During the “Go Mo” presentation at Advertising Week on Wednesday, Jesse Haines, group marketing manager for Google Mobile Ads, summed up where brands joining the mobile-optimized website party today stand: “It may be too late to be early, but it’s still early enough not to be late.”
Her talk focused on how to take advantage of the mobile platform in 2012, from embracing the “nonline” world to making meaningful connections with consumers to accessing more than one screen.
To start, she spoke about how the online and offline worlds have converged and how mobile has played a key part in that convergence. She gave an example of how Nissan put QR codes on vehicle price tags at car lots this year since insights showed that customers often visited the dealership outside of business hours and they also didn’t want to deal with pushy salespeople. The QR codes, said Haines, acted as “silent salespeople” by providing all the same vehicle information. “In this ‘nonline’ world, customers are seeking to interact with your business anytime and anywhere,” she said.
Moving on to the frustration consumers feel when they land on a site that isn’t mobile-optimized, she used a personal anecdote about doing a search for an underwater camera (Haines has a thing for sea turtles). When she typed “underwater camera” as her search query in her smartphone, Haines said a few ads appeared at the top of the results. When she clicked on the Sony ad the site wasn’t mobile friendly: the font and images were much too small. She returned to the search results and then chose a Canon ad. Again, the icons were super small; it was hard to click on one without hitting the one next to it. Still determined to find a camera, she tried the third advertiser that came up in her search results. It was for a local camera shop, which she would have happily supported, but it also had a site that wasn’t made for a mobile device.
This incident is reflective of what’s happening on a larger scale in today’s mobile sites space. Haines said Google did some research into mobile-optimized sites and found that a whopping 79% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile-optimized landing page.
She also provided stats about categories people are searching via their smartphones: overall, 30% of restaurant-related search queries and 25% of movie-related search queries are coming from mobile devices. (And, as an aside, 11% of users have screamed at their phone as a result of reaching a non-mobile-friendly site.)
To help companies see how their site displays on mobile and determine if they have a mobile-optimized site, Haines promoted HowToGoMo.com, a site developed by Google. The site also has vendors that can help brands build a mobile site.
One of the keys to creating a successful site is making meaningful connections with users. Using another personal example, Haines said she recently did a search for Italian food while in San Francisco. A hyper-local ad came up in the results that showed a map of a restaurant and how far it was from Haines. It also listed a phone number, which was convenient if she chose to make a reservation. It’s easy to make such an ad, said Haines, adding “If you’re already a Google AdWords customer, you’re already one step away from this.”
Haines went on to speak about the four screens that marketers need to consider today: TV, computer, smartphone and tablet. She said that roughly 40% of smartphone owners in the U.S. use their smartphone as they are watching TV, and that tablet and smartphone search peaks during TV primetime.
When people sit down to watch TV with their smartphone or tablet by their side, Haines said one out of five of them will search on subject matter related to what they’re watching; 46% will search for material that’s not related to what they’re watching.
She also cited a Google/Nielsen study that showed that ads seen across all screens were more effective in driving brand awareness. In this case, in a group exposed to Volvo TV ads alone, 50% correctly recalled Volvo as the brand advertised. On the other hand, of the group exposed to TV, PC, phone video and tablet video ads, 74% correctly recalled the brand advertised—a 24% lift in campaign recall.
Is mobile your brand’s site mobile friendly? Are you convinced a mobile site is table stakes? Tell us in our comments section.
