Engaging consumers on tablets: new ad formats

Tablet devices went mainstream this year and people are using them - 65% of consumers who own tablets use them at least one hour per day. Consumers are embracing them as the third digital screen in their lives. Over the last few months, we've researched the ways people use their tablets on a daily basis and have recognized some emerging trends. Shopping, consuming media, gaming are all popular tablet activities according to our recent study. And, daily search trends suggest tablets are used more frequently in the evenings and at nights.

We’ve also looked at how consumers engage with ads on tablets. Our research shows that they have higher expectations of ads on tablets, believing they should be more interactive and touch screen friendly.

To help marketers reach these engaged consumers we are launched new tablet-specific ad formats. On the display side, today we are launching new Rich Media Designs for Mobile.  These new rich media templates will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets using existing assets (photos, logos, etc.) and then implement them across platforms (mobile, tablet and desktop).  Advertisers can use these templates in a number of ways, including to interact with a specific product, feature a collection of products or promote foot traffic to a specific store location.


For tablet search advertisers, we are launching Media Ads in beta this week. Media Ads take advantage of the large, interactive touchscreen by bringing video directly into an ad on the search results page.  Advertisers who want to engage consumers with video content can now use Media Ads to provide an immersive and engaging video watching experience. In addition to watching video game, TV or movie trailers, US consumers will also be able to view locally relevant movie showtimes right within the ad.

Tablet users can view movie, game, and TV trailers in a full screen overlay right from Google.com

These new tablet-specific ad formats build on the launch of new tablet-specific ad formats on AdMob and tablet-targeting in Adwords earlier this year.

While most advertisers do not need to create tablet-only campaigns today, they should start thinking about how they can engage their customers on Tablets in distinct ways and using made-for tablet formats, now and in 2012. Tablets are just getting started and we plan on continuing to invest in building tablet first consumer experiences and ad units.

Posted by: Karim Temsamani, VP of Mobile Ads