Join our upcoming mobile Hangouts On Air

As part of our ongoing GoMo initiative, we’re hosting two more mobile Hangouts on Air to explore different mobile topics. Join us for one or both Hangouts to learn all about going mobile.

Build a business, not just an app (August 15th) on the AdMob +page
If you already have a mobile application and are interested in learning more about app monetization strategies, register here by August 10th for our ‘Build a business, not an app’ Hangout on August 15th at 4pm GMT/8am PDT. Whether you’re an AdMob newbie or simply looking to get a refresher, this Hangout is designed to show you how to make the most out of your app. In this Hangout we’ll look at:

• App business model and promotion strategies
• AdMob optimization tips and policy information

Creating a mobile strategy (August 16th) on our AdSense +page
Learn more about developing a mobile strategy and why it’s important to create a mobile site or app to accommodate your mobile users. Register by August 10th if you’re interested in joining our ‘Mobile Hangout’ on August 16th at 4pm GMT/8am PDT. In this Hangout we’ll look at:

• The importance of building a mobile site or app
• Mobile site best practices
• Where to find agencies that create a mobile site or app
• Mobile success stories from other publishers

Once you’ve registered for either of the Hangouts On Air, we’ll send you instructions on how to join the event.  We look forward to hanging out with you soon.

Posted by Dairine Kennedy - Mobile Team

Mobile Websites vs Responsive Design: What’s the right solution for your business?

The following post originally appeared on the Google Mobile Ads Blog.

As more of your competitors Go Mo, building a mobile-friendly site becomes more of a priority for your business. Over the past two years alone, mobile search traffic has increased five-fold. Customers are searching for your business from their mobile phones, and you need to engage them with a mobile experience designed for completing on-the-go tasks from their small screens. Recently many businesses have been asking us about an emerging trend among web developers—responsive design—and if they should use it. While we believe that building a separate mobile website is an appropriate solution for certain businesses, it’s also important to understand how responsive design might fit into your plans to Go Mo.

What is responsive design? It is a website design technique that allows you to create a single website that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. A site built with responsive design will automatically resize for different devices, but it is up to you to prioritize the content that matters most to the mobile user. For example, a mobile user might need to quickly find your phone number or directions, whereas a tablet user might want a simpler way to make couch-surfing purchases. A site built using responsive design could prioritize click-to-call and click-to-map buttons, while the tablet site would focus on simplifying the shopping cart. For the technical details on how responsive design works for building mobile-friendly sites, read this blog post from the Google webmaster team.

So how do I know if I should build a separate mobile website or use responsive design?
Here are some guidelines to help you decide what makes sense for your business:

If I decide responsive design is a better fit for my business, do I have to build my site from scratch?
Not necessarily. A sophisticated web developer might be able to adapt an existing site with responsive design, but there will still be costs in terms of time and budget.

Will a site built with responsive design have more than one URL?
No. A site built with responsive design will have the same URL for desktop, mobile and tablets. When building a separate mobile optimized site, typically there is a different mobile URL, but the users will be taken there automatically as long as your desktop site is enabled with the auto redirect code.

How much does it cost to use responsive design for mobile?
Prices vary across developers and agencies. We recommend reaching out to a developer and/or agency for help on getting started.

Responsive design can definitely minimize long term maintenance of your site, but many businesses can effectively connect with their customers with a separate mobile-friendly site. If you have the technical resources and a clear business need, then responsive design is a more advanced way to make your site mobile-friendly. No matter how you go about it, you need to ensure you are designing for mobile first, and engaging your customers when they're using their mobile phones to search for your business.

For additional resources on the value of mobile, testing your site and finding developers to help you build your mobile-friendly site, visit howtogomo.com.

Posted by Jessica Sapick, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Watch our latest Hangouts On Air to learn how to get started with DFP Small Business and Mobile

This past month we hosted two Hangouts on Air to help publishers get started with DFP Small Business and to create mobile websites using DudaMobile’s free mobile site builder. If you missed either Hangout, don’t worry -- we've included short recaps below, and you can watch the recordings at any time from our YouTube channel.

Getting started with DFP Small Business
If you’re thinking about using an ad server, just getting started using DFP or would like to learn some best practices you may have missed, then be sure to check out the video from our DFP Hangout.

In the video, DFP specialist Rishan first explains how an ad server works and the benefits it can provide to growing publishers. He then discusses orders, line items and your ad units, and the ideal way to set up each. Before closing, Rishan talks about the different ways to traffic direct ads versus other ad networks and enable dynamic allocation for non-guaranteed inventory.

Learning to build a mobile site
In our mobile Hangout, specialists from Google and our partner DudaMobile, work with Dan from ScienceDaily.com to build a mobile version of his website. You’ll learn about available resources and important questions to ask yourself when starting to ‘go mobile’ with your site and how to create mobile ads to monetize mobile traffic.

We hope you’ll join us for our future Hangouts -- be sure to stay connected with us by adding Google AdSense to your circles on Google+.

Posted by Jason Sanio - Inside AdSense Team

Mobile Mondays: Wrap up and SEO resources

As we wrap up the Mobile Monday series, we’d like to leave you with one final tip on improving search engine optimization (SEO) for your mobile site.

Although mobile may be a new space for you as a publisher, SEO for your mobile site should be as easy as creating your mobile site through the DudaMobile tool. That’s why we’ve consolidated resources from our Webmaster team to address common concerns around indexing content from your mobile site.


Read Google’s recommendations on building smartphone-optimized websites.

Watch this video to demystify the myth of mobile sites resulting in duplicate content.

Read this blog post for steps on how you can help Google index your mobile site.

If you missed any of our previous posts, here is a recap of the Mobile Mondays series, along with relevant mobile posts:

Is your site ready for mobile users?
Going Mobile - Why FindTheBest went mobile
Setting goals for mobile monetization
Mobile site or mobile app, what’s right for your business right now?
GoMo and DudaMobile offer a do-it-yourself mobile site builder
On Mobile, it’s as much about the user as it is the content
QLife receive 560% increase in mobile app revenue with Custom Search Ads
How to monetize your mobile friendly website

Also, don’t forget to check out the GoMo for Publishers webinar that will walk you through specific best practices on going mobile.

Posted by Tuyen Nguyen, Mobile Publisher Advocate, AdSense

‘Hangout on Air’ and learn how to build a mobile site in minutes

Did you know that 40% of mobile web users reported that they’ve turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience? With 44% of Americans owning a smartphone, publishers have the opportunity to meet their users’ expectations by delivering a mobile experience that’s on par with the desktop experience.

If you haven’t yet developed a mobile-optimized site, we’re here to help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!



Join us tomorrow, May 24th at 1pm ET/10am PT and watch as we showcase how ScienceDaily.com can use the mobile site builder to build a mobile-friendly site--live on air.

You’ll also hear from the CMO of DudaMobile, Dennis Mink; he’ll talk about best practices when using the mobile site builder and walk through important questions to ask yourself when building a mobile-friendly site.

Details on how to tune in

1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 24 at 1pm ET/10am PT
2. Go to the Google AdSense+ Page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them on Google+ with the hashtag #GoMoSite.

Posted by Joseph Corral, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

Join us at the AdSense GetMo Exhibition in London

We’ve talked a lot recently on our blog about how mobile usage is rising at a rate faster than any other technology to date. To keep up, it’s important for your business to develop a mobile strategy.

If you’re located in the London, UK area (or are willing to travel to London!) we’d like to let you know about the GetMo Exhibition we’re hosting on Wednesday, 30 May. During this event, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about mobile trends. You’ll meet mobile site developers from the GetMo site to hear how they can help you develop a mobile site with their offerings.

The agenda will feature sessions including:

• Mobile Industry Trends with Ian Carrrington, Mobile Advertising Sales Director
• A glimpse into the world of Android with Richard Hyndman, Developer Advocate
• Offerings available from GetMo vendors
• GetMo publisher panel

Spots are filling up, but if you’d like to attend the upcoming event, fill out our interest form before Thursday, 24 May. Although we won’t be able to accommodate all requests due to space constraints, we’ll do our best to include as many interested publishers as possible. We also recommend ensuring you’re opted in to receiving ‘Special Offer’ emails so we can reach you in the future.

We hope to see you in London at our GetMo Exhibition!

Posted by Marta Lysiak - AdSense Optimisation Team

Mobile Mondays: QLife receives 560% increase in mobile app revenue with Custom Search Ads

QLife is a leading hospital finder, drug database and health-care information website. QLife’s mobile application, “Medicine Search” is one of the biggest health-care applications in Japan. The app enables users to search for information on a range of medicines. QLife reached 2.5 million downloads of their app after the 3/11 Japan Earthquake, when Japanese consumers sought to pay greater care and attention to their family’s health-care.

Recently, QLife’s Executive Producer, Yoshimasa Mine spoke to us to describe why they choose to use Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications and AdMob mobile advertising, and shared some optimization best practices.

---

Why and when did QLife choose to start building a mobile application?

In 2008, when the iPhone was introduced to the Japanese market, there was a mobile industry event, Mobitec, where I felt the potential of high-end mobile. Mobile phones are a device that's always with a consumer, regardless of whether they're at home, at work, or at play. This was a good match with our business of providing a medicine search service - a search that is done instantly at a time of need.

Next, we took a look at our own company's data. We began to see large increases in traffic from mobile, even more than PCs. We wanted to build and encourage mobile activity to complement desktop traffic, particularly during holidays and weekends where we saw mobile traffic surging.


Why did you decide to monetize your mobile app using AdSense and AdMob?

We originally started using AdSense on our desktop site. As a health-care review site, we need to protect our objectivity and integrity to our users. As a result, advertising is the best solution for monetization, over paid reviews from other health-care services and companies.

We chose AdSense because of the quality of the ads, the content matching technology, and the limited number of sales resources we had internally.  Serving relevant ads is important to our business; we view ads as useful content for our business, and irrelevant ads have not been successful in bringing revenue to us.

We used to use only AdMob to monetize our application. But last year, when Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps was released, we decided to implement it for two reasons. First, we already used Custom Search Ads for our desktop site. Secondly, we’ve heard that using both Custom Search Ads and AdMob will increase CTR because Custom Search Ads will show more related ads in search results.  


What did you see as a result of implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps?
We’ve seen revenue from mobile increase by 560% after implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications. We’re seeing CTRs, CPCs, and RPMs maintain healthy levels in line with our internal benchmarks. Ad engagement tends to be higher with users who own our free app.

When we compare how these perform to our desktop site, we find that the mobile app generates lower CPCs but higher CTRs for us.To increase more app downloads, we are working hard to create high quality content to meet our user's needs. 

How long did it take to implement Custom Search Ads on mobile apps?
We took some time to implement Custom Search Ads on our app, since changes won’t go live until our users update their version of our app. It took us three to four days including the test period to implement this.

Could you share any publisher best practices you’ve found across using Custom Search Ads and AdMob?

1. Show Custom Search Ads on search result pages. Use AdMob on other content pages.
2. We also use the AdMob House priority level to serve direct ads to users.
3. With Custom Search Ads, you'll see a variation in the number of ads that show, depending on the amount of organic search results you're delivering.  We'll always place one ad above search results. We'll also choose to show another ad below when there are more than five search results. In doing so, we can maximize revenue while complying with the program policy, which permits only one ad per view.

What’s next for QLife?

We've found a lot of success with the medicine/health-care search and service business. We'd like to expand our business in a couple of new directions.

First, we're interested in growing our business as an app developer for the health-care and medical service sector. We saw good success with the consumer application, and so our reputation as a medical app developer has increased in the industry overall.

We're looking to take our app to new global markets. There is a need for a quality medical and health-care search service anywhere in the world. With a publisher solution like AdSense, we are excited to expand and monetize our business beyond our home market in Japan.

Finally, I’m excited to announce that we just launched a new iOS app, Find Clinic that seeks to help people easily find and access hospitals at home and abroad. We’ve implemented Custom Search Ads for mobile apps on Find Clinic as well, and look forward to seeing similar successes!

Posted by Tatsuo Sakamoto, Account Strategist

Mobile Mondays: On Mobile, it’s as much about the user as it is the content

For this Mobile Mondays post we’ve invited Netbiscuits to offer you best practices and tips for creating a good mobile experience for your users.  Netbiscuits is a leading cloud platform for the development and delivery of next generation web apps across all mobile devices and connected platforms.

Cultivating a user-focused mobile experience isn’t just about shrinking your existing website to fit a mobile screen. In a single day, a connected consumer interacts with your brand and consumes your content across smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and game consoles. To meet consumer demand for instant, optimized access, marketers must design engaging “connected experiences” that respond differently for each device as they each present unique size, capability, and content consumption challenges.

In solving these challenges, marketers need to focus on a responsive design that takes the multiplatform world into account and allows for a device-optimized “Content Centric” user experience. The layout should morph depending on the size and shape of the device’s screen ensuring the experience adapts as new devices are introduced in the marketplace.

Touch enabled devices have evolved the digital user experience by providing users with a “Parallel Response Experience” to their request as opposed to a “Sequential Response Experience” found in a traditional “Point and Click” mobile user experience.  Designing a “Parallel” mobile experience with many touch enabled features ensures a more natural flow of information which  dramatically increases site effectiveness. For example, instead of re-using a traditional website interface, many mobile commerce clients use a drag and drop interface for placing items in a shopping cart which has greatly increased sales on touch enabled devices.

Along with the design layout, responsive design must adapt a content centric approach to the user experience. Your users must be served content based on the topics for which they have shown interest as well as based on time of day, weather, or geographic location. A system remembering the items in your shopping cart has been an essential element of a cohesive e-commerce experience for some time. But this concept can be expanded upon by associating a broader range of content to the individual that results in the serving of an article that interested the customer earlier in the day or weather information for an upcoming trip. To foster a good user experience, this needs to be done in a streamlined, accurate manner that limits clutter.

One of the more challenging attributes of going mobile is the varying screen sizes of tablets and smartphones. When it comes to tablets, we advise clients to take a layered approach to designing and delivering a “one-page” experience. By embedding or layering a video or photo gallery on top of a page, consumer engagements and actions happen without forcing the user to leave the page.

Being responsive to the user’s device and serving appropriate content is done by using analytics. The insights gleaned from mobile, including device models, screen resolution, device capability, service provider, and preferred user language cannot be matched by traditional marketing activities. Compared against geographic location, savvy marketers use this data to define product offerings and regionalize discounts.

Once you understand these strategic points, you should also keep in mind these simple best practices:

• Mobile is not a channel. Mobile is an integrated solution where CMS, CRM and commerce updates should occur at the same time and in the same systems as updates to your traditional website.  
• Research! Engage your team, friends and family to get insights on how they use their mobile devices. Conduct a competitive analysis to learn how your competitors illustrate and deliver their product and services. 
• Design your site to solve the main problems or situations customers might find themselves in. Consider what features, tasks or existing site elements translate best on mobile and implement them.
• And finally, don’t simply duplicate your traditional website. Consumers want and expect a different experience on mobile.

Posted by Craig Besnoy, Managing Director, The Americas, Netbiscuits

Visit Netbiscuits.com to learn more about the Netbiscuits platform.

Mobile Mondays: GoMo and DudaMobile offer a do-it-yourself mobile site builder

An important first step to attracting customers on-the-go is to create a mobile-friendly website which can sometimes be complicated and confusing. We’re happy to announce that GoMo and DudaMobile have joined forces to make it even easier for small businesses to create a mobile-friendly website.

You can create a free mobile site directly from howtogomo.com using a tool powered by DudaMobile. This do-it-yourself site builder, customized specifically for GoMo users, easily converts regular websites into mobile-friendly sites in five simple steps. And it allows you to add features like a click-to-call button, mobile maps and Google AdSense. Sites that are created with the GoMo-DudaMobile tool will be hosted free for one year.

Here’s a before and after screenshot of Dog Nanny’s site.

Dog Nanny’s website was not mobile friendly. Visitors had to pinch and zoom to read content.

Dog Nanny’s new mobile site - created in just a few minutes - looks great on mobile devices.

Please note that DudaMobile’s technology is best for converting simple sites. If your site uses a lot of Flash content, framesets or e-commerce, we suggest that you Go Mobile by talking to your agency or working with one of our suggested developers.

Many small businesses are discovering that mobile sites mean more business. Now you have an opportunity to easily create a professional mobile site which will delight your customers when they visit you on the mobile web. Visit howtogomo.com/getstarted and build your site today.  It’s time to GoMo!

Posted by Nabil Haschemie, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Mobile Mondays: Mobile site or mobile app, what’s right for your business right now?

Last month, we talked about why the time has come to mobilize your site and nurture what is most likely your fastest growing audience -- your mobile users. We also launched our GoMo initiative to help you get started. If you've started thinking about going mobile, chances are you've asked yourself whether you should create a mobile site, a mobile app, or even both.  The answer depends entirely on the needs of your business.

One thing to note — for web publishers, the best mobile strategy is rarely a “one or the other” choice between mobile sites and mobile apps.  Mobile sites are cheaper and less complex.  Many web publishers have elected to build mobile sites as their first foray into mobile, and the question becomes:  do I need to invest further in mobile and build a mobile app?  Below are a few questions to consider as you decide whether a mobile app is right for your business.

Who are your users?
Find out how users are currently accessing your content using the Platforms report on the Performance reports tab in your AdSense account. Understanding the devices your users are accessing your site from will help you tailor your content to provide them with the best mobile experience.  For example, if most of your visitors are coming from feature phones, then a smartphone app wouldn't do them any good.

How do you want users to access your content?
Connectivity matters. A mobile site requires users to have data access, while apps can allow the user to cache your content to consume at a later moment. Tourist information and maps are great examples of content that is extremely useful when downloaded and cached on a mobile device for later consumption.

How do you want users to interact with your content?
Mobile devices allow you to design a unique user experience with your content.  Mobile apps allow you to tap into native phone features that don’t exist on a desktop browser such as GPS, accelerometers, embedded cameras, etc.  While more of these device features are becoming available via HTML5 libraries on newer devices, mobile apps still offer the most robust suite of options for accessing mobile specific features.

How quickly do you want to make changes to your content?
Updates to mobile sites are instantaneous. Depending on the change you want to make, some app stores may require you to resubmit your app, which will then require the users to take action in updating the app package on their mobile devices.

What development and budget constraints exist?
Understanding your in-house capabilities and resources is crucial in making development choices. Without in-house capabilities to develop mobile assets, you’ll have to consider development and upkeep costs. In addition, you’ll only need to develop one mobile site, while apps require cross platform assets and skills to maintain. As with any other worthwhile investment, this should not be a set-it-and-forget-it project. Be sure to iterate often to keep the user experience fresh.

Finally, consider who will be responsible for further development and whether you’ll need to hire another head to maintain this new asset. Answering all of these questions above will help you to make the right decision for your business and your users.

Posted by Tuyen Nguyen - Mobile Publisher Advocate

Mobile Mondays: Going Mobile - Why FindTheBest went mobile

For our second post in the Mobile Mondays series, we’ve invited Grace Nasri of FindtheBest to share her company’s experience in going mobile.  Read last week’s post to learn about setting mobile goals.

Mobile is rising at a rate much faster than any other technology to date. Last year at Google’s Think Mobile Event, Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker said the pace and force of mobile growth was unlike anything seen previously and Google’s Dennis Woodside predicted, “mobile will create the largest technology market ever. This market will dwarf the PC and all the PC industry has done.”

Seeing this global trend toward mobile, realizing that large segments of potential consumers only have access to mobile devices, and knowing that about 60% of time spent on smartphones is spent engaging in new activities—meaning potentially new customers— we at FindTheBest decided to launch a mobile-optimized version of our site.

FindTheBest is a data-driven comparison engine, and we launched our mobile site in January after realizing there was a large segment of potential customers we weren’t able to effectively reach. Before launching the mobile site, mobile visitors were 12% more likely to bounce and viewed 27% less pages than desktop visitors.

FindTheBest has gone mobile, and has been rewarded with a 3.5x increase in mobile revenue.

However, designing a mobile site doesn’t come without challenges and we had to consider three main issues:

1. While traditional desktops offer a lot of real estate, mobile devices are more limited in terms of space.
2. Desktops and laptops have faster Internet connections than mobile devices.
3. Mobile devices are primarily touch-based, which requires an entirely different user interface.

How FindTheBest went mobile

We hired a mobile expert to design our mobile site. Several decisions needed to be factored in to guarantee the best user experience, as users who visit mobile sites that don’t offer a great UX often leave a site and go to a competitor site. Since we offer a diverse amount of information presented in a range of ways on the traditional site, we had to limit what it would include in the mobile version. We took into consideration questions like, “What are the most relevant filters that need to be included?” and narrowed the data fields on each comparison’s search results page to only the top three most important ones. Similarly, we made design considerations to ensure users could access the information they needed within three taps and that the pages loaded quickly over 3G networks.

After developing and designing the mobile site, we were able to take some of our findings and apply it to the main site.

The Results: Increased customers and ad revenue for FindTheBest and its partners

Currently, 25% of our customers are accessing the site through mobile devices. While traffic to FindTheBest is rising by about 15-20% month-over-month, the percentage of mobile users accessing FindTheBest is rising by 25%.

Between January 2011 and January 2012, the total number of visits to FindTheBest has grown by 3X, while the number of visits from mobile alone has grown 7X. The week after launching the mobile version, visits from mobile devices increased 28% (as compared to 19% for non-mobile visits). Our user engagement has also significantly increased as page views per mobile visit increased by more than 15%--which reaffirmed the benefit of optimizing for mobile.

The mobile site has also translated into more ad revenue for us. After launching the mobile site, our ad revenue from mobile devices increased 3.5X. The benefits of having a mobile-optimized site have also carried over to our publisher partners, which currently include TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Android Authority.

What’s Next?

We constantly analyze user behavior and continue to optimize the mobile site accordingly. We’re currently researching ways to include responsive design technologies into the site, so that the mobile and desktop code bases can be merged into one. Maintaining multiple code bases is time consuming, but we believe this is the future and will be worth the investment.

Posted by Grace Nasri, Managing Editor at FindTheBest

Mobile Mondays: Setting goals for mobile monetization

This is the first post in our ‘Mobile Mondays’ series. Throughout the next couple of months we'll highlight best practices to help you get the most from your mobile content. From time to time, we’ll also share stories directly from publishers who have recently gone mobile.

We recently announced our 11 billionth app download from Android Play. Given the consumer movement towards the small screen, it’s important to consider how much of this consumed media was created specifically for mobile. Once you’ve successfully taken your business mobile, you can capitalize on this with some key optimization steps. Below, we’ll outline ways you can get the most out of your mobile content. Before any optimization can take place, you’ll need a clear view of your business goals on mobile.

The importance of goals
There are no rules around mobile strategies, but mobile businesses need clearly defined goals  in order to be successful. If you’re an online-only publisher, your goals might revolve around engagement and visits. If you have location-specific content, you may want to incorporate local elements into your mobile offering. Your business goals should align with the needs of your users.

Prioritization is a key element in goal-setting. You might think that all publishers have acquisition goals around new users prioritized most highly -- after all, who wouldn’t want to reach new audiences? Consider a mobile forum and message board website. They’ll want new users discovering and using their online discussion site, but this should occur organically if their existing user base creates discussions with sufficient breadth and depth. In this instance, it could be beneficial for the forum owners to focus on website optimization (driving engagement), rather than new user acquisition.

With these possible goals in mind, here are some tips to help you optimize your content for a mobile audience:

Goal #1: Drive traffic and new customer acquisition

• Cross-promotion: This is an easy and cost-effective way to leverage your existing user base to drive users to your mobile site.
• Advertising: Mobile website optimization now factors into mobile search ads quality. To find out more about advertising on mobile devices, visit our Mobile Ads site.
• Localize: China, Korea, Japan, and the U.S. represent some of the biggest markets for mobile media consumption. Track your usage in regions and consider building out a localized app for regions where it's most popular. 
• Create new, unique mobile content for new mobile audiences. Men’s Health understood that their target audience used smartphones in the gym to listen to music. As a result, they created a mobile app with workout exercises -- handy for when their users have the phone with them in the gym.

Goal #2: Drive engagement

• Website optimization: If one of your goals is to retain users who want access to content on-the-go, use Google Analytics to help you choose the most effective content for your site. A recent survey (Omniture, 2010) found that Mobile- friendly web experiences have produced an average 75% higher rate of engagement (revenue, page views, etc.) per visit for mobile users, than desktop websites viewed through a mobile device.
• Brand engagement: Make use of the extended functionality of a mobile device (GPS, Camera, SMS).

Goal #3: Maximize revenue

• When designing a mobile-optimized site, it’s key to focus on the overall user experience and what you want to achieve as a publisher. This is especially true if your core business model is built around advertising revenue or if it’s a strong contributor of profit. Consider the type of ad units and formats that you plan to incorporate, which will help you make the most of monetization opportunities without compromising content. To find out more, download our publisher guide or our Android app to explore the range of our mobile ad formats.

We’ve placed “publisher goals” into three categories using broad brush strokes above. In reality, it’s unlikely your ambitions will be as narrow in scope. We hope you’ll be able to pick an optimization step (or a combination of steps) tailored to your particular site.

Posted by Robbie Wetherell, Mobile Publisher Advocate

Watch the recorded GoMo for Publishers videos to learn how to mobilize your site

As part of Google’s ongoing GoMo initiative, we hosted a live webinar a few weeks ago to help publishers learn the benefits of creating mobile-friendly sites, hear tips and case studies, and tap into new resources to get started. If you missed it, no problem! You can watch the recorded video or download the slides below.

Watch this webinar to learn:

1. Why go mobile?
Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit.
2. Tips for building mobile sites   
Mobile is different.  Learn 10 practical tips for building engaging, uniquely mobile experiences.
3. Best practices in action
Hear from web publisher FindTheBest about the success they’ve seen from going mobile.
4. How to get started
Google is here to help. Learn about tools we’ve created to get you started on the path to delighting
your users and maximizing your mobile revenue.

Interested in learning more? Watch the recorded webinar and download the slides.

Posted by Tuyen Nguyen - Mobile Publisher Advocate

Upcoming webinar on March 22nd: “GoMo for publishers”

Did you know: 8 in 10 consumers instantly abandon a mobile site if the experience isn’t up to par?¹  Mobile consumers have high expectations from content publishers today. With Google mobile searches growing 400% in the last two years, it’s increasingly important for publishers to satisfy the needs of a mobile user by building a mobile-friendly site.  That’s why we recently launched GoMo for publishers, which brings publishers a new set of tools to help build mobile-friendly websites.  

Join Google on Thursday, March 22nd at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET, to discuss why it’s imperative to build for mobile and delight your fastest growing audience.  We’ll show you all the tools you need to get you ready to go mobile. Sign up today and learn... 

1. Why go mobile? 
• Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit.
2. 10 tips for building mobile sites   
• Mobile is different. Learn 10 practical tips for building engaging, uniquely mobile experiences.
3. Best practices in action   
• Hear from web publisher FindTheBest about the success they have seen from going mobile.
4. How to get started  
• Google is here to help. Learn about tools we’ve created to get you started on the path to delighting your users and maximizing your mobile revenue.

Sign up for the webinar today.  We look forward to seeing you on March 22th!

Posted by Joseph Corral, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Source (1) Limelight Networks, Inc. 2011

Is your site ready for your mobile users?

Last December, we posted about the massive shift to mobile we’ve seen in your users over the past two years.  Still, 4 out of 5 online publishers don’t have a mobile-optimized website, and they risk losing their fastest-growing audience.  Today, we’re launching a new suite of tools at howtogomo.com to help publishers build mobile-friendly websites.

To help demonstrate the potential of creating a mobile-friendly site, we’d like to share the story of AdSense publisher Baby Gaga.  Two weeks after launching their mobile-friendly website they saw a 64% increase in mobile visits. This leading destination for educational materials and social support for pregnant women also saw an 82% increase in mobile page views and a 50% increase in revenue from mobile (full case study).

Today Baby Gaga’s mobile users don’t need to squint and they view more pages per visit.

Visit howtogomo.com today to:

1. See how you rate.  Use the GoMoMeter to analyze your site’s mobile user experience.
2. Start planning.  Download the GoMo Publisher Guide for mobile best practices.
3. Find a partner.  Learn about vendors who can help with implementation.

As mobile continues to take off, we believe it's important for publishers to develop a strong mobile strategy now and make the most of this new opportunity. Baby Gaga’s decision to go mobile allowed them to improve the user experience for their mobile visitors and also make more money.  We want to help you do the same.  In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing additional materials to assist you in this process, so stay tuned to Inside AdSense for further announcements!

Posted by Chris LaSala, Director, Strategic Partner Development, Mobile

How to monetize your mobile-friendly website

In our previous blog post we talked about how to create a mobile-friendly website. Now we’d like to show you how to best monetize your mobile site with AdSense Mobile product offerings.

AdSense for Mobile Content
AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile web pages using targeted Google ads. Below are some key features.

• Contextual targeting ensures ads match the content of your mobile site.
• Google advertisers bid directly for your mobile inventory.
• Mobile-specific ad formats are optimized for the small screen.

For mobile websites, AdSense automatically detects the type of phone viewing your site and delivers ads to match. For example, if someone views your site through a high-end smartphone, we'll deliver mobile ads specifically designed for the device’s full HTML browser.

It’s important to note that AdSense for mobile content ad units are meant to be used in mobile websites and not mobile applications - as noted in our policies. If you’re looking for an advertising solution for your mobile application, sign up for AdMob.

Custom Search Ads for Mobile 

If you currently use Custom Search Ads for your desktop, we’re happy to let you know that publishers can now also apply to use this feature on mobile sites and apps. Custom Search Ads for Mobile are highly targeted ads that are based on user queries from a mobile website.

These ads typically monetize at a high rate and publishers are able to customize the look and feel of the ads to best integrate with the user experience on the page. The ads can be fixed to the frame or scroll along with the results.

If you're already an AdSense publisher and want to get started with ads on your mobile site, you’ll find the Mobile Content button under the ‘My Ads’ tab. If you're not a publisher yet, sign up.

Posted by Anja Kuncic, AdSense Optimization Specialist

Create a mobile-friendly website

Did you know that there will be a mobile device for every person on earth by 2015, and that mobile searches have grown by 4x since 2010¹? That means that every day more and more of your users are looking for your content…on mobile devices. What’s their experience like? Can they easily read what’s on the screen without pinching and zooming? Do you have links that are difficult to click instead of user-friendly navigation buttons?

61% of users are unlikely to return to a site that isn’t mobile friendly². It’s important to remember that even if users can see a website on a smartphone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the site is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. Your users are going mobile as we speak, and so the most important thing you can do to grow your business using the mobile web is to create a mobile-friendly website.

Here are ten tips to help you design a mobile-friendly site:

1. Keep it quick - Design your site to load fast and make copy easy to scan
2. Simplify navigation - Create clear navigation and search functionalities
3. Be thumb-friendly - Design your site so any size hand can easily interact with it
4. Design for visibility - Make it easy for your customers to read
5. Make it accessible - Mobile sites should work across all mobile devices
6. Make it easy to convert - Create clear ways for your users to make purchases or contact you
7. Make it local - Consumers look for local info on their phones all the time
8. Make it seamless - Convert as much of the functionality of your desktop site to mobile
9. Use mobile site redirects - Ensure that visitors who visit your website from a mobile device are redirected to your mobile-friendly site
10. Listen, learn and iterate - Make testing and optimization an ongoing process

To review a detailed set of these best practices, download a copy of the 10 Mobile Site Best Practices. Visit howtogomo.com to explore actual mobile site examples of each best practice and use the GoMoMeter to see how your site is faring on mobile*.



Finally, take a look at Google Sites for Mobile Landing Pages*, a free and easy-to-use tool that enables you to build mobile pages.

¹Gartner, 2010; Google Internal Data, 2011; Cisco, 2011
²Compuware and Brand Anywhere and Luth Research
*Note: These resources are currently only available in English, but will be available in other languages shortly.

Posted by Dairine Kennedy, AdSense Mobile Specialist