Just three years after the release of the iPad, there were 70 million tablet users, marking tablets as the fastest-growing innovation ever. The Pool recognized the tidal wave of change on the horizon. We knew the tablet would create enormous opportunities for advertisers, so we set out to identify the best ways to advertise on tablets and invited the industry to join us.

In November 2011, 26 companies joined The Pool to launch our largest research initiative to date: the Tablet Lane. During our three-phased approach of qualitative, quantitative and field trial research, we considered 37 models and tested 130 custom ad executions with 20 million consumers. We spent $5,000,000 in media, served 150 million impressions, and reached one-third of the U.S. tablet market.

After 14 months of extensive research, The Pool has announced three winning ad models proven to outperform standard ads on tablets. To maximize consumer experiences across a wide range of media, each winning model integrates seamlessly with one of the three main types of tablet content: Web, video, and print.

Additionally, we developed a set of ad model best practices to accelerate the marketplace and drive advertiser demand.

Winning Ad Models:

Banner to Full Page
This unit operates similarly to a standard Web banner, but features the added capability to expand to a full-screen, interactive ad allowing a robust level of engagement within the unit.

Pre-roll with Overlay
This video unit lets users engage with brands via additional videos, games, social media, and more - all without ever forcing the user to leave the video player.

Rich Media Interstitial
The print ad of the tablet age, this full screen, interstitial unit offers deep engagements between advertisers and consumers by tapping into the full potential of the tablet.

Key Findings:

• Tablet ads work. All attitudinal metrics were positively impacted by at least one new model.
• Tablet advertising works even better when users engage. When engaged with, new models performed better on all attitudinal metrics.
• Options are good. When more options were given, users engaged more. The Banner to Full Page saw a 126% lift in engagement over its benchmark and the Rich Media Interstitial saw an 88% lift over its benchmark.
• Options create opportunities for advertisers. More interactivity allows more creativity, but also signals an opportunity to rethink metrics like Click-through Rate.
• Education is critical to develop the models into scalable solutions. Understanding specs, limitations, and marketplace complexity is imperative.