It’s time for our third post in our Mobile Insights series featuring expert views from our mobile ads team. This week’s guest contributor is Adam Compain, a Mobile Specialist at Google. Adam explains why it’s vital to create a mobile website now versus later.

In the early days of the Web, businesses didn’t believe their customers were online, nor did they think the Internet would become a viable medium for customer interaction. Companies were hesitant to build websites, let alone advertise online.

Of course, the Internet ramped up faster than anyone imagined. Companies that hesitated were left behind and those that took action became industry leaders, reinventing their business models to become more efficient and profitable marketers. In this new age of mobile computing, how can you ensure your business remains present? Build a mobile site. Research has shown that web retailers can increase consumer engagement 85% with a mobile-specific website (1).

At Google, we’ve worked with many advertisers who’ve already built excellent mobile experiences for their users. Each one of the examples showcased below focuses on the needs of a mobile user and is designed for ease of navigation on a mobile device. These sites, all stemming from different industries, prioritize content, use a simple layout and are designed specifically for touch interaction with large buttons.

Blue Nile esurance CreditCards.com

Meanwhile, 79% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile site (2). Those who have not taken action may be harming their relationship with potential customers: 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% said they’d visit a competitor’s mobile site instead (3). Throw in the astonishing rate of mobile web adoption - which is ramping 8x faster than the desktop web did in the mid 90's - and the importance of having a mobile site is clear. (4).

Think about the 4-inch mobile screen as your new storefront. It may be the most important one you ever have: it’s always open; it’s in the hands of nearly everyone, and it’s increasingly how people are finding your business. As important as it is to have a mobile advertising strategy, it’s even more vital to build a mobile website that delivers a seamless and satisfying experience to your users.

Avoid falling into the trap of marketers in the mid 90’s who didn’t think the Internet would evolve into a viable medium for customer interaction.

Ready to take action? Download our new two-page guide: “5 Easy Ways to Mobilize Your Website”.

Posted by Adam Compain, Google Mobile Specialist

Sources:
1. Research by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research, “Supply and Demand of the Mobile Web” Nov, 2010.
2. Google Research, 2010

3. Compuware, “Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-users,” March 2011

4. Mary Meeker, Economy & Internet Trends, Oct 09

In late May, to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of joining Google, AdMob launched an update to its free House Ad tool for developers.  With so many apps available to users, developers are realizing that marketing the app can be more challenging than building it.   Now developers can access more ad formats, including full page graphical interstitial ads, to cross-promote their apps while gaining more control over their campaigns by setting impression goals, targeting by device or geography and creating ad groups.

For developers using the latest AdMob SDK, the enhanced AdMob House Ad tool gives you access to a range of new high-end ad formats to promote your apps including:

• Crossfade Banner: A banner ad that fades between as many as 10 different images and directs user to the app download page
• Click to Full Screen Expandable: A banner opens to a full screen experience.  Simply upload screen shots of your app and define the transitions between them
• Graphical Interstitial: This full screen takeover experience can be placed at transition points within the app and does not require a user to click on a banner

Developers set an impression goal to control how often House Ads are shown in comparison to ads served by the Google AdMob ad network.  By setting an impression goal, your House Ads are now weaved into your ad inventory so that they show over the course of the campaign start and end dates that you assign.  The new AdMob House Ads tool also allows you to roadblock all of your inventory if you only want to show House Ads during a certain time frame.

With device targeting, you can ensure that only devices that support your app will see the ad and geographic targeting enables you to target specific countries and even cities for U.S. and UK markets.  In the next few weeks, we will also be adding conversion tracking so that you can more easily track performance of your House Ad campaigns.  To get started today, log into your AdMob account, click on the “Sites & Apps” tab and select “House Ads”.  Click on the “Learn More” link to get to the upgrade page.

For more instructions on how to set up your first campaign and to learn more about the new ad formats click here.   


Posted by Jason Morse, Product Manager, Mobile Display Ads

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that we frequently advise our advertisers to create mobile specific AdWords campaigns. This is because separating out your mobile and desktop campaigns is a powerful method of driving performance on mobile.  In fact, advertisers have experienced an 11.5% average increase in mobile clickthrough rates when they’ve ran and optimized a mobile only campaign.

So today we are happy to share a new resource that will help guide you in setting up a mobile specific campaign. Watch the video below and learn how to create a mobile-only campaign directly in your AdWords account or by using the AdWords Editor tool.

After you’ve set up your mobile-only campaign, follow these optimization tips to gain competitive advantage and maximize your performance on mobile.

• Exercise more control and flexibility:  By using a separate mobile-only campaign you’ll gain better visibility into your mobile specific performance. Use this information to  optimize your bids, keyword lists and creatives without impacting your desktop campaign.
• Budget and bid separately for mobile: Since less ads show on mobile devices, bid aggressively to ensure your ads are competitive and appear in the top spots.  
• 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.  
• Make the most of mobile:  You can take better advantage of powerful mobile-specific ad features such as Click-to-call and location-based ads which offer more relevance and convenience to users on the go.

We hope that you’ll enjoy this new resource and find it useful in optimizing your mobile marketing campaigns.

Posted by Anna Khesed, Product Marketing Manager

Cross-posted on the Inside AdWords blog
 
Many advertisers use location extensions to automatically show the most relevant addresses and business information in the ads they run on Google both on desktops and mobile devices. Along with address and phone numbers, these ads also show directions to the business location. A click to access directions enables customers to map the quickest route from where they are located to a business that they want to visit.

We’ve also observed that location extensions with “directions” are beneficial to users and lead to more interactions with the ad. And, in January, we launched a report in AdWords to help you measure these useful interactions.

And, over the next few weeks, you’ll see performance metrics for “directions” alongside those for clicks and phone calls. We’ll also begin to charge for “directions” clicks in the same manner as a click on your ad’s headline and/or phone number. If your campaign has a high number of “directions” clicks, this indicates that your customers are interacting with your ads to get directions to your business.

(click for full-size image)

(click for full-size image)

Below are some answers to a few questions that you may have as a result of this change:

Where will I see the performance metrics for “directions” clicks?
You can see the number of directions clicks in the same place as your other click metrics (select Segment, thenClick type from your summary tables). You can review the performance of “direction” clicks to determine if they are helping you meet your marketing goals.

How will “directions” appear in ads on desktop and mobile devices?
For AdWords campaigns with location extensions enabled, a “directions” link will be eligible to appear in the ad and on sponsored map bubbles in Google Map on desktops.

On mobile search ads, a “Get directions in Google Maps?” pop-up will appear when the user clicks on the expandable map. Clicking on “OK” in the pop-up allows users to access directions and will be charged.

Where can I see past performance of “directions” clicks?
For a report, select the Free clicks view within the Dimensions tab of your AdWords account. If you don't see theDimensions tab in your account, click the arrow button next to the existing tabs above your performance table, and select Free clicks in the dropdown menu.

I do not want to pay for “directions” clicks. How can I opt out?
You can do this by removing location extensions associated with your campaign. However, location extensions provide valuable information to your customers about your local business, so we encourage you to carefully analyze your campaign performance before doing so.

To learn more about location extensions and directions in ads, please see the location extensions overview section of the Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

As we approach the first anniversary of AdMob’s arrival at Google this Friday, it’s amazing to look at how much the mobile industry has grown since last year: an estimated 300 million smartphones were shipped, average smartphone data-usage doubled and hundreds of thousands of new mobile apps have been created.

Many thousands of mobile publishers and developers use ads to support their businesses, so we’re excited to see rapid growth in mobile advertising, too.  For example, in the last year, traffic on the AdMob network has grown more than three and a half times, and we now get more than 2.7 billion ad requests every day. We have thousands of advertisers both large and small getting great results every day on AdMob’s network of more than 80,000 mobile apps and sites.  To celebrate AdMob’s first year at Google, today we’re introducing a set of new products and features for mobile advertisers and publishers.

New ad formats for tablets 
In the last six months alone, traffic from tablets on the AdMob network has increased by 300 percent.  To help advertisers better connect with tablet users, today we’re launching a variety of new, tablet-specific rich media ad formats.  These new HTML5-based ad formats are built specifically for tablets’ larger, high-definition screens, and make use of features like touch, tap and swipe. Together, these features will enable advertisers to develop rich, engaging campaigns and run them across multiple mobile platforms.

Enhanced tools for mobile app developers
To help app developers grow their app businesses, we’re releasing a significant upgrade to our AdMob “House Ads” product, which developers can use to promote their own products within their mobile apps. The new version includes improved campaign management, new ad formats and better ad targeting options.

In the coming months, we’ll also improve mobile app developers’ ability to use AdMob to deliver the most valuable ad by integrating a new “mediation” feature that selects the best ad from multiple, competing ad networks directly into the Google AdMob Ads SDK.

Deeper integration with Google advertising products

Many advertisers, agencies and publishers use DoubleClick’s ad serving and measurement tools to manage their digital ad campaigns. We envision a single platform that enables seamless management of ads across desktop, video, mobile and tablets. Our announcement earlier this week about the availability of DoubleClick Rich Media ads on the AdMob Network on the AdMob network is one example of this commitment. In a few weeks, we’ll also add support for mobile to our DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business ad serving product, which thousands of web publishers use today to manage ads that appear on their sites.

The last year has seen incredible growth, but it’s just the beginning. We believe that the products we’re announcing today will further accelerate the growth of mobile advertising, enable marketers and developers to rapidly grow their businesses and help to fund more great mobile content and apps for users.

Posted by: Clay Bavor, Product Management Director, Mobile Display Ads

Here’s the second post in our Mobile Insights series, featuring expert views from members of our mobile ads business. Welcome this week’s guest contributor, Anjali Vaidya, an Account Manager on the mobile ads team who shares her experiences on our Click-to-call (CTC) offering in mobile ads.

We’re continually making enhancements to the Click-to-call ad format. Launched in early 2010, CTC allows mobile consumers searching Google or visiting sites in the Google Display Network, to click on the phone number and speak to someone who can explain more about the product or service. 

One enhancement was our Call-only format to allow advertisers to receive only calls, instead of clicks, to their website. Starting this week, we’re making the Call-only format even better by including a phone icon and moving the phone number above the ad.

The convenience and immediacy of CTC for users has made it one of Google’s fastest-growing advertising solutions. Click-to-call is a great addition to the advertising mix. You can still drive searchers to your website, but it gives you other advantages:

• it’s a great option if you don’t yet have a mobile-optimized website; 
• it captures consumers who are ready to act; 
• it allows you to drive traffic to a strong call center, giving you a competitive edge over other online advertisers.

We’re generating millions of calls every month on mobile devices and the number of advertisers using phone extensions is growing quickly. The uptake for CTC is fast because advertisers are realizing great returns.

• Home security provider Defender Direct gets 75-80% of online advertising clicks using Click-to-call. Four out of their top 10 campaigns in terms of clicks are now mobile. And the calling customers  are ready to consult with an expert about the ins and outs of alarm systems. Once the company started targeting high-end smartphones, their returns from mobile ads and CTC skyrocketed. Results were soon double what they got from desktop search. Today, Google mobile ads constitute 24% of the company’s overall online budget.

• When auto insurance company Esurance started using mobile ads and CTC they found that they could acquire customers at 20-30% less cost compared with other channels. Esurance wanted to put interested people in touch with agents or claims representative in a few simple steps. Reaching the company is faster and easier for customers, and a less expensive way to acquire leads for Esurance. Calls coming from CTC mobile ads are more likely to result in sales.

• The Carphone Warehouse has had great success with mobile ads CTC too. The UK mobile phone retailer created a mobile website where visitors can search for headset details and price plans. They used Mobile Ad Sitelinks to provide deep links into the site and incorporated CTC in ads to allow users to reach a call center agent to get advice or buy.

Our advice? Test Click-to-call, whether you’re a national or local business, to see how it can generate sales. Our customers have shown us that mobile searchers will research your products on their phones, and they appreciate the convenience of calling from that same device. Once they call, they are even closer to purchase. Your best leads are only a phone call away, try Click-to-call today!

Posted by Anjali Vaidya, Google Account Manager for Mobile Ads

AdMob is excited to announce that rich media ads can now be served from DoubleClick into the AdMob network. This feature is currently in beta and will also enable advertisers to create and measure rich media ads from DoubleClick Rich Media. 

To date, AdMob advertisers have relied on AdMob systems to serve their mobile rich media ads. Today, the beta will pave the way for advertisers in mobile to build, serve, manage and report on rich media ad units using the DoubleClick tools that they, and their agencies, are already familiar with. Creative agencies will be able to use DoubleClick Studio, a creative platform for producing rich media ads, to output rich, HTML5 mobile creatives for placement on AdMob apps. Media agencies will be able to use DoubleClick’s ad server, DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA), to serve and report on rich media ads in mobile.  

To date, advertisers on DoubleClick have enjoyed the ability to build an ad once and run it anywhere with online display and rich media ads. AdMob’s beta with DoubleClick gets us one step closer to making this possible for mobile display advertising too. 

Posted by Ben Chung, Product Marketing Manager