Shopping Blog

(cross-posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog)

To ensure that we deliver the most effective mobile ads marketplace to our customers we are changing the AdMob auction for all cost-per-click (CPC) ads.

Effective February 15, 2012, AdMob will move to an AdWords-style auction, where the winning price is determined by the quality of the ad and the other bids on that impression; the price we charge will never exceed the advertiser’s bid. In addition, we’re removing minimum bids and targeting fees to allow AdMob CPC advertisers to compete for inventory under the natural forces of supply and demand.

Advertisers will benefit from more efficient pricing and could receive cheaper clicks depending on the inventory on which they bid. High quality ads will be rewarded with an improved chance at winning the auction.

This change will occur for all CPC auctions globally on Feb 15th. There are no changes to non-CPC campaigns at this time. Advertisers should monitor their bids to see the effect on their particular campaigns, and be prepared to adjust bids & budgets to ensure they are meeting their volume & ROI goals.

We look forward to bringing AdWords auction components that have been refined over the years to the AdMob platform to benefit advertisers, users, and publishers.

Please visit the Help Center for more details.

Posted by: Chrix Finne, Product Manager

(Cross-posted from the Google Commerce blog)




Posted by Madhu Punjabi, Strategic Partner Manager Associate, Google Catalogs Team

(cross-posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog)

Mobile advertising has created an entirely new opportunity for businesses to drive phone calls to sales teams and call centers, generating a new method for our advertisers to receive qualified incoming leads. In fact, since we introduced the click-to-call feature to advertisers over a year ago, we’ve had more than half a million customers globally run campaigns with phone extensions.

Two of the most common ways to get mobile customers to call you are either by listing your phone number on a click-to-call ad, or adding your phone number onto your website. It’s easy to measure calls from a click-to-call ad from your Campaign reports, but it can be more challenging to track the calls made by consumers clicking on the phone number on your website.

Today, we are introducing a new conversion tracking metric to help advertisers and agencies do just that: all AdWords accounts will now have the ability to report calls placed from mobile pages.



You’ll now be able to attribute clicks on your phone number or ‘call’ button back to the AdWords campaign, ad group, ad or keyword that brought a customer in. As this is a new tracking metric, there won’t be new charges or changes to CPCs. We hope that this new metric will give advertisers and agencies new, richer information on the value and returns from their mobile advertising.

Red Ventures, a customer acquisition company in Charlotte, NC, was a beta partner for this new conversion metric. In addition to their own proprietary in-house tracking platform, they used this new metric to track the use of click-to-call numbers on their mobile websites for a variety of partners. John Sutton, VP of Online Marketing at Red Ventures, said, “Now, every advertiser can get full insight into calls generated from their AdWords spend on mobile devices, directly inside the AdWords interface and at a very granular level.” Moreover, John sees this as a new added benefit to AdWords advertisers who “don’t have the capability required to produce unique keyword or ad level phone numbers on their mobile websites.”

This new metric enables all advertisers to leverage existing AdWords tools to now optimize for calls. According to John Sutton at Red Ventures, this “opens the doors to participation in AdWords features that rely on conversion metrics like Enhanced CPC and Target CPA bidding.” You can start using this new metric by installing a snippet of code on your landing pages. Upon doing so, you can set ‘calls’ as a conversion metric to track on your landing page. Next, you can pair calls focused campaigns with tools like Conversion Optimizer, then bid by setting a target CPA for calls, and ultimately automate ad serving to optimize for calls.

If driving calls is an important part of your mobile advertising strategy, and you’ve placed a phone number or ‘Call now!’ button on your site, begin measuring these calls now using this new conversion type. Moreover, in doing so you’ll be able to leverage a rich set of existing AdWords tools available to you to optimize performance. For more information on how to set this up, please see our Help Center article.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

It's no secret: the continuing rise of web commerce, combined with the rapid evolution of smartphones, gives shoppers the option to do extensive research and make decisions based on price, location or just plain preference. In fact, 2 out of 3 moms shops with a smartphone in hand! And while this offers retailers numerous opportunities to reach their customers, it also means that moving units requires more differentiation than ever to stand out from the well-researched pack.

But department stores are responding to the evolving landscape by signing exclusive deals with brand names, famous designers, and of-the-moment celebs, in the hopes that stocking unique products will give consumers an incentive to visit specific stores, while simultaneously providing retailers with a selection of merchandise safe from the info-fueled wars.

Such changes are happening fast and wide: according to the recent New York Times piece linked above, major retailers like J.C. Penney and Kohl's already see such exclusives driving up to 50% of their sales, while many other major stores are scrambling to follow suit.

The exclusives vary from entire collections focused on budget consumers, to stores that offer their own special versions of the highest-end products. For example, J. Lo and Marc Anthony just launched a line of affordable apparel and home decor exclusive to Kohl's, while Neiman Marcus is the only place you'll find this rather amazing Christian Louboutin sandal.

Such an array of exclusives offers a wide variety of choices, but often leaves consumers confused as they try to figure out where to go for which products. Sure, it's easy enough to remember that the Kardashian Collection is only available at Sears - but it's a bit harder to keep straight that the Kardashian-endorsed Skechers Shape-Ups are actually available at multiple stores. And what's the difference between Martha Stewart Living (only available at Home Depot), and the Martha Stewart Collection (only available at Macy's)?

When the ever-increasing myriad of options overwhelms consumers, they turn to the web to help sort things out - and it's imperative that stores with exclusive offerings establish an online presence around them. This includes:

• Running specially-tailored Creatives that emphasize exclusive brand offerings

• Investing on Search terms related to designers/celebs whose lines they carry

• Staying alert for Display and/or Video opportunities on related content, especially for lines driven by celebrity endorsement or design (after all, if someone can't stop rocking out to "Party In The USA", it's a decent bet she'll also want to rock Miley's Fringed Suede Boots, available only at Wal-Mart...)

• Establishing a Mobile Search campaign to reach those smartphone-using shoppers out at the mall trying to figure out which store carries which exclusive brand

• Coordinating promotions between web and brick-and-mortar stores so that consumers can access their favorite exclusive brands from every angle, and get consistent messaging/pricing as they do so

Posted by Brian Crocker, The Google Retail Team

Do you ever feel like you don’t know how to most effectively leverage your mobile marketing campaigns? While mobile is an incredible new way to distribute content and reach customers, it also presents a unique challenge when it comes to measuring the impact of our mobile efforts (like applications, advertisements or mobile friendly websites).

We’d like to invite you to join us for a webinar discussing mobile marketing metrics, led by Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist. In this exciting webinar Avinash will share his tips and best practices for new metrics unique to mobile, as well as how best to measure mobile ads and websites.

We hope you can join us!

What: Mobile Advertising Webinar: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message - Finally!
When: Wednesday, November 2, 2011 9-10:30am PST/ 12-1:30pm EST
How: Register here

Posted by Jaime Mayer, The Google Marketing Team

[cross-posted on the Mobile Ads Blog]

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

Online retail sales currently represent 9% of all retail sales, are predicted to represent 11% of all retail sales in the US by 2014, and are up from 8% in 2009.* Overall retail sales in Q4 2010 were up 3% but online sales were up 13.5% and we expect online sales growth to be even larger this holiday season.*

The role of the internet will continue to grow for consumers and retailers, as consumers continue to understand the value of finding information about their purchases online.

Consumers make purchase decisions based on brands and experiences. For consumers, a website is the portal to the brand. How (device) and where (location) the brand is accessed is a matter of specific need for information at a unique stage in the purchase cycle. The challenge for all retailers is that expectations for a seamless transition throughout the funnel are high and rising. Persistence of experience delights the customer.

There are five notions that are driving today’s state of Retail:

1. Necessity is the mother of all invention: Downward pressure on the economy increases the desire to save money and make the right purchase decision. Shopping related queries are up 25% y/y this month and deal related queries are predicted to reach a 195% growth rate this December compared to last year. In order to do find the best value and make the right purchase, consumers spend more time investigating how to find the best value.


2. Moore's Law in every pocket: Today, gateways (smartphones, tablets, laptops, kiosks, etc.) to real time information are cheap, more powerful and portable than ever before. Forty-four percent of top retailers show product availability online and at store locations. Retailers are beginning to make it easier for consumers to find what they need where and when they need it.


3. Reducing friction increases adoption: Internet connected shopping tools are simpler and easier to use than they have ever been. For example, 28% of top 25 retailers feature buy via mobile/pickup in-store.


4. Transparency increases opportunity: In addition, pricing and inventory availability have reached near 100% transparency for non-perishable goods.


5. Integration enhances the value of convenience over immediacy: Consumers are now empowered to research, price, locate and transact any good/service nearly anywhere in the world within minutes and have it delivered to a doorstep in 2 days. All this, while Americans have less leisure time than they've ever had. Click and deliver often sounds better than park and wait in line.

So what does this mean for retailers?

Retail has evolved from consumer engagement via individual channels to consumers transitioning between them.

• Align your business around a single customer across many channels rather than a channel by channel experience.


• Build exceptional connected experiences across devices that let every unique individual know your brand understands what interests them at that right moment.


• Ensure that your brand can deliver what a customer is looking for regardless of the device, location or time.

Posted by Todd Pollak and Nina Thatcher, The Google Retail Team


*US Online Retail Forecast, Forrester Research

Advertisers often wonder whether search ads cannibalize their organic traffic. If search ads were paused, would clicks on organic results increase, and make up for the loss in paid traffic? Google statisticians recently ran over 400 studies on paused accounts to answer this question.

In what we call “Search Ads Pause Studies”, our group of researchers observed organic click volume in the absence of search ads. Then they built a statistical model to predict click volume for given levels of ad spend. This model generates estimates for the incremental clicks attributable to search ads (IAC), or in other words, the percentage of paid clicks that are not made up for by organic clicks when search ads are paused.

On average, the incremental ad clicks percentage across verticals is 89%. This means that a full 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. This number was consistently high across verticals:


You can find a video on the study here. The full study can be found on research.google.com.


Posted by Lizzy Van Alstine and David Chan, The Google Quant Management Team

Google’s invite-only retail summit, Think Retail: The Future is Now, was held on July 12 in Mountain View, CA. The event reached over 950 marketing leaders and agency executives. Think Retail explored the ever-evolving marketplace, how to most effectively leverage digital assets, and how to best connect with today’s consumers.

I attended the session and it was a jam-packed day of valuable information, trends, and great examples. It sparked ideas for many marketers on “how can I integrate mobile into my back-to-school programs,” “how can I apply multi-channel online attribution to my business,” and “how the social landscape is changing with Google+.”

The event provided a new perspective on the increasingly digital consumer shopping experience and offered new ideas and opportunities for marketers to make more meaningful consumer connections and increase online and offline sales. Key highlights included:

• Matt Nemer from Wells Fargo’s insights into why “We are on the brink of another acceleration in eCommerce”

• Andy Mantis from MasterCard’s analysis of consumer spending trends and predictions for the holidays

• Product experts from Google sharing trends in local, mobile and video, and how retailers can incorporate these strategies into their marketing mix

• Avinash Kaushik's sharing of best practices for multi-channel online attribution

• Google’s Social team's peek into the Google+ project - real-life sharing , rethought for the web. The team gave a demo on how to use circles, huddles, sparks and more. They also shared how clients using Google Analytics can gain insight into social engagement on their website (see below)

The Think Retail website has been updated with presentations and videos from the event. You can access the content here. Enjoy!


Posted by Atoshi Shorey, The Google Technology Market Team

Contextual. Audience. Remarketing. Demographic. Marketers have many options when it comes to targeting their display campaigns. The emergence of these powerful technologies has transformed display into a powerful direct response medium, delivering measurable performance at scale for marketers. But with the plethora of options to choose from, where do advertisers and agencies begin?

Please join Google for an upcoming webinar to learn more about how to approach targeting strategy for your campaigns on the Google Display Network. Specifically we’ll cover:

• The “targeting toolbox” for direct response campaigns
• Strategies for prioritizing and applying the available targeting options to maximize campaign performance and efficiency
• Tools, tips and best practices for maximizing ROI for your campaigns

Register here for the webinar to be held on August 4, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

[cross-posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog] 

It’s time for our sixth post in our Mobile Insights series featuring viewpoints from our Google mobile ads team. This week, our guest contributor is Grace Dolan, Account Executive. Grace shares her insights on how mobile advertising can help boost brand awareness and sales during the Back to School season.

During the summer months, more users turn to mobile devices to shop. Summer is also when the Back to School shopping season begins. This is a perfect opportunity for marketers, especially in retail, consumer electronics, and cable/telecommunications, to get in front of their target customers who are hungry for information to make purchases. Last year we saw a lift of 500% in mobile searches for retail and consumer electronics categories over the summer months. (1)

I experienced the growth in mobile searching personally over this past 4th of July weekend. My brother is in college, he was researching options for a new laptop for school. During a family barbecue, he and my father were on his smartphone, comparing features, prices, and getting opinions from others (photo featured below). My brother was able to interact with everyone during the get together instead of being inside on his computer.

This isn’t just happening at my parents’ house. The Back to School demographic is on mobile devices, often several hours a day, for more than just a phone call or text message. According to Sergio Alvarez, Chief Operating Officer of the interactive marketing agency Ai Media Group, "The Back to School crowd is leading the way with mobile. As mobile phones increase in versatility and power, they have become more like pocket computers than phones. Colleges and institutions are taking advantage of this technology. We consider mobile to be an integral part of our marketing strategy, and we will continue to make it part of all our campaign portfolios.”

As a marketer, how can you maximize Back to School success with the peaked traffic? Here are a few tips:

• Prepare for the massive traffic spikes with appropriate budgets in place.
• Be on top 24/7. Bid to be in “above the fold” positions on Back to School categories. This is essential on mobile.
• Give them incentive. Include Mobile Offer ads to help drive redemption in-store, online or on the phone.
• Be local. Direct customers to your store by adding your location to your ads.

Back to School is a great opportunity to be in front of your target audience, especially if you maximize the potential of mobile marketing. Don’t miss out; visit the mobile ads site today to find out more.


Posted by: Grace Dolan, Account Executive, Google Mobile Ads

Source:
(1) Google Internal Data (2009-2011)

Anyone plugged into the Retail landscape in the past couple of years has undoubtedly had an encounter with a private sale site. These types of sites exist to offer sales on designer goods at discounted prices for short periods of time. The idea of the private sale site is to create buzz around new brands while encouraging loyalty for old favorites. What makes these sales private? Sites require users to sign up as a member before allowing them to make purchases.

These days, you can find a private sale site for almost any product, be it clothes, jewelry, furniture, or even wine. In fact, ComScore's February Media Metrix, which measures online traffic, showed an overall increase in unique visits to flash sale sites compared with the February of last year. Because of the high popularity of these kinds of sites, well established retailers across the board have been throwing their hat in the game to test private sale sites of their own. How do you take advantage of this unique business model to drive more traffic? Check out the tips below.

1. Create a buzz before launch
The attraction of a private sale site is its exclusivity. If shoppers think they’re being given the first look into the next hot trends, they’re more likely to rush to join a site. Start running ads across relevant sites on the Google Display Network a week or two before your site actually goes live to get people talking. Include a call to action encouraging users to come sign up with their name and email address so they can be one of the first members to take advantage of your exclusive offer. Since the GDN reaches 80 percent of Internet users worldwide, it’s an easy and effective way to get the word out about your new site before you even go live.

2. Cross-sell from your current site
For established retailers looking to launch a new private sale site, consider tagging users on your current site and using Google Remarketing to send them ads about your brand new private sale site. This is a really effective cross-sell strategy for any advertiser who owns more than one site or brand!

3. Identify a new audience
Let’s say you’re an established retailer who sells casual clothes at low price points to all demographics. That’s going well for you, but now you want to venture out and start a private sale site with designer maternity clothes. Simply sending emails to your previous customers just won’t cut it. Instead, use the GDN to create awareness on sites expecting moms are most likely to visit. With high profile mom-friendly sites like HGTV.com, Cooks.com, and Parenthood.com, the GDN makes it easy to reach the right audience at the right time.

4. Bring users back for every sale
In addition to cross-selling, Google Remarketing is a useful tool to generate loyalty among your customers. When users buy something from your site during one sale, pixel them and send them ads for future sales. Remarketing can help you upsell products to current customers and make them fans for life.

Posted by Kathryn Smith, The Google Retail Display Team

[cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog]

Bridgevine is a company that is focused on driving customer acquisition for its clients via its Acquisition and Merchandising Platform, AMP. The platform is a complex network that combines several different channels of promotion to support clients in marketing. To ensure that they are in front of all prospective clients, Bridgevine has been using online and mobile campaigns to promote their business with display and search advertising across both platforms.

As Bridgevine expanded their business onto mobile, they saw some unexpected but very interesting behavior from clients. 20% of clients that did research on the desktop would then finalize their purchase on their mobile devices. Seeing this incredible crossover data, Bridgevine invested in mobile search advertising by leveraging Google’s click to call to drive traffic to their call centers and also send 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.

With visible success with Google Mobile Ads, Bridgevine targeted their mobile audience by generating mobile-only deals accessible via their mobile optimized site. To ensure they were targeting customers accurately on specific mobile devices, Bridgevine put resources toward campaigns that focused on device keywords, and then tweaked the campaigns to suit the interactions they saw by device. The campaigns using Google mobile ads drove up mobile sales by 10% for Bridgevine; something they believe wouldn’t have happened without Google mobile.

With this type of success in mobile, and also seeing a crossover from desktop to mobile, Bridgevine will continue to invest in mobile advertising as an asset to the growth of their company’s revenue.

To learn more about this crossover campaign, download the entire case study here.

Posted by Dalia Mitra, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

There are more than 2.4 billion conversations about brands every day, according to our latest ‘Word of Mouth’ study with Keller Fay. More than half of consumers involved in these conversation say they’re likely to make a purchase based on what they talk about. We wanted to know more about how media and the Internet play into all this conversation so we took a look at what effect the Internet and search has on a word of mouth. The study shows how media and marketing channels provided content before, during and after consumer conversations by surveying 3,000 adults across 12 categories.

It turns out that while most people still talk about brands face to face, their conversations are informed by the Internet more than any other media source. And, when they’re online, users go to search sites more than any other. This is even more true after conversations, especially those sparked by TV. People follow up by searching for more information and prices more than any other online activity including social media.

Check out this video or Think Insights for more information and results!

[cross-posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog]

It’s time for our third post in our Mobile Insights series featuring expert views from our mobile ads team. This week’s guest contributor is Adam Compain, a Mobile Specialist at Google. Adam explains why it’s vital to create a mobile website now versus later.

In the early days of the Web, businesses didn’t believe their customers were online, nor did they think the Internet would become a viable medium for customer interaction. Companies were hesitant to build websites, let alone advertise online.

Of course, the Internet ramped up faster than anyone imagined. Companies that hesitated were left behind and those that took action became industry leaders, reinventing their business models to become more efficient and profitable marketers. In this new age of mobile computing, how can you ensure your business remains present? Build a mobile site. Research has shown that web retailers can increase consumer engagement 85% with a mobile-specific website (1).

At Google, we’ve worked with many advertisers who’ve already built excellent mobile experiences for their users. Each one of the examples showcased below focuses on the needs of a mobile user and is designed for ease of navigation on a mobile device. These sites, all stemming from different industries, prioritize content, use a simple layout and are designed specifically for touch interaction with large buttons.




Meanwhile, 79% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile site (2). Those who have not taken action may be harming their relationship with potential customers: 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% said they’d visit a competitor’s mobile site instead (3). Throw in the astonishing rate of mobile web adoption - which is ramping 8x faster than the desktop web did in the mid 90's - and the importance of having a mobile site is clear. (4).

Think about the 4-inch mobile screen as your new storefront. It may be the most important one you ever have: it’s always open; it’s in the hands of nearly everyone, and it’s increasingly how people are finding your business. As important as it is to have a mobile advertising strategy, it’s even more vital to build a mobile website that delivers a seamless and satisfying experience to your users.

Avoid falling into the trap of marketers in the mid 90’s who didn’t think the Internet would evolve into a viable medium for customer interaction.

Ready to take action? Download our new two-page guide: “5 Easy Ways to Mobilize Your Website”.


Posted by Adam Compain, Google Mobile Specialist

Sources:
1. Research by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research, “Supply and Demand of the Mobile Web” Nov, 2010.
2. Google Research, 2010
3. Compuware, “Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-users,” March 2011
4. Mary Meeker, Economy & Internet Trends, Oct 09

Despite high gas prices this Memorial Day weekend, AAA estimated that over 35M Americans traveled at least 50 miles or more during this year’s unofficial start of summer - approximately 100,000 more vacationers than in 2010. Of those 35M, almost 90% drove to their destinations. This is great news for travel and hospitality businesses. However, advertisers within all retail industries should be celebrating and taking advantage of the influx of family caravans this Memorial Day as well. “Why?,” you ask?

Just think about how the dynamics of your own family road trips and how they have changed....

Rare now are the days of car sing-a-longs, the license plate game, or “slug-bugging” each other. Now little Johnny’s in the back with his iPod cranked up, Cindy’s texting her friends back home, Mike is searching for the nearest fast food chain, and Mom is trying to use her mobile GPS to tell Dad that he made a wrong turn 5 miles back.

Technology has changed the way we travel, the way we vacation - the way we live. We are no longer disconnected from world after we leave our computer screens. Our mobile devices have capabilities far beyond the simple phone call. The time spent on mobile phones has increased 90% from March 2010 to March 2011 (Internet Retailer May 2011). With people spending more time on their hand-held devices, advertisers must understand the importance and value of having a presence in the new mobile frontier. However, many are missing out on the opportunity and will be late to the game.

Without a defined mobile strategy, advertisers are losing incremental market share and leaving dollars on the table for competition. According to a 2011 ForeSee Report on Mobile Retail, shoppers are using their phones for a variety of reasons and are becoming even more savvy:

• 56% are comparing price information
• 46% are comparing different products
• 35% are looking up product specifications
• 27% are viewing product reviews

However, the most telling statistic speaks to the importance of defending & defining one’s personal brand. While in physical stores, almost 70% of mobile shoppers use their phones to visit the store’s own website, but nearly half also used their phones to access a competitor’s website. Years ago, business owners were only responsible for the image and branding of their brick and mortar store fronts. However, today that company is responsible for two additional equally important store fronts - the Desktop Website Homepage & Mobile Website Homepage/App.

One of the top priorities for 2011 should be focused on developing an expansive mobile strategy. Google has a variety of targeting capabilities to allow for optimal control and real-time alterations, as well as an ever-expanding inventory for search and display advertising. As more people take the roads this summer for vacations, weekend get-aways, and holiday celebrations - be certain that you’re along for the ride too!

Posted by Terra Teague, The Google Retail Team

Portlanders know how to mix the urban (killer coffee, music and art) and the small-town (easy walking, biking and socializing). There’s no end to the city’s great restaurants, coffee shops and hot spots, and the locals are more than willing to explore. That’s why, when we started planning the Google Offers beta trial, we knew Portland was the ideal place to get it all kicked off.

Today, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius announced at the D9 Conference that we’re launching Google Offers beta in Portland, Ore. tomorrow.

Our first Google Offer will be from beloved local java shop Floyd’s Coffee. Husband-and-wife team Jack Inglis and Cris Chapman opened Floyd’s seven years ago, offering up espresso, coffee, breakfast burritos and more. They now have two convenient locations—one cozy, brick-lined shop in Old Town and another Stumptown watering-hole in Buckman.



With Google Offers, we’re working with great local businesses like Floyd’s Coffee, Le Bistro Montage, Powell’s Books and Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade to help them reach more Portlanders. We hope to bring Google Offers to other cities soon, with New York City and the San Francisco Bay area as our next stops.

You can learn more about Google Offers and sign up at google.com/offers. If you’re a business interested in participating in Google Offers, you can let us know too. Finally, if you’re at the Portland Rose Festival this Saturday, visit our Google booth at CityFair to say hello to our team and learn more about Google Offers.

Posted by Kyle Harrison, Product Manager, Google Offers

As we shared last month, Google’s Online to Store research shows that online marketing campaigns are effective in significantly increasing in-store sales. In other words, digital ads influence shopping decisions made in physical store aisles as well as those made in front of computer screens.

This week, we’ll take a closer look at the individual Online to Store study results of technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP collaborated with Google and Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) to quantify the impact of online search ads on in-store purchases. They conducted a four-week long study in which users were exposed to HP search ads co-branded with a leading national electronics retailer. Would a significant number of users who clicked on a co-branded HP/retailer ad after searching on keywords such as “hp laptop” and “laptop computer” then purchase a product at the physical retail location, generating incremental in-store sales?

The answer, the study showed, was yes. The online campaign resulted in a 530% overall return on advertising spend (ROAS) for computers, with a 1,090% ROAS in the top 25% of markets based on specific store attributes for the computing category. Furthermore, HP found that ads for higher-end models and ads in more prominent positions on the searchresults page were correlated with an even higher increase in physical store sales. This suggests that some users who conduct research online may be more comfortable purchasing higher-end items at a local store, and also highlights the importance of ad rank in influencing users.

To learn more about this and other studies, visit Google’s new Think Insights site.

Posted by Emily Parker, The Google Tech Team

At an event in New York City today, we announced Google Wallet, an app that will turn shoppers’ phones into their wallets. Google Wallet will enable consumers to store their credit cards, coupons, loyalty and gift cards securely on their phone, so they can pay, redeem offers, and earn loyalty points - all with a single tap of their phone. It is in a field test now and will be available to all consumers this summer.

A key benefit to retailers will be the integration of coupons, or offers, into Google Wallet. We’ve been testing a variety of offers - from discounts directly within search ads to check-in offers to offers in Google Places. Over time, consumers will be able to save each of these offers directly to their Google Wallet. That means consumers will get the benefit of carrying their offers with them at all times, bringing retailers targeted foot traffic.

The integration of offers into Google Wallet will enable merchants to close the loop by directly connecting their online and mobile advertising with offline purchases. In addition, Google Wallet provides merchants with a way to engage with customers in-store, enhancing the customer experience. Many leading merchants are integrating Google Wallet into their stores.



From the outset, Google Wallet will be compatible with more than a hundred thousand merchants nationwide that are part of the MasterCard PayPass network - a merchant point of sale service that enables consumers to tap to pay.

We’re also working with leading retailers and point of sale systems companies to integrate Google Wallet into their physical store experience. Participating retailers include: American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdale’s, Champs Sports, The Container Store, Duane Reade, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Foot Locker, Guess, Jamba Juice, Macy’s, Noah's Bagels, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, RadioShack, Subway, Toys“R”Us and Walgreens.

Google Wallet is currently being field tested, and we plan to release it soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to learn more at our website: www.google.com/wallet.

Posted by: Spencer Spinnell, Director of Commerce Partnerships

[cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog]

When I’m looking for a restaurant in San Francisco, I always browse photos to see if the ambiance is right for the occasion. With our Business Photos pilot, we’ve been photographing businesses, with their permission, to highlight the qualities that make their locations stand out. In addition to the photos that business owners can upload directly through Google Places, these photos help potential customers get a better view of the decor, merchandise, food, and more on each business’ Place page.




We’ve also been taking 360-degree photography to help businesses owners showcase their locations further, and starting today you can experience that panoramic perspective for select businesses in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

This experience, using Street View technology, includes 360-degree imagery of the business interior and storefront. With this immersive imagery, potential customers can easily imagine themselves at the business and decide if they want to visit in person.




We’re now starting to make these images available through the Place pages of select businesses we’ve photographed. When 360-degree imagery of a business is available, you’ll see an arrow appear over the thumbnail Street View image on that business’ Place page. Press the arrow to preview the storefront or interior, then click on the thumbnail to see the image in Street View.




With this pilot, you'll begin to see additional photo experiences on the Place pages of a growing number of businesses. As additional imagery becomes available for more locations in the coming months, you’ll also be able to enter the interior perspective of businesses directly from the Street View images of nearby roads on Google Maps.

We’re continuing this program with businesses in select cities in the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, and France. If you would like to highlight your business to Google Maps users, please visit the Business Photos site to learn more and apply.


Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps