“Uncover Your World” with AdMob rich media and the Google Search app

Here on the Google mobile ads team, we’re big fans of pushing the limits of what’s possible with our products. So when we were thinking about the best way to promote the Google Search app on iPhone, we wanted to see what we could do with the latest in AdMob rich media.

The answer, it turned out, was a whole lot. We worked closely with our marketing team and its agency, Grow Interactive, to create “Uncover Your World,” an interactive mobile experience that takes full advantage of AdMob’s rich media capabilities.

Here’s a preview:

(l-r): User clicks on an in-app animated HTML5 banner; They watch an in-line intro video; While exploring the ad, users can unlock secret games

And here’s a video where you can see how the ad actually works:

“Uncover Your World” invites you to explore a virtual cityscape and learn via a self-paced storyline how the Google Search app can “uncover” facts about the world around you with features like search with your voice and search with your phone’s camera. We highlighted this functionality by combining many of AdMob’s custom rich media features, including:

• Animated HTML5 banners


• Interactive HTML5 interstitials and expandables


• Extensive video content


• In-line video and audio, so the users stay within the ad while experiencing sight, sound and motion instead of being directed to the phone’s media player (e.g., Quicktime for iPhone)


• Unlockable games where users tap, touch, and tilt to play

The preliminary results of the campaign have been impressive. On average, users spend over a minute and a half interacting with the ad, and of those, 50% go on directly from the ad to download the app.

As excited as we are about these results, we’re even more excited to see how “the pros” – our advertisers and their creative agencies – make use of the technologies behind the “Uncover Your World” campaign. As the campaign showed, the tools are all now there to build really innovative new mobile experiences that make use of the touchscreen, location, audio, video, interactivity, and more.

Designers... start your engines!

Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director, Mobile Ads

Update: You can also view the ad experience directly at http://www.uncoveryourworld.com on your iPhone browser.

Voice of the Smartphone User: South Korea

We recently went out into the streets of Seoul and looked around for people with smartphones in their hands - it wasn’t hard - and asked them questions about how they use their smartphone, how often they use it and what their life would be like without it. We heard from people young and old, and their answers were unsurprisingly consistent: they can barely imagine life without their smartphones.

We thought the video would be interesting to a global audience interested in the changing dynamics of a fast-growing Asian economy, so we subtitled the video in English for you:
 

We also recently completed a study, in collaboration with Ipsos, of over 1,000 South Korean smartphone users and found some of the following stats to be interesting:

• 100% of South Koreans have a mobile phone, 27% of them smartphones. This smartphone penetration is higher than countries such as Germany, Italy, Taiwan and Russia, and comparable to the U.S., France, and the UK.


• 85% of smartphone users report that this is their first smartphone, one of the highest proportions of any country in the world that we studied.


• South Korean smartphone users report an average of 42 apps downloaded on their phone, the second highest # of any country for which we currently have results.


• 72% are using search on their smartphones on a daily basis, one of the top 3 countries out of the 30 we studied.


• Koreans are more likely to say they’ve used their smartphone at home (98%) than on the go (90%) or at work (79%) showing that the smartphone is a primary, not just supplementary, gateway to the internet.

We’ll be making many more statistics on Korean smartphone users publicly available for your own analysis within the next few weeks - including mobile search, video, social networking, mobile advertising attitudes and more - so stay tuned.

Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager, Google Asia-Pacific

Human Plastination Body

World Bodypainting Festival Image

Improving user experience and reporting for phone numbers in ads

One of the easiest ways to receive a quick answer on the go is by clicking on a number from your phone and calling a business directly.  In fact, we’re seeing users make millions of calls a month through AdWords Call Extensions; advertisers display their national or local number in an ad and receive detailed reporting on these calls to help inform marketing decisions.  

But what happens for phone numbers that are entered in an ad, but not via a clickable Call Extension? Previously our system wasn’t able to provide separate reporting for clicks to phone numbers from a URL click so these numbers were not clickable. Now advertisers can view detailed reporting on click-to-call activity by segmenting traffic by click type. As a result, we will be making an upcoming change to ads where any phone number in an ad will be clickable on a mobile device.  

(Left): Previously, numbers in ad were non-clickable and customers users couldn’t directly call a business from the ad.

(Right): Now, phone numbers in ad text will become clickable. Users can call a business directly from an ad, and full AdWords reporting is available for all calls placed.

Calls stemming from clicks to these numbers will now be the same cost as a click to your website. Moreover,  potential customers are now able to click on your number while on their mobile devices, and you’ll be able to leverage the power of Adwords reporting by segmenting your campaign reports by click type. 

However, to get the most value from click-to-call, we recommend that you remove your phone number from your ad creative and manually create a Call Extension.  There are two primary benefits to this. First, your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other messages. In addition, you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, call-only creatives, and Call Metrics reporting. To get started with these call based features, visit the ‘Ad Extensions’ tab in your account to create your first Call Extension . 

We are committed to providing our users with the best mobile web experience and encourage you to learn more about the different ways you can connect with customers via the phone by visiting our Help Center.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

Mobile optimised site versus app? No contest, says ebookers.com

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

Intel & OMD delivers engaging rich media in mobile via 3rd-party ad-serving

In late May, Google announced a beta launch that enables rich media ads to be served from DoubleClick into mobile apps in the AdMob network.

Google selected Intel and OMD as the first advertiser-agency team to test this capability in June. As part of this test, Intel served one million rich media impressions from DoubleClick into the AdMob network. The rich media ads were banner-initiated interstitials that featured additional calls to actions such as playing a video or visiting the mobile site to learn more.
 


As it turned out, the test proved successful from an ad serving perspective as the variance in reported impressions between AdMob and DoubleClick were in line and compliant with industry standards.

Since the mobile campaign was served from DoubleClick, Intel and OMD could understand their campaign’s performance across an expanded set of ad metrics, including:

• Engagement rate: the rate at which users engaged with the ad, whether it be tapping to play the ad’s video or visit a site.


• Average display time: the average time in seconds that each rich media ad is displayed to users


• Midpoint and complete video plays: a measure of how much of the video was viewed, including up to the midpoint of the video or to the video’s end.

Based on these metrics, Intel’s rich media campaign proved highly successful in engaging users:

• 19.5% engagement rate


• 15+ seconds average display time; 3x longer than average DoubleClick rich media campaigns.


• 1 of 4 video plays lasted to at least the mid-point of the video.

For OMD, DoubleClick-served rich media into mobile is a big step forward. According to Amit Prakash, Director of Analytics at OMD, “Getting DoubleClick to serve rich media into AdMob mobile apps is a huge win for advertisers. This really helps bring down the complexity of working in mobile. DoubleClick platform can now be utilized to build, host, serve mobile ads that we’re already using for digital.”

In light of the compelling results of this first test, Google will be opening this beta to another handful of advertisers over the coming weeks.

Posted by Ben Chung, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Think Mobile UK: Industry leader Charles Dunstone, Carphone Warehouse CEO, reveals what the future holds

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.”

View the video of Charles’ talk in full here.

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

 

Think Mobile UK: Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman OgilvyOne, on the mobile and human behaviour

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 here where 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

Mobile Insights: Retailers, are you reaching one of your biggest opportunities – mobile users?

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