Mobile technology is making it easier than ever for people to research products and connect with businesses while they’re on the go. But we all know that sometimes it helps to speak to a real person before making a purchase decision. In fact, research shows that 52% of smartphone users have called a business after looking for local information on their mobile devices. Calls are key in helping consumers connect with businesses in the digital age, so incorporating a click-to-call strategy on mobile is crucial for any company that does business over the phone.

Companies big and small have put click-to-call functionality front and center in their mobile ads to reach customers on the go, and have seen impressive results. For instance, Comcast incorporated click-to-call ads into their mobile strategy, and now find mobile drives more than 10% of online sales. Esurance also reduced their cost per acquisition by 20-30% compared to other channels by using Google mobile ads with click-to-call. With more than 20 million calls made through Google click-to-call ads each month, it’s clear that mobile works when driving calls to businesses. In fact, our studies have shown that adding Call Extensions to mobile ad campaigns have improved advertisers’ average click-through rates by about 6-8%.

But as any business knows, getting customers to call is only half the battle. That’s why we’ve invested in features like Google call forwarding numbers, which show detailed reporting on calls generated from your ad campaign such as call start and end time, duration and caller area code. Having this valuable information can help advertisers understand how effective their ad campaigns are at driving calls as well as the quality of those calls. Advertisers using Google call forwarding numbers see calls last over six minutes on average.

We’re working hard to continually improve the click-to-call experience for advertisers and consumers. Here are a few of the things that our team has recently been hard at work on:

• Click-to-call button - We recently introduced a new click-to-call button for ads leveraging Call Extensions, which people can easily tap to call businesses. Early results indicate that this new design positively impacts advertiser click-through rates and call volume.
• Expanding availability of Google call forwarding numbers - We’re also focused on bringing Google call forwarding numbers to more advertisers so they can better measure the full value that mobile is driving through calls. Already available in US and UK, we recently expanded availability to Germany and plan to expand availability to additional countries in the coming months.
• Call Extensions for in-app ads - We also recently introduced Call Extensions for ads showing in apps on the Google Display Network. Now in addition to click-to-call ads across the mobile web, advertisers can also drive calls from ads in more than 300,000 mobile apps.

New click-to-call button

If you haven’t yet tried Call Extensions in your mobile campaigns, you can find instructions for enabling in our Help Center. We will also be hosting a webinar on December 5th focused on tracking call performance in your AdWords campaigns. To register for this webinar, click here.

Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

How do you inspire excitement around an exotic travel destination that many people have never heard of? For Finnair, the answer came in the form of the new Swipeable Gallery ad for tablets. In a CPM campaign running across six European markets, nearly 5% of the impressions Finnair achieved led to an interaction. Of these interactions, 60% clicked to enter a competition and 12% clicked through to view fares on the site with the possibility to purchase.

The seeds for this success were sewn earlier this year Finnair when became the first airline to operate non-stop flights between Europe and Chongqing, China. While China’s importance among business and leisure travellers is rocketing, Finnair faced a challenge in stimulating tourism to the destination. Because travel to exotic places is an inherently sensory and immersive experience, the airline aimed to unleash the most stimulating and emotive advertising imaginable.

The goals? First, the campaign needed to be highly visual and interactive, leading people to learn as much as possible about the destination in a short space of time. Second, Finnair wanted to drive users to register for a competition (with the prize being a pair of round-trip tickets to Chongqing) and ultimately visit Finnair’s website to check the current fare offers with the opportunity to purchase tickets.

Finnair seized the Swipeable Gallery ad format as the ideal union of performance with branding. This format is part of Google’s Rich Media Designs for Mobile, a set of templates making it easy for display marketers to create rich media ads using existing assets and to implement them across platforms including mobile and tablet. In essence, the designs enable advertisers to create beautiful and highly interactive ads with no HTML5 expertise.

The Swipeable Gallery ad used by Finnair consists of links to make a booking or to enter the competition. But the main content of the ad is a range of compelling imagery from cityscapes to ancient sculptures to tantalising local food. The viewer can swipe horizontally to browse the gallery. Clicking on any image will expand it to full screen size, effectively allowing the viewer to dive into the irresistable sights of Chongqing.

Want to learn more about the tablet’s potential for driving awareness and sales? Read the full case study here.

Posted by: Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

An inspiring mobile ad campaign for the new video game Dishonored drove viewers to a four-minute trailer on m.youtube, achieving an incredibly successful click-through rate of 13% over the 12 days that it ran. By incorporating the Dishonored promotional trailer into the new Branded Video format from Google’s Rich Media Designs for Mobile, the short clip created serious excitement around the game in a compelling new way.

Dishonored is a first-person neo-Victorian stealth action-adventure video game. Because it’s not part of an established franchise, its creators Bethesda Softworks needed to grab the attention of gamers and educate them very quickly about the unique gameplay of Dishonored. So when Bethesda gave its agency Target Media the task of raising awareness about the brand-new game, everyone was in agreement: Dishonored deserved advertising as visually remarkable and as captivating as the game itself.

The idea was to use the visually stunning announcement trailer to establish Dishonored in a front-of-mind position among the game’s tech savvy target market, building up awareness in the key demographic in the lead-up to the game’s launch. Target Media understood that the target audience of early adopters and committed gamers were likely to be heavy users of smartphones and tablets, so the Branded Video format for mobile was a perfect fit. Google’s Rich Media Designs for Mobile templates are designed to make it easy for advertisers to create ads using existing assets and then implement them across platforms including mobile and tablet. All Target Media had to do was use the Branded Video template to embed a short 20-second version of the game’s trailer on a backdrop comprising a key image from the game. By using just these two assets, the cost and turnaround time of the custom ad unit was kept to a minimum.

The clip plays with full in-line video and audio, meaning that the user can view it in place rather than being redirected outside of the ad to the native video player or their device. The aim was to get the maximum number of targeted views for the short trailer and also to drive users to click to Bethesda’s YouTube channel to watch the full four-minute version. The ad ran on the AdMob network, which provided the perfect platform to reach an audience of gamers when they were on their mobile devices. The timing of the AdMob campaign was coordinated with desktop efforts to complete a powerful multi-screen approach.

To learn more about the campaign’s success, see the full case study here.

Posted by: Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

This holiday season, make it easy for your customers to find, visit, and call your business with AdWords location targeting and location extensions. Location targeting shows your ads to customers in specific geographic areas you want to reach, while location extensions dynamically attach your business address and phone number to your ads. Today, we are announcing a few improvements to these two features and making them available in more countries to help your business “get local” for the holidays.

What’s new

1. Introducing airport targeting: A new way to reach travelers on the go
Whether people are checking a flight status or passing time before take-off, mobile and tablet devices have become indispensable for airport-goers. With the launch of airport targeting, businesses are now able to connect with potential customers on mobile, tablet or laptop devices in more than 350 airports around the world via AdWords.  

With airport targeting, you can offer relevant, last-minute travel and entertainment opportunities, promote your mobile application to airport travelers, amplify interest in your in-airport campaigns, build your brands with mobile display ads, and much more.  Plus, you can easily review the performance of these campaigns using geographic performance reports.  

2. Location extensions and sitelinks show together
Location extensions can now be shown alongside one-line sitelinks in text ads (on desktop and laptop computers) and will continue to show with two-line and three-line sitelinks. If you have a multi-channel business, consider using location extensions in addition to sitelinks to help you highlight specific areas of your business.    

3. Larger, more useful maps
Location extensions on desktop and laptop computers will now appear with a larger, more engaging map panel that will replace the current expandable map. When the location extension address is clicked, this new map panel appears to the right of the top search results.

Early testing suggests that users will click to see locations on a map more frequently than with our previous design.  

4. Better location matching for customers
Features such as postal code targeting in the U.S., have enabled us to show closer and more relevant locations to your customers from within your location extensions. At the same time, if you have a specialty or destination business such as a niche boutique or a ski resort, your location extensions can be shown to people who are located nearby, but who aren’t within your business’s postal code -- so you also can attract customers who are willing to travel longer distances to visit your business.

5. Online conversion reporting for Location Extensions
If you use AdWords conversion tracking, you probably want to know how location extensions affect your online conversion rates. Earlier this year, we included online conversion data within ad extensions reports to help you analyze the overall impact of location extensions on online conversions and measure your online conversions per location more effectively.

6. Geo-targeting and location extensions available in more countries
In addition to previously announced updates to location extensions and geo-targeting options in more countries, we’re excited to make location extensions available in Argentina, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, UAE, and Vietnam.

We have also expanded geo-targeting options in the following countries: counties in the United Kingdom, departments in France, and cities in Argentina, Russia, and United Arab Emirates.

Here’s a full list of location targets available globally.

Get local
We hope these improvements will make it easier for you to highlight your local business information for customers, both during and after this busy holiday season. If you’re new to local ads, or would just like to learn more, check out our help center for step-by-step instructions on setting up location extensions and location targeting. And, you can always contact AdWords support.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager

The 2012 campaign will be remembered as the first four screen election.  

The Internet has fundamentally transformed how voters receive information on candidates and issues. Access to political information no longer comes from one place, or one screen. That means that campaigns that adapted to this new reality - and adopted a four-screen strategy to persuade and connect with voters -  more often than not won.  The trend is clear:  those who invest in online win.  In fact, 9 of the top 11 US Senate races who spent more online with Google won on Tuesday. 

Let’s look at how the four screens worked together in the closing days of the race.

Of the four screens, mobile’s role in political campaigning grew the most from 2008.  Voters use their devices to stay up to date about key issues, look up quick answers, or find last-minute information like where to vote. Candidates who recognized these behaviors and developed mobile strategies to reach people on their smartphones were able to drive voter interaction.  Specifically, we found that as election day neared, voters turned to their mobile devices for election-related information.

• Total US Mobile searches related to finding a voting location increased by 164% from Monday to Tuesday. This trend was even more pronounced in battleground states.

• Quite a few voters leave their homes on Election Day and are still undecided. On the day of the election, throughout the US, the majority of Obama-related searches occurred on mobile devices as millions of Americans stood in line and travelled to their polling places.

Search, especially on larger screens like laptops, is an essential voter tool for fact-checking and education.   It is also a critical campaign tool for rapid-response and persuasion.  We saw campaigns and issue advocacy groups use search to respond, educate or even ‘bracket’ events in real-time.  There was a real shift toward voters using (and trusting) the Web as a fact-checker, especially around offline events like debates.  64% of voters use the Internet to verify or “fact check” a claim made by a candidate or issue group and it is clear that it is key to formulating voting decisions.  

• In Maryland, where same sex marriage legislation was passed, total searches for gay marriage increased by 482% from the same period last year.

• Since April 2011, when Romney officially entered the race, over 700,000 videos mentioning Obama or Romney have been uploaded to YouTube, and these videos account for 2.8 billion views.

Television - especially around live campaign events like debates - is a powerful catalyst to drive action on digital devices.  Savvy campaigns built presences across all screens to stay connected with voters that are driven online by TV to fact-check or research.  

• 77% of TV viewers use another device at the same time in a typical day.   (Google Multi-Screen Research)

And, finally, while tablets are still a relatively new device, they distinguished themselves as an important tool this election. The most notable role that tablets played was as a couch companion, helping voters find more information and react to the things they saw on TV. While this TV + Tablet multi-screening was the most mainstream behavior, we are also seeing a growing number of people who are turning to tablets first to consume news and find information.

• During the second Presidential Debate, energy-policy related searches on tablets spiked by 359% immediately after the question about gas prices. This shows how people reach for their tablets in response to things on TV.

Campaigns who don’t come to grips with these changing voter behaviors will have a harder time giving that victory speech on Election Night.  Campaigns who go online and develop a multi-screen approach to persuading and connecting with voters will win.  It has never been more clear that the road to victory requires a four screen strategy.

Posted by: Jennifer Gross, on behalf of the Politics & Elections Team

We’ve heard a lot of talk about HTML5 and it’s potential to alter the way ads are developed and trafficked online, but we wanted more details. So we chatted with Wook Chung, Product Manager for DoubleClick Mobile, to hear his thoughts on the changing landscape.

Q: So what’s the big deal with HTML5? (Why should people care about it?)
A: We’re living in a multi-device era where people use a variety of devices to meet their daily needs. Advertisers want to reach their audience on all surface areas and HTML5/Javascript is the only known language that runs across all modern day devices. With HTML5, a given ad creative can potentially run everywhere.

Furthermore, HTML5 gives advertisers access to native device features such as touch, gyroscope, GPS, and even 3D graphics acceleration. Creatives now have access to many more primary constructs which translates to infinitely more possibilities in what content can be. With HTML5, we have an opportunity to revolutionize digital advertising. Finally, the HTML5 spec is still yet to be finalized, which means it can remain agile in adapting to hardware innovations.

Q: How does HTML5 specifically improve the possibilities for mobile ad development?
A: HTML5 is the only known language that runs across all major mobile operating systems and browsers. Without it, mobile advertising would be relegated to custom native code rendering governed by ad SDK providers. It would not be scalable and designers would be severely limited in flexing their creative muscles. With HTML5, we can now unleash all sorts of possibilities. Currently, the majority of the mobile ads seen out in the internet are static images. We can change this with HTML5.

Q: How is Google and Doubleclick thinking about HTML5?
A: Google has been a strong supporter of the HTML5 standards alongside other companies and organizations. Through our contribution to the WebKit open-source project and our Chrome browser, we continue to push the boundaries in showcasing what is possible with HTML5. You can check out the latest HTML5 innovations and experiences in our Chrome Experiments projects or HTML5Rocks.com. Another great example is Google Maps on browsers that use WebGL for 3D renderings.

Just as Google places a high priority on HTML5, we also envision a healthy ad ecosystem based on HTML5 ads. We see a world where a single creative can potentially run on any device, any screen size, and naturally respond to user interactions and device movements. To realize this vision, Google is working with industry partners to establish HTML5 ad standards, educating creative agencies on HTML5, and building products and services that can support these ads, from our DoubleClick platform to our ad networks and SDKs.

If you work on a creative team at an agency, we would love to hear from you to understand how you're currently creating HTML5 ads and how you'd like to be creating them in the future.

Please complete this short survey to let us know how we can better meet your needs. You can enter to win one of two Nexus 7 tablets if you complete the form!*
*Only participants located in the United States, who submit their email addresses, are eligible to win prizes. Winners will be selected on November 30th, 2012 and notified within 2 weeks.

Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Rich Media

With 29% of shoppers planning to purchase smartphones this holiday season, there’s no doubt that some of the shiniest new mobile devices will be wrapped up under the tree this Christmas. Little time will be wasted before happy new smartphone and tablet owners begin searching for the best apps to fill these new devices. So it’s no surprise that according to Google Trends, during the week following Christmas last year, searches for “best tablet apps” rose by more than 70%, while searches for “free phone apps” jumped by about 37%. The holidays are prime time for app promotion, so it’s important for marketers to make sure their app stands out from the crowd.

Maximizing reach with search and display ads
Whether you have a shopping companion app, a banking app, or a mobile gaming app, it’s important to reach the right audience to drive downloads and increase awareness. Many marketers have made mobile work for them by using search and display strategies together to raise interest and drive downloads of their app.

TripIt, a mobile travel organizer, used click-to-download ads on Google Search and the Google Display Network to promote their app to business travelers on the road. By creating and optimizing display ads within other apps, TripIt increased downloads by more than 75% and slashed cost-per-download by more than 96%. According to Rhonda Hanson, senior director of search marketing, promoting their app with mobile ads allowed TripIt to, “redirect the dollars we've saved on app promotion to improving our app and providing a better trip-organizer service to our business travelers.” Download the full case study here.

Maximizing ROI with Conversion Optimizer
Savvy advertisers also know they can take app promotion to the next level with optimization tools. Leading mobile game developer GREE promoted their apps to gamers using Google Search click-to-download ads along with image and text ads on the Google Display Network. To make sure they were getting the best return on investment for their in-app display ads, they used Conversion Optimizer for apps to reach their cost-per-download targets. This automated campaign optimization helped them improve app download rates by 150%, decrease cost-per-download by 52% and improve click-through rates by 49%. Download the full case study here.

If you haven’t already created your holiday app strategy, it’s not too late. Here are some things you can do to win across search and display:

1. Make sure you’re reaching people when they search for apps like yours and help them easily download your app with click-to-download ads and mobile app extensions
2. Reach relevant users within over 300,000 premium apps on the Google Display Network with image and text ads
3. Track downloads on Android and iOS with AdWords conversion tracking and optimize ROI with the automated bidding feature, the Conversion Optimizer for apps
4. Measure in-app user activity with Mobile App Analytics in order to optimize
5. Increase app promotion campaign budgets for the holidays to account for additional ad clicks

For more on how you can drive cost-effective app downloads with Google AdWords, check out this recorded Learn with Google webinar.   

Posted by Jessica Sapick, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

With the holiday season just weeks away, we sought out to understand how mobile behavior changes during national holidays throughout the year, particularly when people have a day off from work or school. What we found was a surge in activity on tablets and smartphones during these holidays, showing that when people are away from the office kicking back at home or out shopping, they increasingly turn to their smartphones and tablets nearby. More surprisingly, while we consistently saw mobile searches spike on holidays, we discovered an even more pronounced surge in mobile ad clicks, signaling that people are particularly interested in shopping and connecting with businesses.

For example, while Americans celebrated Labor Day this year with barbecues, family trips and shopping, they also often turned to their mobile devices nearby. Searches on smartphones were 7% higher compared to those on a typical Monday, and searches on tablets jumped by 25%. But perhaps more interestingly, clicks on mobile ads spiked even more dramatically in comparison to other average days. The chart below shows that on Labor Day, ad clicks on smartphones grew 9% compared to the average number of ad clicks on a typical Monday, while ad clicks on tablets jumped 39%.

This means that not only are people searching more on their mobile devices during holidays, but they’re actively looking to connect with businesses. So whether shoppers are using their free time to pick up a last-minute gift or buy holiday party supplies, this behavior presents an important opportunity for marketers to engage the mobile shopper.

We see these same mobile trends during holidays throughout the year, but find that they’re particularly pronounced on big shopping days like Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For example, while smartphone searches last Black Friday rose by 17% compared to a normal day, ad clicks on smartphones that day jumped by 61%. Likewise, while tablet searches rose by 40% last Black Friday, clicks on tablet ads shot up by more than 100%, and stayed above average in the days following.

So what does all of this mean for businesses? Quite simply, it means that with people turning to more devices during the holidays, there are more opportunities for them to find and connect with you, whether they’re at home or on the go. Here are a few things that you can do to make sure you’re ready:

1. Make sure that you have campaigns or new ad text for your holiday promotions or messages.
2. Increase your budget cap on holidays to account for additional clicks.
3. Adopt an always-on strategy to make sure your budget lasts throughout the day. Consumers are researching and shopping at any time throughout the day and you should make sure you can be found.
4. Segment your historic campaign performance by device to understand how people interact with you across different devices like smartphones and tablets, and tweak your campaigns accordingly to capitalize.
5. Expand keyword lists to include holiday-related terms and ensure you have keyword parity between your desktop and mobile campaigns so you’re reaching potential customers regardless of what device they’re using.

Posted by Ben Taggart, Mobile Analyst