Last week we brought together top marketing executives, industry visionaries and agency leaders to discuss all things mobile at Google’s Think Mobile event.

Speaking to a room full of excited marketers, Google’s Dennis Woodside, President Americas, Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, and Jason Spero, Head of Americas Mobile Advertising gave their thoughts on the future of mobile and what advertisers can do to better connect with today’s mobilized consumers.

In order to share these innovative perspectives with as many people as possible, the event was live streamed to desktop and Android and iPhone mobile devices. If you missed the live stream, you can watch the recorded session on the Google Mobile Ads YouTube channel. Additionally, be sure to visit our Think Mobile Live Stream page where you can view presentations and videos from the event.

Posted by Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Until recently, Guilherme Schvartsman was an investment banker with a successful career in the financial market.  At the same time, he was keenly interested in the exponential growth in high-end mobile devices and apps, especially in his native country, Brazil.  In 2009, Guilherme started developing iPhone applications in 2009 in his free time.  Soon after, he founded Best, Cool & Fun Games to focus on developing mobile games full-time. The company is currently one of the top mobile gaming companies in Latin America, with a portfolio of more than 30 casual games played by 10 million users around the world.  We are excited to have Guilherme as a guest author to share his top five things that every app developer should know.

#1 - Use advertising to grow traffic and get discovered
Many apps are discovered when users are searching or browsing on their mobile device, often browsing top ranked applications lists in the Android Market and App Store.  With over hundreds of thousands of apps available for download, how do you get your app to stand out in the crowded marketplace?  Be sure to promote your app because I’ve seen so many good apps go unnoticed. There are many options for promoting your mobile app, but one of the easiest is mobile advertising.  Mobile advertising helps with getting your app discovered and installed, which in turn helps you stand out in the crowded app marketplace.  With AdMob mobile advertising, I was able to get front and center across a network of over 50,000 apps and sites to promote Ant Smasher.  Promoting my app was really easy and I was instantly able to see the impact of my advertising campaigns through real-time reporting in AdMob.  This allowed me to optimize my ad spend accordingly.  Using mobile advertising, I was able to drive significant download volumes for Ant Smasher (close to 50% of all downloads), which was key for getting ranked in the top app store lists.

#2 - You can make money by giving away your product for free
Keep in mind that many users won’t spend a nickle for a game, so offering your app for free and serving ads is a great way to let everyone play your game.  It may seem counter intuitive but you can earn sustainable revenues by giving away your product for free.   We were getting downloads and earning money when we initially launched the paid version of Ant Smasher for $0.99.  However, when we started offering a limited version of the app for free and using AdMob to serve ads, we quickly discovered that the bulk of revenues were coming from ads displayed in the app.  As a result, we quickly re-evaluated our business strategy offering the full version of Ant Smasher for free while relying on ads for monetization.  Today, most of the apps in our portfolio are offered to users at no cost, and we rely on an ad-supported business model.  Ant Smasher currently garners $2 million annualized revenues, with 80% coming from ads, primarily via AdMob.

#3 - It’s all in the little details
Ant Smasher started off as a fun idea where the user squishes ants on a tabletop.  I wanted to build a simple game that would be easy to learn, yet a challenge for users to master.  Beyond just having a fun idea, I tested it with various users who found it endlessly fun to play before starting to build the app.  We also knew that smartphone users are a tough crowd to please.  They want instant satisfaction, no bugs or glitches, and flawless performance.  So we spent a lot of time on the little details that make Ant Smasher delight users.  We kept the game simple, and focused on gameplay and graphics, hiring a UI designer.  The end result was an addictive app with realistic looking ants and squishing sound effects that keep users engaged and coming back.

#4 - Ride the social wave
Remember, for an app to “go viral” it needs to offer something valuable to the user.  Be it a useful utility or endless hours of fun, it also has to be easy for users to share.  By offering your product for free, you essentially lower the barrier for users to download and try your app.  When we released the free version of Ant Smasher, it went viral because it was easy for players to recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.

 #5 - Leverage house ads
House ads are a great advertising tool that often goes underutilized.  It enables app developers to cross-promote their own apps using their own mobile inventory. Conversion rates also tend to be higher and house ads can be used to fill excess inventory.  We used house ads with AdMob to cross-promote the paid version of Ant Smasher in the free version and inside other apps within our portfolio.  On average, Ant Smasher click-through rate is 6.5% with one in six clickthroughs resulting in an app purchase.  Additionally, we used our house ads performance to benchmark our paid advertising at no cost.  It helped us know where to invest budget and how to better optimize our paid advertising campaigns.

Mobile is such an exciting industry, and it’s different from anything else I’ve ever done.  With smartphone adoption taking off globally and the rapid growth of mobile apps, it’s an exciting time to be an app developer.  The possibilities to build a business on mobile are endless and the barriers to entry are low. I hope app developers of all sizes find these tips useful -- I sure wish I had these before I quit my day job!

 Editor’s note: You can try Ant Smasher for yourself by downloading the latest version for iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) or Android.  For more information about AdMob, please visit www.admob.com.  For Latin American based developers interested in AdMob, please visit http://goo.gl/HjMe7.

Posted by Guilherme Schvartsman, Founder & CEO, Best, Cool & Fun Games

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.”

Watch the full interview with Marco in the below video or visit the Google Mobile Ads YouTube Channel.



To read the full case study, please download this PDF.

Posted by Michael Schipper, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

For all those Mobile World Congress delegates worrying about who to meet up with in Barcelona, where and when, fear not! The Google Mobile Advertising team has teamed up with ad agency Jung von Matt Stockholm to develop the must-have app of this year’s MWC.

The new ‘Heat MWC’ app will allow MWC attendees to identify the hottest popular spots at the event and around town - and connect to fellow delegates.

Users will be able to see which keynote, stand, event or bar is attracting the most delegates on a heat map. Those feeling particularly cliquey could even filter their heat-seeking device to only focus on those from a particular country.

And when you find an interesting new contact, try bumping your phones together to instantly exchange personal details and pave the way for future business.

The new Heat MWC app aims to help delegates connect in a fun and innovative way whilst inspiring businesses to appreciate the power of mobile.

You can download and test the application for Android from www.heatmwc.com (and also see the cool video) or iPhone at iTunes App Store.

Happy heat-seeking and bumping!

Posted by Rikard Steiber, Global Marketing Director, Google Mobile Ads

With searches on mobile devices with full Internet browsers growing 4x over the past year, the opportunity to reach users on the go is big and growing.  Are your campaigns optimized for mobile? Creating mobile specific campaigns that are separate from desktop campaigns is a best practice  advertisers can use to drive better performance on mobile. We’ve seen that advertisers experience  an 11.5% average increase in mobile CTR when they run and optimize a separate mobile campaign, compared to their mobile CTR on a combined mobile+desktop campaign.  Earlier we shared how Roy’s Restaurants achieved an impressive 800% ROI on their advertising by employing a separate mobile campaigns strategy.

Why create separate mobile specific campaigns?
Currently many advertisers run hybrid campaigns that target both desktop computers and mobile devices. This is a sound strategy to increase reach and get started in mobile advertising, but advertisers who want to gain competitive advantage and maximize mobile performance should create separate AdWords campaigns for mobile.   By doing this you can optimize your ad strategy specifically for the mobile platform because you’ll have more control over the levers that directly affect performance.  After you create a mobile-only campaign we recommend that you follow these optimization tips:

• Exercise more control and flexibility:  By using a separate mobile-only campaign you’ll gain better visibility into your mobile specific performance and have more control to optimize your bids, keyword lists and creatives without impacting your desktop campaign.
  
• Budget and bid separately for mobile: On mobile you are competing to have your ad serve on 5 ad spots available on mobile search results page vs. 10 ad spots on desktop. It is important to bid aggressively to ensure your ads are competitive and appear prominently.
  
• Tailor your ad creatives for mobile:  Create mobile specific ad copy and calls to action such as “Receive a quote on your phone” which could attract more attention from mobile consumers.  You can also customize features like Ad Sitelinks and direct users to more mobile relevant content, such as Store Locator pages.
  
• Make the most of mobile:  You can take better advantage of powerful mobile-specific ad features such as Click-to-Call and location-based services which offer more relevance and convenience to users on the go.

How to get started with separate mobile campaigns?

To create a separate mobile campaign you’ll need to create an AdWords campaign which is targeted only to smartphones, keeping it separate from those campaigns which target desktop and laptop computers.  The fastest and easiest way to do this is to use AdWords Editor to copy your  campaign and keywords to a separate mobile-only campaign.  You can duplicate your entire campaign or select just the highest performing keywords on mobile.  

If you’re not using AdWords Editor, please follow these steps to setup new mobile-only campaigns:

1. Login to AdWords.
2. Compile your existing keywords from your existing campaigns into a spreadsheet or text file.
3. From the Campaigns tab in your account, click the New Campaign button.
4. Within your campaign settings, scroll to the Network and devices section, click ‘Let Me Choose’ under Devices and deselect ‘Desktop and laptop computers’.  Your targeting should show that you are selected into Mobile devices with full Internet browsers. 
5. Paste your keywords into the new mobile-only campaign in relevant ad groups.
6. Set the Devices for your old, copied campaigns to ‘Desktop and laptop computers’ only.
7. Use the Shared Extensions feature to easily apply any of your existing extensions (such as location and phone extensions) to your new mobile campaigns.

We hope that you’ll take advantage of this mobile best practice and find it effective in optimizing your mobile ads strategy!

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Product Marketing 

This post has been cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.

By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50% of all Americans will own a smartphone.  Because of the explosion of web-enabled mobile devices,   mobile usage is now on a hockey-stick trajectory: searches on smartphones and tablets have increased by 4x in the last year, and the world of mobile apps continues to engage mobile users—125 years’ worth of Angry Birds are played every day!

For people everywhere, the mobile era has begun.

Yet most businesses haven’t adapted their online strategies—advertising, webpage design, commerce—to mobile.  The opportunity for these businesses is huge and we want everyone to be able to take part.  On February 10, we’re hosting an event at our New York office called “ThinkMobile”: Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, and our own Dennis Woodside, SVP, Americas Operations and Jason Spero, Head of Mobile, Americas, will explore some of the most significant trends in mobile and explain why it’s “not too late for businesses to still be early” in this space.  We invite you to livestream these talks at 1pm ET/10am PT this Thursday on desktop, or—for the first time from a Google event in the U.S.—on both Android and iOS mobile devices as well.  In other words, you can Think Mobile....on mobile!

Right now, advertisers engaging on mobile are increasing brand awareness, purchase intent and sales with effective mobile search and display campaigns.  Mobile developers and publishers are supporting very profitable businesses with advertising revenue.  And consumers are benefiting from relevant and useful ads on their mobile devices.

To help all businesses take advantage of the opportunities that mobile advertising presents, we’re focusing on three core principles with our mobile ads business:

• Seamless: We’re bringing the best characteristics of desktop advertising to mobile devices.  We want to help marketers and developers extend the benefits of their desktop advertising to people on mobile devices, while effectively managing their campaigns and ad space across many channels.

• Inclusive: It’s clear that mobile is about more than just one device, one type of ad format or one style of ad campaign.  Our ad solutions span across search, text, display, video, commerce and more, on a wide variety of devices, and enable businesses and consumers to connect in newly relevant and useful ways.
  
  
  
  
• Made for mobile: Mobile devices have unique characteristics like location awareness and touch screens (and the ability to make phone calls!) that make it easy for people to engage with information conveniently, and create unique opportunities for businesses as well.  Our ad solutions are built to help marketers, developers and publishers take advantage of these mobile-specific characteristics. 

The power of constant connectivity on mobile is a thrilling new reality, and has already transformed the way people engage with information, businesses and certainly with each other.  We’re just now scratching the surface of what’s possible on mobile.  This is an exciting time, and there’s much more to come.

Posted by Karim Temsamani, Global Head of Mobile

The rise of the mobile web is driving one of the most dramatic consumer behavior transformations in history. Billions of people are using their smartphones to search for information, consume news, watch video, interact through social networks and engage with advertising every day. So, what does this mean for mobile marketing?

Tune in and find out what Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Google’s Dennis Woodside, SVP of Americas Operations, and Jason Spero, Head of Americas Mobile Advertising have to say about the future of mobile and what marketers can do to better connect with the mobilized, modern consumer.

The live stream will start on February 10, 2011 at 1:05pm EST and you’ll be able to watch from your desktop computer or from your mobile device. Please register for this virtual event by visiting the Think Mobile Live Stream page.

Following us on Twitter? Use the #thinkmobile hashtag as you are watching the event.

Posted by Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team