Are you reading this post from your PC at work, from your mobile phone as you wait in line at a cafe or from your tablet at home before bed?  The screen a user chooses to engage with is largely driven by context and users are matching their device type to their situation.  At Google Mobile Ads, we’re interested in the way the proliferation of these screens is impacting user behavior, especially search behavior.  We looked separately at searches from tablets, PCs and mobile devices.  The data show that during the workday users are searching from their computers and they use smartphones steadily throughout the day with a lift during commute time and in the evening.  Tablet usage spikes dramatically in the evening.  While both tablets and mobile are portable devices that can be used in a variety of places, this data points to the fact that tablets are used primarily at home as “lean back” devices while sitting on the couch, whereas smartphone devices may be used in a similar way but are also used in the office and on-the-go throughout the day. 

Google Internal Data 2011. % of each platform's traffic shown hourly for one day. Does not indicate absolute or relative traffic volumes.

If you’re an advertiser, you might be wondering which is the best screen to reach your customers on. The answer is: all of them. These screens are better together. Each screen fills a specific need state consumers have for information at different, complementary points in the day.  Failing to invest in any of these three digital screens not only leaves the door open for competitors to engage with your customers, but also could mean a missed opportunity for brand awareness and sales either on the device itself or through driving potential customers into your place of business.  

Posted by Johanna Werther, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

The best consumer experiences on mobile devices happen on websites that are designed for mobile. We all know the difference that sites designed for mobile make in pure usability - they are designed for the smaller touchscreen, making it easy to find what you are looking for and interact with. We believe that giving consumers the best possible experience on their mobile device is critically important. A poor mobile web experience can negatively shape a consumer’s opinion of a brand or company and make it hard for them to engage or make a purchase. A recent study which asked users about the performance of mobile websites found that 61% of users# are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone.  

Last year, we began to limit ad serving on high-end mobile devices if they pointed to landing pages with Flash-heavy content. This was an initial step taken to improve the experience for mobile users. In the coming weeks, we will be introducing the mobile optimization of a website as a new factor of ads quality for AdWords campaigns that are driving mobile search traffic. As a result of this change, ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will perform better in AdWords -- they will generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.

We encourage you to visit the website for your business on a mobile phone, and experience your site as your customers do. If your site is not mobile optimized, we are committed to helping you get started. We recently launched a free Google Sites tool to help you create simple mobile pages. Here is a webinar that has useful best practices for mobile sites. There are case studies from businesses who created successful mobile sites, and a series of blog posts (1, 2, 3) with tips on how to build a mobile friendly site. These are some resources that can help businesses get started.  

Stay tuned to the Google Mobile Ads blog for news of upcoming events and initiatives related to mobile site optimization.

Posted by David Nachum, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

However you say it, Get Mobilized, Jouez La Carte Mobile, Mobil Werben or Get Mobilised, the time for mobile is now! With our Get Mobilized website now available in 3 new languages there has never been a better time for your business to join the mobile revolution. Don’t feel left out Japanese readers, you can モバイル最適化のおすすめ too! Your version is due to drop soon, keep your eyes on this blog for more information.

You just have to look around you to see how smartphones are radically changing the way consumers connect the real world with the online world. They are out and about, their smartphones are with them 24/7, they need your services and 82% of US smartphone users notice mobile ads. Is your business ready for them? They are searching more and more, in fact, at Google, we are seeing mobile search grow at an exponential rate, increasing five-fold worldwide in just the past two years - a rate comparable to the early days of desktop Google Search. No matter what your business size, you can get started with a few some simple steps to connect with your customers and grow your business with mobile advertising.

From tips on optimizing your mobile campaign performance to how to drive more calls to your business, there’s lots of getting started resources with short videos explaining the benefits of each key mobile ad solution. Want more clicks? Want more calls? Want more customers in your store? We’ll show you how.

Begin on the path to mobile advertising success by watching this introduction to mobile advertising video and don’t forget to Get Mobilized!

Posted by Jon Garwood, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

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Now that the final days of summer have come to an end, retailers are in the thick of planning for the busy holiday shopping season.  As you start to plan your campaigns, it's important to take a step back and look at how consumers are using their mobile and tablet devices to drive in-store and on-device purchases.  Here are a few insights that may surprise you:

• We project that this year 15% of total “Black Friday” searches will be from mobile devices based on historical growth rates.
• Many advertisers do not realize that mobile users actively search for last minute holiday gifts and to locate stores to purchase these last minute gifts.  In fact, we project that 44% of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices this holiday season based on historical growth rates.  
• In fact, looking back on the past two holiday seasons, we see a “double peak” in search volumes for retail brands around first Black Friday and then the week before Christmas as mobile users locate stores for last minute shopping.  These shoppers may have missed the deadline for free shipping and are motivated to locate and shop at brick and mortar locations.  Here is the data from the holiday season in 2009 & 2010 showing this double peak:

• The important thing to keep in mind is that these mobile searches drive in-store purchases: 65% of high end device users report that they have used their device to find a business, and then made a purchase at that business in person according our holiday retail survey of users in the AdMob network.
• Retailers should be sure to plan for the tablet audience when it comes to driving on-device conversions.  Ebay has stated that tablet users spend 50% more than PC users, have higher AOV, and have higher or equivalent conversion rates.
• According to our survey, greater than 33% of both smartphone users and tablet users plan to start their shopping before Thanksgiving, so smart marketers will start their campaigns early this year to reach these consumers.

Whether your goals are branding or direct response, Google Mobile Ads can help you with strategies to reach and engage your target audience and drive customers to convert on tablets, on mobile devices, and in your stores.  Contact your Google Mobile Ads sales representative to learn more.

Posted by Johanna Werther, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Welcome to the latest post in our Mobile Insights series featuring expert views from our mobile ads team. This week’s guest contributors are Alex Barza and Kacy Brod, who lead our U.S. mobile efforts for Retail. Here are their thoughts on the state of mobile marketing in retail gleaned from Think Retail 2011, Google’s annual gathering of retail executives.  

At this year’s Think Retail event in Mountain View, mobile marketing was a hot topic.

We started the day by summarizing the most interesting retail insights from a recently conducted 5,000 person mobile survey (watch the three minute highlight video).  We also noted that last year our #1 recommendation to retailers was to create mobile-optimized sites and/or apps.  After a quick survey of Internet Retailer’s top 100 ranked companies, we’re happy to report the majority now have created one or both.

After speaking with many retailers and analyzing our own retail data, we identified six trends and recommendations around each to help retailers evolve their mobile strategies.  

#1 -- Mobile Is Highly Engaging:  There’s no other platform that can allow you to touch and engage with a product or brand like mobile can, so intrigue users to interact with your advertising campaign. Invite them to swipe, rotate, tell their own story, or upload their own personal video: the sky’s the limit. The Gilt Groupe, for instance, ran a iPad Rich Media Interstitial ad that lets users interact with multiple product images by swiping and enlarging the images in an interactive manner.  Users simply tap or pinch-out and, in this case, have the option to download the app directly from the Apple Marketplace.

Recommendation:  Tie mobile into other branding and channel marketing strategies and look at tapping into Mobile's unique native features to further engage customers.

#2 -- Local Drives Business: We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we believe in local search. The most popular mobile shopping activity is locating the nearest retailer. When consumers find local information, 88% take action within a day; of this number, 61% call a retailer and 59% visit a store. (1)

Recommendation: Be discoverable and drive store foot traffic when consumers are searching for your business, products, or services. Integrate store locatiors into your display campaigns to help your customers find stores nearest to them.  

#3 -- Consumers Want Offers: Google research shows that 70% of consumers use their smartphones while shopping. Why? Consumers love to compare prices while in a store. When we analyzed last year’s holiday search trends, we found a 250% increase over the previous year in searches related to offers and deals.

Recommendation: Use Ads with Offers and mobile coupons in both search and display to drive consumers into your stores and keep them there while they are comparison shopping.  Include mobile to distribute promotional offers and time-sensitive coupons and designate custom mobile codes to track the return on your ad spend.

Both display and search ads deliver returns for retailers

#4 -- Consumers Engage with Mobile on Multiple Platforms: More than 165 million tablets are expected to ship in the next two years, and according to eMarketer, 41% of people say shopping is their sole purpose for buying a tablet.  As a result we’ve noticed a big surge in search on tablets which has prompted us to completely redesign and optimize the tablet search results page for a touch interface. This means retailers need to have a cross-platform strategy which includes tablets.

Recommendation:  Test new ad formats and redesign experiences specifically for different types of devices. Target tablets within your existing desktop search campaigns or break them out to ensure appropriate coverage, especially during this holiday season.  Reach the tablet customer via new rich media ad templates that make it easy to execute a rich user experience resulting in extremely high engagement.  These templates take advantage of tablets’ larger screen sizes, high-res graphics, touch screens and multimedia capabilities to drive deep engagement with mobile audiences.  Take a look at our launch partner video here! 

#5 -- Mobile Is Incremental: Fifteen percent of all shopping-related searches are now on a mobile device. This spells opportunity for retailers to tap into search growth by specifically targeting mobile devices and tablets.  

When one advertising agency expanded their client’s business onto mobile, they saw some unexpected but very interesting behaviors. 20% of clients who conducted research on the desktop finalized their purchases on mobile devices. Seeing this incredible crossover data, they invested in mobile search advertising by leveraging Google’s Click-to-call ads to drive traffic to their call centers and also sent mobile users to an easy to use two-step ordering process on mobile and tablet sites. This investment led to a large increase of new prospects and also lowered the cost of a sale by 25% when occurring on mobile versus the call center. This is just one example of what can be achieved.

Recommendation:  We see huge search spikes during the holiday season, as the above shopping query trend graph illustrates.  In fact, last year Google saw a 250% increase on Black Friday related queries vs 2009 during the week of Black Friday and we’re hoping for another banner year for mobile. This is a valuable time to get in front of consumers, so have specific mobile holiday strategies in place and establish appropriate budgets.  Below are two examples of how Target and Home Depot used Black Friday messaging during the week of Black Friday to capture the increased demand.

#6 -- A Word On Measurement:  Mobile acts as a bridge and impacts your in-store and online channels. The opportunity is huge, but it requires innovative thinking, adapting to new realities, and challenging the assumed models.  Our research shows that when consumers make purchases as a result of research conducted on their phones, 76% purchase in-store and 59% purchase online, while a smaller portion purchase on their phones.

Recommendation: Measure mobile differently; don’t measure success solely on mobile sales broadly.  Think of conversions differently -- metrics such as a store look-up, customer sign-up, redemption of an offer in store, or app downloads are important.  Tablets, on the other hand, have shown very strong eCommerce ROI, especially in retail, and can be measured more like desktop.

To learn more about the above recommendations, download the Full Think Retail Mobile Deck here.

For a quick snapshot of what’s available for retail in mobile now, check out our retail sizzle video.

Posted by: Alex Barza, Senior Account Executive, Mobile & Kacy Brod, Mobile Head of Display, Retail


Additional Notes(1) Google & OTX Study Q4 2010

If you've taken the time to build a site designed specifically for mobile, we want to hear from you!
 
At Google, we believe that building a mobile-ready site is critical for businesses of all sizes and we’re looking for some great examples.  We’d love to hear about what you’ve done, how you did it, and the success you‘ve seen. Please fill out this form and tell us about your mobile site.  
 
We’ll spotlight some of the best submissions in case studies. If selected, you can tout your success and spread the word about your truly great mobile site experience.
 
Think you’ve got what it takes? We hope so!  Here’s the kind of info we’re looking for about your successful mobile site:

• Your strategy for success (simple layout? prioritized content?)
• What you learned along the way (experiments? trial and error?)
• Metrics that show how far you’ve come (numbers tell the tale!)
• Why your mobile site works and what advice you have for others

If you’ve got a mobile site success story to share, fill out this form to tell us about it and you may be featured by Google for being an innovator in the mobile space.   
 
If you’re still working toward mobilizing your site, we’ve got the resources to help you get from here to there (and everywhere that mobile goes). Use our Mobile Site Builder to build your site, or learn from our Mobile Website Best Practices.
 
Posted by Adam Compain, Mobile Specialist, Mobile Ads

Smartphone penetration link updated 8/9/11.

This is the first in a series of posts capturing insights from the Think Mobile event in London.
 
Google’s recent Think Mobile event in London hosted a capacity crowd of over 400 delegates, with a further 9,500-plus viewers streaming it live on desktop and mobiles.  This is the first in a series of four blog posts where we’ll summarise key points and include video footage from the thought leaders who presented.  For a sneak preview, check out the three-minute summary from Google UK MD Matt Brittin here that finished the day on a real high.  

Ian Carrington of Google took the prize for sharing “killer stats” at Think Mobile UK as he highlighted data on just how fast the mobile market is developing:

• In 2010 there were 500 million people connected to the mobile web, today there are around a billion.
• In the middle of last year, Wall Street tech futurist Mary Meeker predicted that smartphone sales would overtake PC sales by the end of 2012. That in fact already happened in Q4 2010 – fully two years earlier than expected.
• UK smartphone penetration in 2010 was 24%; in 2011 it has soared to 36%

Ian also announced some of the results of Google’s research (we’ll soon be sharing the full report with you on this blog)  in the UK with notable stats including 44% of us go to bed with our phones within arm’s reach, 65% of us use our smartphones to kill time commuting and 91% of us use our smartphones during downtime in the workplace.



Smartphone usage is clearly booming in the UK.  However, only 17% of advertisers today have a mobile optimised site. “This is the single largest barrier between you and the mobile user,” Ian announced, adding “it’s time for a little less conversation and a little more action.”:

Step one: develop and integrate your mobile strategy Start off by finding out what your objectives are. “Is it about downloads? Is it about customer acquisition? What are you trying to achieve? Once you’ve defined that, integrate it into all your other marketing activities”

Step two: build your mobile destination This could be a website or an iPhone or Android app. To show just how much this step is worthy of your investment, Ian pointed to Ebay. “They’re having a sale on a mobile device every single second, and they’re doing over $2bn worth of revenue in a year on mobile. In actual fact, they sell three to four Ferraris per month via a mobile phone!” he said.

Step three: connect with your users “People are looking at your business through a mobile lens,” he continued. “Are you optimising your advertising campaign? Have you separated out your AdWord campaigns to target desktop customers in a different way with different bidding strategies to your mobile customers?” If you’ve answered “no” then it’s time to consider making these changes.

Step four: mobilise your business with data “Be creative with the data you’ve got,” Ian advised. “You’ve got all this data from your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts on what people are doing today with your business on a mobile phone. Very, very few people are actually looking at that data – so start looking at it and understand the insights it’s giving you.” These valuable details can directly inform step one – your strategy.

Get more “killer stats” and insights by watching Ian’s talk here and look out for three more blogs on the key takeaways from Think Mobile UK.  

Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads UK