With the holiday season just weeks away, we sought out to understand how mobile behavior changes during national holidays throughout the year, particularly when people have a day off from work or school. What we found was a surge in activity on tablets and smartphones during these holidays, showing that when people are away from the office kicking back at home or out shopping, they increasingly turn to their smartphones and tablets nearby. More surprisingly, while we consistently saw mobile searches spike on holidays, we discovered an even more pronounced surge in mobile ad clicks, signaling that people are particularly interested in shopping and connecting with businesses.

For example, while Americans celebrated Labor Day this year with barbecues, family trips and shopping, they also often turned to their mobile devices nearby. Searches on smartphones were 7% higher compared to those on a typical Monday, and searches on tablets jumped by 25%. But perhaps more interestingly, clicks on mobile ads spiked even more dramatically in comparison to other average days. The chart below shows that on Labor Day, ad clicks on smartphones grew 9% compared to the average number of ad clicks on a typical Monday, while ad clicks on tablets jumped 39%.

This means that not only are people searching more on their mobile devices during holidays, but they’re actively looking to connect with businesses. So whether shoppers are using their free time to pick up a last-minute gift or buy holiday party supplies, this behavior presents an important opportunity for marketers to engage the mobile shopper.

We see these same mobile trends during holidays throughout the year, but find that they’re particularly pronounced on big shopping days like Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For example, while smartphone searches last Black Friday rose by 17% compared to a normal day, ad clicks on smartphones that day jumped by 61%. Likewise, while tablet searches rose by 40% last Black Friday, clicks on tablet ads shot up by more than 100%, and stayed above average in the days following.

So what does all of this mean for businesses? Quite simply, it means that with people turning to more devices during the holidays, there are more opportunities for them to find and connect with you, whether they’re at home or on the go. Here are a few things that you can do to make sure you’re ready:

1. Make sure that you have campaigns or new ad text for your holiday promotions or messages.
2. Increase your budget cap on holidays to account for additional clicks.
3. Adopt an always-on strategy to make sure your budget lasts throughout the day. Consumers are researching and shopping at any time throughout the day and you should make sure you can be found.
4. Segment your historic campaign performance by device to understand how people interact with you across different devices like smartphones and tablets, and tweak your campaigns accordingly to capitalize.
5. Expand keyword lists to include holiday-related terms and ensure you have keyword parity between your desktop and mobile campaigns so you’re reaching potential customers regardless of what device they’re using.

Posted by Ben Taggart, Mobile Analyst

Cross posted from the Google Analytics Blog

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of hashed data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity. 

Measurement today is evolving from technology that counts site traffic into a broader system that measures your effectiveness in advertising, sales, product usage, support, and retention. Ultimately, this sort of integrated measurement can help you deliver the best service, products, and experiences for your customers.

We’ve been developing solutions, like Google Analytics Premium and Mobile App Analytics to advance this vision. For large enterprises, such as Premium customers and those who want to work with APIs, we're now starting to offer “Universal Analytics.” This will help these customers tailor Google Analytics to their needs, integrate their own datasets and ultimately get a more complete vision of the entire marketing funnel.

The new tools offered by Universal Analytics via the new Measurement Protocol (an API that enables you to send your data to Google Analytics) can help you measure the how people actually become and remain loyal customers:

• Consumers use multiple devices.

Mastering data on your website is no longer sufficient - larger clients are increasingly asking for a cross platform view of their data in Analytics. The tools from the Measurement Protocol allow you to seamlessly send your own data about your customers  and business (from any digital device that you are measuring) to your Analytics account. This can help you see how users interact with your brand from multiple touchpoints - phones, tablets, laptops or more - in one place. 

• The world is mobile.

We announced Mobile App Analytics at I/O in 2012 as a beta. It’s been delivering great results for clients. Universal Analytics now enables you to measure your marketing more holistically by integrating this data with your Google Analytics account. 

• Cross-channel measurement is essential.

Cross-channel information is more important and more diverse than ever before. Universal Analytics, via the Measurement Protocol, lets you sync your own data from across various marketing channels, so you can discover relationships between the channels that drive conversions.

• Your business is unique. 

Not every campaign (or app, or website!) is the same, and sometimes, depending on your business and goals, you want to learn more about a particular aspect of the way visitors interact with your business. With Universal Analytics, you can integrate your own data and can customize the metrics that matter to you - beyond website visits.  Google Analytics can deliver the custom metrics you want, in the same report you’re used to, based on the customized data you provide.

As a Google Analytics user, Universal Analytics won’t mean any changes in your account. But if you’re a large enterprise that is interested in exploring the integration options, you can request access to the Universal Analytics beta. You can also learn more in our help center.

Posted by Manav Mishra, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps you measure value across all the steps a user takes between app download and your ultimate goal. Whether you’re hoping users will purchase in-app, level up in your game or register for your service, Mobile App Analytics points out what’s impeding and aiding users along their paths to your ultimate goal. On Tuesday, we presented a webinar, “Understanding your App Users with Google Analytics” about ways to promote your mobile app with AdWords. Led by Jessica Sapick, Mobile Ads Product Marketer, and Chrix Finne, Mobile Ads Product Manager, the webinar explained how to use Mobile App Analytics to iterate on app development and marketing.

Attendees learned:

1. How to set up a Mobile App Analytics account
2. The benefits of the new software development kit
3. How to use the new app overview, engagement, Google Play sources, device and network, engagement flow, loyalty, and crash and exception reports
4. How to use analytics data to assess and iterate on advertising strategies

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

Posted by Jessica Sapick, Product Marketing Manager

Apps are a powerful way to keep your most loyal users engaged, and can also be a real driver of revenue for marketers big and small. When advertising apps, the key is to know what’s working and what’s not. While advertisers have already been able to measure their Android app downloads within AdWords, we’ve now launched the ability to track iOS downloads that were driven by in-app display ad campaigns.

To set up iOS conversion tracking, advertisers need to create a single code snippet in their AdWords account and install it in their app. This snippet is accessible in the AdWords interface in the same place where advertisers have been able to codelessly track Android downloads. With iOS conversion tracking, marketers can better understand which campaigns are most effective at driving app downloads. These enhanced insights help marketers iterate on app promotion strategies to reach their return on investment goals, with the help of features like the Conversion Optimizer for apps.   

Figuring out what ads are working is key for marketers like Sho Masuda, Vice President of Player Marketing for GREE, a leading mobile social game app developer. GREE has used click to download and in-app advertising solutions with AdWords to promote their app, and Masuda says, "Google’s host of tracking and optimization tools help us quickly iterate and maximize ROI across our app promotion campaigns. iOS conversion tracking will help us gain even deeper insights into our Google app promotion efforts for our iOS apps."

If you’d like to learn more about how to track value beyond the app download, you can watch a recording of our Learn with Google webinar “Understanding your App Users with Google Analytics” here.

Posted by Morgan Hallmon, Product Manager

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