From text to apps to mobile sites, mobile marketing presents a wide range of opportunities. Today, I’m going to explore one of the most promising platforms, mobile search advertising.
As of March 2009, there are a little short of 20 million mobile subscribers using search engines, a number that is expected to climb to 60 million by 2013. In this search environment, Google is the far and away leader, capturing even more market share than it does in desktop search with more than 90% of the U.S. mobile search market.
How is mobile search different?
Today, the mobile search market, particularly in Google’s case, is conveniently integrated with the general search campaign. This meaning that search engines will typically serve the same ads within a mobile search as a desktop search. Over time, though, websites will feature more mobile-specific content. In the future, we expect that search engines will grant this content a higher ranking than its standard, desktop counterpart when competing for the same keywords from a mobile device.
That isn’t to say that marketers shouldn’t build a separate mobile campaign. People searching on their mobile phones aren’t as keen on typing in specific searches as they might be on the desktop, so our mobile search campaigns likely need to be a little different. Mobile search campaigns often require a different set of keywords – usually shorter and more general, and need to be monitored and optimized on their own. In addition, mobile search ads often have the option to include a phone number and a click-to-call link inside the ad itself.
Cost and performance
As with desktop search, the price of mobile search campaigns varies depending on the keywords you choose and how much you bid. For these campaigns, marketers set a daily budget and are charged only when a user clicks on their ads. Placement depends on whether or not they out-bid other companies competing for the same search keyword.
There have been conflicting reports on performance of mobile search ads. Some have enjoyed significantly better results than their desktop counterparts – often reaching 15% click through rates – while others have had difficulty even reaching their desktop search numbers with 0.5%. Brand metrics tell a different story. We’ve seen consistent increases of brand metrics, particularly unaided brand awareness, when a marketer has top position on mobile search results.
Considerations
Along with an up and running mobile campaign, it’s important to live with a couple things in mind:
Think post-click
Because many mobile campaigns currently experience high click through rates, it is important to build interesting and appropriate mobile websites. More often than advertising, these sites have the opportunity to include rich brand experiences like video and, for some phones, interactive elements.
Think integration
Mobile advertising works best as part of an integrated campaign. It’s a channel that has the flexibility to compliment both traditional and digital media over a wide range of objectives. Often, mobile can act as the brand bridge between the traditional and digital worlds, blending the sometimes-disparate experiences together. The best practice here is to keep pointing your audience to the next brand experience. From print, point to mobile, from mobile, point to online, from online, point to an event.
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