In case you missed it last week, the iPad 3, now known simply as ‘the new iPad’, was announced during the Apple keynote conference (and has now been released). There was much speculation and rumour about what upgrades would be included in the latest version.
What hasn’t been included are USB ports and flash support, and let’s be honest, it’s never going to happen. However, there are a bunch of great new features that are sure to make iPad 1 and 2 owners envious.
For each feature I will give a brief overview of what is included and then explain how this will affect advertisers.
Retina Display
The biggest update to the iPad is the inclusion of the Retina display, which provides four times more pixels than the iPad 2. What this means is the resolution is much higher (2048 x 1536) and provides a more crisp and beautiful experience. Some of you might have an iPhone 4 or 4S, these have the retina display too.
Increased resolution means display ads will be crisper and more visually appealing. This once again brings up the issue of flash support with the iPad. If you’re targeting mobile and tablet users, be sure to make your display ads in an image format, rather than in flash. If you have the budget for two sets of ads, creating a display campaign targeting the Apple operating system, iOS, will allow you to only display image ads for Apple products. On this flip side of this, creating campaigns for Android and other operating systems will still allow you to show flash ads on these devices.
Another thing for advertisers is to think about is how their mobile/tablet landing pages will display on higher resolutions.
Updated Hardware
The updated A5X chip with quad-core graphics provides more power to the iPad than ever before. The extra power is needed due to the increased screen resolution, but is this extra power going to drain the battery faster? Well not according to Apple, in their promotional material it states that you can now get 10 hours battery usage. This will still depend greatly on what your primary usage of the iPad is.
The increased processing power will allow advertisers to create more hardware demanding landing pages.
iSight Camera
The updated camera can shoot 5-megapixel still images and record video in 1080p. As with most cameras, a higher megapixel count is good, but it isn’t the defining factor of a quality camera. The lenses of cameras play a big part in the quality of pictures and videos. The iPad lens has had an overhaul and now features five elements and the hybrid infrared filter.
With higher quality of cameras on phones and tablets and the increasing demand for better quality customer service, including video to video, this face-to-face customer support could improve your customer satisfaction levels.
4G LTE Support
What does 4G LTE mean to the average iPad user? Faster download and upload speeds! That is if you live in a country which supports 4G LTE, are on a phone network which supports it AND have the 4G version of the iPad. If you meet all these criteria, then this feature is great for you!
With increased download speeds, the new iPad will allow users to view websites faster. This means mobile/tablet sites can include larger files and videos, allowing advertisers to experiment with larger landing pages.
Dictation
Many had speculated that the new iPad would feature Siri. Instead, we get dictation. This feature allows you to write an email, send a text or search the web with voice commands. There are a number of apps out there which already allow voice dictation, but this feature now fully integrates with the phone.
The impact of this on advertisers isn’t as obvious as it may first appear. With the addition of voice searching, it will be more important than ever to have a brand name which is easy to pronounce and easily picked up by the voice recognition software. Whilst it may be too late for some businesses, this is definitely something to consider when introducing a new brand or product.
AirPlay
AirPlay allows you to stream what is on your iPad straight to your speakers and TV. This feature lets you view photos you’ve taken, or movies you’ve downloaded from iTunes and view it in the comfort of your living room. The other feature is ‘mirror’, which allows you to display exactly what’s on the iPad screen on your TV, including apps and other such things. In order to do this you will need to purchase the ‘Apple TV’ hardware for your home entertainment system.
We now have to worry about how ads appear not only on tablets, mobile devices and computer but on TV! Depending on what devices you’re targeting, it might be valuable seeing what your display ads and website look like when ‘mirrored’ on TVs from the iPad.
So that brings us to the end of the new iPad features and how it can affect advertising. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an iPhone 5 come out this year with more updated features. And as always, the advertisers will then need to reconsider their mobile advertising strategy.
