Google is helping marketers reach mobile consumers with a new set of advertising formats that are designed to reach more tablet users.

Google is rolling out both display and search improvements to its advertising services. The tools are aimed at adding more interactive elements to tablet advertising.

"Tablets have emerged as an important third screen in consumers' lives, and we've worked to understand how and when people are using these new devices," said Jason Spero, director of mobile for America at Google, Mountain View, CA.

"We are launching these new formats to enable advertisers to engage with a fast-growing segment of consumers in tablet-specific ways," he said.

"We want marketers to be able to reach these users in ways that take advantage of the big display and touch screen."

Tab into consumers
For display advertising, Google has launched a set of six ad templates for developers to use that match tablet formats.

The rich media designs let developers create ads that can reach across desktop, mobile and tablet platforms.

For example, developers can add location, galleries and slideshows to ads.

Google has also announced improvements to its search advertising by adding its media ads feature to tablets, which lets marketers add video to mobile search results.

The new tools are linked to Google's recent findings that looked at tablet usage, which found that consumers were spending more time on their devices and viewing rich media content on them, including videos and entertertainment content.

The goal of the new tools is to get advertisers thinking about mobile advertising as more than a one-fit solution for all devices.

These new ad formats are being added after Google announced that it was trying to combine parts of its AdMob and AdSense to help marketers better target consumers (see story).

Tablet-first
Google?s new tools will let marketers create more specific mobile campaigns for either smartphones or tablets.

In May, Google also let AdWords users target tablet users, showing the increasing importance that tablets are playing in the marketplace.

Additionally, a recent study from Pew Research and The Economist Group found that 77 percent of tablet owners use tablets daily, showing the opportunities marketers have to treat the devices separately from smartphones (see story).

"We're living in a three-screen world now as people are deeply engaged on desktop, mobile, and most recently on tablets," Mr. Spero said.

"Of course, it may seem like even more work for marketers to reach these users effectively, but this is a tremendous opportunity," he said.

Final Take
Here's a demo of the new tablet services from Google