Google Mobile Advertising

OK, so it's been a few months since we enabled mobile devices and the "click-to-call" feature for client campaigns.  Looking at mobile visitor traffic in Google Analytics, we see that traffic over the past 30 days has increased significantly from the prior 30 day period. 

One client has experienced an 11% increase in mobile traffic on his two websites and another client's mobile traffic has absolutely exploded, with visits up 61% over the prior 30 day period!  Granted this particular client's market tends to be a younger, more technical buyer.  But 61% - wow!

In addition to an increase in mobile visits, we're seeing improved metrics for bounce rate (down 7%), pages per visit (up 8%), and average time on site (up 18%).

The most notable sources of increase have been Android and iPad devices, which makes sense given the massive marketing effort that Verizon has launched (I recently took advantage of their "buy1/get1" deal), and the recent launch of the iPad.  Blackberry and iPhone traffic remained steady relative to the prior 30 day period.

CPC for the click-to-call feature is the same as for a regular click on a text headline, so it's a no-brainer to enable this ASAP.  Preferably, the merchant should assign a unique telephone number for PPC mobile ads in order to track effectiveness of this ad delivery method.

In order to target WAP devices (not full browser capable), you'll need to create mobile-specific text ads which are really easy to do.  Simply create a new ad, choose "mobile ad" type, make the appropriate selections (text vs. image, specific carriers, click-to-call, etc.), and write your ad.  Google recommends that you create specific Campaigns or Adgroups for your mobile specific ads to make reporting and data gathering easier, and I agree with this practice.

The challenge with WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) ads are that you need to have a mobile version of your website, written in "acceptable mobile markup language" to be eligible for ads to display.  Accepted mobile markup languages include XHTML (WAP 2.0), WML (WAP 1.2), and CHTML.  

Mobile ads are eligible to display on Google Search & Search Partner networks as well as on their Content network.  Mobile ads may also appear while operating many downloadable apps.  I highly recommend that you use Google AdWords' knowledge base which contains dozens of pages of instructions on how to implement and best practices for mobile.

See you on the web!