Incorporating social recommendations into display advertising will make ads more relevant for users and impactful for advertisers. Today the Google+ project is expanding to the Google Display Network.  

The +1 button will start to roll out on AdSense for Mobile Content publishers for both text and image ads by early October.

The +1 button will appear on the left side of the ad and recommendations will appear for several seconds, then  

fade out.

Advertisers interested in learning more about the +1 button can view today’s announcement or the AdWords help center for more details.

In the next several weeks, we will share the details of how developers can incorporate +1 ads into their mobile applications.  Mobile web publishers who prefer not to show the +1 button can opt out starting today by signing in to your account at google.com/adsense.

We’re excited with the broad consumer engagement with the +1 button throughout the web.  Find out more about the latest developments to the Google+ project here.

Posted by Neha Pattan, Software Engineer, Mobile Ads

We know that many of you have spent the better half of this year learning about how big the opportunity is to reach your customers on mobile. This Wednesday (9/21/11), we’re taking on a deeper dive of the five things every advertiser needs to have to get their business mobilized in a webinar, “Going Mobile: From Why to How?".

Are you ready to take your business and your clients forward with mobile? Sign up for our webinar today. To register, please visit this link: goo.gl/KFpeb

We look forward to seeing you on September 21st!

Posted by Sonja Lee, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

India’s wildly popular MTV “Hero Honda” Roadies emulates the tried-and-true reality genre that has existed in some form almost from the get-go in television programming. Now in its eighth season on MTV, the youth-based show—with multi-lingual participants conversing in a mélange of Hindi and English—has expanded beyond the borders of India to encompass seasons in Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Africa, and, most recently, South America. When MTV wants to pique interest and engender buzz about the latest series, they now turn confidently to Google AdMob—one of the world’s largest mobile-advertising networks—to reach their core show audience of 18 to 24 year olds.

AdMob reaches the roadie
Roadies’ Gen Y version features a mismatched group of guys and gals and their adventures as they dash around a country—on eye-catching Honda motorbikes no less—completing myriad tasks and challenges. These consist of “Money tasks,” “Advantage tasks,” or “Immunity tasks,” the third of which grants immunity from the dreaded “vote-out” at the hands of their team members. Tasks can be either individual- or team-based and the final surviving “roadie” happily pockets the cumulative cash.  
 

MTV Roadies ad opens to an interactive experience

 
Reaching a young, mobile-savvy customer
In debuting MTV Roadies 8—set in exotic Brazil—the producers based their marketing campaign on Google AdMob to generate online excitement in the imminent launch. Targeting their core demographic of young smartphone-wielding males and females with a predilection for reality TV, the marketers created compelling banner ads that appeared across screens of a variety of downloadable apps. Users who clicked through to the mobile-optimized Roadies website could either view show previews, download special content, or participate in a relevant contest with goodies and vouchers.
 
Because the targeted audience comprises the heaviest users of mobile handsets in India, MTV’s marketing team confidently expected healthy return-on-investment (ROI) for their advertising efforts. The data gleaned from Google Analytics exceeded their predictions. One quarter-million cellular users clicked through to the Roadies site and 80% of those, almost 200,000, then took the time to download show content or play different contests.

"We’re thrilled that we were able to capture so much attention during ourlatest mobile campaign and know that our Google mobile-ads strategy was instrumental in these results,” says Aditya Swamy, Senior Vice President MTV India.  “From the tremendous online interest garnered before the first episode, we’re now predicting that our eighth season could well be our strongest.

Based on these results, there will be no “vote-out” for Google AdMob as MTV plans its next mobile ad campaign for the popular show’s 9th season.

Post by Mahesh Narayanan, Google India

Here’s a question for all of you smartphone owners out there: If someone asked you whether you’d rather give up your phone or your TV, what would you say?

Earlier this year, Google teamed up with IPSOS Research to learn the answer to this exact question (and many others) by asking 30,000 people in 30 countries about how they use their smartphones, and where (on the bus? at the office?). It’s the first time anyone has asked this many people the same questions, for free: that means we can compare and contrast behaviour and trends across different age groups, different cities, and even countries.

So what did we learn about Australia? To start with, those of us at Google Australia were particularly proud to discover that Australia has the second highest smartphone penetration in the world -- ahead of the US, UK, and Japan. This is a recent achievement for the land down under. The majority of smartphone owners we surveyed had bought their device in the preceeding 12 months, which means that Australia went from lagging to leading the worldwide smartphone revolution in just one year. We estimate that each month, 1-2% of the entire population of Australia buys a smartphone.

Here are a few other fun facts we found when we took a look at the numbers:

• Not just on the go: You may think that your smartphoneis an “on the go” device, something you can use to kill time in line at thegrocery store or check email on the train. But our survey found that 81% of Australians used their smartphones at home during the past 7 days--compared to just 66% on the go. Nearly 1 in 2 use their smartphone while watching TV, while 1 in 3 use smartphones and another Internet-enabled device at the same time.
• Smartphones are good for business: 49% use their smartphone to research and then call businesses--while 45% visit a business they’ve found using their smartphone.
• We can now indulge our obsession with real estate 24x7: 1 in 5 Australians we surveyed had looked for an apartment or house with their smartphone--a figure 33% higher than the US or UK.
• Search is big on smartphones: 2 in 5 of Australian smartphone owners use mobile search daily--more than the UK or Germany, and almost as high as the number who use desktop search daily.
• Apps, apps, apps: our Australian survey respondents had 25 apps on average per smartphone--that’s versus 23 in the US & UK. They’re not just free apps, either; Australians averaged 8 paid apps per phone.
• And now, the answer we’ve all been waiting for... 1 in 5 Aussie smartphone owners would rather give up their TV than their smartphone.

So what does this mean (aside from smartphones at the dinner table)? First, Australians are buying more smartphones, faster, than the rest of the world--and they’re using them more, too. Second, as more and more of us embrace the smartphone revolution, we’ll be watching more videos, searching for more businesses, buying more apps, and sharing more via mobile. In other words, there are a host of new opportunities for developers, web publishers, video creators, retailers, and advertisers to build and grow their businesses on mobile.

Expand image

If you want to learn more, stay tuned: we’ll be making our global survey results public, in their entirety, for everyone who wants a closer look at the global mobile revolution.

Posted by Jason Pellegrino, Head of Mobile Ads, Google Australia and New Zealand

Mobile advertising is seeing rapid growth and today’s campaigns are richer and more advanced than ever.  However, a lack of industry standards has made it difficult to build and run rich media campaigns across different ad networks and mobile platforms at scale.

To address this challenge, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) brought together a broad group of industry participants and created the MRAID (Mobile Rich-Media Ads Interface Definitions) project. Google fully supports IAB’s effort to create mobile advertising standards and is actively engaged as a member of the MRAID working group.

Last week, IAB released the first public draft of MRAID v1.0  for comments and feedback. The document provides definitions to help standardize the interaction between mobile ads and mobile platform SDKs.  We invite the industry to review this draft and look forward to finalizing this important mobile standard.

The effort to develop standards on mobile is reminiscent of a similar process on desktop years ago.  On desktop, Flash emerged as a standard which enabled advertisers to create ads that would seamlessly run across different ad networks and websites.

Today, the mobile industry has rallied around HTML5 as the preferred language to create mobile ads, yet several challenges remain before this can be instituted.  A wide variety of mobile SDKs have forced advertisers to develop platform or network-specific ads as opposed to a single ad that works across multiple networks and devices.  Having to customize campaigns for each ad network increases cost and pain of ad creation and hinders the growth of the ecosystem.  Imagine if a marketer’s TV ads worked on one channel and one type of television, but not others - that’s where we stand with some mobile ads today.

The first public draft of MRAID v1.0  is a significant step in the rapid evolution of mobile and mobile advertising.  We thank the IAB for organizing the initiative and other working group members for passionately participating in this important project.

Wook Chung
Product Management, Mobile Ads

We all know that consumers and businesses are going mobile. In fact, this was the first year that shipments of smartphone and tablets outpaced computers. This holiday season, we predict that mobile will become an even bigger part of consumer activity, with a predicted 44% of total searches in the US for last minute gifts and store locator terms coming a mobile device.

You’ve probably started to tailor your advertising efforts for mobile, and engage your users on these devices. But what’s next? How can you delve deeper in the mobile space? We want to give you the tools to get your business from the “Why?” to the "How?"

On Wednesday, September 21 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET, Sonja Lee, Product Marketing Manager and Angela Sherman, Mobile Specialist, will be presenting 5 key mobile advertising strategies for various marketing goals, including how to drive local traffic and mobile conversion volume, and how best to reach tablet users. They will also be showcasing the latest launches in Google mobile ads and discussing how to best incorporate them into your mobile strategy.

Are you ready to take your business and your clients forward with mobile? Sign up for our webinar today. To register, please visit this link: goo.gl/KFpeb

We look forward to seeing you on September 21st!

Posted by Sonja Lee, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Leapfrog Online, one of the largest digital marketing companies in the US, helps Fortune 500 companies build digital channels that capture new customers at dramatic rates. Their expertise, coupled with Google Mobile Ads, has seen mobile campaigns that drive quantifiable, high-volume sales for big brands in the telecommunications, financial services, automotive, home services, and education industries.

The mobile opportunity is significant and growing at an exponential pace and Leapfrog is seeing strong results: mobile sales range from 15-125% of desktop sales across their clients. That means that some clients are now seeing mobile sales eclipse desktop. Additionally, Leapfrog launched its first mobile optimized site for a large client in the telecommunications industry in 2009. With this new site, sales through mobile campaigns skyrocketed by 35% and led to similar results across Leapfrog’s portfolio.

According to Leapfrog, it’s not simply about developing a mobile app or site, it’s about smart integration. That means engaging the customer via mobile and driving them to an easy-to-use experience from beginning to end on their mobile device to close the purchase funnel. This includes smart, targeted marketing, focused call centers, data-driven messaging and promotions, and top-notch brand marketing.

“We are always testing new and different approaches to deliver a transformative sales channel for our brands. Mobile has demonstrated unprecedented growth – we have not seen another approach deliver this much volume over such a short period of time, with no end in sight to the opportunity,” says Cass Baker, Executive Vice President of Leapfrog Online.

To learn more about how Leapfrog is measuring ROI on every mobile campaign, download the full agency testimonial here.


Posted by Mike Schipper, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads