Google's Aunkur Arya Speaks About Mobile Game Monetization @ SGS

Last Friday Aunkur Arya, a veteran of AdMob and now Manager of Google’s Mobile Partnerships, participated in a panel about mobile game monetization with experts from Boku, Greystripe, Tapjoy and Zong at the Smartphone Games Summit.

Game developers were anxious to better understand their mobile monetization opportunities, learn about industry best practices and listen to the experts discuss the future of mobile game monetization. Here are a few insights from the panel discussion if you missed it:

• When asked whether developers should use in-app purchases or advertising, the panel agreed that each game is different and the user experience should be considered alongside with the monetization strategy.  Considering a hybrid approach with advertising, freemium upgrades and in-app purchases, will allow more engaging games to maximize revenue potential, but the hybrid approach is difficult to do well.
  
• For advertising, Michael Chang from Greystripe explained that brand advertisers have a lot of options for ad spend and want reach if they are going to invest in mobile. According to Chang, a growing game developer with 100,000 downloads will not grab the attention of brands.
  
• As a follow-up, Aunkur Arya explained that, “The macro trend is good. There are more and more brand advertisers realizing they can’t ignore the mobile game space.”
  
• With the mobile games market becoming increasingly crowded, Aunkur Arya pointed out that marketing is critical in order to break through the clutter and achieve strong ranking in app marketplaces.  He further noted that many developers find success by promoting new games throughout their existing portfolio of games with House Ads. These ads are easy to create in the developer's AdMob account and display in lieu of a portion of regular banner ads.
  
• The panel advised game developers to build in or use third party tools to analyze user behavior to drive improvements to games. Take advantage of the unique opportunity on mobile to constantly test, iterate and improve games.

Overall, it was a thoughtful discussion on mobile games and the key takeaway was that quality, engaging games built with a monetization strategy in mind will win.

Posted by Keri Buchanan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

New Hyperlocal Ad Feature Provides Distance Information

Imagine driving to work and your Check Engine light comes on. After pulling over and calling a tow truck, you realize you’ll need another car to get to work and use while yours is getting repaired. You pull out your phone and search for “car rental,” hoping that you can find one nearby. From a Google search ad result you discover there’s an Enterprise Rent-A-Car neighborhood location just half a mile away! The blue distance marker made it easy to see that Enterprise is approximately .5 miles away. You click on the phone number listed in the ad and are instantly connected with the car rental service. Soon, an Enterprise representative is on his way to pick you up.

To create more meaningful connections with their customers, Enterprise Rent-A-Car is taking advantage of Google Mobile Ads’ new hyperlocal advertising feature which serves locally relevant ads and displays distance information to help users understand how close they are to a business. This powerful ad feature delivers down to the block level information about your business at the right place and at the right time.

According to Laura Bryant, Enterprise spokesperson, “Since Enterprise Rent-A-Car has neighborhood and airport locations within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population, Google's hyperlocal ad feature is an excellent medium to help our customers find us at the exact moment they need us most.”

Click to enlarge

Hyperlocal distance information enhances the location extensions ad format with a marker providing the distance between the user and your business location.  This visual cue instantly helps customers who are on the go and close to a point of sale know that your business is nearby which can drive more traffic to your store and generate more revenue for your business.  Users see the hyperlocal ads only if they’ve opted into sharing their location on Google.com. And because the hyperlocal distance feature is built on top of location extensions, users can also easily click to see where your business is located on a map and click to call and connect with your business immediately.

Hyperlocal distance information is automatically enabled for location extensions and does not
require any additional configurations, allowing you to effortlessly perform hyperlocal advertising with your existing location extensions. Campaigns must also be opted into showing on iPhones, Android OS phones or other mobile devices with full Internet browsers. The ad format is available only on the Google search network and in countries supporting location extensions ad formats.  Advertisers are only charged when users click to visit the website or on the phone number shown in the ad.

Google is committed to expanding the possibilities of mobile local advertising by developing innovative hyperlocal ad features powered by robust location-based ad serving.  Stay tuned for more exciting developments in hyperlocal advertising from the Google Mobile Ads team.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager

Join Google’s AdMob at Mobile Monday October 4, 2010

Please join us next Monday October 4, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.
A panel of experts will be discussing the future of mobile with respect to “Native
Apps vs. Web with HTML5”.

Event details:

Mobile Monday: Silicon Valley Chapter

October 4, 2010 at 6:30pm

Hyatt Regency SF California St & Drumm St (5 Embarcadero Center) San
Francisco CA 94111

Registration is free, so sign up now to reserve your spot! I look forward to seeing
you there.

Posted by Keri Buchanan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Kerala Tourism Board Innovates with Mobile Video Ads

We are excited to showcase an innovative campaign from the Kerala Tourism Board and their agency MobME that drives viewership of the Board’s short film across iPhone and iPad Apple devices.

Located in India, Kerala Tourism is the first tourism board to connect with inbound travelers via a mobile platform. The campaign cleverly combines the region’s popular tag line (“God’s Own Country”) with AdMob’s Interactive Video Interstitial ad format to introduce Kerala as a must visit destination to travelers around the world. Additionally, the board intelligently incorporates social connectivity through action buttons that link to Kerala Tourism’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Kerala Tourism campaign is expected to generate over 2.5 Million video views in a period of one week.

“iPhones and iPads have created a global mass following and their users are high end consumers. Kerala Tourism has realized the potential to reach out directly to its consumers in a big way & with a personal touch. This was the single reason why we decided to go in for a high voltage digital media campaign focusing exclusively on these new age devices using AdMob,” said Mr. Sivasankar, Director, Kerala Tourism.

Posted by Mahesh Narayanan & Tanushree Baruah, The Google India Team

iOS 4-Compatible Google Analytics Mobile SDK Available Now

Today, the Google Analytics team announced a new v0.8 build of the Google Analytics SDK for iOS that is compatible with Apple’s iOS 4 operating system. Additionally, we’ve released a v0.8 build of the SDK for Android that includes some minor bug fixes.  

If you are an app developer, understanding how users engage with your application is critical to building a successful development and monetization strategy.  Using Google Analytics, you can gain insight into how users interact with your app to help boost your ad earnings.

For example, you may find that users are browsing a significant number of pages that aren’t currently being monetized or that a particular ad unit converts better on certain pages than others. This type of rich usage data is crucial to optimizing the user experience as well as your revenue.

Want to try or find out more about Google Analytics for mobile?  Check out Developer Resources for Google Analytics or read the full post.

Posted by Chrix Finne, Product Manager, Google Mobile Ads

A Fully Interactive Mobile Experience with Interstitial Ad Units

You recently may have seen some exciting ads while you load your favorite apps on iPhone and iPod touch devices. AdMob has run interstitials for dozens of brands, including a May campaign for Seattle’s Best Coffee (shown below):

The interstitial in the above video is fully interactive and acts as an animated, immersive full-page mobile experience.  As with all of our interstitial products, at anytime the user can continue with the app load by clicking the close button on the ad. 

We’ve developed tools to make it simple to create an animated, multi-panel effect and simulate many of the animated ad formats you’ve seen online. In this implementation the last of the animated screens can contain multiple clickable regions linking to additional content. Here is a mock of what’s possible based on actual assets that ran as part of the Wolfman campaign:

Both of these examples are full screen size on iPhone (320x480), but we also can run either implementation in the 300x250 size located at the center of the screen. The latter mode will create a similar experience to the rich animated and interactive creatives currently popular online.
We’ve seen strong advertiser interest in rich mobile ad formats and we continue to invest in developing industry-leading, customizable units that help brands come to life in mobile. Behind the scenes, we’re making tools to make rich ad units like these even easier to build and run.  Here’s how simple it was for us to create this Wolfman interstitial using our internal tools:

In the above screenshot, we’ve uploaded one of the images from the Wolfman interstitial and selected the transition animation type (Dissolve) and timing (2 seconds).  Below is a screenshot of the subsequent panel:

  
As you can see, AdMob makes it easy to creatively engage with your audience and we continue to invest in scalable tools such as our interstitial builder to provide rich advertising solutions to advertisers.

Posted by Johanna Werther, Google/AdMob Mobile Ads Marketing

AdMob Helps Bring Seattle’s Best Coffee to Life in Mobile

Seattle’s Best Coffee and its agency, Creature, connected with AdMob in order to promote a new line of coffee beverages across a variety of mobile devices. AdMob closely collaborated with Creature to develop visually engaging ad units and a landing page experience compatible with thousands of phones.

click for full size image

“AdMob’s wide range of creative units truly brought our brand to life in mobile. Their solution made it simple to get started and measure success, and the Interactive Interstitial mirrored the PC experience, allowing our customers to get in to the campaign wherever they happened to be.” said Kristie Shields, Director of Media Strategy, Creature.

The campaign drove 139K users to Seattle’s Best Coffee mobile website and delivered a 5.7% interaction rate on full-page expandable ad units and a 5.4% clickthrough rate on interactive interstitial ad units.

To read the full case study, please click here. 

Posted by Johanna Werther, Google/AdMob Mobile Ads Marketing Team

An Update on Apple’s Terms of Service

Today, Apple updated their iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.  Unlike the previous version, these new terms ensure that Apple’s developers have the choice of a variety of advertising solutions (including Google’s and AdMob’s) to earn money and fund their apps. Apple’s new terms will keep in-app advertising on the iPhone open to many different mobile ad competitors and enable advertising solutions that operate across a wide range of platforms.

This is great news for everyone in the mobile community, as we believe that a competitive environment is the best way to drive innovation and growth in mobile advertising.  Mobile advertising has already helped to fund tens of thousands of mobile apps across many different platforms and devices, and it will help do the same for many more in the years ahead.
The new terms provide immediate clarification about the status of mobile advertising on the iPhone and will benefit users, developers, and advertisers. Users will benefit from more free, or low cost, apps that can now more readily be supported by advertising.  Developers will be able to choose from a variety of competitive advertising options and pick the solution that works best for them, to boost their revenues.  Advertisers will have access to simple and effective advertising solutions that can reach users across a wide range of devices.
We’re very grateful for all the words of encouragement we’ve received on this issue from app developers in recent months.  We’re pleased that Apple has clarified its terms and we’re 100% committed to developing the best possible advertising solutions and formats for the iPhone - as well as for Android devices, BlackBerry devices, Palm devices, Windows mobile devices  and undoubtedly many more to come - in the years ahead.
Omar Hamoui

Vice President of Product Management

Location Extensions with Multiple Addresses Available on Mobile Devices

Do you have several business locations in one city? For example, are you a national retailer of consumer electronics who wants to increase foot traffic to your Los Angeles area stores?

Everyday consumers are using their high-end mobile devices to find directions to local businesses, making mobile an ideal way to reach this audience. We are excited to streamline this experience by announcing a new enhancement to the location extensions ad format: location extensions with multiple addresses. This new feature will ensure that your customers can connect with the right location of your business at the right time.

Now available on Google Maps for Mobile (GMM) versions 4.4 and above on Android devices, location extensions with multiple addresses allow consumers to find the most relevant location of your business on a Google mobile map.

Featuring your business location alongside your mobile ad is a powerful method to drive foot traffic and in store sales. For instance, if a potential customer is looking for a wireless communications store like Sprint, an ad within GMM can display all Sprint locations near them. This not only delivers a relevant search experience, but also enables customers to visit the closest and most convenient Sprint store location.

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Here is how location extensions with multiple addresses work:

1. Based on a user’s search and location signals, AdWords can display a clickable banner with the option to show all locations for a particular business in Google Maps for Mobile.
   
   
2. When the “Show all” banner is clicked, the map displays just the locations of your business as indicated by your business icon. Using your business logo as the icon is a great opportunity to build awareness and loyalty for your brand. 
   
   
3. Clicking on a specific business location leads the user to a page with more details about the business -- including ad text, business address with directions and the ability to call or visit the website.
   
   
4. After the search is completed, the business icon and location are automatically saved as a GMM Layer and will continue to appear on the map in subsequent search results until turned off by the user.

To take advantage of this enhancement, you must be a primary business owner and have enabled location extensions within your Google Places account. Additionally, your campaigns must target the iPhone and other high-end mobile devices with full mobile browsers. You will only be charged when users click on the website URL or the phone icon displayed on the details page of a particular business location.

Location extensions with multiple addresses launched for desktop earlier this summer and we’ve worked hard to bring it to mobile. For now this feature is only available on Android devices, but we hope to expand to other platforms in the near future.

Location extensions ad formats can show in the United States as well as a number of other countries. To learn more about location extensions with multiple addresses, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager