Publishers casting around among “certain” futures with “too little money attached” have been told to keep taking the tablets.

The mobile platform found favour with several speakers at WAN-Ifra’s World Advertising Forum in Turin this week.

Conceding that most were still reliant on print for revenue, UK consultant Eamonn Byrne put tablets among “promising” areas for digital advertising revenues: “Tablet advertising is giving a very, very good yield… similar to print in giving good value,” he says.

Later, Newsworks deputy chief executive Vanessa Clifford told delegates just how good. A project by the UK publishers group had found responses to tablet advertising could be up to 40 times higher than online ads.

While many statistics about sales of apps and tablets were available, a larger-scale study had not been undertaken. Some 20 national campaigns for brands including Sony, Canon, LG and Audi were examined over three months.

Clifford urged publishers to keep tablet apps simple, with a reminder that links could need a basic ‘press here’ legend to get a good response. And to give users control: “They want to have interaction, but they also want to chose when they are interactive and not just have things popping up at them,” she said.

Results from the study showed the average tap rate with a tablet ad is 0.79 per cent, up to 40 times greater than the average online display click-through rate. Consumers also spend an average of seven seconds with tablet ads.

Almost 18 million tablets are in use in the UK, with the core audience aged 35-44 years old (47 per cent). News brands in the country now have a weekly reach of more than 1.5 million via tablets. "Tablets have a growing and engaged audience, particularly across news brands,” Clifford said.

Key metrics for each sector varied:

• Motors - average tap rate of 0.61 per cent; average dwell time of 6.9 seconds;
• Finance - average tap rate of 0.87 per cent; average dwell time of 5.9 seconds;
• Retail & travel - average tap rate of 1.04 per cent; average dwell time of 6.1 seconds;
• Tech - average tap rate of 0.84 per cent; average dwell time of 6.8 seconds;
• Entertainment - average tap rate of 0.57 per cent; average dwell time of 10.1 seconds.

Advertisements were grouped into three core creative types – text link, video and interactive, and show that each type has a different role to play – text links drive above average tap rates; video provides a powerful combination of tap rate and dwell time; and interactive ads hold attention with considerably higher dwell time:

• Text link - average tap rate of 0.82 per cent; average dwell time of 5.6 seconds;
• Video - average tap rate of 1.06 per cent; average dwell time of 7.1 seconds;
• Interactive - average tap rate of 0.42 per cent; average dwell time of 9.0 seconds.