Have you seen the latest Apple’s ad for iPad 2?

The ad preaches that the change has just happened. Change of how we do things in our everyday lives.

In marketer’s words, this is a change in consumers’ behavior. And when it happens, marketers must find a way to adapt to these changes. Better said, to find new ways to consumers hearts and minds. And wallets.

It is obvious that consumers are going mobile. Even their wallets are becoming mobile, aren’t they? Which leads us to an important question for marketers:

What’s better for mobile brand promotion – smartphones or tablets?

If we are talking about consumer behavior, let’s look at the results of a recent study done by Admob, about how tablets are used. 1430 respondents from USA said that among other things:

• they spend at least an hour a day on their tablet

• they primarily use it at home

• they mostly use it on weekdays and in the night

• after getting a tablet, their use of desktop/laptop computers decreased

If you take a look at the graphs bellow, numbers will tell you what kind of impact tablets had on people’s lives.

But what does this mean for marketers?

It means that

• Consumers are spending more and more time with their tablets (almost 40% said that they spend 2 hours or more per day), occupying the time slots previously reserved for TV (1 of 3 respondents said they use tablets more than they watch TV) and online activities on their home computer. In other words, tablets are slowly overtaking chunks of TV and PC audiences.

• While people are out, they will probably use smartphones more. However, this is the period when people do not have much free time to engage with content (i.e. they are at work or going to the office/coming back home). This means that they are more likely to search for concrete information or wish immediate results. Therefore, smartphone apps should focus on features or offer quick activities which can fill very short time slots (like playing one level of a game while waiting in line, etc.).

• However, tablets are better devices to engage people for longer periods of time (which leaves enough time to achieve brand promotion results) and explore content (get more information about a topic, play more complex games, etc.). So, apps for tablets should focus on content and making interesting interface to access it. In a way, if smartphone apps are more about programming and providing features to make people’s everyday easier, tablets are about creativity and finding interesting new ways to access content.

• Moreover, tablets are more used at home, in the safe atmosphere where we are more likely to make purchasing decisions and where we are more susceptible to promotion techniques. Also, not only that we have more time to do it, but we are more willing to engage with content. Add the fact that tablets are used more in the evening/night instead during the day when people are working and it’s easy to draw the conclusion: tablets are prime-time for mobile promotion.

Because of all these it seems that in terms of promotional gain, optimizing apps for tablet experience should be in the top of the marketers’ lists of priorities. However, one more important question still remains and this is:

Is tablet penetration reached the tipping point to justify investing in this type of promotion?

It may seem strange, but tablets are here for years. But, it was not until the iPad that these devices became adopted by users. Now, the landscape has completely changed. The success of the iPad was followed by many Android models. The queues in front of Apple Stores when iPad 2 was launched speaks volumes of how popular these devices are now.

To illustrate how popular they really are, it’s enough to know that Apple’s revenue from iPad sales now exceeds the revenue from selling Mac computers. Only 15 months after the device was originally brought to the market!

And the trend is not likely to stop any time soon. Comparing the sales figures from Q2 2010  and Q2 2011 shows that the year over year growth is 331%! iPad still dominates the market, although not with 95% market share as last year, but it is still “the” device of choice in the tablet promotion world.

I would like to finish with a quote from the post at Moconews:

“It’s because after nearly a decade of promises, people are finally embracing a new lightweight style of computing that Apple currently dominates. That doesn’t mean those people will never buy a Mac or PC again, but it does mean that the upgrade cycles for the bigger devices could be lengthening as people spend more and more time with their tablets, only turning to the PC when serious typing is required or more horsepower is needed.”

For marketers, this means a lot of opportunities. And a lot of new creative ways to promote brands.