Adobe: Media-rich ads are more engaging for users

According to a new report by by Alex Wang, Ph.D, (commissioned by Adobe), advertisements in iPad magazine apps can “more effectively engage readers and create stronger purchase intention” than those in print media.

That’s not a major shocker. Print ads are static. Unless newspapers have made some major media improvements, there are no movie clips or audio either.

That’s important. Here’s a bit from the story:

Overall, the research discovered that readers are more likely to engage with interactive than static ads, as well as have a more favorable attitude to the ad and greater purchase intent. See a summary of the results below; participants responded using a scale from 1-9 and considered both all ads in the magazine, as well as a specific ad presented to them.

The results of the study can be download here as a PDF.

Of course, there is some irony here. On the surface, it appears that since Adobe’s proprietary content delivery  platform—Flash—doesn’t run on iOS, it’s hard to say what Adobe really has at stake here. Most moving ads on the web right now are Flash-based.

Flash isn’t the whole story, though iPad magazine apps like Wired are built with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite. (Read more about it here.) Obviously, Adobe wants this platform to grow, since the far more popular Flash probably won’t ever end up on iOS devices. The more engaging these tools are to users (including ads), the better it is for not only publishers, but Adobe as well.

The elephant in the room with this study is Apple’s iAd platform. While the company hasn’t spoken too much about it, iAds do offer a great experience—better than any other ad platform I’ve seen on iOS, not to mention anywhere else. However, with just one iAd running on the iPad at launch, it’s been slow to grow.

So, dear readers, what do you think about ads on your phones and tablets?

Article Via Apple Insider

Stephen Hackett, formerly a Lead Mac Genius at Apple, now spends his days running the IT department of a large non-profit in Memphis, TN. He writes about Apple, design and journalism at forkbombr.net. Like all twenty-somethings, you can find him on Twitter. Oh, and he has a dogcow tattoo.