Coca Cola, General Motors and Yahoo! unite in quest to find best ad formats for tablets

A total 26 US-based advertisers and publishers joined the Pool in 2011, to help drive a three-phased approach of quantitative, qualitative and field trial research in which 37 ad formats were tested among 20 million US consumers over a 14-month period.

The study is understood to be the first of its kind industry to bring together clients and media owners in an attempt to identify, test and create industry standards for new ad models.

Three ad formats were selected as favourites by both the the Pool Group and consumers beating other formats including ad selector video format ASq and AdBank, a video format that lets users choose to watch a programme in return for credits or the ability to skip the ad.

Among the winning models was “Banner to full page”, a format that is similar to an online banner but can expand to a full screen and caters for engagement within the unit. “Pre-roll with Overlay” was another selected format, letting users engage with brands via additional videos, games and social media from within the ad unit without the consumer being directed outside of the video player. The third favourite format was Rich Media Interstitial, defined as the “print ad of the tablet age”. Tracey Scheppach, VivaKi EVP, innovations director and founder of The Pool said tablets were still in their infancy when it first started the research project. “We knew we needed to work with marketers and publishers to learn about the advertising potential of this game-changing device. The amount of research we conducted is unprecedented; we reached one in three tablet users, so we feel quite confident that the learnings we uncovered are reflective of consumers’ wants and needs with regards to their tablet advertising. Above all, we learned Steve Jobs gave marketers a gift and now is the time to ignite it in the marketplace,” she said. Agency teams from within Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia worked alongside Vivaki on the research, while The Pool comprised 13 blue-chip advertisers including Bank of America, Best Buy, Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Walmart. The 13 publishers involved included ABC Television Network, Bonnier, Crackle, Digital Broadcast Group, Mojiva, NBC News Digital Group, and Scripps Networks Interactive.