Advertisers Get the Facts on iPads at Tab Day

Some 250 advertisers, ad agency executives, sales reps and editors filled Bonniers Konsthall art museum in Stockholm yesterday to hear the latest about the advantages and challenges of advertising on tablet computers. Dubbed Tab Day, the event was sponsored by Bonnier AB and featured a range of experts from publishing, advertising, marketing and research. Along with first-hand experiences from magazine publishers and advertisers, new research on reader habits and an eye-tracking study were released.

"We've worked with some of the biggest advertisers to get the most out of ads on the iPad," said Gregg Hano, group publisher for the Bonnier Technology Group in the U.S., which includes Popular Science, one of the first magazines out on the iPad and built on Bonnier's Mag+ platform. "But we need to remember that we're in the beginning of the first game of the season - at the start of the start when it comes to tablets."

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the creative agency which has been working with Bonnier in a project to develop effective ad formats, presented some of its initial findings. Among the key results the agency found were that content created for the iPad and other tablets should enable action, build an ownable experience, create an enduring function, bring the outside in, make it shareable and make it easy to shop. "It comes down to how much do we make someone's device more useful than the next person's," said Lindsey Allison, researcher at CP+B.

Also presented were the findings from a new study commissioned by Bonnier AB from MRC International, which investigated how users read on an iPad versus reading a printed newspaper and magazine. Findings included that readers looked at ads 21 percent more on the iPad than in print. The differences are even greater in comparisons of how readers look and interact with traditional Internet ads. You can read some key findings here.