Welcome to the new world of “tabvertising”

Abba Newbery, director of advertising strategy at News International Commercial, looks at what lies in store for newspaper advertising…

At Wapping towers we talk a lot about the tablet, alongside many other related issues to do with the future of the newspaper industry.

Will printed products survive, or is the future more to do with mobile, the web or video? We might not yet have all the answers, but our ongoing research with subscribers to the Times and the Sunday Times provides invaluable insights.

I thought it might be useful then to share what I’ve learned about tablets in the last twelve months, summarised here in the following six principles.

Principle 1: Think print evolution

We engage with written tablet content in the same way we read a newspaper or a magazine. We mainly use them at home, or in transit: the Times readers use it twice a day for an average of 47 minutes.

Last week, the Sunday Times generated 13 million page impressions. So should tablet content development look like a press ad or a web-modeled interactive format?

Neither. Best-in-class functionality should work on the basis that if you could do it with your mouse, you’ve failed. Ads should be interactive but immersive; content rich but relevant.

Principle 2: Be relevant and useful

Readers’ expectation of tablet interaction is rooted in play, interaction and manipulation, fused with a requirement for relevant entertainment and useful additional information.

Think 360 degree product carousels, movement-driven car configurators, watch ads that always tell the right time and fashion ads where you can dress the models yourself.

Principle 3: Get closer to advertising agencies

The reality of multi-platform content experiences means that we need to be able to plan for many screen sizes, differing resolutions and varying means of interaction (e.g. touch compared to non-touch).

This means we need to help agencies deliver a consistency between multiple screen sizes and identify the likely sweet spots to create optimal sizing for practicality.

Moreover, we need to help agencies get better at creating the additional assets required for next-generation tablet formats within their current creative processes.

Principle 4: Think personal

Tablets are individual devices and therefore personalised advertising is a genuine reality. As publishers we need to focus on real-time usage behaviours across our multiple platforms in order to better realise our ability to create and manipulate more relevant content delivery.

Principle 5: Clients are the new competition

The real opportunity for commercial return with tablets is in a closer-than-ever fusion between content and retail. Clients such as Gucci and Net-a-Porter now see themselves as much as publishers as manufacturers, retailers or brands.

This offers us an as yet unrealised opportunity in bespoke syndication content creation, or indeed in advertiser-created content distribution, raising real questions about valuing and selling engagement over merely the number of eyeballs.

Principle 6: A new paradigm for advertising and editorial co-existence

Currently editorial is created with advertising as white space to exist within it. The new requirement for relevancy should make advertising become a rich experience to enhance the editorial content in which it exists. This is the most exciting time for the newspaper industry in many years.