Looking to reach out to your customers on mobile? Join us for our live streamed discussion on February 10th, 1:05pm EST with Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Google’s Dennis Woodside, SVP of Americas Operations, and Jason Spero, Head of Americas Mobile Advertising on the future of mobile and mobile marketing. To learn more about the event and live stream, please visit the Google Mobile Ads blog.
Posted by Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team
Imagine driving to work and your Check Engine light comes on. After pulling over and calling a tow truck, you realize you’ll need another car to get to work while yours is getting repaired. You pull out your phone and search for “car rental,” hoping that you can find one nearby. From a Google search ad result you discover there’s an Enterprise Rent-A-Car location just half-a-mile away! You click on the phone number listed in the ad and are instantly connected with the car rental service. Soon, an Enterprise representative is on his way to pick you up.
Visit the Google Mobile Ads blog to read more about how a new hyperlocal ad feature provides distance information to help you know a business is nearby and helps businesses better connect with mobile users on the go.
Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager
Recently we announced a new feature that allows advertisers to add a clickable phone number to their mobile ads, making it easy for customers to connect with the local business they're looking for directly by phone. This week, we're expanding click-to-call phone numbers for national advertisers. Now advertisers can add a national phone number to the last line of ad text for any existing or new campaigns, making it easy for customers to connect with the business by phone directly from the ad, regardless of their location.
This can be especially helpful when you're trying to connect with the business call center rather than a specific business location. After searching for a travel services, for example, you might want to call to discuss trip planning with an agent. Or after searching for car insurance, you might want to call for a quote. Now, if you're using an iPhone, Android device, or Palm Pre, you can just click the phone number to call the business without needing to navigate to a new page. If you're an advertiser and would like to learn more about how to add a clickable phone number to your mobile ads, check out this post on the Inside AdWords blog for more details.
Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Product Manager, Mobile Ads
Sometimes when you're searching for a local business on your mobile device, you're not looking for their website, but rather to connect by phone. After searching for a restaurant, you might want to call and make a reservation. Or, after searching for a video store, you might want to find out if they have the video you want. Calling the business is now easier thanks to a feature that allows advertisers to add a clickable local phone number to their mobile ads. If you're using an iPhone, Android, or other smartphone, you just click the number to call the business. What's more, the ads and phone numbers you see are based on your location. So, if a store or restaurant has multiple locations, you'll be calling the nearest one, and not making reservations in some other city. You can use My Location to make sure you get search results that are tailored to your location.
Of course, if you're going to be in another city next week and you want to call ahead to make your reservation, include the city in your search query to get the most relevant results.
If you're an advertiser and would like to learn more about how to add a clickable phone number to your ads that appear on mobile devices, check out this post on the Inside AdWords blog for more details.
Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Product Manager, Mobile Ads Team
Since we launched printable coupons on Google Maps a few years ago, people are increasingly using their mobile phones to find local information when they're away from a computer. With more of you going mobile to search for this information, it makes sense for coupons to go mobile too.
So just in time for the holidays, we've made it easier to find discounts when you're on the go. If a business adds a mobile coupon to its Google Local Business Center listing, you'll be able to access it from your mobile device. Just go to google.com on your phone and search for a local business. When you land on its Place Page, you'll see any coupons or discounts that might be available. Then simply show the participating business the coupon, right from your phone, to redeem the offer.
We hope you find these mobile coupons useful and that they help you save money, trees (fewer printed coupons), and your hands (from paper cuts) when you're on the go. Mobile coupons are currently only available in the US. For more information check out the Lat Long Blog.
Last week, we introduced expanded mobile reporting features in Google Analytics. To help developers, this launch includes features that make it easy to see how people are using specific parts of their iPhone and Android applications. The same Google Analytics reports that provide insights into website traffic and engagement are now available for mobile apps.
As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track: pageviews and events. Since mobile apps don't contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger pageview requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app. Developers can also track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to pageviews using Event Tracking. These user actions can include views of embedded videos, button clicks, downloads and more. App developers can then use this data to understand which features are most popular and inform decisions about which features should be promoted or prioritized for further development. Redfin, an online brokerage for buying and selling homes, recently tested Google Analytics on their mobile application. Watch this video to learn more about their experience:
To get started using Google Analytics to understand and optimize how people use your iPhone or Android mobile app, check out the SDK and technical documentation.
