Majority of Users Pay for Tablet Content

A new study from The Online Publishers Association (OPA) reiterates what many recent reports have shown—tablet adoption is increasingly widespread, usage is on the rise, and consuming content is a favored activity on the device.

What is even more reassuring for publishers is that 61 percent of all tablet users actually paid for that content.

According to the study, accessing content and information is the dominant activity on these tablets, as 94 percent of users do so. Notably less, at 66 percent, check email on the device, while 54 percent use their tablets for watching video. Checking weather (49 percent), national news (37 percent) and entertainment content (36 percent) follow as additional popular activities.

Overall adoption of the tablet is expected to reach 47 percent (117 million) in the U.S. by next year’s second quarter. The current uptake is at 31 percent, with a total of 74 million users, up from 12 percent (28 million) last year.

Correspondingly, users spend more time, more frequently, with the devices—74 percent use it daily, while 60 percent use it several times per day. The average number of hours spent is 13.9 per week.

An encouraging signal to marketers is that 38 percent of tablet users have made a purchase after seeing tablet ads, while 23 percent have clicked through on them. In the past year, the study shows, users purchased an average of $359 in products through the device.

Users are also, of course, buying apps—the tablet app market has doubled this year, with an estimated $2.6 billion spent in 2012 compared to $1.4 billion in 2011. In the past year, 23 percent of all tablet apps downloaded were paid.

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