“In the next twelve months, we’ll start to see mobile go from experimental budgets to core parts of media plans and hopefully just embedded into digital spend.”
-Marc Ruxin, Chief Innovation Officer at Universal McCann

On February 10, 2011 we hosted Think Mobile, a thought leadership event that brought together mobile industry leaders to discuss all things mobile.

Afterwards, we caught up with speakers from the event to find out their thoughts on the future of mobile as well as their favorite mobile trends and mobile apps. Watch as mobile industry leaders such as eBay’s Deepak Thomas, Expedia’s Joe Megibow, Universal McCann’s Marc Ruxin, Kleiner Perkins’ Matt Murphy, Google’s Jason Spero, Brendon Kraham, Jesse Haines and many more respond to our questions about mobile’s transformation on consumers and marketing. Visit the Think Mobile: Perspectives from Industry Thought Leaders playlist on our YouTube Channel.

Also, if you missed the Think Mobile live stream, be sure to check out the recorded session posted on our YouTube channel.

Posted by Suzanne Mumford, 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

Over 350 people attended Google’s sponsored session, “Turning Mobile Games into Money Makers,” at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco last week. Charles Yim, who manages strategic partnerships with the mobile games industry for Google, moderated the panel which included Glu Mobile's Mike Breslin, Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka and ZeptoLabs' Misha Lyalin.

Developers in the audience got to see a range of perspectives on monetizing, marketing, and distributing mobile games from the small upstart with 5 employees, Zeptolab to the publicly-traded Glu Mobile which is now 400 employees strong.  Each of these companies were building mobile games years before the iPhone and “apps” existed, so here are a few insights if you were not able to attend:

1. Start with a Great Game: It sounds simple, but Vesterbacka kept coming back to this point and the rest of the panel agreed.  Lyalin explained that building low-quality games undermines the entire industry not just the developer or the company.  One key is to create an emotional connection like with the friendly monster Om Nom in Cut the Rope; the player wants to make Om Nom happy so keeps playing.
2. Games as a Service: Breslin urged developers to think of mobile games as a service that needs to be constantly improved rather than a product that is shipped and sold.  The connectivity of a mobile device allows game developers to build an ongoing relationship with mobile gamers.  Similar to old arcade games, the goal is to have players “keep putting quarters in the machine” which is different from prepackaged console games.
3. Listen to Your Users: Lyalin believes recommendations and word of mouth are critical for success and believes in the net promoter score.  Keep a close eye on reviews and percent of users upgrading to new versions to ensure they like your content.
4. Build with Monetization in Mind: The type of game you have and relationship with your customers influences your opportunities for monetization.  You need to build the game thinking about where you might place ads or what mechanics will incentivize a player to pay for a virtual item or advanced features rather than try to go back and add these things in later.
5. Test and Iterate: Mike Breslin stressed the importance of “testing, testing, testing” to identify the optimal monetization strategy for each game.  All panelists closely measure conversions and uptake of virtual goods in addition to MAU, DAU, etc.
6. Scale Quickly: When asked what mistakes they made that other developers could learn from, Lyalin admitted that they did not scale fast enough.  He points out that it can all happen so fast on mobile.  Your game takes off and you hit your first $1 million, and it is exciting, but then you realize you need to reinvest a lot of that money back to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Looking ahead in 2011, the panelists are excited to see continued growth in mobile and new opportunities to monetize their games. Despite the limited reach of tablets today, all panelists were very bullish on the platform with Vesterbacka even predicting that they could highly marginalize consoles. Additionally, Mike Breslin reminded developers that, with the rapid growth in smartphone adoption, every 2-3 months you have an entirely new audience to attract to your game.  

For more information on Google’s products for developers visit the new Google Game Developer Central website.

Posted by Keri Kandel, Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

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

Yesterday, the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) officially kicked off in San Francisco. From browser technologies to cloud storage solutions, Google has many products and services that can be useful to game developers. Until now, it was hard for developers to track down information on how Google can help them build, distribute and monetize their games. This is why we are excited to release Google Game Developer Central.

Google Game Developer Central provides an overview of Google products and services that are particularly relevant to game developers. You’ll be able to explore different platforms like Chrome, learn about technologies such as GWT, WebGL and HTML5, and check out monetization options like AdMob.

This is just the first iteration of Google Game Developer Central. In the next few months, we plan to add additional content to make this an even better resource for all game developers. If you’d like to give us feedback on how to improve the site, please join our developer forum or for those of you at GDC, stop by our booth on the expo floor. We look forward to meeting you in person!

By Ian Ni-Lewis, Game Developer Relations Team

This post was written by Avinash Kaushik, Google Digital Marketing Evangelist, and cross-posted from his Occam's Razor blog. 

Just when you thought you were finally getting more comfortable with website analytics and the metrics you report, here comes the massive explosion of mobile data!

At one level it is the normal impressions and clicks data, but on another level we are getting new data and metrics we normally don't use. We are going to have fun doing cool stuff, learning new things.

I have been spending some time with the Mobile Ads team at Google to try and understand what is innovative about mobile (oh my god so much!) and what implications are on measurement (loads!).

In this blog post I want to talk about just one specific ad unit, the Search / Display click-to-call ad, and how it is cool, useful, and immensely measureable in sexy ways.

Couple of quick caveats:

1. Click-to-Call ads are available in 223 countries, but Call Metrics (more on this below) is still in limited release, in the US only, so some of you might not have access to it. This will change over time.

2. Some of the screens and setup stuff might change as the product evolves, from what you see below. It should only get better.

3. My blog has a very finite width. so in many places I've cropped the reports to make them more clear for you. Please don't worry if when you use the tool you don't see exactly what you see below. On any tab in AdWords just click on the button called Columns and then click on Customize Columns. You can now add and remove metrics and prettify things!

Read more »

Google is coming off two exciting weeks of mobile engagement.   First, we had our inaugural Think Mobile event in our NY office hosting executives from hundreds of top advertisers, agencies and publishers.  Top Google executives and industry experts such as Mary Meeker presented data showcasing the rapid growth of mobile and urging businesses to think “mobile first” in 2011 as customer interactions on mobile continue to skyrocket.

Then, last week, 50,000 mobile industry executives descended on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.  After talking with mobile executives from leading content providers at both events, one message was clear - they get it.  Mobile is big.  Now is the time to take the plunge and engage users on mobile, yet many of these content providers have barely scraped the surface as their mobile teams are constrained by minuscule budgets and a general low ranking on the company’s priority list.

The good news is it is not too late to be early to mobile, but the race is on as a slew of entrepreneurs draft plans to unseat the incumbents.  For those of you working hard to convince your CEO of the urgency to think “mobile first”, I offer the following letter with my advice to your CEO.  Feel free to pass it along to him or her to get the conversation started.

Dear CEO,
Congratulations.  Many of you saw mobile coming before it came – and you hired mobile teams to plan for the future.  I know them – they are smart and are passionate about mobile.  And they are emotionally attached to your mission.  Now let them run free.  Because who is better suited to reinvent your current business for mobile than this group?  Follow these simple rules to see how mobile can transform your business.

1. Build for mobile:  Merely porting your content to a mobile website or app is not enough.  Mobile devices now enable you to use features such as location, voice commands, touchscreens and embedded cameras to create unique, engaging experiences for your users.  Let your mobile team think creatively to discover how best to leverage these features to delight your customers.
   
2. Remove budget constraints: Budgets are created based on last year’s performance and neglect future opportunities.  Invest now in mobile so that you are not blind-sided later by a competitor that provides your customers with a more compelling product.  Give your mobile team license to dream big and have them develop a budget that makes sense for an emerging business.
   
3. Take risks:  Allow this mobile team to act like a start-up.  Let them explore new business models and new ways to package your content for mobile usage.  Do not restrict them with what worked and did not work in print and online.  Focus on delighting your users and then determine how mobile best fits in with the rest of your portfolio.
4. Test and iterate: 3-year plans don’t work in emerging businesses - you need to reevaluate every three months at a minimum.  Give this mobile team a month or two to produce something.  It will not be perfect, but push them to create something you can put in market.  Focus on gathering customer feedback and responding with improvements to your offering.

As you challenge your mobile team to reinvent your business for mobile consumption, let me end on a note that will help you rest easy at night.  We’ve found that mobile usage peaks when desktop wanes making it additive to your existing business.  People want to stay connected wherever they are...at lunch, during the commute, even at the beach while on vacation.  For content providers, that’s good, dare I say great, news.  

Cheers,
Chris

Posted by Chris LaSala, Director Mobile Partnerships

Next week OMMA Global in San Francisco will explore the impact of the latest technology trends on media and marketing. We hope you can join us in learning about the latest news around mobile, social, video and display media.

Google’s Jordan Kobert will be on hand to discuss how advertisers and publishers can remain relevant as user attention moves increasingly to mobile on the “Can Advertisers and Publishers Keep Pace with the Mobile Shift” panel at 2:45 p.m. on February 28th.

Please stop by the Google booth and chat with our YouTube, Doubleclick, Google Display Network and Mobile Ads teams on both days of the conference. Registration is free - we hope to see you there!

Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team