Chitika has conducted a study measuring the web usage and the click through rates (CTR) for tablets based upon screen size. There is a surprising result. The 8” tablets have a much higher CTR than tablets of other sizes. 1.6% of ads seen on an 8” tablet receive clicks, whereas, the next best performing size was the 8.9” tablet at a little over 1% CTR. That is a big difference between the best and second best performers. The 9.4” performed worse at a little over .7%.
Chitika did account for the iPad and when computed into the results the 9.7” tablets jump from a .8% CTR to a little over 1%. The iPad is easily the best performing tablet on the market, but that is not a reflection of its size but other qualities (there are not many 7” tablets, etc…). That is also an error with this result. The graph shows no consistency among size and user rate, so there must be other things going on.
This data can still be useful to the social media agency. Even if size is not the sole determinate, there are few enough tablets that those other factors are nearly constant with the size. A web site can detect this data and offer up different landing pages. A strategy could be to offer ads to an 8” tablet that are more assumptive of a click through. Whereas an ad served to a 9.4” tablet would focus less on clicking as a call to action and instead focus on brand recognition and exposure. As more data is revealed and more tablets enter the market, then the graph of size usage should even out to form a more consistent line and then the digital media agency will have more data to base better decisions.