With more than one million apps available across the Google Play and Apple App stores, and users spending nearly half a day each month using apps, the message is clear: users like apps, especially when what they want is right at their fingertips.  Google Analytics for mobile apps equips marketers and app developers with tools to help users find what they’re after, cultivate loyalty and convert more app downloads into purchases, sign-ups and other desired user actions.

Join Google on Tuesday, October 23rd (10am PT/1pm ET) for a webinar about how you can use Google Analytics to measure in-app user activity.

The webinar will walk you through setting up a Google Analytics for mobile apps account, explain how to use the new reports to translate data into insights and give you a chance to ask your burning app analytics questions.  

Sign up for our webinar today by registering here.

We look forward to seeing you on October 23rd!

Posted by Jessica Sapick, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

While it’s easy to get caught up by the passion and finger pointing in Tuesday night’s debate, it’s important to remember the real purpose of a presidential debate - educating and informing the American people.

We wanted to understand how viewers use their smartphones and tablets as ‘second screens’ to research and fact-check topics during and after the debate. So we took a look at debate-related search queries coming from mobile devices on Tuesday and found that:  

• Mobile has become a central component of this year’s election
• 2,000% increase in debate-related searches on mobile in 2012 vs. 2008

• Mobile helps voters find spur-of-the-moment information
• 3,300% increase in searches related to Libya immediately after the question about presidential accountability for the Benghazi attack

• Mobile is used simultaneously with television
• 47% of Tuesday’s elections-related mobile searches occurred during and immediately after the debate

Mobile devices: our couch companions

Already this election season, we’re seeing voters research issues, find information, and even register to vote across desktop, smartphone, tablet and television. This data reinforces the need for political campaigns to engage voters across all four screens - especially during key campaign events. With the portability of mobile devices, many people are using them while watching television to search for follow-up information or to fact-check. The debates were a great example of this mobile multi-tasking as people turned to their mobile devices in real time to find more information about the comments and issues raised by the candidates. Looking at a timeline of searches for a specific issue like energy throughout the debate, we can see that the spikes in searches occur in direct response to specific conversation sparks on television.

Click to enlarge

Immediate information

In addition to being used in front of the television, people turn to their mobile devices when they’re looking for immediate information. The “always-on” nature of tablets and “always with you” nature of smartphones make them quick and easy to pick up for a spontaneous search. During the debate we saw enormous spikes in mobile queries immediately after panelist questions or statements from the candidates. For example, within one minute of Mary Fallano’s question to Romney about his tax plan, tax-related mobile searches increased by over 500%. This is true not just while watching the debates, but also throughout the day as people use their smartphones while talking about politics with friends, listening to the news, or even after coming across an offline ad.

Four screens to victory

As we enter the final weeks of the presidential election, digital devices will be key to helping voters decide which candidate is right for them. It’s a well-known fact that one of the keys to a successful candidacy is controlling the message. What’s clear in today’s multi-screen world, is that controlling the message on any issue requires that a candidate have a strategy to engage with voters across all four screens.

Posted by: Adam Grunewald, Mobile Ads Marketing

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Last week, Learn with Google announced a new series of webinars which will arm you with the tools you need to get the most out of your holiday ad dollars. Over the next couple of months, 20 webinars will teach you tips and how-to’s to help make the web work for your business. Three of these webinars will focus on our favorite topic - mobile!

The Google Mobile Ads team is excited to be partnering with Learn with Google on the following upcoming webinars:

• Tues, October 23rd: Understanding your App Users with Google Analytics
• Thurs, November 29th: New Tablet Research: How to Win on the Third Screen
• Wed, December 5th: Capturing the Full Value of Mobile with Click-to-Call and Call Metrics

All webinars will take place at 10am PT/ 1pm ET.  

Visit the webinar page for more information and to register. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding the Learn with Google Webinar calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see future webinars.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming session!

Posted by: Erin Molnar, Marketing Coordinator, Learn with Google

Earlier this year, we launched The Mobile Playbook in the US to help brands and agencies develop winning mobile strategies. At the time, most marketers had already moved beyond the “why mobile?” question, but didn’t know where or how to get started. Now it’s become clear that, when done right, mobile works for marketers. As the industry has evolved, we’re seeing examples of marketers designing compelling mobile creatives, and how savvy advertisers are finding ways to measure the real value that mobile has on their businesses. These are two areas that have been top of mind for the thousands of marketers that we’ve talked with and we’re excited to expand the playbook to delve deeper into these topics.

In The Full Value of Mobile section, we dive into the range of mobile conversions possible today and how they provide economic value to businesses in ways that marketers may not realize. For example, Adidas worked with iProspect to evaluate how mobile clicks on their store locator links were driving in-store sales, and ultimately found that each mobile store locator click was worth $3.20.

With mobile debuting as a new category at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity this year, it’s clear that mobile has truly arrived as a creative platform. According to Terry Savage, Chairman of Cannes Lions, "We're now starting to see some marketers build incredibly engaging and immersive creative for mobile. We sought out to celebrate these great mobile creatives at Cannes Lions this year and inspire others to think about how to bring their brands to life on mobile." The Mobile Creativity section explains why mobile is unique and powerful from a creative perspective, and shares examples of how marketers from around the world have used mobile to bring their brands to life.  

The Mobile Playbook was created as a one-stop resource to spotlight brands that are making mobile work for them and to reflect our latest recommendations on how marketers can approach mobile strategically. We’ve also rolled out international versions of The Mobile Playbook across different countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, France, and the UK, and will bring the playbook to Japan, Australia and Italy over the coming weeks. We welcome your input, and will keep adapting the playbook as the industry continues to evolve.

Posted by: Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile Sales & Strategy

Did you see our new research emphasizing why it’s important for businesses to ‘Go Mo’ and build a mobile-friendly site? Last week we featured a study - What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today - in a live webinar. Powerful insights included how a mobile site can turn your users into customers:

• 67% of mobile users are more likely to buy a site’s product or service when they visit a mobile site;
• 74% say they’re more likely to return to a mobile site in future.

If you missed it, no problem, you can watch watch the recording instead.

We created the GoMo initiative to help businesses understand why having a mobile site is important and how to get started. The site is a starting point for you to:

• research why mobile sites matter;
• test your site on the GoMoMeter to see how it looks on a mobile device;
• get a free, personalized report about how to tailor your site for mobile users;
• build a free mobile site in minutes.

We’ve gotten great feedback from businesses about the resource, and we’re thrilled to hear that it recently won a 2012 OMMA Award for the best business-to-business integrated online campaign.

So whether you’re ready to get started, or just thinking about it for the first time today, take a look at howtogomo.com.

Posted by: Michael Schipper, Product Marketing Manager, and Suzanne Mumford, Product Marketing Manager

In this increasingly mobile world, it’s important for marketers to understand what consumers are doing on their mobile devices.  We recently took a close look at this question in a number of different research studies - Our Mobile Planet, The New Multi-Screen World, What Users Want From Mobile Sites Today.  But as we talked with marketers and agencies, especially creative agency folks, we realized there was another important question to answer: why is the mobile space so powerful at a deeper, more emotional level?  And how are people finding and making meaning there?  These are important questions because it’s hard to tell emotionally resonant stories about brands on mobile unless we understand the resonance of the mobile space itself.

So what is the meaning of mobile?  That’s a big and complex question, but to start scratching the surface we sought the help of an anthropologist who went into the homes of mobile users and spoke with them at length, observing their device interactions and asking them to keep “mobile diaries” to understand the role mobile is playing in their lives.  From this investigation, we gained some valuable insights that we hope will help strategic planners and creatives better understand how to make use of the mobile space.  For example: Have you ever thought about how miniature items tend to possess the power to unlock imaginations, and how this dynamic plays out with the smallness of our phones?  Or how our smartphones enable us to indulge in our innate desire to “read” and “write” meanings onto our physical surroundings?  (We hadn’t either.)

We’ve shared our findings with strategic planners and marketers at Cannes, Advertising Week, and at a handful of creative agencies.  Today, we are excited to share our insights with you through a new whitepaper that tells the story of what we found -- how mobile is helping us achieve our self-ideals, co-create culture with our communities, and make sense of the physical world around us.  

We invite you to put on your anthropologist's hat and to think about mobile in a new and different way.  Perhaps some of the findings will inspire you to think about the ways that you can connect with your customers in the mobile space.  We’d love for you to join the dialogue and share your thoughts.  
Posted by: Jesse Haines, Head of Marketing, Mobile Ads, and Abigail Posner, Head of Strategic Planning, Agency Development

Earlier this week we shared how today's consumers expect more -- much more -- from mobile sites. They told us so in our recent research survey, What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today.

Today we'll share more results, with some great examples of businesses giving mobile users what they want. Whether you're a Fortune 500 company or the pizza shop down on the corner, creating a mobile-friendly site is a critical step: 67% of mobile users say that they’re more likely to buy a product or service from a mobile-friendly site, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.

How are smart companies making mobile sites work for them?

• Less is more: ProFlowers For their new mobile site, the flower retailer ProFlowers simplified things by highlighting the most popular bouquets to reduce scrolling, by trimming text, and by cutting checkout steps. How well has it worked? “Since becoming mobile-friendly, we’ve seen our mobile conversion rate jump by 20–30%," says Leif Heikkila, the company's senior director of online marketing. Download the case study.

• Bigger is better: FragranceNet.com FragranceNet sells perfumes and colognes, yes, but also face creams, shampoos, eyeliner and more. For Michael Nadboy, the company's VP of online marketing and strategic development, the trick to mobile success was to show bigger product images and buttons, larger font sizes, and fewer images overall. Mobile users loved it: FragranceNet boosted mobile sales by 48% in just four months. Download the case study.

• Speed sells: TicketNetwork
• Rock concerts, Broadway shows, NASCAR races: TicketNetwork’s mobile site helps on-the-go fans find tickets for them all. The company redesigned its mobile site with speed in mind, stripping away all non-essential content and graphics. They also trimmed steps from the checkout process to help mobile users buy fast. Four months after introducing the new mobile site, web traffic from mobile devices was up 120% and overall sales from mobile had grown by 184%. Download the case study.

You can see the keys to mobile site success: big buttons and text, less content, fewer steps to checkout, and a focus on speed.

What kind of mobile content is most important? The users we surveyed listed "Get directions”, “Find operating hours" and “Click to call the business” as some of their most-wanted mobile tasks. They also showed clear differences in mobile usage by business category. For instance:

Mobile Banking and Finance customers are most interested in checking account balances, transferring money and paying bills.

Mobile Travel customers are most interested in checking flight status and confirming reservations.

Mobile Retail customers like to contact a store and find product information.

Mobile Automotive customers are most interested in contacting the dealership and making service appointments.

The bottom line: mobile users are ready to make choices on the go. Help them get there fast and you'll help your business grow.

We reviewed these findings yesterday during our webinar: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising. If you missed it, please keep an eye out for the recorded webinar, which we'll post soon.

In the meantime, check out howtogomo.com for more tips on how to build a mobile-friendly website.

Posted by: Masha Fisch, Google Mobile Ads Marketing