How Google's AdWords updates will impact marketing in the mobile-era
Google doubles down on bid for smaller screen domination as it reveals more searches happen on smartphones than desktop.
Google has unveiled a flurry of updates designed to make its media more mobile friendly, focusing on offering advertisers creative ad formats and deeper cross-device conversion tracking as it looks to capitalise on the fact that over half of all searches now take place on mobile.
The changes aim to solidify the company's refusal to throw in the towel in its fight to dominate mobile against Facebook. Despite selling more mobile ads, Google has, unlike Facebook, been unable to inflate the value of its formats through video and app install ads over the last two years though this could be about to change.
Its all-out assault on smaller screens builds on its much-hyped “mobilegeddon” search engine pivot to favour mobile-friendly sites, refreshing its Adwords tools for the mobile era. But whereas in the past it has offered more general purpose ads to marketers, its new approach sees it tailor its efforts to different sectors and provide targeted services.
The automotive ads, for example, show users a series of interior and exterior photos of the car model they searched for, along with a list of dealers who sell it. While the hotel ads it unveiled offer photos of the hotel, directions and maps as well as options to book a room immediately.
Google wants advertisers to think of these ad experiences as 'micro moments', primed to reach and convert people while they're on the move. The units are engineered for finger swipes rather than mouse clicks in deference to how more searches take place on mobile devices than anything else in more than 10 major markets worldwide including the US and Japan.
It aims to accelerate advertisers to native formats and away from the cheaper text-based and banner advertising that have stunted its mobile offering. Google is already running search ads in the Google Play store, which will help spark the shift with further updates due later this month.
Jerry Dischler, vice president of product management for AdWords, said: Consumers, particularly on mobile devices, now have higher expectations than ever before - they want everything right, and they want everything right away. This requires that marketers answer their needs in the moment, whenever and wherever they are. Our investments in mobile are driven by consumers’ expectations for immediacy and relevance in the moment.
"To achieve this, marketers need to have time and resource. It is why Google has made them a new reporting dashboard that spotlights the performance of bid strategies over time as well showing the trade off between volume and cost at varying CPA targets. Additionally, advertisers no longer need to manage keywords to show relevant ads based on the content of their sites with the process being automated through Google's new Dynamic Search Ads.
“Consumers engage with brands, across billions of monthly searches, billions of hours of videos watched every month, and billions of interactions with various sites and apps,” said Dischler. “The sheer scale can be staggering, but with automation you can master the complexity and show exactly the right ads for consumers’ intent and context.”
Marketers must ensure that they're measuring the mobile moments that matter - from first impression to final conversion, he continued.
Google is making it easier for brands to track the impact the effectiveness of ads beyond the last click and through data-driven attribution lets them plug in their conversion data to work out the actual worth of each keyword along the path to purchase. The digital business will also hand marketers the ability to measure results across devices and integrate those insights into their automated bidding.