Analytics Blog: Mobile App Analytics Updates And Public Beta Launc...

Admob & Google Analytics
With ever-expanding mobile application marketplaces (more than 600,000 apps on Google Play at the time of writing) and a shift in focus to mobile (more than 80 percent of marketers are planning to increase emphasis in mobile initiatives in 2013, according to recent research we conducted with ClickZ) measuring mobile is more important now than ever. With this, we are excited to be movingGoogle Analytics Mobile App Analytics (initially launched at I/O) out of closed and into open beta. We’ve listened to feedback from more than 5,000 mobile app developers during the closed beta, improved the product, and are now making it available to all developers and marketers. 

Analytics Blog: Mobile App Analytics Updates And Public Beta Launc...: With ever-expanding mobile application marketplaces (more than 600,000 apps on Google Play at the time of writing) and a shift in focus to

Google Mobile Ads Blog: Get local in time for the holidays and beyond

Google Mobile Ads Blog: Get local in time for the holidays and beyond:
This 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.

Mobile Advertising Ecosystem Explained

We are in the post-PC era, and soon billions of consumers will be carrying around Internet-connected mobile devices for up to 16 hours a day. Mobile audiences have exploded as a result.

Mobile advertising should be a bonanza, similar to online advertising a decade ago. However, it has been a bit slow off the ground, and its growth trajectory is not clear cut.

Read more

Inside AdSense: Social Fridays: See how your content was shared on...

Inside AdSense: Social Fridays: See how your content was shared on...: Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check ...

With Ripples, you can now see how your public content was reshared over time on Google+, and what users were saying about it. To try it out, just find a public post and select ‘View Ripples’ from the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the post. You’ll see a number of circles that each correspond to a user that has reshared your content, and inside the circle you’ll see the people who have reshared the link from that person (and so on). Circles are roughly sized based on the relative influence of that person -- so the larger a person’s circle is, the more reshares have resulted from their original reshare. 

Google Chrome Blog: Always getting faster

Google Chrome Blog: Always getting faster: Every time you launch Chrome, you see the same simple browser window. What you may not know is that things are changing under the hood every...

Inside Search: Spiffing up your search results page

Inside Search: Spiffing up your search results page: You’ll notice a new simpler, cleaner design on the search results page — we’ve been working on ways to create a consistent search experience...

Google Chrome Blog: One click to Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Google Chrome Blog: One click to Docs, Sheets, and Slides: Google Drive is a place where you can create, share, collaborate and keep all your stuff. Of course, there are times you want to start a new...

Analytics Blog: Announcing Enhanced Link Attribution for In-Page A...

Analytics Blog: Announcing Enhanced Link Attribution for In-Page A...: In-Page Analytics provides click-through data in the context of your actual site, and is a highly effective tool to analyze your site pages...

Mobilizing the Web

 Gives a Lots Of Opportunities

Mobile web is the accessing of the internet via wireless devices such as smart phones and tablet computers.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, the mobile access to the internet exceeded desktop computer based access for the first time in 2008. This phenomenal success of the mobile web is in part due to the smart phone revolution and the advent of the tablet computers.

Smart phones are equipped with multicore processors and come with various input options such as touch screens, accelerometers, GPS receivers etc. These coupled with modern mobile operating systems make a solid platform for accessing the internet.

In the beginning, mobile web comprised lightweight web pages which were optimised for smaller screens and lower resolutions and written in Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language (XHTML) or Wireless Markup Language (WML). Because of this this, the mobile browsing experience was never even close to that on a computer. But with the progress in technology which enabled for faster mobile processors and better mobile browsers, modern mobile devices are moving beyond these limitations by supporting a wider range of Web formats, including variants of HTML commonly found on the desktop Web.

Advertisers have realized the potential of mobile web and are increasingly using it as a platform to reach consumers. In 2007 the total value of mobile advertising was estimated to be in excess of 2 billion dollars. This fact in itself speaks volumes about the growing size and weight of the mobile web.

The major problems with the mobile web faces is the fragmentation of platforms and the resulting lack of standards. The development of standards is one approach being implemented to improve the interoperability, usability, and accessibility issues surrounding mobile web usage.

The Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) is a new initiative set up by the W3C to develop best practices and technologies relevant to the Mobile Web. The goal of the initiative is to make browsing the Web from mobile devices more reliable and accessible. The main aim is to evolve standards of data formats from Internet providers that are tailored to the specifications of particular mobile devices. The W3C has published guidelines for mobile content, and is actively addressing the problem of device diversity by establishing a technology to support a repository of device descriptions.

Many of the technologies which were once considered to be a part of the computers have literally moved "out of the box". The way digital music has almost totally moved from computers to iPods, internet seems to be moving towards the mobile devices. After all its much more convenient to have all the web in the palm of your hands than to have it sitting on the top of your table! This is opening new frontiers and is nothing less than a complete revolution in its own.

Apps Dominate Mobile Time Spent Accessing Travel in U.S. August 29, 2012 As the summer travel season comes to a close, Nielsen looked at the usage of travel-related mobile apps and websites during June 2012. Findings showed that U.S. Android and iOS users spent 95 percent of their time accessing travel information from travel apps, versus only 5 percent from the mobile Web. This discrepancy was largely driven by Google Maps—the top Travel category app and mobile website during June—which accounted for 78 percent of all mobile time spent on Travel. Americans’ decision on whether to open an app or their mobile Web browser depends on the type of travel information they seek. The Cruise Lines category was exclusively accessed through the mobile Web, while 98 percent of time spent browsing map/navigation information was through an app. The Travel Destinations/Theme Parks category seemed to have the most balanced usage among smartphone owners, as 54 percent of time spent was through an app and 46 percent via mobile Web. Read More.

Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

Mobile Web

The mobile revolution is sailing ahead at full steam, and your customers are on board. Embracing mobile can help you win the moments that matter, make better decisions, and go bigger faster, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Consumer gets new tools to help their shopping path, you get new tools in your marketing path

Consumers can now use smart-phones and tablets to interact with businesses 24/7, from anywhere - at home, at work, on a bus. And companies that embrace this always-on behavior -  can disrupt entire industries. 

Read more at Internet Marketing

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing Google+ to work

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing Google+ to work: Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director, Google Apps On the Google Apps team, we wake up every day excited to work on products t...

Comparing Tablets

Comparing A look at the new Microsoft ‘Surface’ tablet compared to the third-generation Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy tablet. Which would you go for - if you didn't already own one? (assumptions made that you do or have thought about a particular model)

From Reuters

Mobile social networking is good news for startups on web.

The majority of consumers worldwide will soon have smartphones. Smartphones are about the most important thing to happen to social networking since Harvard sent its acceptance letter to Mark Zuckerberg.
Smartphones know where you are, who your friends are, who's nearby, and soon thanks to NFC, they'll know what you're buying and where. They are the key element of the next, mobile phase is social networking.

Facebook is the power hitter in social networking today, and is likely to drive the most activity and a fair share of the innovation in social networking in 2012. But it's not the only company driving things forward. Google+, Twitter and Linkedin is also in this business.

Facebook is serious about mobile social networking, but it is not the leader in this space in terms of design or technology. Smaller companies, like Path and Milk (with its first app, Oink) are coming out with new takes on mobile interaction. Square could play in this economy as well. All these services will likely use Facebook's network to put people or businesses or in touch with each other in new ways. More specialized mobile networks (really riders on top of Facebook) will appear this year.

A Rumor sad that Facebook will go Into Mobile Ads by End of March 2012.

Facebook plans its first push into mobile advertising by the end of March, giving the company a fresh source of revenue ahead of a possible initial public offering, two people with knowledge of the matter said. An idea being considered is putting Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ads, which feature friends’ interactions with brands, within the mobile News Feed, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The News Feed lets users view status updates, photos and other content.

Facebook, which boasts more than 800 million users, is increasing its focus on mobile technology, aiming to take advantage of the shift to smartphones and tablets. The company expects its next 1 billion users to come mainly from mobile devices, rather than desktop computers. More than 350 million users already access Facebook through their mobile devices, according to the site. Read more:

Go Mobile

Mobile is delivering on its promise at the moment. The technology is in place and people are engaging in droves, on smartphones in particular. but many businesses still hasen't started walking the mobile road yet. Most have not yet meaningfully engaged with mobile consumers and adapted their strategies to capitalize on the mobile opportunity. But, not too late. Here are some steps that businesses should take today to build the foundation of their mobile marketing and commerce strategy.

Thinking Local
Mobile searches have more ‘intent’; but what does that mean? It’s a way of saying that when people are looking for information on a mobile device they intend to act on it fast. Mobile users search for information because they want to take action. After looking up a local business on their smart phone, 61% of users have called the business and 59% have visited. Because of this, location is exceptionally relevant to mobile users, and should be especially important to marketers. If people intend to act fast on the information they find on mobile, they’re more likely to take action somewhere near their locations. So,as a business, to try to reach a mobile consumer, understanding geo-targeted advertising campaigns and products is critical.

You need a mobile specific site
That giv's your conumers a great mobile experience when they visit your site on their mobile phone. And what’s a mobile specific site? It’s a website that’s been designed specifically for a smartphone, and it prioritizes what’s important for a user on the go, it features elements that are easy to see and interact with.
A mobile optimized site isn’t a desktop optimized site. In fact, it may be just the opposite: websites that look great on the desktop may be illegible, or require endless zooming-in, or may not work at all on mobile. The mobile web is not a smaller, portable version of the desktop web. When designing a mobile site, think as a customer. Make site navigation easier, put key action-items front and center, and build for the on.the.go user. Think about the mobile behavior of your customers and design for it.

Be more ‘Personal’
200 million videos are viewed every day on Mobile YouTube, an increase of over 3x from last year.65 million minutes (over 125 years!) of Angry Birds games are played every day on mobile. We’re glued to our mobile devices, and engaged like we’ve never been before. There’s an opportunity to connect with consumers in ways that are both special, and only possible, because they’re on mobile.

Track your mobile site
The web looks and feels different on a mobile device and people engage with it differently, at different moments of the day, and often with different objectives. Google sees a 50% spike in usage on weekends for Google Maps for mobile and in general, mobile engagement increases in the evenings and on weekends, when people are away from their desks, or on the go. So, mobile is distinct from desktop; your mobile site tracking should be distinct as well. When you separate your desktop and mobile website data, you’ll better understand the users visiting your site, what phones they have, and what actions they are taking. You can then use this data to optimize your website and improve it, along with your campaigns.

Iterate
We’re in the earliest chapters of mobile’s history. Change is in the air and hopefully will be for a long time. Just remember, before 2007, the iPhone didn’t yet exist, and neither did Android handsets, or any app marketplaces. The rate of change in mobile over the last five years is astounding and you need to have a fast development cycle to stay ahead of that change. The tactics and strategies that work today may be very different from what works months, or even weeks from now.

Marketing in Google+

Convert to mobile websites

If you convert a traditional website into a mobile version, it’s important to make sure a number of things happen:

Auto-Detect Mobile Phones. Mobile-friendly websites automatically detect that users are on a mobile device and then display the appropriate version of the site.

Clear Calls to Action. The most important features of the site should be the at the top of the page and should include clear calls to actions.

Avoid Mobile-Unfriendly Elements. The design should avoid mobile-unfriendly elements such as Flash, large images, video, and complex layouts.

Fluidity. Design with a fluid layout that will gracefully adapt to a range of typical mobile screen resolutions.

Touch Interface. Touch screens don’t have hover states — it’s all about fingers tapping, so don’t build a site that requires users to move their mouse over menus or other elements. Also, make sure links and other clickable elements are big enough to tap with a fingertip.

Scrolling. Limit scrolling to one direction — the site should only scroll vertically. Having to manage a page that scrolls horizontally and vertically is difficult to navigate.

One Window. Avoid pop-ups and new windows. A user’s entire experience should take place in a single window.

Use Alt Tags. Sometimes images won’t load, either because of issues with the mobile browser or because a user’s connection is too slow. Always include descriptive alt tags for images, in case they don’t appear.

Simple Navigation. Simplify your navigation. Typically, a site’s traditional navigation is too complex for a mobile site.

Clean Code. Most desktop web browsers allow a lot of leeway when rendering HTML and will usually display a site correctly, even if the code has flaws. Mobile browsers usually have less room for error, so there is an added value to having clean, simple code.

Label Forms. Some modern websites embed form labels inside the form field. On mobile, it’s much more difficult to keep track of the fields, and users often make use of “next/previous” buttons built into they keyboard. Without clear labels alongside the form fields, it might be impossible to know what information is supposed to be in which field.

Escape Hatch. Sometimes users just need to use your normal site. If possible, always have a link back to the original, unoptimized site.

It all comes down to leveraging design and technology to keep things simple, clean, fast to load and easy to digest on the go.

Local Now Accounts for 40 Percent of Mobile Searches, according to Google, “Distance” Now an AdWords Ranking Variable.

Google announced new mobile ad-units along with some interesting new stats in regards to mobile search.
According to the company, 40% of all mobile searches coming to Google are local in nature at this point, which continues to trend upward.  As such, the search giant also announced that “physical location,” or the proximity of a local business to a user’s location will become a targeting variable when serving ads to mobile users.

The new AdWords ranking variable that takes into account a user’s location is good news for local businesses and retailers as it aims to drive more relevant foot traffic at lower costs.  Local businesses will need to use Location Extensions to take advantage of the new location targeting, and the smartphone user will need to be opted-in to share their location for location proximaty to kick in.

Custom Search Ads for apps: will appear when users search within apps for content. Search ads now can be integrated into apps, which wasn’t available previously.

Click to Download ads: will direct users to download areas in Android Market or iTunes app store.

Mobile App Extensions: these ads can direct people to specific apps or pages within apps already on their phones.

Circulars (not limited to mobile): these are more graphically rich ads that contain product images, pricing and deals/offers. Google says, “When someone clicks on a search or display ad (on desktop, mobile or tablet devices), they may see these engaging ads which contain photos of relevant products and special offers.”

Here’s Google’s example: “If someone searches for sneakers on a mobile device, they might see an ad that takes them directly into a cool shopping app they’ve installed on their phone.” It’s not clear what happens if the app isn’t on the user’s phone already.

Marketing on smartphones

Before smartphones arrived, much of mobile advertising was limited to small text links on WAP sites, opt-in mobile messaging, or ad banners too small for the mobile user to read and much less be impressed by. Standardization was difficult or impossible becauce of the many different devices, and mobile advertising was subject to a scale problem much worse than the one experienced by web advertising in its early days. Not only because ad units couldn't be effectively standardized, but also because the technology used by each carrier was different -- further compounded by the notion that two handsets might have the same carrier, but might also have a completely different set of capabilities and enabling technologies fueling how they worked. On top of this, many people looked to their mobile phones primarily as interpersonal communication devices, not as content consumption devices.
So it's no wonder the mobile web wasn't the huge game-changer we thought it might be.

Smartphones arrived. Apple has half the market. I've had my iPhone 3G for several months now and still love it, even though it can't handle email as well as my BlackBerry did. With Apple holding 50 percent share in the smartphone market, we might see a scalable solution coming our way. The problem is that mass marketers won't likely understand that people still see phones largely as an interpersonal communication device, less so as a content consumption device.

Many iPhone apps are free. I do occasionally check the weather, the stock market, and use the Safari web browser to access content. More often, though, I'm using Twitterific to tweet from the road, using Facebook's mobile app to approve friend requests and upload mobile photos, or making use of location-based services like Loopt.

Many mass marketers would like to think that mobile devices will simply replace desktops and notebooks for web browsing, but that's not what is going to happen. If we are going to figure out a way to use smartphones as a marketing channel, we can't think it's just web advertising on a small screen. While it is true that mobile web browsing is on the rise, and that the iPhone can surf the web more elegantly than any mobile device that came before it, the truth of the matter is that mobile applications are increasingly being used to enable interpersonal communications rather than to provide brand platforms in the vein of mass media.

There's always room for mobile apps that provide content, but the ones that will scale quickly and will integrate more closely into the lives of people who download them will be the ones that provide utility and community, not straight content. So, if you're looking to make smartphones a viable channel for your brand, you need to branch out beyond content distribution and into mobile utility and community.

Go Mobile With your Marketing

Mobile advertising is growing fast. With the gradual introduction of sophisticated new technologies, marketers are beginning to track results and manage mobile metrics in ways similar to those used online. Opportunities abound for creating new channels of profitability when based on measurability and accountability.
Understanding the unique potential and the proven power of the mobile platform - as well as its limitations, can improve performance and allow mobile advertising to become a significant layer in the marketing mix.

What You Need to Know
There are a number of issues that should be considered once the decision has been made to begin advertising via mobile, in order to increase the success in mobile marketing. Here are a few things that result-based marketers should do when planning a mobile campaign.

There Is A Vast New Markets
There are global markets where mobile phones are commonplace and often used instead of landlines and where the amount of traffic is vast and rapidly growing. Marketers should take advantage of the reach and potential of these relatively untapped and unsaturated markets. Advertising costs are often significantly lower than in other parts of the world and, at the moment, there is considerably less competition.

The Process Should Be Short
Less time and less hassle translate into more conversions. This is especially true in the mobile realm, where campaign success depends on keeping the advertising process as short as possible. Unlike stationary PC users, mobile device users are constantly on the go. They can be exposed to an ad anywhere, at any time, in an endless variety of situations and occasions. Not less important, mobile screens are considerably smaller than PC screens.
Given these limitations, in order to successfully attract the user’s attention, messages (both on the creative and the landing pages) need to be short, precise and effective. The call-for-action should be instantly understood, delivered from a single landing page, and should employ a simple registration form. The form should include a minimum number of required fields that can be quickly and easily completed without the need for lengthy responses or multiple clicks

Multiple Landing Pages
The process should be optimized, from impression to conversion, in order to reach the campaign’s goals. The use of multiple landing pages for each product is critical for the success of the campaign, as is the use and testing of a variety of different banners. Multiple landing pages enable a quick determination of what works best, what turns users into buyers, and delivers the best results for the advertiser.

Text Links
Text Links are ideal for mobile advertising. They deliver excellent conversion rates for result-based advertisers, usually cost less than banners, can bring a higher CTR (Click-Through Rate), and often account for the majority of a campaign’s traffic.

Use Advanced Technologies
Result-based advertisers can benefit from the intelligent use of the latest campaign tracking and management technologies, which can make all the difference for mobile campaign success. Conversion Tracking enables a view of the entire process as well as ongoing measurement and optimization, thus allowing for continuous improvement of campaign results. By focusing on the total process, from impression through conversion.
Unified Reporting Capabilities consolidate campaign data from all relevant networks into a single, unified report. This facilitates the simple detection of campaign variations, strategy, and effectiveness including the relative performance of specific landing pages and network/landing page matches. Innovative new tools that enable the tracking of a campaign’s progress without requiring the advertiser to check each mobile ad network separately are critical for the success of mobile campaigns.

Extend Campaigns to the Widest Range of Devices
Marketers should match their campaigns and technology to the widest possible range of mobile devices including both feature phones, smart phones and tablets, in order to maximize effectiveness and expose the campaign to as much traffic as possible. When planning campaigns, it is particularly important to take into account the rapid growth in smart phone traffic

Campaign Partners (Publishers and Ad Networks) Keep Them Updated
Marketers should keep traffic sources continuously updated. Publishers and Ad Networks should be kept informed about the advertiser’s selected operators, and about the agreements signed with them. This avoids running campaigns via unsuitable operators and on ineffective traffic, and prevents running wasted campaigns.
Mobile Advertising has become an exceptional opportunity for result-based advertisers to increase their revenue sources as well as their reach. New marketing channels can be created and new markets can be tapped. Cutting-edge technologies can be utilized to develop smart, fully optimized campaigns that maximize conversion potential and deliver rapid ROI.