Tablets and smartphones: not mobiles
Lumping tablet and smartphone reporting into ‘mobile’ isn’t useful, but the success of tablets as a platform in their own right will hopefully allow them to crawl out from under the mobile umbrella and bask in the sunshine of their success this year, says InSkin Media’s Dominic Tillson.
We live in an increasingly sophisticated world. Not in an “heirs and graces / pass the port” sort of way, but in the way we consume (and publishers serve) media, and the way that marketers target those consumers accordingly.
UKOM has recently announced that comScore will separate out tablet data from smartphones in its latest GSMA MMM reports.
But why does the rest of the advertising industry invariably package up smartphones and tablets with a generic “mobile” catch-all label? Surely, in a world where we can cope with half a dozen scripted reality shows, we can also manage to differentiate between two different, but related, platforms?
(Disclaimer, and the motivation for this thought piece: At InSkin Media we have a very successful tablet ad format that often flirts with smartphone conversations; that, and the fact that too many of our commercial team watch both TOWIE and Made in Chelsea…)
Ex-colleagues at a well-known global software company once called the iPad “the big phone”, but to bundle smartphones and tablets and report on “mobile” growth or trends, without indicating if you’re mixing them together to improve your argument in some way, is to do each of their unique features a massive disservice.
Smartphones are highly personal, extremely “mobile” communication and entertainment devices. Their portability and sophistication mean they offer a fantastic search or geo-enabled engagement.
Tablets have evolved from the laptop end of the spectrum and tend to be somewhat less “mobile” than their cousins. With a small laptop-sized visual experience and touchscreen capabilities, you now have a far more tactile and portable version of the humble laptop.
So, marketers need to consider tablets as a different platform and adjust their strategies accordingly, not just bucket them both into a “mobile” conversation. Larger tactile interfaces have given the pastime of surfing something of a renaissance, as the consumer tends to be in more of a discovery mode when playing around with a tablet, and looking at Government usage stats, which mirror our own internal research, it’s clear the tablet is the most popular platform in the evening, compared to smartphones and laptops.
From an advertising perspective, reaching consumers when they are more relaxed and potentially receptive is very appealing; now tablet offers a significant scale to boot, with 50% of the UK population expected to own a tablet by the end of 2014.
From an advertising creative point of view, there are several reasons for not simply putting tablet activity into a “mobile bucket”.
Size:
Sorry to point out the obvious, but tablets are bigger than smartphones; therefore you can deliver more sophisticated messages, and leverage high-impact ad space.
Design:
Still often ignored is that, compared to a relatively accurate laptop cursor, the human finger is pretty chubby and therefore not very pointy. Creative executions need to take this into account in terms of how a user can physically interact with the brand.
While it’s no longer the market “owner”, the fact that iPads (market share varies between 30 – 50%, depending on who you believe, and other tablets are available) can’t host flash-based creatives means a whole range of multi-platform campaigns will only display a standard gif on the iPad – so we need to develop richer HTML5 based creatives to develop this engaged platform and audience.
Tablet usage:
Peaking in the evening, when users are often dual-screening, there are opportunities to tie in with parallel media consumption – and with the growth of Smart TVs the ability to interact with other platforms needs to be considered.
To geo-target or not to geo-target:
I remember the first time I mentioned we were launching a tablet version of one of our web formats to a planner on a well known DIY brand. heir first thought was, “great – can we target a user when they’re looking at their tablet within walking distance of a Homebase or B&Q?” (What, all three of them? I thought…)
And herein lies another issue we face:
Tablets are more mobile than laptops, and with 4G packages and free Wi-Fi unchaining the tablet from a home and work experience, there will be geo-targeting opportunities – but I can’t help thinking (from an massively unscientific study of friends and family habits) that the tablet is still more of a laptop style experience, and therefore NFC or hyper geo-targeting will predominantly be left to smartphones for the foreseeable future.
Currently 97% of InSkin Media’s tablet ad formats are served through a Wi-Fi connection, vs a 3G/4G network, which tends to support this back-of-a-fag-packet observation.
So, in essence, we should be embracing the unique way in which consumers are engaging with both tablets and smartphones, and not be lazy in how we report the facts.
The packaging up of tablet and smartphone reporting into mobile can be frustrating, but hopefully the success of tablets as a platform in their own right will allow them to crawl out from under the mobile umbrella and bask in the sunshine of their tactile success in the latter half of 2014.