The theme of the Consumer Electronics Show was ‘The Year of the Tablet,’ and more than 80 were introduced at the show. In this cacophony of device debuts, what’s most important for marketers to know? What follows are four questions and answers that will help put tablets in perspective.

Question: Do any of the more than 80 tablets introduced at CES have a chance of coming close to the iPad’s success?

Answer: What’s happening with tablets is very similar to what happened in the smartphone market. In whatever the category—Apple has one device. And that one device is always being measured against many other devices in the same category. Samsung introduced the Galaxy Tab in the fourth quarter of 2010 and it did pretty well, but it’s unlikely that any single tablet coming out is going to outsell the iPad. It’s more of a question of whether collectively they will reach parity with the iPad.

What we’ve seen in the smartphone space in the past 12 months, as Android has expanded dramatically, is that the growth from Android has been straight up and the growth of the iPhone has been largely flat.

So it stands to reason that we’ll see a similar dynamic in the tablet market. Apple had the lion’s share of the market in 2010 because it basically had the market all to itself. But most forecasters see other tablets on other platforms—not individual tablets but tablets on competing operating systems, specifically Android—chipping away at Apple’s lead.

Question: Let’s say you’re a brand manager and you’ve budgeted a little money to experiment with tablets in 2011. What’s the smartest thing you can do with that money?

Answer: Of course, it depends on the brand and on the objectives. If you’re a marketer and you’re doing display advertising, you are faced with similar choices as you are with smartphones. If you are trying to build awareness, you can do some display advertising on the tablet. You either go with the mass-market approach on one or more of the many mobile ad networks, or you invest the significant resources to put up an iAd, which would then restrict you to the Apple platform.

Naturally there are apps as well and they require some investment—of both resources and in developing attainable goals and objectives. An app does need to be accompanied by some solid thinking about where the app fits within the larger brand strategy, but it remains a solid approach, especially if you want to deliver an immersive experience. Branded utilities—apps that carry the brand name and which do something useful for the end user—also work quite well, such as an airline app that allows users to book flights and check in.

One thing that Apple did intelligently with the iPad is that it developed the platform to handle apps designed specifically to run on the larger form factor. That’s not something that the current version of Android allows for. We saw some CES previews this week of a version of Android (dubbed Honeycomb) that is optimized for tablets and it looks quite impressive, but remember that by the time it comes to market, Apple will already be coming to market with the second version of the iPad.

Marketers should look very carefully at the new tablets and operating systems coming down the line this year. In this particular market segment, Apple will remain the leader through 2012 at the very least, but that doesn’t mean that brands should not consider Android and even BlackBerry tablets.

It’s also worthwhile to consider working with the larger digital platforms such as Amazon and Google, which are expanding their media presence (Amazon with music and video and Google with music and video through YouTube). There is a way that you could work through companies like these that serve as distribution partners.

Question: What is the most important thing for marketers to understand about tablets during this “year of the tablet”?

Answer: The tablet is a different kind of device—a hybrid of mobile and computing. One of the things to watch is the extent to which people are using tablets as communication devices as well as media distribution devices: Some of the recently introduced Android tablets include video-chatting capabilities, and the second-generation iPad is expected to carry these as well.

Of course it’s unlikely that people will do away with their phones right away. But one of the things this trend dovetails with is that people are using their phones less and less as phones—especially younger people. It changes our idea of what a phone is—sometimes a phone more important for its computer-like functions than phone-like functions. And as enterprise interest in tablets grows, it will be interesting to see the opportunities for tablets as a work utility and for communication purposes.

Question: Will there be offices with iPads on the desks instead of landlines and PCs?

Answer: I don’t think tablets will take the place of PCs just yet. But as the enterprise suites become more robust, they make tablets more viable for business users. The enterprise is one area that tablets lag behind laptops and netbooks, but again, we can look to the growth of smartphones to see what we can expect with tablets.

The iPhone was introduced as a consumer device, but because of its appeal, people in enterprises demanded iPhones from their IT departments. So Apple backed its way into the business market, and started to penetrate areas that were traditionally the province of BlackBerry and Microsoft. We will see a similar trend in the tablet market this year.

The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which wrapped up this week in Las Vegas, saw the introduction of a slew of tablets, suggesting that 2011 will at be the year of the tablet. But amidst the high-flying talk of “iPad killers,” device manufacturers also rolled out an impressive slate of new smartphones, many prepped for the wireless carriers’ new, faster 4G networks.

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A much-debated tax on internet advertising in France took a big step toward approval on Monday, December 13, only to be withdrawn two days later—and big US companies breathed a sigh of relief.

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When Apple introduced its iAd platform back in April, it promised to raise the bar for rich media mobile display advertising. To show off the platform’s capabilities, Apple demonstrated an ad for Disney’s “Toy Story 3,” complete with games, video and in-ad purchasing. So with iAd now poised to finally reach the iPad, it seems fitting that Apple would once again turn to Disney to debut the larger-format ads on its larger-format device.

Because iAd won’t officially roll out for the iPad until early next year, Disney’s “Tron Legacy” iAd has the limelight all to itself, just in time for its blockbuster release on Dec. 17.

The ad itself, activated from a typical iAd banner, is visually stunning. Like its “Toy Story 3″ predecessor, it comes complete with trailers, a theater locator and character profiles as well as a helpful explanation of the film’s convoluted plot (helpful for those who cannot remember back to or did not see the original “Tron” of 1982). The ad also enables viewers to purchase the movie’s soundtrack from iTunes without leaving the ad.

It’s a tour de force, and although by no means the first interactive rich media ad for the iPad, it is nonetheless an impressive harbinger of what is to come in terms of tablet advertising. Moreover, the “Tron Legacy” iAd is very much in line with a trend I noted in a previous post, which is, the combined effect of bigger screens and richer, more engaging ads, including video, is slowly changing consumer attitudes toward advertising on mobile devices.

Nielsen’s research among connected device owners suggests that iPad owners are more receptive to ads than other mobile device owners, particularly when the ads contain video and other interactive features. These findings square with the general purpose of the device. After all, the iPad shines when it comes to video and multi-media consumption.

But even if mobile device users are becoming more receptive to advertising, how much time they are willing to devote to viewing ads is still an open question, especially when much of the more useful content, such as trailers and showtimes, are readily accessible through other means. To the extent that brands that have built iAds have been willing to comment on the record, they have indicated satisfaction with metrics such as dwell times and interaction rates.

Apple has made no secret of the fact that it expects mobile users to reach content such as movie trailers through applications, including in-app advertising, rather than search engines, so it may be a question of finding the right balance between the richness and layers of the ads and the amount of time marketers demand from their target audience. At the very least, if some early reviews are to be believed, the “Tron Legacy” iAd might very well be more entertaining than the film itself.

The re-emergence of the tablet has been a major storyline in 2010. Thanks primarily to Apple, tablets have gone from also-ran to overnight success, creating a market that could see sales of as many as 41 million devices in the US alone by 2012. The category-redefining iPad will drive the majority of sales, in the US and worldwide, through 2012, according to eMarketer estimates.

Adoption of this new generation of tablets has been far brisker than other related device categories. Tablets will blow by e-readers in total sales in 2010, and by 2015, Forrester projects that tablets will account for a greater share of PC sales than netbooks or desktops. To say that tablets are changing the face of both computing and mobility is putting it mildly. Big tablet sales projections mean significant opportunities for marketers.

The big question is: will advertisers adapt to this whole new way to be mobile? Results from an August 2010 Nielsen survey suggest that they should. It found that iPad owners are considerably more receptive and, in some instances, significantly more excited about ads than other mobile device owners.

A case in point: 39% of iPad owners consider ads on their devices as “new and interesting,” according to Nielsen, compared to 19% of all connected device owners. And 35% say they actually enjoy viewing ads (especially multimedia ads), double the rate of all connected device owners. The iPad remains the standard-bearer for now, but it also functions as a benchmark for other tablets.

Anytime the word “excited” appears in relation to consumer attitudes about advertising, marketers should take note. Interviews with publishing industry executives suggest that awareness of the tablet advertising opportunity is growing.

Philip Whitney, VP of online marketing and product development for American Express Publishing, told eMarketer:

“Based on the price of the iPad itself and the fact that most magazine apps have a fee associated with them, you’re getting a select group of people who are really engaged with the advertising. In a world in which there are a lot of undifferentiated audiences, advertisers are very happy to get their message in front of a group of people who very ready, willing and able to engage with their ad.”

Publishers are understandably excited about the tablet opportunity, particularly tablet owners’ seeming predisposition to purchasing titles optimized for their devices.

But from the marketer perspective, the opportunity goes deeper than traditional publishers trying to make the transition to digital. Some of the most interesting innovations have come from companies such as streaming-music service Pandora, which launched interactive rich media advertising for the iPad in June 2010, and The Weather Channel, which has worked with high-profile sponsors such as Toyota on similarly interactive ad inventory.

Both beat Apple to the punch in providing rich media interactive ads, although with Apple’s iOS 4.2 now available for the iPad, iAds should soon start appearing on the iPad as well.

The bottom line: The combined effect of bigger screens and richer, more engaging ads, including video, is slowly changing consumer attitudes toward advertising on mobile devices. It’s up to marketers to continue fulfilling their end of the value exchange, but as more tablets flood the market, this evolving dynamic bears watching.

For more information on tablets, look for a new report coming out this month, written by my colleague, Paul Verna, “Tablets: New Screens for Marketers.”