NEW YORK - An executive at Gannett Co. Inc.?s USA Today said that tablets are changing the face of mobile and are a game-changer for media companies during a presentation at Mobile Marketing Day.

The conference was cohosted by Mobile Marketer and the Direct Marketing Association. Rimma Kats, staff reporter at Mobile Marketer, moderated the session.

?While the majority of paper newspaper consumption happens in the morning, and mobile also sees a spike early in the day, at night, people really elevate towards mobile again, making plans away from their computers and using mobile devices for utility,? said Craig Etheridge, vice president of mobile advertising sales for USA Today at Gannett Digital, Washington.

?The success of the iPad has rapidly revitalized the tablet market, and advertisers are following the eyeballs,? he said. ?Compared to smartphones, usage patterns are completely different for the iPad, and tablets are changing the face of mobile?they are a big game changer for media companies

?Mobile users average six-minute session times, but they return often?iPad users come less often, but they spend much more time with us per session.?

Gannett?s USA Today newspaper was one of the early pioneers in mobile, launching SMS alerts more than a decade ago and then following up with a mobile site.

The portfolio now includes sophisticated mobile applications for smartphones and Apple?s iPad as well, allowing the publisher to offer advertising across all mobile channels.

Tablet boom

Forrester projects that tablets will outsell netbooks and desktops in 2015. By that year, the research firm predicts that tablets will represent almost one-quarter of all computing device sales in the United States.

Marketing for tablet users is completely different from marketing for mobile phone users, per USA Today.

?Tablets represent a huge opportunity?there are between 45 and 50 million of these devices in market, and it?s a great place to reach people,? Mr. Etheridge said. ?Early-adopters came in who were heavily male with very high household income, which was great, but then Apple sound more than 6.3 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2010 alone.

?The demographics of iPad users are expanding,? he said. ?You?re seeing people spend a lot more time with it and it is getting dispersed throughout the family.?

USA Today has achieved more than 1 million iPad application downloads, and the advertisers have followed that consumer adoption.

The company is focused on expanding the video and rich-media capabilities that it offers advertisers.

The iPad?s creative capabilities include touch interaction and 360-degree imagery, as well as fading in and out and sliding up and down high-quality imagery.

Marriott wanted consumers to sign up for its member rewards program, so it used video advertising assets within USA Today?s iPad application to show what its lobbies look like, enabling 360-degree vision.

The in-app ad unit featured customer interaction and leveraged the device?s accelerometer to let users shake the iPad to activate a rich-media animation.

?That?s something you can?t do in a Web environment,? Mr. Etheridge said.

Hilton ran a creative screencast letting consumers spin a virtual globe to highlight various properties and learn more about them. It also features information about the area and its culture.

The campaign drove a 79 percent lift in brand awareness internationally.

?Hilton said ?We want to learn more about increasing brand favorability and awareness among an international audience,? so we worked with a rich-media provider, our sister company PointRoll,? Mr. Etheridge said. ?We can measure everything?when a consumer clicks on that ad, anytime someone pointed to a different property, I can see how long they engaged with it.

?You can measure traditional attributes such as brand favorability, purchase intent and message recall,? he said. ?The biggest difference with the iPad is creating a rich-media brand experience and encouraging people to spend a significant time within the application and then we find out how people are interacting.?

Click to locate on a map within an ad unit is very popular, according to USA Today.

The bigger screens and touch capabilities promise advertisers more immersive brand experiences.

?When consumers do come and interact with the iPad, an advertiser can communicate everything that brand stands for in one 30-second opportunity,? Mr. Etheridge said. ?Mobile devices let consumers opt in and convert right away, whereas tablet advertising is more about getting to know the brand itself.

?What we?ve found so far in the tablet space, a lot of the tablet advertising is coming from print activation teams, whereas mobile is always linked in with digital,? he said. ?The iPad and other tablets are very different?the split is about 50-50.

?At USA Today, more than half of our tablet business comes from the print activation teams at agencies.?

Final Take
Mr. Etheridge