As many online content providers are moving their content to mobile apps and sites, monetizing this new platform provides a new set of challenges.  TV Guide Digital was getting their feet wet in mobile before the iPhone even existed.  Christy Tanner, GM of TV Guide Digital, shares her insights into building a successful business on mobile.

With nearly 4 million app downloads across Android, iPhone and iPad, Tanner sees mobile as becoming an increasingly important part of TV Guide Digital’s business.  Christy Tanner points out, “we took our time to get the app right - we have loyal customers with high expectations and made sure the app met those customer needs prior to launch.”  Additionally, she warns newcomers to mobile that the development cycle is almost as fast as their online business.

Interview with Christy Tanner, GM TV Guide Digital

To keep users engaged with the apps, TV Guide is constantly providing new content and features to keep users engaged. Therefore an ad-supported business model makes sense to support this ongoing process. Yet, while the company has grown its mobile footprint, training ad sales teams to sell mobile ad space takes time. Tanner notes, “it is great to have the AdMob network to rely on when we have unsold inventory. AdMob is currently giving us the highest eCPMs of any ad network we work with and the customer service has been great.”

As Christy Tanner looks ahead, she is bullish on mobile and excited to expand TV Guide’s mobile offering to continue to meet user needs. As she sees more users interacting with multiple screens simultaneously, she hopes to see more advertisers leverage this opportunity to reach users in new, creative and engaging ways.

A full case study PDF is available here.

Posted by Keri Kandel, Product Marketing Manager

This is the second in the Get Mobilized series to help businesses better connect with their customers though mobile ads.

Finding the best pizzeria in the city, looking for directions to the nearest pharmacy or calling to see if a store has a product in stock.  Looking for local information is one of the most popular things people do on their smartphones. In fact, one out of three mobile searches is for something local. So whether you’re a local business or a national retailer with stores in several cities, you need to have a local ad strategy that reaches mobile users.

It’s easy to mobilize your ad campaigns for local customers simply by adding location extensions to your ads. When people search for you while on the go they’ll be able to see how close they are to your business, where your business is located on a map and a clickable phone number to call you!  All from within your ad and all the info that helps get customers to your door.

To learn more about location extensions, watch this video example of how Andale Bikes attracts more customers by localizing their ads.

Find out more about the benefits of making your ads location aware and how to get started today.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

This is a follow-up to the recent post that Doug Yeum, Director of Business Development, shared last month on mobile trends unique to South Korea.

Three weeks ago, we wrote about mobile in South Korea. We explored 2010 as a tipping point for smartphone growth with a 67x increase in monthly traffic. This growth has led to the emergence of data-rich services and growing mobile media consumption by the South Korean consumer. Since the post, we've received requests to dive deeper into the South Korean market so we've produced a mobile metrics report on South Korea. The report looks at trends in the AdMob network in South Korea and includes data from a localized survey of 524 mobile Internet users. The results of the survey reflect surprisingly strong usage patterns and levels of engagement with the mobile Internet:

• 29% of respondents spend more than one hour a day using the mobile Internet
• 35% of respondents spend more time using the mobile Internet than watching TV; 24% more than using the desktop Internet
• Using the phone for entertainment is more popular than texting, phone calls or social networking
• 58% of respondents access the mobile Internet at least 5 times a day:

To download the full report, please click here.

We’re excited about the momentum of the mobile ecosystem in South Korea, and believe that the pace of its growth creates considerable opportunities for advertisers and publishers. 

Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest residential real estate firm, experienced success in mobile advertising when they ran a campaign for their iPhone app in 2009. As Android phones rapidly populated the smartphone market in 2010, Corcoran launched an Android app to take advantage of the new platform. To provide the Android user with content on the Corcoran app that they wanted to engage with, Corcoran took advantage of Google Analytics for their mobile search advertising campaign on the Android OS.

Two months after its release, Corcoran’s Android app was responsible for 15% of their total app usage across all mobile platforms, making it their fastest-growing mobile platform. To better educate themselves on what users wanted, Corcoran integrated Google Analytics with their mobile app while running a mobile search advertising campaign on Android OS mobile phones. Now, Corcoran could accurately manage their campaign’s conversion funnel and understand the difference in usage between different platforms.

With Google Analytics, Corcoran now had the ability to successfully upgrade their user experience based on actual in-depth usage data they didn’t have before. For example, Corcoran learned that Android users tend to engage more deeply with the app versus other smartphone users and most of them use the “near me now” function available on Android. With this type of new-found knowledge about their customer base, Corcoran provided better navigation and new formats (see image below). As a result the company not only delivered exactly what users wanted, but also experienced click-through rates 7 to 8 times higher than their desktop campaigns.

As the first client to use Google Analytics with their Android mobile campaign, Corcoran continues to see success, and uses data from Google Analytics to further perfect their mobile experience on Android.

To learn more about this campaign, please download the full case study here.

To get started using Google Analytics for your Android or iPhone mobile app, check out the SDK & technical documentation.

Posted by Dalia Mitra, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Voyages-sncf.com – the online travel agency of French rail giant SNCF – found that 51% of its mobile internet users book tickets for travel the day before or day of departure. It’s clear that mobile is the ideal medium for delivering services to customers precisely when they need them most. A mobile-optimised transactional site that launched in 2007 already attracts two million unique visitors per month, but to provide the best possible user experience Voyages-sncf.com launched an iPhone app last year.

Once they’d made this initial investment, the next challenge was to encourage maximum downloads. Rather than tacking mobile onto existing campaigns, we worked with Voyages-sncf.com to craft a well-defined mobile advertising strategy to complement their email marketing communications

Google, with the AdMob network, offered the opportunity for Voyages-sncf.com to use a variety of innovative ad formats which made the most of the medium to drive direct response. So in addition to a classic CPC banner, we implemented an animated multi-panel banner, an expandable banner and an interstitial ad. The campaign required a broad reach into iPhone users in France, and the extensive AdMob network provided this too.

Voyages-sncf.com aimed to achieve 15,000 downloads in the month of December, but the app smashed all expectations by actually hitting 87,000 downloads over that period. Of these, 70,000 were generated by customer newsletters and communications. The 10-day AdMob campaign delivered 50,789 clicks, which generated 17,000 downloads, representing an impressive conversion rate of 33.5%.

Find out how to replicate the success of Voyages-sncf.com by reading the full case study here.

Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Look around you the next time you’re in a restaurant, at the gym, in line at the grocery store or commuting to work. Good chances are that you’ll see someone using a smartphone.  But it’s not just pressed to their ears, they’ve also got it cradled in their hands as they play games, watch videos, look for the nearest store, search and shop all from their mobile devices. Your customers have gone mobile. Have you? It’s time to get mobilized to reach the new mobile consumer.

We’ve heard from businesses that you want a quick and easy way to learn more about the mobile opportunity and how to take advantage of it. Today we’re launching the Get Mobilized campaign to show how you can better connect with your customers and grow your business with mobile advertising.  Maybe you’re already aware of the potential of mobile but are unsure of how to get started. Or perhaps you’ve already begun some mobile advertising and want to take it to the next level.  We’ll share four short and simple solutions to help you succeed with mobile by way of some fun videos.

Today, learn more about the power and potential of mobile. Did you know that nine out of ten users take action as a result of a mobile search? Watch this video to see how Tony uses mobile ads to attract more customers on the go.

Stay tuned for more videos and tips on how to Get Mobilized! 

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are growing in popularity and changing the way that we consume content. People are spending considerable time with tablet devices and using them to play games, browse the web and search for information. Growth in the tablet market is only accelerating with companies releasing new products, and media companies and developers creating content specifically for these new devices.

In order to better understand how people are using tablets we ran a survey of over 1,400 tablet users and found that:

• 68% of tablet users spend at least 1 hour a day on their tablet
• 77% of respondents report that their desktop/laptop usage decreased after they started using a tablet
• 82% of respondents said they primarily use their tablet at home
• More than 1 in 3 respondents uses their tablet more than they watch TV:

For a more detailed look at our tablet usage survey, check out the attached presentation.  

These new usage patterns have strong implications for marketers and content creators. In the AdMob network alone, traffic from tablets has grown 300% in the past six months. Considering the numerous planned launches of new tablets in 2011, we’re excited to watch the traffic from tablets grow as consumers continue to adopt this new category of devices.

Posted by Harsh Shah, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team