We recently shared data on the explosive growth of the AdMob network last year. In 2010 we saw ad requests quadruple with every region and almost every country in the world contributing to that total growth number. Since then we’ve had a number of requests for a more detailed breakdown of exactly where in the world the growth is coming from. While the AdMob network generates monthly ad requests from more than 190 countries, 17 countries account for more than 80% percent of total traffic in December 2010.

When we looked at the growth by country within the regions in 2010 some interesting trends emerged. Most regions had 2-3 countries that accounted for more than half of total ad requests. The remainder of the requests across these regions were spread across a set of smaller, but generally more rapidly growing countries. Highlights include:

• Three countries - India (26%), South Korea (13%) and Japan (12%) - accounted for just more than half of ad requests from Asia in December 2010. Five countries in Asia - South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore and Thailand - had growth rates of more than 1000% in 2010.
• Two countries - Mexico (31%) and Brazil (26%) - drove more than half the ad requests in Latin America in December 2010. Brazil’s growth in 2010 far outpaced that of any other country in the region at 1251%. 
• Three countries - the UK (33%), France (17%) and Germany (12%) drove more than 60% of ad requests from Western Europe in December 2010. The top 10 countries in Western Europe all experienced a greater than 400% growth rate in 2010. 
• Three countries - Nigeria (21%), South Africa (21%) and Egypt (12%) - accounted for more than half of the ad requests from Africa in December 2010. Sudan experienced the most explosive growth in Africa at 2466%, but started from a small base and only accounted for 6% of African requests in 2010.

For a more detailed look at each region, check out the attached presentation.  Note that this data is based solely on ad requests in the AdMob network of mobile web sites and iPhone, Android, webOS, and Flash Lite applications. 

2011 is poised to be another break-out year for mobile as more consumers become more engaged with Internet content - from mobile sites to applications - on their mobile devices. 

Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

This post has been cross posted from the Inside AdWords Blog:

The Ad Preview Tool is a handy way to check how your ads appear on Google without accumulating additional impressions or clicks. By setting a specific location for your preview, you can see how your ads will look to a user in New York even if you’re located in San Francisco.

We’ve recently given the Preview Tool a face-lift and introduced some helpful new features. If you’re signed into your account while previewing your ads, you’ll now see integrated keyword diagnosis results. In this example below, we’ve entered our keyword red roses to see if it’s triggering ads in New York:

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In addition to displaying the ads for that search, the Preview Tool now specifically confirms whether your ad is showing and links to the relevant campaign and ad group. If your ad isn’t showing, the Preview Tool will tell you why, helping you understand if you need to adjust your bids, location targeting, daily budget, or optimize your account.

Using the new Device setting, you can also view and diagnose your ads for high-end mobile devices. You can even choose the specific device and carrier you’re interested in, so you can check ad visibility on multiple devices without borrowing all of your friends’ phones!

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This feature is especially relevant if you're using location extensions to target your mobile ad campaign to an area other than your physical location. By entering latitude and longitude information in the Ad Preview Tool, you can quickly confirm that your ads are correctly displaying your business address to mobile users within a specific location. You can also determine whether a hyperlocal distance marker, which lets users know exactly how far away they are from your business, is visible for your ads. 

You can explore these new features by finding the Ad Preview Tool under the Reporting and Tools tab in your AdWords account or by navigating directly to www.google.com/adpreview.

Posted by Kaan Baloglu, Google Mobile Ads Software Engineer

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.

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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).

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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

This post has been cross posted from the Inside AdWords Blog:

When you’re out and about, is your phone your go-to computer? If you find yourself doing mobile searches for information, directions, or even real-time price comparisons, you’re not alone--mobile search is growing fast. Over the past two years, Google's mobile searches have grown by more than five times. Furthermore, in the third quarter of 2010, Google mobile searches jumped 130% year over year.

Given the growth of mobile search, it’s no surprise that more and more of you are looking to capitalize on the mobile advertising opportunity. If you’re already a mobile advertiser or if you’re looking to make your jump onto the small screen, your job has just gotten easier.

Mobile Statistics in the Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool now helps you build a better keyword list to target mobile users. Under "Advanced options," you can now search for keywords for devices with mobile WAP browsers, mobile devices with full Internet browsers (think iPhone and Android phones), or all mobile devices (sum of devices with WAP browsers and devices with Internet browsers).

When you do a keyword search, the statistics you see for Competition, Global and Local Monthly Searches, and Local Search Trends are all specific to the device or devices that you’ve selected.

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Let us know what you think of this new feature by clicking the “Send Feedback” link in the Keyword Tool or by going directly to our feedback form.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew.

Mobile usage continues to explode, and we continue to see rapid growth throughout the AdMob network of mobile sites and applications. What does this mean for mobile advertising? Today we receive more ad requests in a single day than AdMob received for the entire month of December 2007. That’s a magnitude of 30 times in just over three years.

Here are a few quick stats on what’s happening in our network:
* The AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day, more than quadrupling over the last twelve months.
* More than 100 million unique Android and iOS devices requested an ad each month, nearly doubling over the last six months.
* Rapid growth is global. Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than a billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from just one country a year ago.
* The strongest regional growth in monthly ad requests over the past year has come from Asia (564%), Western Europe (471%) and Oceania (363%).




As we kick off 2011, we continue to be excited about the rapid growth of the mobile industry and of mobile advertising. It’s clear that the growth trajectory of the entire mobile industry is just going to continue to get steeper this year, creating big opportunities. Are you ready for mobile in 2011?

Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

This January, we launched a Click-to-call functionality for mobile ads that enables advertisers to directly connect with potential customers over the phone. In less than a year, Click-to-call (CTC) ads have come a long way and hundreds of thousands of advertisers are using the ad format today. In fact, over the past three months we've seen the number of Google advertisers using phone extensions on mobile grow 28% month-over-month, globally. What’s more, Click-to-call ads on both Google Search and Display Networks are generating millions of calls every month on mobile.

We’re excited to see this response to Click-to-call ads and we’re only just getting started! Since the initial launch, we’ve continued to innovate on the CTC platform by developing a variety of new ad formats to help advertisers reach their marketing objectives. In recent studies we found that when compared to ads without phone numbers, Click-to-call ads drive a 6-8% average increase in click-through rates. To help you maximize the power of Click-to-call, we’ve put together the following best practices for our recent CTC enhancements so that you can easily choose the ad format that best fits your campaign goal. Please note that while these ad formats are eligible to show on the Google Display Network, these tips are specific to campaigns that are targeting Google.com and are opted-in to show on high-end devices with full Internet browsers.


Drive calls to a centralized number with Phone Extensions

Whether you are national advertiser with a call center or just want to drive calls to a specific phone number, the Phone Extensions ad format can be a useful tool. Phone Extensions enable you to include a phone number in your mobile ad that will remain the same, regardless of where the ad is showing.  For example, if you have a national 1-800 number, adding it to your Phone Extension will result in the ad displaying that exact number to users located in California and to users located in New York.  Giving customers the option to instantly make contact with you is a great way to drive qualified leads as well as scale your business. To learn more about this ad format, please read the Phone Extensions announcement.


Focus on phone calls with Call-only Creative

Many businesses value phone calls and website visits differently. If you specifically want to connect with your customers over the phone, you can now use the Call-only Creative to create campaigns solely focused on driving calls to your business. An enhancement that works with Phone Extensions, the Call-only Creative ensures that your phone number is the only clickable part of your mobile ad. Since a call costs the same as a click to your ad, you can completely focus on fostering phone interactions with your desired audience via your mobile campaigns. To learn more about this ad format, please read the Call-only Creative announcement.

Measure performance with Call Metrics for Phone Extensions and Call-only Creative

For more insight into the performance of your Phone Extensions and Call-only Creative ads, enable the AdWords Call Metrics feature.  Using a dynamically assigned Google Voice number, Call Metrics provide campaign-level statistics on the number of phone leads generated by your AdWords ads including call duration and caller area code. Currently, Call Metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers, but we plan to bring this feature to more advertisers in the coming months. To learn more about Call Metrics, please visit please visit Google Ad Innovations.


Help customers remember your phone number with Vanity Phone Numbers

Do most of your business transactions take place over the phone? If so, including a vanity phone number in your ads can help customers remember how to contact you when they need your products or services. An enhancement to Phone Extensions, Vanity Phone Numbers allow you to display an alphanumeric phone number in your mobile ad. As seen in the image above, instead of using 1-800-836-3464 in their mobile ad, 1-800-VENDING can use their actual business name. To learn more about this ad format, please read the Vanity Phone Numbers announcement.


Reach local customers with Location Extensions

Trying to connect with the on-the-go and ready-to-buy local consumer? Adding a location specific business phone number to your ads can help you effectively engage with this audience. Let’s say you own a chain of pizza restaurants and you want to ensure that customers can instantly reach the pizza place nearest to them. Since Location Extensions ads are served based on a users’ location, hungry patrons will click and call the closest restaurant instead of the one across town. As an additional benefit, this ad format displays your address and business location on an expandable map and can help navigate customers to your store.  For more information about this ad format, please read the Location Extensions announcement.

We hope you’ll find these tips useful and we look forward to developing more Click-to-call features for you in the future.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager