As mobile technology continues to accelerate, our phones are quickly becoming indispensable shopping tools. Whether researching a product or comparing prices before purchasing, 79% of US smartphone users have used their devices to help with shopping and 74% of those smartphone shoppers have made a purchase. *

This means that having a mobile strategy is key when engaging with these tech savvy, connected consumers. And this is especially true for advertisers focused on driving online and in-store conversions. To help you develop your mCommerce strategy, we’ve put together the following list of best practices for driving smartphone users to purchase from your site. Please note that these tips are geared towards ads running on high-end devices with full Internet browsers.

Extend your Online Brand Reputation to Mobile with Seller Ratings 
It’s no secret that having a great online reputation is essential to driving online conversions. With Seller Ratings on mobile, you can extend your online reputation from desktop to mobile devices and leverage the power of the mobile platform to drive conversions on your website.

The Seller Ratings extension enables mobile searchers to see merchants who are highly recommended by other shoppers. By showcasing relevant and useful rating information for your business, the extension can help differentiate you from your competition and guide potential customers to purchase from your site. In recent studies, campaigns with mobile Seller Ratings saw a 7.5% increase in clickthrough rates when compared to campaigns without this extension.

Seller Ratings are aggregated from merchant review sites all around the web and the extension will only show when a merchant's online store has a rating of four or more stars and at least 30 reviews. To learn more about Seller Ratings, please read this Help Center entry.

Take your Customers Directly to your Desired Conversion Path with Mobile Ad Sitelinks 
Ad Sitelinks enable direct navigation to specific pages of your website. Since navigating on the mobile web can still be difficult, sitelinks for mobile can be especially useful in taking customers directly to the desired conversion path on your site. For example, with sitelinks you can quickly guide your customers to the best selling products on your site or to your online store locator. Mobile users find this format particularly helpful and on average campaigns with mobile sitelinks see a 30% increase in clickthrough rates when compared to campaigns without sitelinks.

Right now a maximum of two sitelinks can appear on mobile devices with ads displaying two links across one line or stacked vertically on two lines. One-line sitelinks can show with the Click-to-Call Phone Extension and will display one link to your website alongside your phone number. One-line sitelinks can also show with the Seller Ratings Extension and will display your online store rating as well as two links to your website.

The quality of your ad will determine which variation of mobile Ad Sitelinks will show. Two-line sitelinks typically show for higher quality ads. To learn more about mobile sitelinks, please read this Help Center entry.

Drive Customers to your Store with Offer Ads
Are you running an in-store promotion? You can get the word out and incentivize customers to visit your store by placing a coupon right in your AdWords ads.

Mobile Ads with Offers enable advertisers to include special deals in their mobile search ads, allowing users to store coupons via email or SMS.  Ads will also display your phone number or your business location on a Google Map for Mobile so that customers have everything they need to go to your store, redeem the offer and make a purchase.  Mobile Ads with Offers are currently in beta, but we hope to make it broadly available soon.

Make it Easier For Customers to Contact you with Click-to-Call Ads
Whether you take orders over the phone or have a physical store location, you can ensure that your customers can easily connect with you by including your business phone number in your mobile search ads. Since users who make a call are showing interest in your product or service, they are more likely to make a purchase. With a call costing the same as a click to your ad,  this is a very cost-effective ad format for driving quality leads and conversions for your business.

Are you specifically focused on driving calls to your business? Try the Call-Only Creative, an enhancement to the Click-to-Call ad format that ensures your phone number is the only clickable part of your mobile ad.

Do you have a vanity phone number? Use the Vanity Phone Numbers feature of Click-to-Call to display an alphanumeric phone number in your mobile ad and ensure that customers easily remember how to get in touch with you.

To learn more about mobile ads with Click-to-Call please read this Help Center entry.

We hope you’ll find these tips helpful in driving conversions with your mobile campaigns and look forward to developing more mCommerce ad features for you in the future.

Posted by Anna Khesed, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
*source: US Mobile Smartphone Consumer Study, Google & Ipsos, 2010

One of the three core principles of our mobile ads business is ‘inclusiveness’; advertisers and developers should have access to the tools they need  to reach users across many mobile platforms.  More than 50,000 mobile applications across iOS, Android, and webOS platforms currently use AdMob’s monetization tools, and today, we’re excited to further expand our developer offerings with the launch of our beta SDK for Windows Phone 7.

With the Windows Phone 7 SDK, developers can easily integrate advertising into their applications, control where the ads appear, and what types of ads are shown in their apps. The SDK supports text and banner ads with a variety of post click actions including opening a webpage and linking directly to the App Marketplace.

We have also taken steps to customize the ad experience for the look and feel of the Windows Phone 7 platform and make it easy for users to return to their application after engaging with the ad. Publishers can download the new SDK today by logging into their AdMob account and adding a site type of Windows Phone 7.

In addition to the new beta Windows Phone 7 SDK, we’re also updating our existing iOS and Android SDKs.   The new SDKs include enhanced HTML5 support for ad units that enable advertisers to create more engaging, richer ads and in turn, an improved user experience.  We’re also now supporting full screen interstitial formats for tablets on iOS and Android.

Publishers can download the new SDKs by logging into their accounts and selecting “Get Publisher Code” from the Manage Settings of their app.  We encourage all publishers to upgrade during their next development cycle to ensure they are using the latest version of the code and maximizing their revenue opportunities.

Posted by Mark Schaaf, Director of Engineering, Mobile Ads

“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!

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