The evidence continues to stack up that Apple's iPad is an important marketing tool, with a new report from Opera Software showing that it generates more revenue per impression than other mobile devices.

Opera?s first State of Mobile Advertising report reveals that the average effective cost per thousand impressions on the iPad is $3.96 across the Opera mobile ad platform. Demand for tablet ad executions is already up 140 percent from 2011 and Opera expects them to become an even more important part of marketers? strategies in the coming months.

?Our report shows that iPhone and iPad drive the best engagement, but Android phones are not far behind," Mahi de Silva, executive vice president of consumer mobile at Opera Software, San Mateo, CA.

?Bigger screen, great user interface make the iPad easy to interact with ads; gesture based controls appear to drive much better consumer engagement than mouse clicks,? he said. ?Pagination of content and full-page interstitials in iPad apps and iPad optimized web sites - make for a more natural experience with advertising when compared to flash-based banners and side-scrapers.

?The most surprising finding was the impact of rich media ad units and the shift in just 6 months - from banners and expandables to HTML5/Rich Media and Video ad units.?

User-friendly devices
The report finds that the iPad is also achieving significant user adoption in user groups that are desirable to advertisers, such as physicians.

The key to the success of the iPad as an advertising medium is that it is a user-friendly device with a large screen, popular touch screen interactivity and other features that enhance the user experience.

The findings from an earlier report by Marin Software also supports the idea the iPad is proving to be a strong advertising medium, with paid search on tablets - dominated by the iPad ? growing and expected to surpass smartphone paid search in the future (see story).

In general, Opera found that iOS outperformed other platforms with the average eCPM on the OS coming in at $2.49 while for Android it is $2.10. the eCPM for RIM is $0.64 and for Windows Phone $0.20.

The iPhone?s eCPM is $2.85

The results suggest that devices with larger screen size and with features that allow more interaction between the advertisement and the device?s functionality - click to call, expand, play video - have better monetization potential than other devices.

The report is based on Opera?s global network of over 35 billion ad impressions.

Leveraging native functions
The findings also highlight the importance of device market share in encouraging advertisers to target particular devices. For example, iOS had 46.53 percent of traffic and 61.41 percent of advertising revenue while Android had 24.43 percent of traffic and 26.56 percent of revenue.

Additionally, RIM had 6.32 percent of traffic and 1.79 percent of revenue.

The report also shows that leveraging the native functions of mobile devices ? such as HTML and camera interfaces ? drives click-through rates and better customer engagement.

According to Opera Software?s Rich Media Index, 66 percent of users that click through to a video will complete that interaction, with an average dwell time of 52 seconds.

When it comes to leverage photo-taking capabilities, about half of consumers will continue to interact with the ad post-click and dwell for 1 minute and 25 seconds.

Opera?s numbers suggest that marketers are taking notice of these results. In January 2012, 28 percent of ads used HTML5 rich media but by June that number had increased to 51 percent. During the same period video ads grew from 6 percent to 13 percent while standard ads went from 35 percent to 21 percent and expandable banner ads dropped from 31 percent to 15 percent.

Other findings include that the United States and Canada generate the majority of ad requests, with 73 percent of the global total. The U.S. also has the highest eCPM, $1.98, closely followed by the European Union at $1.94.

?The big takeaway from this report is that there lie plenty of opportunities to advertise and get through to your audience in mobile and it is only growing,? Mr. de Silva said. ?iOS users are the ones that are most engaged as they interact more with advertising on their devices and also spend more time than any other platform with advertising. Rich media ads deliver your message with more success and engagement."

Final Take
Chantal Take is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York