As consumers increasingly rely on tablets in day-to-day life, marketers have a huge window of opportunity to engage with consumers. However, extensive new research from VivaKi finds that not all tablet advertising units are created equal.

The goal behind the newly-released, 14 month-long research from VivaKi is to help establish standards for tablet marketers. After testing 130 tablet ad executions, VivaKi dwindled down the list to three recommended ad formats ? rich media interstitial, banner to full-screen and pre-roll with overlay.

?One of the big things that we were trying to accomplish two years ago is that we know if innovation is left to individuals, it creates mass chaos and advertisers need consistent scale,? said Tracey Scheppach, executive vice president, innovations director at VivaKi and founder of The Pool, Chicago.

?We set forth to find a handful of ideas that work really well - we started to learn that different experiences require different ad models,? she said.

Tablet opportunity
The research was made by The Pool, which is VivaKi?s program aimed at helping discover advertising solutions of the future. The tablet lane of the research was launched in Nov.  2011 as tablets began to take off with consumers.

More than 20 million consumers were surveyed in the study, which is a predicted one-third of tablet owners in the United States. The research collected 44,000 surveys.

Real mobile advertising campaigns from brands including Coca-Cola, Walmart, Bank of America, Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Best Buy were tested in the study. Publishers in the research included Rodale, USA Today, NBC News Digital Group and The Weather Co.

Research firm InsightExpress and ad-serving partner Medialets also participated in the findings.

There are several factors in the three winning ad formats that work for marketers, per the research.

Pre-roll with overlay units have an edge over basic video pre-roll because the units let consumers interact with content ? such as videos or social media ? directly from the ad.

For publishers, rich media interstitials are a safe bet because they let consumers dive deeper into content beyond ported PDF ads. The ads are also full-screen, which offers consumers a deeper interaction into content.

Simply slapping a banner ad on a mobile site or application also does not cut it for tablet users. Therefore, marketers should look to leverage banner ads into full-page advertising experiences to grab the attention of consumers, according to VivaKi.

Runner-up ad formats include incentivized video ads or formats that let users pick between two different videos to watch. Additionally, re-oriented ads that start off as banners and ask consumers to flip their device in another direction to interact were also effective at getting a consumer?s attention.

Overall, consumers favored ads that let them choose how to interact, were intuitive and simple, were contextually-relevant and were credible.

Context is also crucial in understanding how consumers interact with ads.

For example, a consumer reading a digital edition of a magazine might find an interstitial ad more appealing because it fits in with the type of content that they are already looking at.  On the other hand, a video ad might seem annoying to consumers who are in a reading mentality.

The research points to a particularly strong opportunity for consumer-packaged-goods brands with tablet advertising.

Twenty-five percent of mothers in the United States today own tablets and an additional 25 percent planned to buy a tablet in the next two years.

Since moms typically control household spending, consumer-packaged-goods marketers should be eyeing the marketing opportunities available on tablets to increase sales and loyalty.

"The main takeaway of VivaKi?s tablet study is quite simply that tablet ads work," said Eric Litman, chairman/CEO of Medialets, New York.

"When you look at the results, it's clear these tablet ad formats are making a meaningful impact on key brand metrics," he said.

"Even more exciting, it?s the rich tablet ads that are driving greater results. As a company that enabled the industry?s first tablet rich media ad unit with the launch of the iPad, Medialets regularly enables rich tablet campaigns that generate high engagement rates. This VivaKi study helps shine a spotlight on the value of tablet ads for the broader industry. It?s incredibly valuable data."

Mobile research
In one phase of the research, VivaKi built 40 iOS and Android executions of the three recommended ad formats.

Consumers were exposed to different ad models and were then asked to complete a 15-minute survey on a PC that measured ad recall, ad reaction and ad impact.

Across all metrics, the test group rated higher than the benchmark numbers that VivaKi established.

For example, 60 percent of the consumers who were exposed to pre-roll with overlay video recalled the advertiser after watching the ad. The benchmarked percentage for this group was 40 percent.

Thirty-nine percent of the consumers exposed to rich media interstitials recalled the brand after viewing an ad, which is a 5 percent increase from the 34 percent benchmark.

Consumers who interacted with a banner to full-page ad had a 39 percent ad recall rate. The benchmark for this ad unit was 35 percent.

The study also measured the ad liking, which is the percentage of consumers who said that they either liked or liked an ad a lot.

The banner to full-page group performed the highest by more than 11 percent compared to the benchmark percent.

Consumers exposed to rich media interstitials had ad liking rates that were 6 percent higher than the benchmarked percentage, and the pre-roll with overlay group was up more than 5 percent.

Field testing
VivaKi also ran a field trial with 74 iOS and Android executions of the three tablet advertising models.

The trial included a $5 million media spend, which resulted in more than 150 million impressions and 42,000 surveys.

Per VivaKi, the three tablet advertising models outperformed the benchmarked numbers in three metrics - message association, unaided awareness and brand favorability.

The key from the findings is that marketers have to look beyond click-through rate to determine the success of their campaigns.

Additionally, giving consumers choices in how to interact is crucial.

For example, when consumers in the banner to full-page unit group could choose an ad to interact with, the interaction rate was more than 126.7 percent up over its benchmark number. Similarly, the rich media interstitial had a lift of more than 88.3 percent over its benchmark when consumers had the choice to pick an ad to interact with.

?Money doesn?t move when it is one-off,? Ms. Scheppach said.

?What was important to us is be completely transparent ? this is the fastest-growing innovation of all time,? she said.

?We want to help the industry move quicker with everything that they need to know.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York