Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a Google Mobile Workshop and they confirmed what everyone has been saying
“2011 is the year for mobile”

Finlay from Google talked at New Year Search Club in January this year where he mentioned mobile would really take off and it definitely has.

(Image from www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/mobile-search-tips-and-best-practices-8276/)

Mobile search queries have increased considerably from last year. Here are a few interesting stats:

Travel queries on mobile have risen from
4% (2010) to 11% (2011)

Retail queries
4% (2010) to 13% (2011)

Tech queries
5% (2010) to 10% (2011)

Entertainment
7% (2010) to 18% (2011)

Do you use your mobile while out shopping? Apparently 45 % of us do and 15% use it to compare prices.
The study carried out by Google, also found that with mobile, people always have them with them and are searching while at home and on the go. 74% of people use them at the same time as consuming other media.

53% of people use a smartphone while watching tv
49% of people use it while listening to music
26% of people use their mobile while using the internet.

Consumers are starting to purchase products on their mobile. 28% of people in the study has purchased on their smart phone, with 41% of people buying entertainment products, followed by 31% for clothing and 28% for tickets.

So what does all this mean?

You cannot ignore mobile any longer. You need to start engaging in a mobile strategy for your organisation. If you are already doing paid search, make sure you have a mobile search campaign. You also need to have an optimised mobile site so that consumers can view your site on their handset and purchase a product.

Google are there to help
There are a number of ways to advertise your site on mobile. Google have three interlinked mobile advertising platforms, adwords mobile search and GDN (Google Display Network), Admob Mobile network, and m.YouTube.com

Adwords Mobile Search & GDN
This gives a company mobile search presence using keywords – remember to set up a separate campaign for mobile. The GDN allows you to contextually target mobile content within the Google Network.
There are also adwords (as with desktop) but tailored for mobile – different volumes of search queries

Admob Mobile network
This network has a reach of 250 million unique users. You can target your ads to specific mobile users, decides ad operators, bundles they have and location as well as time of day.

m.YouTube.com
There are over 1.5 million impressions per day on mobile and this channel allows you to increase your brand awareness on mobile.

There are so many options with mobile search. Below are a couple more mobile adverts than you can choose to run
Mobile Click the Call
User taps your advert and goes straight to the call without having to dial the number

Mobile Click to Maps
User clicks to the location of the store and can easily see Google Maps.

If you have any questions about setting up a campaign, the Google account managers are always happy to help you.