Across the editions developed by TigerSpike - whose clients include Telegraph Media Group, The Economist, The Australian and Mail Online - average app engagement time is 30 to 34 minutes, the agency’s managing director Nic Newman tells me.

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That’s far higher than for newspapers’ websites. “Page views is five times the average for the publications consumed on the web,” Newman added.

In the case of The Daily Telegraph‘s recently-released second iPad app, which requires daily payment or subscription, “a significant proportion” of dwell time is spent in the built-in crossword puzzle. For The Telegraph, it seems, the killer app is the utility in the app.

At a recent City University panel discussion, News International’s chief marketer Katie Vanneck-Smith said, since introducing charges, The Times readers are “three times more engaged in terms of propensity to comment, time spent on website, they click more to advertisers”. This is likely because fleeting users, who arrived on single pages via search engines, have been turfed out.

Previous research shows some tablet owners have shifted their reading of articles from the web and daytime to the evening and tablet.