At Google, we're amazed by how the ad industry is using the digital canvas to bring brands and ideas to life. And the mobile phone has put these experiences right in the hands of consumers.

This week, we launched the Creative Sandbox gallery. It’s a crowdsourced collection of global campaigns that push the boundaries of creativity and technology from across digital platforms -- a place to flash your brilliance, spark new digital ideas, inspire and be inspired. We're asking the creators to share a little detail on how they made the magic happen and the tools they used to do it, exposing us all to new ideas and new ways to improve our own work.

Learn how Chevy was able to extend the Super Bowl, or how BAND-AID brand turned an adhesive bandage into into stage to entertain, and how Lawry’s was able to get families back to the dinner table - all using mobile technologies in new and magical ways.

As with any sandbox, looking and playing are required. Vote to push your favorite projects to the top. Tell other creators what you admire. And if you've done something amazing lately, send it in. We'd all love to see it.

Jump in. Explore. And play.
www.creativesandbox.com

Posted by Justin Joy, Agency Marketing Manager

For marketers with mobile apps, one of the key goals is to drive new users to download - whether that’s for a travel app to book trips, or a banking app for finding the nearest ATM. So how do you effectively promote your app in a way that works and is cost effective? On Wednesday, we presented a webinar, “The Practitioner’s Guide to Driving App Downloads with AdWords” about ways to promote your mobile app with AdWords. Led by a few of our mobile experts, Cameron Grace and George Meredith, the webinar explained how to use the host of AdWords search and display solutions to drive cost-effective app downloads.  

Attendees learned how to:

1. Drive app downloads by setting up a mobile app promotion campaign
2. Capture user intent with click-to-download and mobile app extensions
3. Measure downloads of Android apps
4. Utilize the Conversion Optimizer to improve ROI
5. Get the most out of their campaigns with mobile-specific ad formats and tools

To learn more, download the webinar slides or watch the recording on the Google Business YouTube Channel.

Posted by Jessica Sapick, Product Marketing Manager

With more than one million apps currently in the Google Play and iTunes Stores, we know that those of you advertising apps are looking for ways to drive valuable installs at scale while helping your apps stand out from the crowd. We recently launched several app promotion features designed to help those of you who have created an app promotion campaign in AdWords, or are considering creating an app promotion campaign, maximize your return on investment.

CPA Bidding with Conversion Optimizer

You are constantly looking for ways to easily optimize your campaigns and attract the right customers at the right cost. Google’s Conversion Optimizer helps increase conversions across our search and display networks while decreasing cost per acquisition. Conversion Optimizer analyzes historical conversion data and adjusts bids on an ongoing basis to help you maximize your ROI. We're now extending the power of this automated bidding feature to app advertisers to help you drive efficient app installs at scale. 

With Conversion Optimizer, instead of a traditional CPC bid, you can set a target cost per acquisition (CPA), based on your average cost per download. Conversion Optimizer will use historical conversion data and other signals to place CPC bids automatically, in order to hit the target CPA with as much volume as possible. While results vary per campaign, strong early results from our beta campaigns show a 20%+ decrease in cost per install with the addition of Conversion Optimizer. It’s important to note that Target CPA bidding does not guarantee a particular cost per install. The tool is now available to all advertisers that have created app promotion campaigns, and we’re excited to help you move beyond manual bid management to free, automated optimization.  

Ad Formats

For advertisers looking to promote your apps to app users, capturing the attention of potential users and driving them to download your app is key. Many advertisers use our text ads to drive people to an Android or iOS app, and we've now optimized text ads for Android or iOS apps to include more information about what users are getting, what they have to pay for it, and how others feel about the app.  

The ad rotates to display all the information when a user clicks on the ad.

The user has to click on Download to go to the app download page.

With AdWords, app advertisements are automatically updated with the latest information like reviews and ratings. You simply create a text ad that points to your app download page, and AdWords supplies the graphics and formatting. We’ve found that when app advertisers provide users with this kind of important information about their apps, many have seen their cost per conversion decrease by about 25%.  

If you’d like to learn more about Google’s app promotion features and see a live demonstration of how to implement and optimize these tools in your AdWords account, tune into our webinar on September 12th at 10am PST. Register today by visiting this link: http://goo.gl/B49ma.  

Posted by Chrix Finne, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

How many times have you started reading an email on your phone while commuting, and then continued it on your laptop when you got home? Or perhaps you saw a commercial for a new car and then used your tablet to search for the specs and see it in action? If these things sound familiar, that’s because they’re all part of the new norm in multi-screen behavior.

In “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior,” we discovered that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV. We set out to learn not just how much of our media consumption happens on screens, but also how we use these multiple devices together, and what that means for the way that businesses connect with consumers. Below are highlights from our research:

                                           

Click to enlarge

Two primary ways we multi-screen
In understanding what it means to multi-screen, we discovered two main modes of usage:

• Sequential screening where we move from one device to another to complete a single goal
• Simultaneous screening where we use multiple devices at the same time

We found that nine out of ten people use multiple screens sequentially and that smartphones are by far the most common starting point for sequential activity. So completing a task like booking a flight online or managing personal finances doesn’t just happen in one sitting on one device. In fact, 98% of sequential screeners move between devices in the same day to complete a task.  

With simultaneous usage, we found that TV no longer commands our undivided attention, with 77% of viewers watching TV with another device in hand. In many cases people search on their devices, inspired by what they see on TV.

So what does this all mean for marketers? It’s important to understand both the sequential and simultaneous multi-screening patterns. Sequential screeners will start interacting with you on one device and then pick up where they left off on another, so making experiences seamless between devices is key. Additionally, cross-media campaigns can help you make the most of consumers’ simultaneous usage across screens.

Search is a critical connector as we move between devices
We also found that when people use screens sequentially to complete an activity, they often use search to pick up where they left off. 

So not only is it important for companies to allow customers to save their progress between devices, they should also use tactics like keyword parity to ensure that they can be found easily via search when that customer moves to the next device.

Turning “spur-of-the-moment” activity into valuable opportunities
The accessibility of our devices enables us to use micro-moments in the day to get things done, such as search, shop, communicate and keep entertained. We found that people often turn to nearby devices to complete spur-of-the-moment activity. In fact, 80% of the searches that happen on smartphones are spur-of-the-moment, and 44% of these spontaneous searches are goal-oriented. We see examples of this in our daily lives, for instance, suddenly realizing that you forgot to make a dinner reservation and reaching for your phone to find a restaurant.  

For marketers, this combination of device accessibility and spur-of-the-moment usage means there are now more opportunities to connect with consumers, so businesses have to make sure they’re present and optimized across multiple screens.

Learn more about multi-screening
Check out all of our findings and what they mean for businesses by downloading the full research report.  Additionally, we will be discussing the research and specific strategies that businesses can take to succeed in a multi-screen world in tomorrow’s webinar at 10am PDT/1pm EDT on Thursday August 30th.

Register here and we look forward to sharing more multi-screen insights with you soon.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

90% of media consumption today is screen based, and the growing number of digital devices is rapidly changing the way people search, shop, and connect with people or businesses. To make the most of all of their devices consumers have developed common patterns of multi-screen behavior, and this multi-screening has quickly become the norm. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this changing consumer media behavior, we conducted some new research.

Join Google on Thursday, August 30th (10am PT/1pm ET) for a webinar about our recently released research, "The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior."


The webinar will share our research findings on how the growth of device ownership has changed the way that people consume media. We will also discuss specific strategies that businesses and advertisers can employ to take advantage of these multi-screen behaviors and more effectively connect with their target audience.

Sign up for our webinar today by registering here.

We look forward to seeing you on August 30th!

Posted by Samantha Podos Nowak, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Over recent years, we’ve seen that mobile advertising is a powerful way for brands to build awareness, engage people who are watching multiple screens, and drive in-store conversions. We’ve focused on creating tailored ad formats that work for the user experience on mobile, whether it’s searching or watching videos.

Today, most of us watch video on our smartphones and tablets, as well as our PCs - we watch videos when we’re out with friends, while waiting in line, or riding the bus home. We’ve rolled out a number of specific mobile ad formats on YouTube over the past year, making it easier for advertisers to reach people with great ads and content creators to monetize mobile views. Now we’re extending this further by launching TrueView in-stream video ads on mobile devices. 



Driving greater ROI with TrueView
With TrueView, we’ve developed a model where user engagement matters -- people can skip ads they aren’t interested in after five seconds. Giving viewers choice over ads they watch has led to a better, more engaged viewing experience, benefiting the entire YouTube community of users, advertisers, and content creators. Advertisers only pay when someone chooses to watch the ad, so their budgets go toward the people most interested in what they have to say.

Hundreds of our advertisers are experiencing “buy one, get one free” -- for every view they pay for, they’re earning another one through sharing. This is because after a user watches a video ad, they can stick around to watch more content from that brand, visit their website, or share the video with friends. Many of you are seeing this in action today - TRX, for example, saw the greatest ROI from their TrueView campaign during their busy season promotions.

Additional reach with multi-screen campaigns
We’ve found that brand recall improves when ads run across TV, PC, phone and tablet. Bringing TrueView video ads to mobile devices will make it easier to create and manage multi-screen campaigns and will give you additional reach. All new and existing TrueView in-stream campaigns are now enabled to run on mobile platforms (you can manage your settings within AdWords for video). 



We’ve only just begun testing TrueView on mobile, but early indications are that people engage with these ads in the same way as they do on desktop. This is just the start - we’ll continue to innovate to bring the best of video to the best of mobile. Learn how to get started with TrueView video ads today.

Posted by Phil Farhi, group product manager, YouTube

A common complaint from advertisers on mobile surround the conflicts in reported results between mobile publishers and ad servers.

Mark Halliday, head of mobile at Manning Gottlieb OMD in the UK, wanted to address this issue head-on. When DoubleClick and Google Mobile Ads approached him about collaborating on a beta test to overcome the obstacles in mobile reporting, Mark identified the client Renault as an ideal match for the project. And so a campaign for the Renault ZE would become one of the first third-party served mobile rich media campaigns in Europe - and a welcome companion to a similar campaign ran in the US with OMD and Intel, see previous blog here.

 

The campaign objective was to achieve brand engagement to be measured through numbers of video views, but also to improve tracking and reduce statistical discrepancies in reporting. Ad creatives consisted of the Renault ZE television spot embedded as a YouTube video player in a tap-to-expand unit. DoubleClick Studio was used to build and assemble the ads in HTML5 and to implement tracking code in the raw files. The ads were trafficked in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) and served on a targeted basis across Google’s AdMob network of over 300,000 mobile applications. Thanks to tracking enabled by DFA, as soon as the creative was served, the impressions, clicks, interactions, expansions and video plays could be reported back.  

In the month-long campaign, advertising on the AdMob network generated 25% of UK views for the Renault ZE YouTube commercial  8.6% of users who viewed the expanded panel tapped through to the Renault site. But that wasn’t the only victory worth celebrating. Thanks to tight integration, the discrepancy between the ad serving side and the publishing side in reported impressions was just 1.5%. As far as Mark Halliday is concerned, this is good news not just for the agency and their clients, but also for the mobile sector at large.

Read more about the pioneering campaign for Renault and what this means for mobile by downloading the full PDF of the case study here.

Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads