We invite you to take a few minutes tomorrow and hear mobile insights, strategies and best practices from mobile search specialists. On Wednesday March 30 at 1:00 pm EST, Google’s Anjali Vaidya, Mobile Account Manager, and Bon Mercado, Senior Mobile Account Manager, will speak to 1000+ members of the American Marketing Association in a webinar; please join us.

Since marketers tend to combine their mobile and desktop campaigns in order to drive additional traffic, many marketing efforts are not yet optimized for the mobile platform. Tomorrow, Bon and Anjali will share tactics and tools for setting up mobile specific campaigns to maximize traffic and conversions. Major topics of the webinar will include the mobile search landscape and how to optimize mobile campaign structure. Specifically, Anjali and Bon will discuss keyword selection, ad creative and click to call options, mobile landing pages, and analytics and reporting.

To register, click here. Dial in for a the latest and greatest mobile strategies from Google’s Mobile Search Ads Team!

Posted by, Anjali Vaidya, Mobile Account Manager at Google

Last week we shared tips for designing a great mobile experience for your business, encouraging marketers to customize their website for a mobile user. Today we want to share an example of how to test content on mobile to maximize user engagement.

The American Red Cross recently ran a portion of their annual holiday campaign on mobile.  To take advantage of unique mobile call-to-actions, they offered visitors the choice to contribute by SMS, over the phone or with their credit card – making it as simple as possible for a mobile user to donate to the charity.

However, making it easy to convert was only the first step in optimizing for mobile. As part of the campaign, they created three mobile landing pages to compare what type of content resulted in highest click-through to one of their donation pages. By running three pages simultaneously, they could evaluate whether showing a photo gallery, video or recent news articles resulted in the highest donation interest.

This landing page experiment demonstrates how to test content and design on your mobile optimized website in order to maximize user response. We’ve put together the checklist below to assist advertisers ready to set up a mobile landing page test of their own.

Checklist for setting up a mobile landing page test:

1. Think about how your customers want to engage with your business on their phone. Should you offer the ability to get directions or does it make more sense to add a click-to-call button so they can connect with you directly? What mobile-unique actions are right for your business?
2. Evaluate what type of content is most relevant on mobile. By providing information that is relevant to a mobile user and also easy to access on a mobile phone, you will ensure your customers have a positive mobile experience.
3. Implement a mobile analytics solution in order to track and compare landing page performance based on the user response metrics that matter most to you.
4. Drive traffic to each of your landing pages and refine design based on what content results in highest user engagement. By experimenting and iterating based on what is working, you will create an experience that your mobile customers will remember and return to.

Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

The American Red Cross name and emblem are used with its permission, which is no way constitutes an endorsement, express or implied, of any product, service, company, opinion or political position.

Mobile allows us to connect with those around us, find the nearest restaurants, and access information any time, any where.  It’s gone from an emerging medium to something that our advertisers and publishers continually ask us about.  At Google, our “mobile first” attitude helps push continuous innovation across our products, including ads.  So it’s no surprise that one of our AdWords favorites is a story that is uniquely mobile.  Let us know what you think!

Love at First Bite
A sweet ending to missed connections in the big city.

To watch more Search Stories, visit the Inside AdWords Blog for a full video playlist.

Posted by Lauren Usui, Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Over 19,000 people descended on Austin, TX for the SXSW Interactive Festival from March 11-16th. Google’s mobile team was there to learn how these tech savvy attendees use their mobile devices. We found that 98% of people we spoke with had a smartphone and they love their apps!  Check out the video to learn what apps people are using, what they think about ads in apps, and why they are excited about mobile.

Posted by the Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Even if you didn’t make it to the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, you can still get a taste of the action by checking out the video of our panel, “Turning Mobile Games into Moneymakers”.  Google’s mobile games guru, Charles Yim, interviewed Glu Mobile’s Mike Breslin, Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka and Zeptolab’s Misha Lyalin to learn the secrets to their success.  Find out how Rovio thinks about marketing Angry Birds.  Listen to Zeptolab explain the thought process they went through after Cut the Rope hit #1 in the app store in just 3 days.  Discover how Glu Mobile’s metric-driven approach translates into user value.  Check out the video of the panel in the GDC Vault here.

Posted by Keri Kandel, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

This month, we are excited to share with you new country insights from our Global Mobile Perspectives series.  Doug Yeum, Director of Business Development in South Korea, gives his thoughts on the latest mobile trends unique to South Korea. 

A great year for mobile
In 2010, South Korean consumers proved to device manufacturers and mobile operators that high end devices running iOS and Android would be big.  It’s almost an understatement as traffic from high-end devices in the AdMob network grew 6723% in 2010 over the previous year.  South Korea represents one of three countries that accounted for more than half of AdMob network ad requests last year in JAPAC.  Along with the launch of the iPhone, we’ve seen national brands with high brand awareness, like Samsung and LG, drive significant demand for devices running Android with aggressive in-country marketing.  We anticipate by the end of this year, 40% of all mobile devices in South Korea will be high end devices.

Early adopters
South Korea has a high rate of Internet penetration amongst both households and mobile devices.  Not only are South Koreans well connected, they are fast to adopt new technologies.  For example, new input methods like Voice Search have become very popular compared to other markets.  Even when we compare this growth to other markets, rates of adoption in South Korea have been staggering.  This has all happened in less than two years, which is faster than I’ve seen in any other region globally.

Emergence of data rich services
It’s no surprise that high-end devices have resulted in South Koreans spending more time browsing the web and using apps.  They now have access to cheaper, faster data services and we’ve begun to see increases in mobile video views on YouTube and the emergence of data-intensive services like mobile Voice over IP (VoIP).  I anticipate that we’ll continue to see network improvements for faster data services and increased availability and that data-driven activities will continue to be a large part of how users use their mobile devices.

Thinking mobile
In a recent study from Nielsen and KoreanClick, time spent on the PC has decreased from 43% to 33%, and South Koreans are now spending 23% of their time on mobile media consumption.  We anticipate mobile usage to continue to grow in the next 12 to 18 months, so it’s important for advertisers to think about mobile as a channel to reach their consumers.  Advertisers can easily extend their existing desktop campaigns to include mobile device targeting, or can develop new mobile specific marketing campaigns to reach users as they go mobile.

click to enlarge image

We have all seen the recent explosion of apps available to users of high end devices, especially with the popularity of Android.  South Korea is home to a number of global players in the mobile app space.  We anticipate more innovative apps to come in 2011 so now is the perfect time for advertisers to think about reaching users while they are engaged with apps.

Advertisers can learn more about how to reach users on mobile devices in South Korea by visiting the local website http://kr.admob.com/advertise.  For information for app developers looking to grow their business on mobile, visit kr.admob.com/appdevs.

Posted by Doug Yeum, Director of Business Development for South Korea

Starting out on mobile can be overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you prepare for your first campaign? These are big questions that we hear every day. This is the first in a series of posts on establishing your presence on the mobile web - before you even start your first advertising campaign.

An essential part of any digital marketing campaign is the post-click experience from advertising. Is your website easy to navigate? Are there any hurdles to conversion that you can remove? These are the same questions that you should consider for your mobile user experience.

We recently conducted a study that examined the mobile post-click experience of some of our largest advertisers. After looking at over 200 diagnostic points to measure ‘mobile readiness,’ including load time, device detection and mobile site optimization, we found that only 21% of Google’s largest advertisers have a website that is optimized for mobile. That’s 79% serving up a less than ideal experience for their mobile customers.

The good news is that it’s not too late to be early on mobile! Get ahead of your competition by creating a fantastic experience for your mobile customers. Start with these 4 tips for designing a great mobile website and check in next week for some real examples of how to test and build a mobile website that works for your business.

Four Tips for designing a mobile website:

1. Prioritize what’s important. Make it easy for customers on-the-go to call or find directions to your business. Easy navigation combined with relevant and interesting information lead to happy customers and more business.
   
2. Take advantage of mobile-specific functionality. Users can interact through touch, sound, sight and location on their mobile device. Create a mobile website with custom content that utilizes these capabilities.
   
3. Build for the mobile platform. Focus on easy navigation and remember to develop your website with touch screens in mind. Eliminating any website elements that don’t work or are slow to load on a mobile phone will keep users engaged.
   
4. Optimize, optimize, optimize.  Be sure to add mobile analytics to your website in order to evaluate and improve performance.

Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team