This month at Mobile World Congress we unveiled some new research insights at the session Mobile Entertainment: Rise of the Digital Global Event.  

We all know that we now live in a multi-screen world and the device that people choose in a particular moment is largely based on their context: a person's location, the time of day and day of week as well as the device’s capabilities.  We were interested to see what this meant when people were attending, watching or just following a major event.  

Working with YouGov, Sparkler and Ipsos, we conducted three separate studies during the London 2012 Olympics using a combination of online diaries, surveys and network usage. This was the first Olympics where smartphones were mainstream and of course tablets were not even invented for Beijing 2008. We wanted to understand how various devices would be used by ticket-holders and armchair fans alike. Would there be any new behaviors and how would multi-screening, including TV, smartphones, tablets and computers, play-out? 

The research highlights included:

1 in 3 people followed the Olympics on multiple screensIn a typical day, 33% of people following the Olympics in the UK were doing so on more than one screen. Multi-screeners also spent more time following the Olympics: a single screen follower averaging 203 minutes per day, while the ultra-connected four screener averaged 435 minutes - typically enjoying the games at home, work and out-and-about.

Smartphones extend event engagement – in home and out of homePeople were devouring information on the Olympics across devices with 40% looking online for event results, 20% for information on athlete backgrounds and 31% for event times. When actually watching an event - whether in-person at the games or on a device elsewhere - people were hooked to their smartphones. 11% of people were following the same event - if you were watching cycling, for example, you could be checking your phone for other competitor times. 14% followed a different event, so if you were at the cycling you could be checking on the rowing results. And 10% of people were multi-tasking and looking at non-Olympics related info such as news, emails, weather or a restaurant to head to. We’ve seen how the walls in shops are now “porous” with people using their mobiles to compare prices, research products. The same can also be said of stadiums and this opens up a whole new world of opportunity for sponsors and advertisers.

The Olympics has caused people to try new things, will it leave a legacy?

50% of people watched catch-up TV online for the first time or more during the Olympics, 47% for live video. 18% visited a sponsor’s website for the first time or more often. In fact only 17% of people didn’t try anything new online.  These new behaviours may act as a catalyst for more everyday use.

The Olympics may well be seen as a unique once-in-a-lifetime experience for the UK.  But the extended and enhanced use of multiple-screens is certainly no phenomenon but a natural and continuing trend.  A trend that offers countless multi-screen opportunities for advertisers and sponsors to engage with their customers at live events - whether that’s the next football World Cup in Rio or a music festival in Glastonbury, England.

See all of our findings by downloading the full report here.

Posted By: Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Today marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more — all to help you make the most of the web.

In the headlining mobile story, Understanding the Full Value of Mobile, read about how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved that mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI. While you’re visiting, scroll down to view the video case study.

Also, check out Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions, in which Nielsen and Google analyzed over 6000 mobile searches and the actions that resulted, drawing connections between mobile searches and the conversions that they drive.

For mobile marketers, you can explore the Mobile Ad Types section for mobile-specific research, case studies, articles and more. Start by viewing our featured story, The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive's Guide to Winning with Mobile by Jason Spero, Google's Head of Global Mobile Sales & Strategy.

While you’re visiting, don’t miss the Mobile Ads product page, which contains the latest in mobile solutions to help grow your business and build brand momentum with mobile.

For those mobile marketers who want to turn “light bulb” ideas into lightning or just want to check out the best in digital marketing -- we hope that you visit often. To stay up-to-date on the latest content added to the site, please subscribe to our monthly Think Letter.

Posted by: The Think Insights Team

In this era of mobility, our smartphones are always with us, keeping us connected anytime and anywhere. With this constant connectivity, we’ve come to expect information (literally) right at our fingertips just a search away - whether it’s locating the nearest sushi restaurant or booking flights for your upcoming trip. In “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions”, we set out to understand when and why people turn to mobile search, the actions they take as a result, and how marketers can capitalize on every mobile search moment. We found that there’s an immediacy effect of mobile search, with more than half of the resulting conversions (going into a store, calling a business, or making a purchase) happening within just one hour.

Working with Nielsen, we also wanted to push the standard of mobile research. It’s traditionally been difficult to quantify mobile’s full impact on driving conversions, particularly since consumer surveys are often constrained to broad recall questions. Instead, we asked participants to log their mobile searches over two weeks in a diary smartphone app - logging more than 6,000 mobile searches in total. We followed up to ask them what actions resulted from those searches, helping us draw more precise, measurable connections between mobile searches and the conversions that they drive online and offline.

click to expand

Here are the highlights of the research:

Mobile search is both always-on and on-the-go
Mobile has traditionally been considered an out-and-about or on-the-go context, used on the bus or while in a store. While that’s certainly true, the research showed that mobile’s role is also much more than that. People turn to mobile devices throughout the day to find information because of its speed and convenience, with 77% of mobile searches happening at home or at work. What does this mean for marketers? Mobile is always-on for consumers, so marketers should make sure their mobile search strategies are reaching people in these different customer contexts.

Mobile searchers take a variety of actions... and they act quickly
We also found that three of four mobile searches trigger additional actions. These range from open-ended actions like additional research (36%) or a website visit (25%), to more concrete conversions like a store visit (17%), a purchase (17%), or a phone call (7%). On average, each mobile search triggers nearly two actions, so in order to understand the full value of mobile, marketers must evaluate the different ways that their customers convert, both online and offline, and measure accordingly.

Most interestingly, not only do mobile searchers take action - they act fast. In fact, 55% of conversions from mobile searches happen within one hour. We see this immediacy effect with mobile because not only are people potentially closer in physical proximity to a purchase, but they’re also closer to the crucial decision moments. Forty-five percent of mobile searches are conducted to help make a decision, and that number jumps to two-thirds when happening in a store. And when people use mobile search to help make a decision, they’re more likely to convert. So it’s important for marketers to be present during those searches, while also creating ads and experiences that are relevant to this immediacy.

Context is key to mobile searches
The research also showed that the types of searches people conduct on mobile are strongly tied to their specific context, like location and time of day. For instance, shopping searches are twice as likely to be done in-store. Mobile searches made in stores are a key opportunity for marketers to reach someone who’s looking to take action. And since searchers are also 55% more likely to notice ads when they’re in a store, there’s a huge opportunity for marketers to capitalize on these mobile-led moments.

Mobility continues to change the way that we search, explore and shop, and as consumer behavior comes further into focus, there are clear opportunities for marketers to take advantage. Check out all of our findings by downloading the full report here.
 
Posted by: Ben Chung, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

People today are constantly connected, presenting a tremendous opportunity for retailers to deliver the right products to them across devices anytime, anywhere. We recently announced the release of enhanced campaigns to  help advertisers reach customers in a multi-screen world.  Today we’re pleased to announce that Product Listing Ads are now eligible to appear on smartphones globally, extending the shopping experience already available on desktops and tablets. When a user enters a shopping-related search, a commercial format that displays products in a single unit may appear above organic search results. This ad unit is labeled as ‘Sponsored’ and displays rich product images, prices, retailers and more. This mobile shopping experience will be available in all markets currently serving Product Listing Ads.

Below are a couple of examples of what a shopper might see when searching for a product from their phone.

In the image on the left, a user searching for a plaid tie may see an ad unit displaying three options. He can click any of them to learn more and buy, or click ‘Shop on Google’ to continue browsing on Google Shopping, as shown in the image on the right. From there, the user can look at an even wider variety of options from different retailers. He can review and compare images, prices, reviews, shipping options and other information. Perhaps he’ll narrow his search down to plaid ties over $45, or filter to see just the selections available nearby. Finally, once the user has honed in on the perfect choice, he can easily complete his purchase on the retailer’s site.

Ensure your products are eligible to display in this new unit for smartphones

• If you’ve already upgraded your Product Listing Ads to enhanced campaigns and made appropriate bid adjustments, your products will automatically be eligible to display in the new unit for smartphones.

• If you haven’t yet upgraded your Product Listing Ads to enhanced campaigns, we recommend you upgrade to increase coverage of your products and easily manage bids across devices, locations, and time of day - all from a single campaign.

Learn more in our upcoming mobile shopping webinar

Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns

March 14, 2013 at 10 a.m PT (1 p.m. ET)

During this webinar, attendees will learn about how Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads work in concert with features that are part of enhanced campaigns. We will also discuss the latest Google Shopping user experience on smartphones and cover new multi-screen opportunities for retail advertisers.

Posted by: Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

April 11 update: Offer extensions are now available and can be shown in the UK. 

With AdWords, you’ve been able to run campaigns in targeted geographic locations and attach your local business address to your search ads using location extensions. Now, new location-oriented features in enhanced campaigns are rolling out globally to help you achieve even better results with AdWords – online and offline. Read on to learn how to:

• Improve campaign results using location bid adjustments, whether your customers buy online or offline.
• More easily reach customers that are near your business locations. 
• Drive more offline purchases and measurable in-store traffic with search ads using offer extensions.

For a guided walkthrough, tips and Q&A on using these new location-based features and offer extensions, please register and join us at this week’s Learn with Google webinar on enhanced campaigns this Thursday, March 7, at 10am PST.

Geotarget broadly with selective bid adjustments for improved results

Whether your business is online-only, offline-only, or multi-channel, you can improve your overall results by using a broad location target to cover your entire potential market while refining your bids in select areas. With legacy campaigns, you’d need to set up a new campaign for every location you wanted to bid differently on. Now, with enhanced campaigns, it’s simple to increase or lower your bids by a certain percent for any location target in your campaign.

In the AdWords interface, click Locations on the Settings tab, and then click on the bid adjustment column to the right of a location target to increase or decrease your bid. You can also make location bid adjustments with the latest version of AdWords Editor.

Setting a location bid adjustment (click to expand)

To optimize with selective bid adjustments using the AdWords interface:

1. Click on the “Location details” button and select “What triggered your ad.” 
2. Toggle the View button to slice your campaign performance data, including conversion data, by different geographic levels (example screen).
3. Sort or filter to focus on the locations you want to optimize. 
4.  Select one or more locations. 
5. Click the “Add targets and set bid adjustment” button.

For more advanced optimization, you might pair your AdWords reporting with your company’s data on customer value by geography to adjust bids for different locations.

Example 1: A commercial maintenance company targets a 20 mile radius around downtown Denver. The marketing director might know that it costs 20% less to sell to and service customers who are within 10 miles of downtown. He can improve his results by increasing his bids by 20% for customers within 10 miles of downtown Denver, since these leads are more profitable. 

Example 2: An online-only financial services company has modeled its average customer lifetime value by zip code. The company’s search specialist has been asked to achieve an average 8:1 return on ad spend (ROAS), which they define as average lifetime value divided by average cost per lead. The specialist downloads data from AdWords with cost per lead by zip code and pairs it with lifetime value for each matching zip code (example data). She looks for opportunities to improve her results by lowering bids in zip codes where ROAS is below the target and increasing bids in zip codes where ROAS is above the target. She makes her bid adjustment decisions in the third column and implements them in her enhanced campaign, re-checking the ROAS and volume impact for a few weeks and making changes as necessary. With legacy campaigns, she would have to set up a new campaign for every zip code with different bids, increasing the level of campaign management complexity and effort required.

Experienced search marketers know that bids are an important contributor to campaign results, along with ads, extensions, keywords, and landing pages, so they’re sure to measure periodically and make adjustments. Remember, targeting too narrowly can limit your reach, clicks and conversions, so consider using selective location bid adjustments while targeting broadly. More tips on optimizing your campaigns using location are available in the AdWords Help Center.

Reach customers near your offline business locations more easily

If you operate an offline or multi-channel business, you can use the new location extensions targeting to reach potential customers or increase your bids when they're near your locations with just a few clicks. It uses the location extensions you’ve already created and a radius that you specify to create targets around your businesses.

Setting a location extension target (click to expand)

You can then assign a bid adjustment to your location extension target to increase your ad’s visibility when customers are near your business, and potentially more likely to shop and buy from you (step-by-step directions).

Example 3: A national multi-channel retail business has been running AdWords campaigns to sell directly online and to drive people to its 400 local stores. The account has already set up location extensions, but it wants to improve its ad visibility even more when customers are searching within a short distance from its stores. With just a few clicks, its search agency adds a single “2.0 mile around each location extension” target and sets a +25% bid adjustment.

 Setting a bid adjustment for a location extension target (click to expand)

Drive measurable offline purchases and in-store traffic with offer extensions

Showing a potential customer the right offer at the right time can be the difference that brings them into a local business to buy from you. Offer extensions help you drive offline purchases and in-store traffic with a redeemable offer shown with your search ads across devices. You can use them whether you’re a retailer, manufacturer, or other type of business (currently shown to users in the U.S. only).

Desktop offer extension example

Mobile offer extension example

When customers click your offer, they'll see your offer details, business logo, and nearby stores (see example below). They can print your offer or save it to their Google Offers account for in-store redemption. At the point of sale, customers redeem the offer using either a text code or a bar code.

Offer details example on desktop (click to expand)

You pay for clicks on an offer just like a click on your ad headline – there are no fees for each redemption. We’ll also remind customers about unused offers through email to improve the redemption rate. Offer extensions are available at the campaign or ad group level. Check out more details and tips on offer extensions usage and reporting in the Help Center.

Please stay tuned for more details on the availability of offer extensions in other countries and improvements with offer redemption reporting. We welcome your feedback on these features and others in enhanced campaigns using this form.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager

We live in a multi-screen world where people are constantly connected and moving seamlessly across devices. Not only do mobile devices keep us connected anytime and anywhere, but they play an increasingly important role in shopping, both online and offline. With mobile, consumers no longer just take linear paths to purchase that begin and end on the same device. Instead, there are a range of customer journeys - like starting on a smartphone and ultimately buying in-store, continuing on a different device, or making a phone call.

This era of mobility is bridging the digital and physical worlds, so marketers need to fully understand mobile’s impact both online and offline, and evaluate how each of these actions applies to their business. Here’s a look at two brands who’ve invested in understanding the full value of their mobile efforts:

adidas
Being locally relevant is key for any brick and mortar business, and adidas worked with its agency iProspect to leverage mobile’s power to reach local customers. They recognized that in order to build an effective mobile presence, they had to pivot their thinking to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. “If we look at a 1:1 response or 1:1 measurement of what our media budget is driving on a mobile site, we're missing a big part of that picture. As performance marketers, a lot of the times we look at direct responses, and what mobile is requiring us to do is redefining direct response," says Kerri Smith, head of mobility at iProspect.

adidas and iProspect partnered to estimate the value of each store locator click on their mobile website. Based on internal benchmarks, iProspect theorized that 1 out of every 5 people who visited the mobile site store locator page went into an adidas store. In-store conversion data from adidas indicated that around 13% of shoppers who go into stores completed a purchase, and that their average order value is $71. Since an active search usually demonstrates stronger intent to purchase, iProspect applied a 20% conversion rate and an $80 average order value. As a result, they determined that 4% of the people who clicked on a store locator translated into an actual sale for adidas, meaning that each store locator click is worth $3.20.

To put that in perspective, for a hypothetical mobile investment of $1 million, in-store sales from store locator clicks was an extra $1.58 million beyond direct mobile purchases. [Download the full case study here]

RadioShack
To fully understand how mobile drives in-store sales, RadioShack collaborated with its agency Mindshare to redefine mobile success: “User behavior is much different on smartphone compared to the desktop experience. It became obvious that to be successful, we had to measure mobile performance by focusing on different criteria,” says Lisa Little, Search Marketing Manager at RadioShack.

RadioShack worked with Mindshare to understand how mobile impacted foot traffic into stores. Using mobile search ads to promote their mobile site, they found that 36% of the clicks were going to the store locator page. Based on internal studies, the teams estimated that 40-60% of people who used the store locator on a mobile device visited a store. RadioShack’s internal analytics team also determined that approximately 85% of customers who visited the store as a result of the store locator made a purchase in store. [Download the full case study here]

A holistic view of the mobile customer
This new model can help marketers better understand the return on investment they’re getting from their mobile efforts. Both companies also found mobile success because they developed a holistic view of their mobile customers and created strong synergies across all marketing channels. For example, RadioShack’s social, email, digital, video and search marketing teams work collectively to create the best user experience possible for mobile customers. Little says, “This allows us to better understand the behavioral path of our customers, from the initial research phase through the final purchase stage including all the marketing they were exposed to along the way. To be successful, you have to adopt this holistic vision of the mobile user behavior.”

Posted by: Julie Pottier, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

People are constantly connected and searching from all kinds of devices. Advertisers are looking for ways to quickly provide customers with the right information, in formats that make sense for where they are, the time of day, and the device they’re using. As part of AdWords enhanced campaigns, we upgraded call extensions and sitelinks with several new features to help you reach customers in more relevant ways across these varying contexts.  

In this post and a Learn with Google Webinar this Thursday, February 28th, at 10am PST (sign-up here), we’ll provide a closer look at these new features, and give you practical examples for how to use them to drive better business results.

Improved extensions for the multi-device world
In our world of constant connectivity, people expect to have the information they’re looking for right at their fingertips. Sitelinks provide your customers with links to any part of your website, directly within the ad. On average, ads with sitelinks have a 30% higher click-through rate compared to standalone ads. With enhanced campaigns, you can now customize sitelinks at the ad group level, in addition to the campaign level. You can also customize sitelinks specifically for mobile devices:

 

People are often looking for ways to connect with you directly on the phone. In fact, there are more than 27 million calls per month through our ads call products on mobile and desktop. In addition to calling you directly from a smartphone, people may wish to find your business’ phone number when they search from devices without call functionality like computers and tablets. With enhanced campaigns, you can now show your business phone number or a Google forwarding number in call extensions on computers and tablets. Additionally, Google forwarding numbers are now free on all devices. Learn more

Precise extension scheduling for more granular control
Many advertisers customize their ad content to align with their business hours or special events like sales and promotions. With enhanced campaigns, you can now schedule the specific dates, days of the week, or times of day for your call extensions and sitelinks, at either the ad group or campaign levels. So instead of having to manually turn ads on or off to run specific extensions, you can now schedule them ahead of time.

Example: A multi-national sporting goods business has a website and physical stores in 5 major cities. With enhanced campaigns, Mary, their online marketing manager, can align her AdWords schedule with the operations of the business. Mary runs call extensions between 10am and 6pm when her stores are staffed. After 6pm, she schedules ads to point to the website instead of the call extension. For weekend sales and promotions, she can schedule sitelinks pointing customers directly to her “Sale” page. Scheduling enables sitelinks to appear exactly at the times that Mary sets (e.g., 12 midnight on Saturday) instead of having to manually turn them on at that time.

Advanced reporting for sitelinks and new conversion types

Many advertisers drive leads or conduct business over the phone, so they value phone calls as much as, or more than, clicks to their website. To give you greater visibility into the full value of your ad spend, AdWords reports now count phone calls as conversions, making it easier to compare calls alongside more traditional conversion types like online sales. For example, you can now specify that calls longer than 60 seconds count as conversions.

We’ve also made reporting for individual sitelinks more precise and actionable. You can now manage and track sitelinks individually to ensure that each one drives the right ROI. You can also take advantage of per-link approvals so if one link is disapproved, your other links can still run.

Continuing the example from above: Mary uses the new detailed per-link reports to manage individual sitelinks. Below, you can see that the “Swimming” sitelink only got 16 clicks, while the other sitelinks for the sporting goods store got 100+ clicks each. With this precise data, Mary made the informed decision to replace the “Swimming” sitelink with another one, like “Soccer.”

Mary further segments her data with the "This Extension vs. Other” feature. Here, you can see that two clicks occurred specifically on the “Running” sitelink while 137 clicks occurred on the other parts of the sitelink, like the headline.

Feedback
We really value your feedback to help us make AdWords even better. In fact, many of the new features that we described today are a result of your ideas and suggestions. Please continue to share your thoughts using this form so we can continue to improve the product.

Posted by: Scott Silver, Senior Director, Ads Engineering