The role of tablets in mobile search is growing, giving marketers a new way to deliver rich advertising, per a recent study by Performics.

According to the company , tablets account for 1.7 percent of all paid search impressions ? mobile and desktop ? or 14 percent of all mobile impressions. While Google did not break out results for tablets separately from mobile until June, tablets have been making themselves felt in search for several months.

?Tablets? share of overall searches is small at the moment, but growing rapidly,? said Daina Middleton, CEO of  Performics, Chicago. 

?The demographic adopting tablets is highly desirable ? users skew younger, male, affluent and highly interested in using their tablets for shopping,? she said.

?The intrusion of the tablet into TV?s domain ? both in terms of content and time of day ? means marketers have an entirely new environment for constructing rich advertising and streamlining purchase paths.?

Traffic patterns
Performics aggregated AdWords mobile paid search impression, click and cost-per-click data for its clients during the first half of 2011.

Until recently, tablet traffic was grouped under all mobile traffic. However, beginning in June, Google began breaking out tablets with full browsers as a distinct group.

The results show that mobile continued to gain share of paid search impressions, accounting for 12.1 percent of total paid search impressions in June.

The initial data shows that tablets contributed 14.3 percent of all mobile impressions and accounted for almost 2 percent of all search impressions in June.

Additionally, tablets contributed 13.3 percent of mobile clicks.

Mobile?s overall click share also was up, reaching 11.9 percent of all paid search clicks in June.

Tablet impressions are heavily weighted towards display while tablet clicks are largely coming through Google search.

?Both mobile and tablet traffic have been steadily growing over the past year,? Ms. Middleton said.

?Really, though, tablets share some characteristics with both mobile devices and computers ? while having distinguishing qualities that it shares with neither of the two other platforms,? she said.

?In the long run, tablets will be considered a truly third, stand-alone device or platform. Specifically, early research suggests users are primarily using tablets at home and during the evening, which means tablets are actually competing more heavily with computers and TVs than mobile phones.?

The results do show some differences between smartphones and tablets when it comes to search behavior.

While mobile devices see moderately strong search usage between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., tablet devices are almost exclusively restricted to the evening period.

The results for click-through rates show that mobile and tablets have been tied with desktop for the past several months.

Mobile?s cost-per-clicks remains steady and is still significantly below desktop CPC rates.

?Mobile search continues to grow rapidly as a percentage of search advertising,? Ms. Middleton said.

?Initial tablet data proves that tablets have been materially contributing to mobile traffic for the past few months,? she said.  ?So, at the very least, marketers should also consider separating their tablet campaigns from mobile campaigns.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is assoc. editor on Mobile Marketer