Tablet Owners Show Some Enthusiasm For In-App Ads

October 23, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Household Income | Local & Directories / Small Biz | Magazines | Men | Mobile Phone | Retail & E-Commerce | Youth & Gen X

3 in 10 tablet owners say they are very interested in ads appearing in shopping and retail applications, according to new data provided by GfK MRI. That interest shows a clear generational trend, highest among Millennials (40%) and lowest among Boomers (19%). Beyond retail apps, other app types in which tablet owners are very interested in seeing ads appear include local information (28%), weather (28%), cooking/recipes (25%), and magazine (25%) apps.

While gaming apps are further down the list (23%), they’re far more popular for ads among Millennials (33%) than Boomers (11%).

Digital Magazine Readers Get Interactive With Ads

Magazine apps’ relative popularity for ads isn’t too surprising, given earlier survey results from GfK, which showed that digital magazine readers are highly engaged with ads. According to that research, 55% of digital magazine readers have “noted” a digital ad on their tablet or e-reader, and 52% of those took some kind of action.

Among the actions taken by those readers, the most frequently cited were: touching/clicking the ad to expand (38%), viewing multiple pages of a multi-page ad (34%), accessing the website through the ad (34%), and watching a video or commercial (31%).

Brands have been moving to up their presence on magazines’ digital platforms. Citing Kantar Media data, the Association of Magazine Media recently said that in the US, the number of brands advertising in magazines with tablet, online, and print editions has been on the rise, up almost 40% year-over-year in H1 2012. The GfK study on ad interactivity, which was fielded from April 1 through July 30, 2012, found 14,230 tablet/e-reader ads to contain interactive features.

Advertisers Respond to Increased Readership

Brands looking to leverage digital magazine media for advertising might not only be enticed by high response rates, but also by increasing readership. In October, comScore released new data showing that during the 3-month average ending in August, about 4 in 10 tablet owners reported reading magazines or periodicals on a monthly basis, including 1 in 10 who did so almost every day.

Who are these readers? The comScore study reveals that compared to the average tablet owner, they are 11% more likely to be male, 27% more likely to be aged 25-34, and 7% more likely to have a household income of more than $100k.

About the Data: The GfK MRI iPanel is an online panel of tablet and e-reader owners consisting of more than 6500 members. For the data on in-app advertising, a total of 1,382 surveys were completed and 1,052 of those (representing tablet owners) were tabulated for analysis. Panelists were weighted to the projected national incidence of tablet/e-reader ownership as based on GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer. Incidence was estimated on the basis of the last four months of interviewing in order to account for the continuous growth of digital device ownership. The study went live on April 20, 2012 and closed on May 4, 2012.

The GfK data on tablet ad interactions is derived from research covering more than 30,000 digital ads across 1,000 magazine issues from GfK MRI Starch Digital.

The comScore data comes from its monthly TabLens syndicated service providing insights into US tablet ownership and usage, based on a 3-month rolling sample of 6,000 US tablet owners.

Chart-Library-Ad-1

Explore More Articles.

Which Skills Are Important in RevOps?

Which Skills Are Important in RevOps?

9 in 10 RevOps professionals view data analysis skills as being important, a high percentage also don’t believe they need this skill for their job.

Marketing Charts Logo

Stay on the cutting edge of marketing.

Sign up for our free newsletter.

You have Successfully Subscribed!

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This