When Unilever launched it’s new Lynx Excite product, they commissioned simple but powerful advertising creative. The video ads promoted a fragrance so irresistible it causes angels to fall from the sky. Unilever knew from the start that they wanted the film to work across a variety of formats, reaching not just TV viewers but also cinema visitors and mobile users.
For the mobile component of the Lynx Excite campaign, they were immediately drawn to the AdMob platform. AdMob enables advertisers to engage with mobile users across mobile platforms to maximize reach with their target audience.
In order to provide the most engaging experience possible for mobile users, Unilever built a robust HTML5 mobile landing page for the campaign. Mobile banner ads led users to an extended advertising experience, where a rotating halo enabled navigation through the microsite. A visitor could view the television ad, see exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and enjoy interactive features including tips, tricks and tools.
Through AdMob, the ads achieved results that far surpassed expectations. In all, 149 million impressions were served and 690,000 unique visitors accessed the content. On all devices, users spent approximately two minutes actively engaging with the Lynx brand storytelling. In terms of this phenomenal reach and high levels of engagement, the mobile advertising achieved unprecedented results for Unilever.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Here’s the second post in our Mobile Insights series, featuring expert views from members of our mobile ads business. Welcome this week’s guest contributor, Anjali Vaidya, an Account Manager on the mobile ads team who shares her experiences on our Click-to-call (CTC) offering in mobile ads.
We’re continually making enhancements to the Click-to-call ad format. Launched in early 2010, CTC allows mobile consumers searching Google or visiting sites in the Google Display Network, to click on the phone number and speak to someone who can explain more about the product or service.
One enhancement was our Call-only format to allow advertisers to receive only calls, instead of clicks, to their website. Starting this week, we’re making the Call-only format even better by including a phone icon and moving the phone number above the ad.
The convenience and immediacy of CTC for users has made it one of Google’s fastest-growing advertising solutions. Click-to-call is a great addition to the advertising mix. You can still drive searchers to your website, but it gives you other advantages:
it’s a great option if you don’t yet have a mobile-optimized website;
it captures consumers who are ready to act;
it allows you to drive traffic to a strong call center, giving you a competitive edge over other online advertisers.
We’re generating millions of calls every month on mobile devices and the number of advertisers using phone extensions is growing quickly. The uptake for CTC is fast because advertisers are realizing great returns.
Home security provider Defender Directgets 75-80% of online advertising clicks using Click-to-call. Four out of their top 10 campaigns in terms of clicks are now mobile. And the calling customers are ready to consult with an expert about the ins and outs of alarm systems. Once the company started targeting high-end smartphones, their returns from mobile ads and CTC skyrocketed. Results were soon double what they got from desktop search. Today, Google mobile ads constitute 24% of the company’s overall online budget.
When auto insurance company Esurance started using mobile ads and CTC they found that they could acquire customers at 20-30% less cost compared with other channels. Esurance wanted to put interested people in touch with agents or claims representative in a few simple steps. Reaching the company is faster and easier for customers, and a less expensive way to acquire leads for Esurance. Calls coming from CTC mobile ads are more likely to result in sales.
The Carphone Warehouse has had great success with mobile ads CTC too. The UK mobile phone retailer created a mobile website where visitors can search for headset details and price plans. They used Mobile Ad Sitelinks to provide deep links into the site and incorporated CTC in ads to allow users to reach a call center agent to get advice or buy.
Our advice? Test Click-to-call, whether you’re a national or local business, to see how it can generate sales. Our customers have shown us that mobile searchers will research your products on their phones, and they appreciate the convenience of calling from that same device. Once they call, they are even closer to purchase. Your best leads are only a phone call away, try Click-to-call today!
Posted by Anjali Vaidya, Google Account Manager for Mobile Ads
The Guide to the App Galaxy, which we showed off last week at Google I/O, is designed to help mobile app developers—regardless of platform—navigate the complexities of launching an app and building a business on mobile. As you maneuver through the "galaxy” using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you’ll get the basics about app promotion, monetization and measurement—with tips from Google as well as successful developers.
There’s no exact blueprint for mobile app success and no developer’s journey is the same, which is why The Guide to the App Galaxy contains different advice and best practices from developers around the world. Here are some key insights from developers who have successfully built a business on mobile:
Rovio Mobile
Making money on mobile is not black and white—there's actually a lot of color. There are a number of business model options that aren't exclusive to any particular platforms.
Best, Cool & Fun Games
Offering your app for free lowers the barrier for users to download and try your app. The free version of Ant Smasher went viral because players could easily recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.
The Weather Channel
Don't forget to think beyond mobile. If you have a website or even a television channel, you can cross-promote your app with banner advertising or in-show mentions to drive downloads.
If you’re a developer who has successfully navigated the App Galaxy and launched your own app, you’ve probably picked up some tips of your own. Share your insights by creating your own journey and sharing it with your friends. We might even feature your story on The Guide to the App Galaxy.
The Guide to the App Galaxy is currently available in English, Japanese, Korean, French and German. We’re continuing to expand the guide to other developers around the world with new languages and new content like case study journeys. For more information about our solutions for mobile app developers, visit www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/about.
The Carphone Warehouse launched in 1989 as a UK mobile phone retailer and now has a portfolio of thousands of stores across nine European countries, as well as an e-commerce site.
Given the different channels their customers can use to access products, it was a logical choice to connect these channels with a mobile marketing strategy. “Clearly The Carphone Warehouse has a natural position in this new emerging mobile space, and we view it as a key way of driving efficient sales but also fulfilling what we refer to as multi-channel assistance,” says Gareth Jones, their head of online marketing.
Take a look at this short interview with Gareth to find out what The Carphone Warehouse did.
The first step was to build a mobile-optimised website. “Previously if you searched for ‘carphone’ on your mobile, you’d have gone through to the dot-com site. We were selling through that, but that was more to do with the tenacity of the user to pinch, scroll and end up at the checkout.” The mobile site leverages the capabilities of a phone with click-to-call functionality to enable a user to contact the call centre and make a purchase.
Next, they worked closely with their agency Efficient Frontier to build a campaign specifically for mobile, analysing results on a frequent basis to refine their keyword lists. In addition, they included a click-to-call number in their text ads. “Click-to-call is an important element of our paid marketing activity because it’s clearly driving calls that are converting very efficiently for us,” Gareth observes.
They began to explore new AdWords ad formats designed for mobile. Taking advantage of Mobile Ad Sitelinks, which allow an AdWords text ad appearing on a high end mobile device to include two links to a site’s deeper content, The Carphone Warehouse included a link to their store finder page. “That’s a clear multi-channel dynamic. You’re walking down the street, you fancy buying a phone, you need to know where The Carphone Warehouse is and you use your mobile search functionality to do that,” says Gareth. The click-through rate for Mobile Ad Sitelinks was 312% greater than mobile search activity where Sitelinks did not appear.
You can download a PDF version of The Carphone Warehouse case study here.
Posted by Michael Schipper, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
As many online content providers are moving their content to mobile apps and sites, monetizing this new platform provides a new set of challenges. TV Guide Digital was getting their feet wet in mobile before the iPhone even existed. Christy Tanner, GM of TV Guide Digital, shares her insights into building a successful business on mobile.
With nearly 4 million app downloads across Android, iPhone and iPad, Tanner sees mobile as becoming an increasingly important part of TV Guide Digital’s business. Christy Tanner points out, “we took our time to get the app right - we have loyal customers with high expectations and made sure the app met those customer needs prior to launch.” Additionally, she warns newcomers to mobile that the development cycle is almost as fast as their online business.
Interview with Christy Tanner, GM TV Guide Digital
To keep users engaged with the apps, TV Guide is constantly providing new content and features to keep users engaged. Therefore an ad-supported business model makes sense to support this ongoing process. Yet, while the company has grown its mobile footprint, training ad sales teams to sell mobile ad space takes time. Tanner notes, “it is great to have the AdMob network to rely on when we have unsold inventory. AdMob is currently giving us the highest eCPMs of any ad network we work with and the customer service has been great.”
As Christy Tanner looks ahead, she is bullish on mobile and excited to expand TV Guide’s mobile offering to continue to meet user needs. As she sees more users interacting with multiple screens simultaneously, she hopes to see more advertisers leverage this opportunity to reach users in new, creative and engaging ways.
The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest residential real estate firm, experienced success in mobile advertising when they ran a campaign for their iPhone app in 2009. As Android phones rapidly populated the smartphone market in 2010, Corcoran launched an Android app to take advantage of the new platform. To provide the Android user with content on the Corcoran app that they wanted to engage with, Corcoran took advantage of Google Analytics for their mobile search advertising campaign on the Android OS.
Two months after its release, Corcoran’s Android app was responsible for 15% of their total app usage across all mobile platforms, making it their fastest-growing mobile platform. To better educate themselves on what users wanted, Corcoran integrated Google Analytics with their mobile app while running a mobile search advertising campaign on Android OS mobile phones. Now, Corcoran could accurately manage their campaign’s conversion funnel and understand the difference in usage between different platforms.
With Google Analytics, Corcoran now had the ability to successfully upgrade their user experience based on actual in-depth usage data they didn’t have before. For example, Corcoran learned that Android users tend to engage more deeply with the app versus other smartphone users and most of them use the “near me now” function available on Android. With this type of new-found knowledge about their customer base, Corcoran provided better navigation and new formats (see image below). As a result the company not only delivered exactly what users wanted, but also experienced click-through rates 7 to 8 times higher than their desktop campaigns.
As the first client to use Google Analytics with their Android mobile campaign, Corcoran continues to see success, and uses data from Google Analytics to further perfect their mobile experience on Android.
To learn more about this campaign, please download the full case study here.
To get started using Google Analytics for your Android or iPhone mobile app, check out the SDK & technical documentation.
Posted by Dalia Mitra, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Voyages-sncf.com – the online travel agency of French rail giant SNCF – found that 51% of its mobile internet users book tickets for travel the day before or day of departure. It’s clear that mobile is the ideal medium for delivering services to customers precisely when they need them most. A mobile-optimised transactional site that launched in 2007 already attracts two million unique visitors per month, but to provide the best possible user experience Voyages-sncf.com launched an iPhone app last year.
Once they’d made this initial investment, the next challenge was to encourage maximum downloads. Rather than tacking mobile onto existing campaigns, we worked with Voyages-sncf.com to craft a well-defined mobile advertising strategy to complement their email marketing communications
Google, with the AdMob network, offered the opportunity for Voyages-sncf.com to use a variety of innovative ad formats which made the most of the medium to drive direct response. So in addition to a classic CPC banner, we implemented an animated multi-panel banner, an expandable banner and an interstitial ad. The campaign required a broad reach into iPhone users in France, and the extensive AdMob network provided this too.
Voyages-sncf.com aimed to achieve 15,000 downloads in the month of December, but the app smashed all expectations by actually hitting 87,000 downloads over that period. Of these, 70,000 were generated by customer newsletters and communications. The 10-day AdMob campaign delivered 50,789 clicks, which generated 17,000 downloads, representing an impressive conversion rate of 33.5%.
Find out how to replicate the success of Voyages-sncf.com by reading the full case study here.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
At Google’s Think Mobile Event last month, brands and agencies had a chance to reflect on recent successes they’ve had with mobile advertising. Jared Hopfer, Associate Director from Mobext, the mobile marketing arm of MPG and Media Contacts, shared his observations with us that day.
In the video below, Mr. Hopfer recounts how he worked with Google’s AdMob team to execute a mobile branding strategy for Volvo Cars of North America. To build excitement around the launch of Volvo’s S60 sedan, Mobext relied heavily on mobile interactive video ads. The campaign delivered significant brand lift and users spent a minute on average interacting with the video ads, akin to two 30-second spots.
As it turned out, the program became a pivotal point in how Volvo and Mobext used mobile advertising. Before the campaign, they viewed mobile primarily as a direct response channel to drive visitors to dealerships. In light of their recent successes, both agency and advertiser now see mobile as a branding mainstay and have added mobile to several upcoming branding and engagement programs. For more details on their story, download the full case study.
Posted by Ben Chung, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
According to Nielsen, YouTube is the #1 mobile video website in the US, with millions of users watching video from a mobile device every day. As mobile video viewership continues to grow rapidly, we are now extending the popular YouTube Brand Channel from YouTube desktop to reach and engage users on high-end devices, including iPhone and Android phones.
Mobile Brand Channels allow advertisers to create a customized mobile brand experience within YouTube. Users can share videos, save to a playlist, subscribe to the channel and rate content through the “thumbs up” YouTube feature. Mobile-specific banners create a wallpaper effect and also enable advertisers to link their Brand Channel to another mobile website.
Brand Channels are discoverable by searching on m.youtube.com. Advertisers can also promote their Brand Channel through mobile advertising on the Google search or display network, as well as YouTube Mobile.
Hyundai Motor America is one of the first advertisers to create a YouTube Mobile Brand Channel. To maximize user engagement, they customized their channel with a mobile-specific banner, promotional text and featured video. To drive traffic to their new mobile experience, Hyundai is running mobile advertising on the AdMob network and also purchased a roadblock of m.youtube.com for 100% share of voice of the mobile YouTube audience.
We congratulate Hyundai on a great mobile video experience and look forward to working with more brands to promote YouTube video content on mobile.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
InterContinental Hotels Group’s sophisticated mobile strategy is having a demonstrable impact on their business in Europe. The business operates seven hotel brands: InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites, and is the largest hotel group in the world by number of rooms.
We caught up with Marco De Rosa, IHG’s Mobile & Interactive Marketing Manager for EMEA, who’s been using Google AdWords mobile ads to reach new customers on their mobile devices. Recently, IHG began creating mobile-optimised websites and creating AdWords campaigns with messaging specifically targeted to users on their phones.
“By using text specifically aimed at mobile users, we saw revenue from our mobile search activity increase by 91% YoY,” says De Rosa. “Thanks to our current activity with Google, traffic to our mobile site is increasing by 20% MoM.”
In the latter part of last year Lovestruck.com, one of the UK’s leading dating websites on mobile and desktop, came to us with quite a challenge. The location-aware dating site wanted to promote its free iPhone application to users in London, and only in London. We often get asked to run campaigns in one country or on specific handsets, but this was the first time that we had been asked to focus a campaign on one city, in the UK.
The campaign kicked off in May 2010 and ran across our network of mobile websites and iPhone applications. However, unlike other campaigns, the ads promoting the Lovestruck.com app were only shown to iPhone users in London. To get the app, users simply had to click on the banner ad and they were taken through to the App Store download page for the Lovestruck.com app.
click to enlarge image
For Lovestruck.com the key benefit of this geo-targeted approach was that it allowed them to align the campaign with the company's strategy of expanding its membership base in the UK's capital city. But this wasn't the only benefit that Lovestruck.com saw. The campaign generated a far greater return on investment than other nationwide campaigns, as it was able to target potential users more closely.
The campaign exceeded expectations considerably. Cost per Downloads (CPD) were more than 76 percent lower than expected. This meant that we were able to work with mobile media agency Fetch Media to immediately scale the campaigns, increasing budget by more than 60 percent.
Lovestruck.com was so happy with the results of the campaign that it now spends 40 percent of its marketing budget on mobile, and has rolled out similar geo-targeted campaigns in Singapore and Hong Kong. To download the full Lovestruck case study, please click this link.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Defender Direct sells affordable security systems to individuals who want to keep their homes and loved ones safe. To stay ahead of their competition and to ensure client satisfaction, Defender Direct staffed their call centers with consultants educated on the intricacies of their security systems. To drive more calls to their call centers, Defender Direct decided to implement Click-to-call mobile ad campaigns.
Driving calls to the call center is critical to Defender Direct’s business model and a primary goal of their marketing efforts. With this in mind, Defender Direct turned to mobile advertising to generate new, better qualified leads. Google suggested their Click-to-call mobile search ad unit, which prominently highlights the business phone number in the ad result (see example below).
click to enlarge image
First, Defender Direct ran a Click-to-call campaign targeted to WAP mobile phones, giving users the option to place a call directly to their call center or visit their mobile site. After this campaign performed exceedingly well, Defender Direct’s next move was to target high-end devices with full Internet browsers including the iPhone and Android platforms. The results were impressive. ROI for Defender Direct mobile campaigns exceeded the ROI for their desktop campaigns by a factor of two. By running Click-to-call campaigns on both WAP and high end devices, Defender Direct succeeded in driving more qualified leads to their call centers.
With an overwhelming 75-80% of Defender Direct’s online advertising clicks coming from mobile devices, they have now allocated a quarter of their total online advertising budget to this platform. This campaign is an excellent example of how advertisers can take advantage of new opportunities in mobile to successfully reach their business goals in different and unique ways. To learn more about this ad format, please read our Click-to-call Best Practices post.
Posted by Dalia Mitra, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Roy’s Restaurants has landed on a recipe for success with Google Mobile Ads. By using hyperlocal advertising and creating mobile-only AdWords campaigns, Roy’s was able to drive 40% more calls and ultimately more customers to their stores. Read more to learn how Roy’s and its agency, G&M Plumbing, have implemented mobile best practices to achieve an 800% ROI. In 1988, James Beard Award-winner Roy Yamaguchi opened the first Roy's in Honolulu, Hawaii. Multi-ingredient fusion dishes, a spacious dining room, an expansive lounge, and a signature exhibition kitchen in full view defined the experience. Today’s Roy’s 31 restaurants cater to diners celebrating a special occasion as well as business travelers looking to wind down.
Getting started with click-to-call mobile ads Based on substantial success with Google AdWords, G&M and Roy’s began looking for new ways to increase marketing returns and create meaningful connections with customers. Together, they determined that customers who call the restaurant will frequently make multiple reservations and that a growing number of people prefer to use their phones to secure a dining spot. With a goal of increasing phone reservations, Roy’s extended their desktop click-to-call location extensions campaign to the mobile platform. As a result, call volumes grew and the company became curious about what they could do to further maximize calls and returns. Creating mobile-only campaigns and implementing mobile best practices Roy’s and G&M subsequent steps are a great example of how to maximize returns by advertising on mobile devices with Google. First, the duo created a national, mobile-only campaign that enabled them to budget, bid, target, and track their mobile performance separately from their desktop AdWords campaigns. Next they employed aggressive bids to increase the chances of their ads appearing in the top positions – an important consideration for advertising on mobile because of the phone’s smaller screen size.
Harnessing the power of hyperlocal advertising In addition to mobile-specific campaigns, Roy’s also took advantage of Google Mobile Ads’ new hyperlocal advertising feature which serves locally relevant ads and displays distance information to help users understand how close they are to a business. The hyperlocal functionality of the ad format immediately enabled the company to better target on-the-go customers searching for the closest Roy’s Restaurant location. Reflecting on the experience with hyperlocal ads, Jason Maloney, Vice President of Marketing for Roy’s said, “With Google's hyperlocal mobile advertising, we were able to target our potential guests at their point of need. Mobile searchers looking for dining options could effortlessly see how close they were to a nearby Roy's Restaurant and the click to call function allowed for instant reservations. Our hyperlocal mobile-only campaign drove a 40% increase in calls with a CPC 67% less than desktop ads. The numbers are impossible to ignore. We have to invest in hyperlocal mobile advertising as part of our long-term growth strategy.” Reaping exponential returns Roy's was able to achieve click-through rates 539% higher on mobile than on desktop by investing in mobile-specific campaigns and hyperlocal advertising. And Scott Dunagan, Director of Digital Marketing at G&M Plumbing believes this is only the beginning of the mobile advertising returns for Roy’s, “With Google Mobile Ads we saw an 800% return on investment on our mobile-only campaigns, roughly doubling our ROI from when we had blended mobile/desktop campaigns. Google Mobile Ads have allowed us to reach our target consumers and enable them to transact with us in much more effective ways than any other medium. It’s all about giving the end user all the information they need within the ad. With Google mobile-only campaigns we are seeing tremendous results.” Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Product Marketing
Adidas, a major sports apparel manufacturer and retailer, was looking for new ways to drive customers to their stores. So when Google Mobile Ads offered them the opportunity to be a part of a limited mobile Offer Ads beta, they jumped at the chance. Mobile Offer Ads enable advertisers to place coupon offers right into their sponsored search listings on Google.com. Adidas was already testing mobile search ads to drive traffic to their mobile site and the beta allowed them to experiment with using mobile to drive foot traffic to their stores.
In their ad, the company offered customers 15% off purchases made in an Adidas store of $75 or more. Interested users could store the offer either via email or SMS. In addition to the coupon, the ad also provided a phone number and map of a local Adidas store, giving consumers all they would need to go in-store, redeem the offer and make a purchase. With a click-through rate 28% higher than their past mobile advertising, the mobile Offers Ads campaign doubled in-store coupon redemption and increased the average in-store order value.
Based on the success of Adidas and other advertisers with mobile Offer Ads, we are excited to continue our work with offers and have since extended the beta to desktop computers. While beta participation is currently limited, we hope to make it broadly available soon.
Posted by Dalia Mitra, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
We constantly work with developers who are running cross-platform app promotion campaigns on the AdMob network. Recently OpenTable ran a campaign to increase the install base for the Android version of their app.
Taking advantage of the scale of the AdMob display network and measuring install rates with download tracking, OpenTable was able to easily evaluate the return from their advertising campaign. In this Android targeted campaign, the AdMob network drove a 125% increase in daily downloads at 42% lower cost-per-install than past iPhone campaigns.
“We’ve been able to increase the pace of Android mobile user acquisition with mobile advertising. App promotion has proven to be as effective on this platform as it is on iPhone for OpenTable,” comments Scott Jampol, Sr. Director of Consumer Marketing at OpenTable.com.
click to enlarge image
We look forward to continuing to work with developers on app promotion campaigns across many different mobile platforms.
This week we had the opportunity to host a panel discussion with John Seebeck, VP of eBusiness at Crate and Barrel and John Lazarchic, VP, e-Commerce at PETCO at the Shop.org Summit in Dallas, Texas. Brendon Kraham, Team Manager of Mobile Display Ads for the Retail & Tech verticals, moderated the panel. Both Crate and Barrel and PETCO recently ran their first mobile advertising campaign on the AdMob network.
The session topic was “Retail Case Studies in Mobile Advertising” and focused on the process of getting started with mobile advertising and results of the Crate and Barrel and PETCO campaigns. The panel drove a great conversation around things to consider when developing a mobile advertising strategy. We’ve included insights from the session below as well as creative examples from both campaigns.
Campaign Highlights
Crate and Barrel ran a CPM campaign to drive mobile visitors to their mobile website from smartphone, iPod touch and iPad devices.
iPad CPM ads drove a 15% CTR for Crate and Barrel.
Overall CTR for Crate and Barrel CPM campaign was 3.48%, substantially higher than their average for online display.
Crate and Barrel CPM Canvas Ad (banner ad expands to canvas)
PETCO utilized both CPC and CPM ads to drive mobile traffic to a coupon offer on a newly created mobile landing page built for the offer.
PETCO’s hybrid CPC/CPM campaign drove coupon redemption rate of 4.6%.
In-store coupon redemptions outnumbered online by 5 to 1 for PETCO’s $10 off $50 purchase coupon offer, showing the power of driving in-store traffic via mobile advertising.
PETCO banner ad leads to landing page for coupon opt-in
Getting Started on Mobile: Mobile Web v. Applications
Both Crate and Barrel and PETCO are focusing on the mobile web first, with the possibility of developing applications for specific operating systems in the future.
PETCO expects the cost of developing a mobile website will be more than made up by increases in mobile conversion rates.
Crate and Barrel already has a mobile optimized site and is considering enhancing this experience through applications, particularly for iPad.
Setting Mobile Goals
PETCO is very ROI focused and excited about the opportunity around both driving traffic to physical store locations and online purchases.
Crate and Barrel had both purchase and branding goals around this initial mobile advertising campaign. The strong CTR they saw on mobile makes them feel enthusiastic about measuring additional activities in the future.
Lessons Learned
Implement and test measurement tools in order to track against mobile goals.
Important to consider ease of conversion on mobile and limit barriers to conversion by providing best possible experience to mobile users.
Big thanks to John Seebeck and John Lazarchic for sharing their experiences. We are excited to continue helping our retail customers connect with their desired audience on mobile.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Seattle’s Best Coffee and its agency, Creature, connected with AdMob in order to promote a new line of coffee beverages across a variety of mobile devices. AdMob closely collaborated with Creature to develop visually engaging ad units and a landing page experience compatible with thousands of phones.
click for full size image
“AdMob’s wide range of creative units truly brought our brand to life in mobile. Their solution made it simple to get started and measure success, and the Interactive Interstitial mirrored the PC experience, allowing our customers to get in to the campaign wherever they happened to be.” said Kristie Shields, Director of Media Strategy, Creature.
The campaign drove 139K users to Seattle’s Best Coffee mobile website and delivered a 5.7% interaction rate on full-page expandable ad units and a 5.4% clickthrough rate on interactive interstitial ad units.
Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, Rosetta is a top ranked digital agency focused on Retail & Consumer Products, Healthcare, Financial Services, Communications, Media & Technology, Travel & Leisure and B2B markets.
After learning about what they could do with Google Mobile Ads, Rosetta was excited to take advantage of the mobile opportunity. One of their financial services clients, a Fortune 500 company, was the perfect candidate. Already working with the client on Google desktop search campaigns, Rosetta saw mobile as a great way to drive additional web traffic and conversions.
To accurately measure performance and optimize conversion costs, Rosetta set up separate mobile search campaigns targeting phones with full Internet browsers -- including iPhone and Android devices. Separating out the mobile from the desktop campaigns allowed the agency to have more control over their bids as well as the flexibility to shift their budget on the fly. As a result, campaign performance exceeded expectations. Mobile click-through rates were almost eight times higher than desktop CTRs and the lift in incremental web traffic from mobile was significant. Most importantly, users were signing up for the client’s services via their phones. “It’s shocking and amazing to see people on their mobile phones converting at a decent rate,” says Jason Tabeling Director of Search Media at Rosetta, “especially when they were completing the quote process for a new account [via] desktop, which is upwards of six pages.” By investing in mobile optimized campaigns, Rosetta not only delivered results but also demonstrated the value of mobile to their client. “[Mobile] traffic is not a waste for us - it’s something that’s been incremental,” explains Tabeling. “And it’s growing… as mobile continues to grow, we are excited to bring the opportunity to more of our clients.” To learn more, please download the full case study here. To read about other case studies, check out our Mobile Success Stories.
Posted by Lauren Usui, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Samsung and its agency, MediaVest, partnered with AdMob to promote a new line of LED 3D televisions to mobile users.
Samsung leveraged AdMob’s range of engaging ad units and network of premium sports sites to connect with it's desired audience of male sports fans ages 18-49. The Samsung team also ran an Insight Express brand study to measure the impact of mobile advertising on key brand metrics.
click for full size image
The campaign was very successful in helping Samsung achieve its goals and is a great example of how mobile is a measurable and effective solution for driving brand awareness. According to the brand study, users exposed to the campaign registered a 27% increase in intent to purchase a 3D TV and a 117% increase in agreement with the statement “Samsung brought the first 3D TV to the market" over the control group. Additionally, AdMob delivered 198K visits to Samsung’s post click experience and 50K video views on the mobile site.
To read the full Samsung case study, please click here.
Posted by Johanna Werther, Google/AdMob Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Earlier this year we launchedclick-to-call functionality, which enables customers to connect with businesses by phone directly from a mobile ad. How are advertisers using the click-to-call feature? And is it working? We’d like to share a case study that showcases how one national financial services advertiser used click-to-call to achieve their marketing goals.
Esurance is a San Francisco based auto insurance company dedicated to improving the way customers shop for, buy and manage their car insurance. To support their new brand positioning -- “people when you want them, technology when you don’t,” the marketing team wanted to enable mobile phone users to quickly reach an agent live or interact with the company through the mobile web.
To do this, Esurance developed an iPhone app that provides users with quotes, insurance information and claim resources. They also launched mobile optimized landing pages for the campaign so that potential customers could easily get information via the mobile web. Additionally, Esurance ran click-to-call ads on both feature and high-end mobile phones. With click-to-call, an interested person could get in touch with an agent to obtain a personal quote in just a few steps. To track the results of the campaign, Esurance used unique 800 numbers in their ads and optimized performance as soon as the campaigns went live.
click for full size image
The results were impressive. Esurance significantly reduced acquisition costs, acquiring customers at 30% less than through other marketing channels. They also boosted conversion rates. Click-to-call mobile ads drove a 30%-35% higher response and a 5-10% lower cost per click on mobile than on online.
Tolithia Kornweibel. Director of Online Marketing at Esurance, summed up her experience saying, “The click-to-call feature of Google mobile ads is key, because it allows a user to connect to us directly after a search -- so customers have a great user experience, and we get a positive return on investment.”
To learn more about Esurance’s approach, please download the full case study here. To read about other case studies, check out our Mobile Success Stories.
Posted by Jesse Haines, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
