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Eight Tips for Google Mobile Advertising

12-04-2010

Google is really establishing a strong presence in the mobile handset sector and the mobile search space for 2010 and offers extensive training on their products and services in this arena. Members of the Redweb Search team recently attended one of these training sessions and what follows below are the most interesting points from that training.

Google introduces some interesting statistics regarding the recent growth in mobile search, mobile user habits and growth projections for the future. These statistics include:

  • In 2013 smart phone sales will exceed PC sales (Source: Mobile World Congress 2010)
  • eBay customers purchased 1.5 million items on their mobile handsets during the Christmas 2009 period, which is the equivalent to a sale every two seconds (Source: http://digital-stats.blogspot.com/)
  • 27% of people use mobile websites and/or applications on a daily basis (Source: Universal McGann 2009)
  • Of the 38% who have taken an action from a mobile ad: 53% of these visited a landing page; 24% made a purchase; 35% opted in for an email for coupons/info; 34% made in-store purchases; 32% opted in for SMS for coupons/info (Source: Universal McCann 2009)

Google is keen to test new websites and apps on phones with full browser functionality and currently there are only three models that do this: the Palm Pre, the iPhone and the Android. It is possible to target Google paid search ads and keywords used in Google mobile searches and to target keywords and keyword placement through specially constructed mobile apps.

Search ads can appear in the search engine results pages and as annotations to a Google map. The best conversion rates are achieved using the click-to-call feature (which allows people to phone a business directly from the ad and can be tracked using conversion tracking). This functionality is achieved with Google Business Extensions which is intended to replace the Google Local Business Search feature. The performance of mobile ad campaigns can be tracked through the existing Adwords interface.

All of this is highly experimental at the moment and here at Redweb Search, we have strong experience in SEO consultancy and PPC management. However 2010 is expected to be the year when mobile advertising comes into its own and we will be watching very closely what happens to stay ahead of the game. In the meantime, Google offered eight tips to those using mobile ads for the first time:

  1. Run separate campaigns for desktop ads and mobile ads using Google AdWords
  2. Select specific devices and networks for ad targeting
  3. Compare the performance of both desktop and mobile ad campaigns to accurately determine return-on-investment
  4. People use keywords of similar lengths on both desktop computers and iPhones/Android phones (around 2.93 words for each), although the length is significantly reduced for WAP phones due to problems with the interface (around 2.44 words)
  5. Write ad text with appropriate calls-to-action; for example 'Call us now to reserve a table' or '10% discount for O2 customers!'
  6. Link to relevant landing pages; e.g. if you have an app to download make sure it links to a download page
  7. Bid competitively. The desktop search results have 11 slots and the mobile search results have 5, consequently it is a good idea to bid aggressively at first to build up the quality score before reducing spend on highly performing keywords
  8. Use conversion tracking!

Written by: Stefan Boettcher, Sandy Lee