One of the biggest headaches in promoting your app is being able to work out how many downloads a specific ad campaign generated. AdMob is committed to providing app developers tools to optimize advertising spend and maximize ROI. App Conversion Tracking helps you do just that by measuring your app download campaign performance.

We’re rolling out a new feature that makes this even easier--automatic app conversion tracking for Android campaigns. All AdMob Android app download campaigns will now automatically report conversion data from the Android Market. This means that you’ll be able to see conversions from your app download campaign without configuring any special code.



To see conversion data for your Android download campaigns, simply go to the App Conversion Tracking section of your account.  You’ll be able to see the number of downloads driven by your AdMob advertising campaign. In addition, you’ll be able to keep tabs on the cost per download and conversion rate so you can better optimize your campaign.

Posted by: Morgan Hallmon, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

Mobile devices are mainstream. In fact, according to our newest research more consumers in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan use a mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone) than a computer (desktop or laptop).

But our most significant findings centered on the clear consumer shift to smartphones. This trend was evident in all countries, with the UK showing the largest increase in smartphone usage from 30 to 45% of the total population. We also found that the demographics of smartphone owners are shifting. Smartphone usage among females increased in all five countries. Smartphone ownership also rose among those aged 45+ in the US, UK and France. 



We partnered with Ipsos to conduct this research with a goal of gaining greater insight into consumer usage of mobile devices, the shift to smartphones and the emergence of tablets as a fourth screen. This study was fielded amongst the total population in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. Phase 1 of the research was conducted in January and February 2011 and Phase 2 in September and October 2011.

Some of the key findings of this new research include:

• Consumers are clearly shifting from feature phones to smartphones. Smartphone penetration reached 45% in the UK, 38% in the US and France, 23% in Germany and 17% in Japan.  
• Consumers are increasingly using their smartphones for Internet access. Germany saw the biggest increase with the percentage of smartphone owners using their device for daily Internet access jumping from 39% to 49%, while Japan had the highest percentage accessing the Internet daily on their smartphone at 88%.  A little over two-thirds of smartphone users in the US and over half of smartphone users in the UK access the mobile Internet daily.
• Smartphone owners are continuing to get online on their computers. Across all five countries approximately 75% of smartphone owners said they continued to use their computer to access the Internet daily.  
• Consumers are embracing tablets as the fourth screen. Tablet usage increased across all five countries with the highest penetration amongst the total population in the US at 11%. The rate of tablet usage is even higher amongst smartphone owners - hitting 17% in the US, 11% in Japan and 10% in the UK.

Download the PDF report here to see the full set of data from this research.

Posted by: Nicole Leverich, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

Online advertisers seek to effectively reach people across all devices and platforms. This means that regardless of whether your customer is on a computer, a mobile phone, or a tablet, we want to provide you with specific ways to reach them through targeted ad campaigns.  

AdWords advertisers already have access to a range of campaign targeting options. For our advertisers running mobile campaigns,we offer the ability to run separate mobile and desktop campaigns, the ability to target tablet devices, or target specific mobile phone carriers in your country (1).

Today we’re introducing two advanced targeting options that are now available in your AdWords campaign settings: WiFi targeting, and targeting by mobile operating system version.

WiFi Targeting
To reach users when you know they’ll have a high speed connection, you’ll now be able to target your campaigns to mobile users specifically on a WiFi connection.  If you’re currently targeting users on specific mobile carriers,  you can now target users on WiFi connections too, and expand your reach. This is also useful if your campaign or landing page has high bandwidth content, like videos that you’d like mobile users to access.

AdWords advertisers in these countries can now use WiFi targeting

To get maximum visibility for your ads we recommend targeting all available carriers and Wi-Fi traffic.

OS Version Targeting
You can already target mobile users by their operating system platform. For example, you can specify whether you would like to reach Android, iOS or WebOS devices with your ads. We’re now giving you even more granular targeting options if your application or service is only applicable to particular platform versions, such as “iOS version 4.0 and above”.


Take advantage of these new campaign targeting options in your Campaign Settings. Stay tuned to the Google Mobile Ads blog for updates on new ways target and reach your mobile customers!

(1)

Available in select countries: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86623

Posted by: Morgan Hallmon, Product Manager, Mobile Ads