, for motors the average tap rate was 0.61% and the average dwell time 6.9 seconds while finance yielded a tap rate of 0.87% and dwell time of 5.9 seconds; for tech the figures were 0.84% and 6.8 seconds.

Retail and travel achieved the highest tap rate, at 1.04%, but dwell time was below average on 6.1 seconds. Conversely, entertainment had the longest dwell time, at 10.1 seconds, but the lowest tap rate, at 0.57%.

With tablet ownership in the UK now standing at around 18m with almost half of these being in the 35-44 age group, Newsworks claimed these benchmarks were "timely".

Vanessa Clifford, deputy CEO at Newsworks, noted that tablets had a growing and engaged audience, particularly across newsbrands, but said there had been a lack of data and understanding around tablet advertising.

"What makes an ad successful, what metrics should brands expect, what kind of ad types and language should we be using? These results will offer the advertising community first-stage industry norms, with some standard metrics, creative learnings and a common language for the first time," she declared.

The study also grouped ads into three core creative types – text link, video and interactive. The results showed that each type has a different role to play: text links drive above average tap rates (0.82%); video provides a powerful combination of tap rate and dwell time (1.06% and 7.1 seconds); and interactive ads hold attention with considerably higher dwell time (9.0 seconds).

Data sourced from Newsworks; additional content by Warc staff