SES New York is coming up next week, and we hope you’ll join us in the Big Apple!
During day 1 of SES New York, we'll be on the expo floor with a custom-built Google classroom. Join us for a full day of learning about the latest solutions from AdWords, Mobile, Google Display Network, and DoubleClick Search to help you win in a constantly connected world.
Where: SES NY Expo Hall, 5th Floor Marriott Marquee When: Day 1 - Tuesday, March 26th Sessions:
10:30-11:30am Reaching customers whenever, wherever, across any device. Surojit Chatterjee, Lead Product Manager for enhanced campaigns
11:45-12:45pm Understanding the Full Value of Mobile. Brendon Kraham, Director, Global Mobile Solutions
2:00-3:00pm Engaging with your audience in a multi-screen world. Speaker TBD
3:30-4:30pm Using DoubleClick Search to manage campaigns across channels and devices. Anthony Chavez, Product Manager for DoubleClick Search
Don’t have a pass yet? Don’t worry! Expo Only passes are free and get you access to our Google classroom. You can also use the code NYGOOGLE which is redeemable for up to $700.00 off a full conference pass!
Consumers are mobile. New research we released this week demonstrates that smartphone ownership is on the rise and these consumers are searching, taking local action and purchasing. Mobile devices are transforming how consumers connect and live their lives. Download our new smartphone research here.
Businesses are going mobile. Last week we launched 26 new mobile websites for some of the Barcelona’s most famous attractions, restaurants, nightclubs and businesses as part of ourBarcelona Go Mobile initiative to enable businesses to better engage with their mobile customers. This week we challenged businesses to fall in love with mobile in 2012. The companies who do will be best positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities that mobile creates.
Marketers are jumping into mobile. The consumers they want to engage are mobile and the opportunities are huge. They are no longer asking us why do I need to go mobile. Now they are asking how do I go mobile? How can my brand find success in the mobile space? How can I maximize the relationship with my customers on mobile?
The answer is to truly operationalize mobile. Marketers need to not only jump into mobile, they need to fall in love with mobile. They need to align their organization for mobile success, create a mobile website for their business.
This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain my colleague Jason Spero and I spoke to a packed audience of marketers about how to go mobile in 2012. For the many people who were not able to join us, we wanted to share a video of our presentation.
Posted by Rikard Steiber, Global Marketing Director, Mobile & Social Advertising
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
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.
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
If you missed out on the action at our recent sell-out Think Mobile event in London you can still get your hands on the highlights from the day. This is the fourth and last in a series of blog posts where we summarise key points and include video footage from the thought leaders who presented their insights during the sell-out event.
“It’s not a debate anymore about mobile website or apps,” announced Rob Define, ebookers’ Director of Product Strategy, at our recent Think Mobile event. “You need to have both.”
The online travel company’s slogan is “book easier. travel happier”, and so to fulfil the dual components of their promise they adopted a two-pronged approach in entering the mobile space.
To help customers “book easier”, last January ebookers launched the first fully transactional multi-product mobile site of any online travel agency in Europe. “What we wanted was really to have 100% the same product that we have on desktop,” said Rob. This meant the mobile site offered a lower cost, faster development time and more straightforward support than an app. Based on the experience of their US-based sister company Orbitz, ebookers also knew that a mobile website would bring more bookings than an app. “As an e-commerce transactional website, we wanted to drive through bookings first.”
The second part of ebookers’ mobile strategy was to help clients “travel happier”. “We did that by launching the ebookersExplorer iPad app in May,” Rob revealed. Mashing together content from several social media sites to create a dynamic travel magazine, the app set out to build customer value and brand awareness through differentiation, and to focus on innovation and inspiration rather than just transactions.
While in the early days of smartphones customers could visit the ebookers desktop site via their mobiles, since launching their mobile site ebookers experienced a 90% jump in visitors and bookings via mobile during the first five months after launch. Rob’s advice for replicating results like these? For both mobile sites and apps, he counsels companies to “advertise and analyse to succeed”.
Rob reports that organic and paid search drive a high share of visitors to the site, so he recommends a dedicated mobile pay-per-click account to manage all-important positioning. Introducing mobile-targeted ad text is another top tip; ebookers trialled text borrowed from their desktop campaigns against mobile-specific text and saw the latter deliver increases in click-through rates of up to 25%.
Meanwhile to promote the app, the team enlisted the help of AdMob. “We launched an iPad-targeted specific campaign in all 12 countries where ebookers is present in Europe,” Rob says. “As soon as we launched this campaign we saw a 100% increase in downloads of the app, which is phenomenal.”
Curious to know more?Read the full case study on ebookers’ mobile success here see Rob at Think Mobile presenting here and interviewed here .
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads
If you missed out on the action at our recent sell-out Think Mobile event in London you can still get your hands on the highlights from the day. This is the third in a series of blog posts where we summarise key points and include video footage from the thought leaders who presented their insights during the sell-out event.
Charles Dunstone, founder and CEO of Carphone Warehouse, doesn’t give a lot of talks – so when he does people tend to listen. When the dynamic entrepreneur presented his thoughts on the current trends in mobile, listeners at Google’s Think Mobile UK were rapt. Here’s the lowdown on what Charles had to say.
Users of smartphones are not only users of smartphones Smartphone owners are highly connected consumers using a variety of devices to access your brand. What does this mean for you? It’s essential to maintain consistency. “You have to present an absolutely homogenous service through every channel,” Charles said.
M-commerce customers are tech savvy and targeted “One of the most interesting things is that people tend to be using their mobile phone or their tablet whilst they’re doing something else, so you actually get very, very targeted responses from people because they’re not just surfing.” Mobile users are often looking for specific information, which is why searches on mobile often lead to better conversions than desktop. You’ll also notice a lower cost per click since mobile remains relatively uncrowded, and there are better click-through rates to be had in the mobile space too.
Many successes in mobile have been an accident! “All the way through mobile, almost everyone has really failed to understand its potential and then has also failed to capitalise on its potential,” Charles said. For example, in the early years it was assumed that mobile would really only serve as a business tool; no one realised that it would become integral in shopping, socialising and entertainment. Similarly, when SMS came out it was intended to enable networks to communicate with customers; no one had any idea how popular this functionality would become among consumers.
Fortune favours the brave Given the fact that so far some of the biggest successes in mobile have come by accident, Charles advises companies to get started on their mobile internet activity now and not later. “You will succeed by experimentation, and generally fortune will favour the brave.”
Also check out our previous blog, here, showcasing a case study and video on Carphone Warehouse’s mobile activity which illustrates how the company has been making sure to practice what they preach.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads UK
If you missed out on the action at our recent sell-out Think Mobile event in London you can still get your hands on the highlights from the day. This is the second in a series of blog posts where we summarise key points and include video footage from the thought leaders who presented their insights during the sell-out event.
Rory Sutherland, executive creative director and vice-chairman of OgilvyOne London, is an expert in advertising and digital media. A charismatic speaker, he shared his notions about the relationship between the mobile phone and human behaviour at Google’s Think Mobile event. If you missed it, here are some of the eye-opening highlights. Comparative advantage and mobile Rory looked at mobile from an unusual but ultimately enlightening angle. He focused on David Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage, a concept that’s about discovering “not just what things are good at, but what they’re unusually, remarkably good at”. Comparative advantage is a valuable idea in today’s expanding media mix. “Let’s actually create an approach to media where every medium plays to its distinctive strengths, to its comparative advantage,” Rory said. “I think asking the question of not only what can mobile do, but what is it uniquely and spectacularly good at is a quite useful conversation.” What are the comparative advantages of mobile? “It’s about context, it’s about timeliness, it’s about the ability to engage people in sophisticated dialogue, customisation and feedback.”
Rory Sutherland at Think Mobile UK
Could context be king? Rory then focused on mobile’s comparative advantage in the area of context. “As marketers, we understand that value is subjective; what we probably haven’t understood well enough is that it’s also contextual,” he said. “The decisions we make and the way we value things and the way we compare things depends very, very heavily on where we are.” Beyond target audience So if context is so important to human behaviour, what does this mean for digital advertisers and marketers? “Actually, we don’t just have a target audience as advertisers, we have target moments,” Rory revealed. “It’s something that Google pioneered, so it makes absolute sense for Google to continue this into the mobile space – where we not only have a target moment, we also have a target context.” In this way, it now becomes useful to ask, “What’s the context in which I might persuade someone to buy this product or service?” Answer that question, and through mobile advertising it is increasingly possible to tailor messages to a specific target audience, a target moment and to a target context too. See Rory’s thought-provoking talk here and check out our previous blog on Think Mobile UK herewhere Ian Carrington of Google shares insights on the power of mobile in the UK marketplace.
Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads UK
On Wednesday, 29th June at 2pm UK time, we will be holding our flagship mobile event in London. We’ve hit full capacity with a truly amazing amount of sign-ups so we’re streaming some of the key sessions live to give you the opportunity to tune-in - no matter where you are in the world.
This thought leadership event will look at why the rise of the mobile web represents one of the most dramatic consumer behavior transformations in history and what this means for marketers. The streaming includes the keynote sessions from: Charles Dunstone, Co-Founder & CEO Carphone Warehouse; Rory Sutherland, Vice President Ogilvy Group; and Ian Carrington, Google Mobile Advertising Sales Director. During the stream you will see, for the first time in-depth, our latest research on mobile usage in the UK, the global launch of a new mobile product from Google and gain insights into what really works for businesses on mobile.
The live stream lasts for two hours, including a break, and can be accessed on 29th June at 2pm on the Google Think Mobile YouTube Channel.
We’re excited to announced that on June 16th we’ll be sharing the initial findings from a global research study conducted on behalf of Google by Ipsos GmbH and TNS Infratest.
As mobile continues to grow in different countries around the world, we wanted to learn more about how people are using their mobile devices and the readiness of businesses to engage consumers via mobile. Two separate surveys informed this study: an online consumer-facing survey of thousands of smartphone users in 30 different countries, and a business-facing survey conducted in 5 countries (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Japan) which incorporated 1,000 phone interviews with marketing decision makers.
We are working closely with the MMA to help marketers better understand the mobile opportunity. The MMA’s North American Managing Director, Michael Becker commented, “As the study shows, smartphones are used extensively by consumers and are a powerful new tool in engaging the marketplace. We look forward to working with Google to help mobile ecosystem members identify opportunities worldwide leveraging the results of this research.”
Don’t miss this exciting launch. Gain more insight into mobile user behavior and business readiness at theMMA Forum in New York City on June 16th, where I will present the findings at 4:40 pm at the "Global Insights on Consumer and Business Mobile Adoption and Readiness"session. Additional data and insights will be rolled out over the course of the next few months.
We hope to see you at the MMA forum but if you can’t make it, we’ll be posting the presented findings here on the Google Mobile Ads blog after the session.
Posted by Owen Charlebois, Global Manager, Advertising, Marketing and Media Research
The Guide to the App Galaxy, which we showed off last week at Google I/O, is designed to help mobile app developers—regardless of platform—navigate the complexities of launching an app and building a business on mobile. As you maneuver through the "galaxy” using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you’ll get the basics about app promotion, monetization and measurement—with tips from Google as well as successful developers.
There’s no exact blueprint for mobile app success and no developer’s journey is the same, which is why The Guide to the App Galaxy contains different advice and best practices from developers around the world. Here are some key insights from developers who have successfully built a business on mobile:
Rovio Mobile
Making money on mobile is not black and white—there's actually a lot of color. There are a number of business model options that aren't exclusive to any particular platforms.
Best, Cool & Fun Games
Offering your app for free lowers the barrier for users to download and try your app. The free version of Ant Smasher went viral because players could easily recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.
The Weather Channel
Don't forget to think beyond mobile. If you have a website or even a television channel, you can cross-promote your app with banner advertising or in-show mentions to drive downloads.
If you’re a developer who has successfully navigated the App Galaxy and launched your own app, you’ve probably picked up some tips of your own. Share your insights by creating your own journey and sharing it with your friends. We might even feature your story on The Guide to the App Galaxy.
The Guide to the App Galaxy is currently available in English, Japanese, Korean, French and German. We’re continuing to expand the guide to other developers around the world with new languages and new content like case study journeys. For more information about our solutions for mobile app developers, visit www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/about.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first Google I/O as a Googler and speaker. It was a high-energy event and lots of mobile developers interested in building a business on mobile stopped by our Office Hours. Additionally, the videos from two sessions we hosted are now available:
Learn how to build a business on mobile apps so you can quit your day job. Walk away with an understanding of app business basics and how to use house ads for app promotion, mediation to optimize in-app advertising revenues and analytics to measure real ROI.
Watch our experts integrate the Google AdMob Ads SDK across Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. Learn integration tips and tricks so you can start making money from your app today.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch all the announcements and excitement in-person or via the live-stream, we hope you’ll get a chance to experience it by visiting the Google I/O website.
Posted by Wayne Pan, Software Engineer for Mobile Display Advertising
Last Tuesday we presented a webinar on Mobile Site Optimization and shared some best practices and next steps to help you get started on the path to a fully optimized mobile presence.
Google Senior Mobile Account Executive, Elliott Nix, and Mobile Specialist, Shiv Kumar presented key statistics surrounding the current state of mobile readiness and made a strong case for the importance of mobile site optimization.
With half of all Americans predicted to have a smartphone by the end of year* and rates of mobile web usage continuing to grow rapidly, it should come as a real surprise that so many marketers, including 79% of Google’s largest customers, do not have a mobile optimized website.
As the number of mobile visitors to your site grows, it’s increasingly important to make sure you’re providing your users with the best experience you can. In one study, 11% of users expressed being so frustrated with a mobile transaction that they’ve screamed at their device and 23% have reported cursing at their phones.** Don’t let that be your site!
As you may have heard, Google I/O sold out in a record 59 minutes. If you were one of the lucky ones to snag a ticket, we look forward to seeing you in person at the Moscone Center in San Francisco next week. Don’t forget to download the official Google I/O 2011 conference app for your Android phone or tablet.
We will be hosting two sessions at Google I/O:
May 10, 2011 @ 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM “Don’t Just Build a Mobile App. Build a Business.”
Wayne Pan, our lead front-end engineer for AdMob, will show you how to build a business on mobile apps so maybe one day you can quit your day job. Walk away with an understanding of app business basics and how to use house ads for app promotion, mediation to optimize in-app advertising revenues and analytics to measure real ROI.
May 11, 2011 @ 1:45 PM – 2:45 PM “Implementing Money Making SDKs”
Watch our mobile display ads engineers, Mike Ying, Dean Browne and Paul Hounshell, integrate the Google AdMob Ads SDK across Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. Learn integration tips and tricks from our experts so you can start making money from your app immediately.
Additionally, if you have any questions or just want to drop by and say hi, our product experts and engineers will be at Office Hours on both days.
If you weren’t able to grab a ticket or can’t attend one of our I/O Extended viewing parties around the world, don’t worry. You can watch the keynote and other major sessions (including our “Don’t Just Build a Mobile App. Build a Business session”), live. In addition, HD video recordings from all sessions that are not livestreamed will get posted within 24 hours. For more about the livestream event, check out the I/O Live blog post.
Posted by Lauren Usui, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
“What gluten-free cake mixes taste the best?”
“Where can I buy allergy medicine at 11:00PM?”
“Which diaper brand is on sale this week?”
What do these questions have in common?
1. They all imply a purchase will be made in the near future.
2. They can all be answered using your mobile device.
Recently, Google’s Jim Lecinski and Brian McDevitt spoke at the In-Store Marketing Institutes's annual Shopper Marketing Summit. The duo discussed the impact of mobile on the path-to-purchase process and what this shift means for marketers.
Jim Lecinski, Google's Managing Director, U.S. Sales and Service, kicked off the session by stating that mobile’s role in the path-to-purchase is actually very simple. Shoppers rely on the mobile web to research products and services both pre-store and in-store. And when shoppers read reviews or find weekly deals online, this information can change what they buy and where they buy it. In fact, 79% of smartphone users use smartphones to help them shop and 74% have purchased due to using their smartphone while shopping (Google’s “Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” study 2011).
Because the mobile Internet has a direct impact on consumer purchase decisions, it is critically important for marketers to have a mobile presence when their target shoppers are in mobile errand planning and buying mode.
Continuing the presentation, Brian McDevitt, Google's Mobile Display Ads Lead, shared a scenario of the mobile-mom-of-the-not-too-distant future using her mobile device to plan for her son’s birthday party. Through the course of her day, she experiences:
A Mobile Website that helps her find the right product, quickly and easily.
Mobile Brand Applications that assist her in tracking down the right recipe to serve her guests.
Mobile Retailer Applications that show her weekly deals at local stores
Third Party Applications & Sites that enable her to build shopping lists across retailers, provide coupons and give suggestions for relevant products
Google Maps or Ads with Location Extensions that help with navigation to local stores
Google Mobile Search & Display Ads that connect the entire experience so it’s easy to find relevant information on a mobile site or application.
And the great part is that this fictional mom could exist today. All of these mobile capabilities and more are available now to create a seamless mobile shopping experience for your customers.
Wrapping up the session, Jim laid it on the line when he said, “Mobile is the key to shopper marketing.” I happen to agree.
Posted by Katrina Shonbeck, Mobile Display Account Planner
As smart phone usage grows, mobile users have come to expect quick and consistent interactions, anytime and anywhere. But businesses have been slow to adapt their mobile sites and overall strategies to meet the needs of their users on the go. In fact, our research has shown that 79% of Google’s largest advertisers do not have mobile optimized sites.
Is your website mobile ready?
We invite you to spend a few minutes next week learning how mobile site optimization can drive results for your business. On Tuesday, May 3 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET, Google Senior Mobile Account Executive, Elliott Nix, and Mobile Specialist, Shiv Kumar, will be presenting on the state of mobile readiness, why mobile optimization matters to your business, mobile site development best practices and tips, and next steps you can take to optimize your mobile site.
