How many times have you started reading an email on your phone while commuting, and then continued it on your laptop when you got home? Or perhaps you saw a commercial for a new car and then used your tablet to search for the specs and see it in action? If these things sound familiar, that’s because they’re all part of the new norm in multi-screen behavior.

In “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior,” we discovered that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV. We set out to learn not just how much of our media consumption happens on screens, but also how we use these multiple devices together, and what that means for the way that businesses connect with consumers. Below are highlights from our research:

                                           

Click to enlarge

Two primary ways we multi-screen
In understanding what it means to multi-screen, we discovered two main modes of usage:

• Sequential screening where we move from one device to another to complete a single goal
• Simultaneous screening where we use multiple devices at the same time

We found that nine out of ten people use multiple screens sequentially and that smartphones are by far the most common starting point for sequential activity. So completing a task like booking a flight online or managing personal finances doesn’t just happen in one sitting on one device. In fact, 98% of sequential screeners move between devices in the same day to complete a task.  

With simultaneous usage, we found that TV no longer commands our undivided attention, with 77% of viewers watching TV with another device in hand. In many cases people search on their devices, inspired by what they see on TV.

So what does this all mean for marketers? It’s important to understand both the sequential and simultaneous multi-screening patterns. Sequential screeners will start interacting with you on one device and then pick up where they left off on another, so making experiences seamless between devices is key. Additionally, cross-media campaigns can help you make the most of consumers’ simultaneous usage across screens.

Search is a critical connector as we move between devices
We also found that when people use screens sequentially to complete an activity, they often use search to pick up where they left off. 

So not only is it important for companies to allow customers to save their progress between devices, they should also use tactics like keyword parity to ensure that they can be found easily via search when that customer moves to the next device.

Turning “spur-of-the-moment” activity into valuable opportunities
The accessibility of our devices enables us to use micro-moments in the day to get things done, such as search, shop, communicate and keep entertained. We found that people often turn to nearby devices to complete spur-of-the-moment activity. In fact, 80% of the searches that happen on smartphones are spur-of-the-moment, and 44% of these spontaneous searches are goal-oriented. We see examples of this in our daily lives, for instance, suddenly realizing that you forgot to make a dinner reservation and reaching for your phone to find a restaurant.  

For marketers, this combination of device accessibility and spur-of-the-moment usage means there are now more opportunities to connect with consumers, so businesses have to make sure they’re present and optimized across multiple screens.

Learn more about multi-screening
Check out all of our findings and what they mean for businesses by downloading the full research report.  Additionally, we will be discussing the research and specific strategies that businesses can take to succeed in a multi-screen world in tomorrow’s webinar at 10am PDT/1pm EDT on Thursday August 30th.

Register here and we look forward to sharing more multi-screen insights with you soon.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

90% of media consumption today is screen based, and the growing number of digital devices is rapidly changing the way people search, shop, and connect with people or businesses. To make the most of all of their devices consumers have developed common patterns of multi-screen behavior, and this multi-screening has quickly become the norm. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this changing consumer media behavior, we conducted some new research.

Join Google on Thursday, August 30th (10am PT/1pm ET) for a webinar about our recently released research, "The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior."


The webinar will share our research findings on how the growth of device ownership has changed the way that people consume media. We will also discuss specific strategies that businesses and advertisers can employ to take advantage of these multi-screen behaviors and more effectively connect with their target audience.

Sign up for our webinar today by registering here.

We look forward to seeing you on August 30th!

Posted by Samantha Podos Nowak, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Over recent years, we’ve seen that mobile advertising is a powerful way for brands to build awareness, engage people who are watching multiple screens, and drive in-store conversions. We’ve focused on creating tailored ad formats that work for the user experience on mobile, whether it’s searching or watching videos.

Today, most of us watch video on our smartphones and tablets, as well as our PCs - we watch videos when we’re out with friends, while waiting in line, or riding the bus home. We’ve rolled out a number of specific mobile ad formats on YouTube over the past year, making it easier for advertisers to reach people with great ads and content creators to monetize mobile views. Now we’re extending this further by launching TrueView in-stream video ads on mobile devices. 



Driving greater ROI with TrueView
With TrueView, we’ve developed a model where user engagement matters -- people can skip ads they aren’t interested in after five seconds. Giving viewers choice over ads they watch has led to a better, more engaged viewing experience, benefiting the entire YouTube community of users, advertisers, and content creators. Advertisers only pay when someone chooses to watch the ad, so their budgets go toward the people most interested in what they have to say.

Hundreds of our advertisers are experiencing “buy one, get one free” -- for every view they pay for, they’re earning another one through sharing. This is because after a user watches a video ad, they can stick around to watch more content from that brand, visit their website, or share the video with friends. Many of you are seeing this in action today - TRX, for example, saw the greatest ROI from their TrueView campaign during their busy season promotions.

Additional reach with multi-screen campaigns
We’ve found that brand recall improves when ads run across TV, PC, phone and tablet. Bringing TrueView video ads to mobile devices will make it easier to create and manage multi-screen campaigns and will give you additional reach. All new and existing TrueView in-stream campaigns are now enabled to run on mobile platforms (you can manage your settings within AdWords for video). 



We’ve only just begun testing TrueView on mobile, but early indications are that people engage with these ads in the same way as they do on desktop. This is just the start - we’ll continue to innovate to bring the best of video to the best of mobile. Learn how to get started with TrueView video ads today.

Posted by Phil Farhi, group product manager, YouTube

A common complaint from advertisers on mobile surround the conflicts in reported results between mobile publishers and ad servers.

Mark Halliday, head of mobile at Manning Gottlieb OMD in the UK, wanted to address this issue head-on. When DoubleClick and Google Mobile Ads approached him about collaborating on a beta test to overcome the obstacles in mobile reporting, Mark identified the client Renault as an ideal match for the project. And so a campaign for the Renault ZE would become one of the first third-party served mobile rich media campaigns in Europe - and a welcome companion to a similar campaign ran in the US with OMD and Intel, see previous blog here.

 

The campaign objective was to achieve brand engagement to be measured through numbers of video views, but also to improve tracking and reduce statistical discrepancies in reporting. Ad creatives consisted of the Renault ZE television spot embedded as a YouTube video player in a tap-to-expand unit. DoubleClick Studio was used to build and assemble the ads in HTML5 and to implement tracking code in the raw files. The ads were trafficked in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) and served on a targeted basis across Google’s AdMob network of over 300,000 mobile applications. Thanks to tracking enabled by DFA, as soon as the creative was served, the impressions, clicks, interactions, expansions and video plays could be reported back.  

In the month-long campaign, advertising on the AdMob network generated 25% of UK views for the Renault ZE YouTube commercial  8.6% of users who viewed the expanded panel tapped through to the Renault site. But that wasn’t the only victory worth celebrating. Thanks to tight integration, the discrepancy between the ad serving side and the publishing side in reported impressions was just 1.5%. As far as Mark Halliday is concerned, this is good news not just for the agency and their clients, but also for the mobile sector at large.

Read more about the pioneering campaign for Renault and what this means for mobile by downloading the full PDF of the case study here.

Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Today, shopping is no longer limited to the mall - it happens at home, waiting in line, or at the doctor’s office. If you’re armed with a smartphone, every moment is now a shopping opportunity. As retailers gear up for this month’s back-to-school shopping crunch, we took to the digital Main Street to find out how consumer shopping patterns have changed. Focusing on apparel shopping, we analyzed consumer shopping behavior from the point of sale backward, and surveyed apparel shoppers to understand shopping trends.

We found that not only is online research playing an integral role than in both online and in-store purchases, consumers are increasingly shopping on their mobile devices and using online video to inform purchase decisions. In fact, 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video online. Here are a few highlights from the report:

Mobile devices bring the mall to you
Mobile shopping is not a sporadic activity limited to weekend trips to the mall. It’s constant and pervasive. More than 1 in 5 apparel consumers are using their tablets or mobile devices on a daily basis for shopping. People are shopping on their mobile devices throughout all parts of the day - and not just while on-the-go. More than 69% of consumers shopped on their phone or tablet while at home, 31% while in a store, 28% while waiting in line, and 27% while at work.

People are using their mobile devices as shopping assistants by informing purchase decisions and helping them locate the best deal. Of people that shop on their mobile device, 56% compare prices and look for promotions, 42% read reviews, 38% search inventory, 16% scan bar code while in store, and 13% contact the retailer.


Video is the virtual fitting room
Aspects such as fit and quality - easily apparent in person - become harder to grasp when shopping online. Video has now filled the role as the virtual fitting room, enabling shoppers to hear personal opinions and reviews, and see the product in motion. In fact, video has become so influential that 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video. Today, nearly 1 in 3 shoppers use YouTube to shop for apparel. So it’s no surprise that video ads top traditional media in encouraging purchases. Thirty-four percent of apparel shoppers are more likely to purchase after viewing an online video ad, versus 16% after watching an ad on TV.

Millennials (aged 18-34) are twice as likely than other age groups to rely on a video to decide which company to purchase from, and are regularly turning to YouTube for shopping advice. YouTube vloggers posting their latest shopping finds aren’t just sharing their recommendations with close friends, they’re sharing with an audience of thousands of subscribers and millions of views - MacBarbie07, a popular YouTube partner, has more than 100M views of her styling tips. And this fall we’re seeing even more shopping reviews on YouTube - there are nearly 600,000 shopping “haul” videos on YouTube, more than 35,000 of which were uploaded within the last month alone.



Digital shoppers are valuable customers
People who shop on their mobile devices and research with video tend to not only spend more on average purchases, but do so more frequently. We found that 1 in 4 mobile researchers purchased apparel more than 6 times in the past 6 months (versus 16% of non-mobile researchers). And 28% of video researchers spent more than $500 on apparel in the past 6 months, while only 2% of non-video researchers did.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the next 5 years we’ll see a bigger change to shopping than we’ve seen in the past 50. Download the full report for more insight into this year’s shopping trends. Visit Think with Google to learn how you can leverage these digital trends for your marketing strategy this year.

Posted by Todd Pollak, Industry Director, Retail, Google

At the 2012 Olympics we’re seeing new records set everyday, not only in athletic performance, but also in global search behavior.  It's clear that these are the first multi-screen Olympics, as users are engaging across TV, computers, smartphones and tablets, often at the same time!

And as users watch TV, or watch their laptops at work, they're searching for information about athletes, sports, events and records -  on their tablets and smartphones. In fact, at some moments during the Games, there have been more searches performed on tablets and smartphones than on computers.  We’ve seen large spikes in global mobile search volume during recent major sporting events, like the Super Bowl, and the Olympics certainly continued this trend - in its first week, Olympics related searches on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) grew by 10x from the previous week.

Mobile devices vault ahead

We’ve crunched some data from the past week, and the opening ceremony is a great illustration of how mobile devices have taken center stage. Fans turned to their smartphones and tablets to find more information about the incredible feats and celebrities that they saw on screen.

Below is one such example where searches for Paul McCartney surge in line with his performance of Hey Jude at the end of the opening ceremony. Whether watching the Olympics at home on TV or on a desktop livestream, or at a bar with friends, users  searched on one screen for things they saw happening on another screen. Comparing searches by device type, smartphone searches surged, and in the US, viewers were searching almost as much on their tablets as on their computers for Paul McCartney.

Global searches for Paul McCartney during local broadcasts of the Olympics opening ceremony (PST)

Mobile is global

The infographic below gives a snapshot of the percentage of total searches that occurred on smartphones and tablets during the first two days of the Games, for Olympics-related searches.

(click here to download infographic)

We see these trends in many multi-screen events (such as the Super Bowl, Oscars, and Eurovision) but the Olympics represents an even more pronounced trend and one we can see happening at a global level.

European countries showed especially high mobile search volume with most countries having one-third or more of their Olympics-related searches occurring on a tablet or smartphone. In some European countries this number was substantially higher - in the UK, 46% of Olympics searches happened on mobile.  In Asia, South Korea (36%) and Australia (45%) saw mobile search volume spikes, while Japan (55%) was at the front of the pack.

Surf, sand, towels...and tablets

As we examined global Olympics search share we noticed an interesting pattern emerge from island nations. On many of the islands that serve as popular tourist destinations, tablet search share was almost equal to smartphone, or in some cases even exceeded it. This is different from most other countries where smartphone search share is typically significantly higher than tablet.

A possible explanation? Large numbers of tablet-toting tourists on summer vacation. Tablets have emerged as an important way of staying informed and connected for travelers, as well as for finding local information.

Olympics Mobile and Tablet Search Share by Device for Several Island Nations

Olympic fever is a global phenomenon, and mobile searches are letting everyone get immediate information, in real time, about what’s happening moment by moment. We hope to have more insights into how people are using their mobile devices during the Games!

Posted by: Dai Pham & Adam Grunewald, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

As more and more consumers are looking to mobile for information on the go, creating a mobile site has become a top priority for business success. Mobile, AL has acted as a true trailblazer in the pursuit to Go Mobile by mobilizing as a community.

Rewind to November 2011, when the Mobile community committed to mobilize together and joined Google to celebrate local community, small business and the mobile web. At the three-day "Mobilize Mobile" event, we helped build 500 mobile-friendly websites for local businesses. The mobile sites helped improve sales and site traffic for many Mobile businesses.

GoMo returned this summer to host a workshop and educate Mobile businesses on how to keep mobilizing on their own by using the DudaMobile/Google free site builder tool. Developed specifically for GoMo users, the tool allows businesses to convert their current website into an easy to use mobile-friendly site that is hosted free for one year. Today, more Mobile businesses are empowered to now create their own mobile websites.

Check out highlights from Google’s most recent trip to Mobile and learn how you too can mobilize your business.




It’s time to GoMo!

Posted by: Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing