Advertising in mobile search (sometimes called mobile paid search) is similar to traditional paid search where you, the advertiser, pay when your ad is clicked.

This is where the similarities end, however, as the mobile search user is a different animal to the desktop one, especially when it comes to their intent, the keywords they use and how you can target them.

Let’s have a closer look.

1. Be brief
Perhaps it goes without saying that mobile users’ attention spans are less than the average desktop user. What this really means for you as the advertiser is that you need to keep your ad copy brief, to the point and focussed on shorter keyword groups.

The search ad networks generally have good guidance on their sites for best-practices, so it pays to read up on what they recommend.

While keeping it brief is a real challenge, you’ll still need to tell customers what they need to do to act on your offer.

2. Include your contact
Including a number (for click-to-call advertising) and either your web address or physical address is necessary because mobile users generally want to act as soon they find something they are looking for.

Google offers ‘click-to-call’ mobile ads via its AdWords network. This means that a restaurant using mobile search advertising can include a phone number for searchers to call to make dinner reservations or order take-away. The advertiser pays Google when their ad number is called.

3. Understand what keywords mobile users are more likely to use
It’s a good idea to set up and use a separate campaign for your mobile search advertising, so that you can better segment and adapt your messages.

Mobile users search with shorter queries than they do on the desktop, so using a keyword research tool such as Google’s AdWord keyword tool will help you select better keywords and keyword groups for your mobile audience. Use the ‘Advanced Options and Filters’ area to Show Ideas and Statistics for mobile devices. You can even choose to show only WAP devices, or only full-browser capable phones.

When using mobile, people also tend to consume their information quickly, so advertising products and services that require little consideration will do better than those that need longer consideration cycles. (Think downloading a ringtone vs buying a new dishwasher.)

Popular mobile categories tend to be things like sports, news, ringtones, wallpapers, local food and entertainment listings, and watching videos.

Build your keyword strategy around immediate actions: downloading something, getting a discount code, ordering a meal, or quickly buying tickets.

Bonus: Targeting options
Google and the other search engines allow you to customise your target audience, including by device type (iPhone, Android), mobile network, and even by WAP-enabled phones for those devices that aren’t smartphones. This allows you to target the kinds of products and offers you have to specific segments of your audience. If you’re an app developer, you can advertise Android apps only to the Android users.

Advertising in mobile search is a powerful way to reach out to your mobile audience segment and enables you to offer specific products or services to very specific people no matter where they are.

About the Author:
Pavel Webb is the affiliate manager at TextMagic, a bulk SMS gateway based in United Kingdom.

Perhaps its indicative of just how much Google plays into our every day lives that on the day that I saw that Google had overtaken Yahoo in terms of display advertising that they announced two new products, again targeting markets outside of their core search battleground. Yesterday it was interesting to see Google saying they wanted to create “tomorrow’s best shopping experience” and “bring online and offline together” through an open payments platform.

Its no secret that Google has taken Mobile seriously, the purchases of Admob for $750,000,000 was indicative of intent there. However one may find it is the purchase of smaller operators like Zetawire (a startup from Toronto they purchased in August last year). The purchase was one which I would suggest many people would have missed – however I would suggest its been crucial to them being able to launch one of the new products announced yesterday.

The major announcement yesterday was that of Google Wallet “that aspires to bring offers, payments and loyalty together at the point of sale to create a next-generation shopping experience.”. Given many of the products that Google have on the horizon (and there are some heavily focussed around integrating mobile and local search) – seeing Google push in a direction of an integrated mobile/localisation framework is not suprising – and Google Wallet is symbolic of this ‘molo’ mindset.

Image: Search Engine Land

So what is Google Wallet. Well, according to Google’s Commerce VP, Stephanie Tilenius the product will officially be released this summer. The service will allow you to “You tap, pay and save” with NFC-enabled devices which Google estimate will , which will number around 150 million devices by the end of 2011. The service would appear to be a US centric rollout only at this stage and will support multiple credit card accounts includingCiti MasterCard (via MasterCard’s paypass network) and a Google pre-paid card will be supported initially. One would suggest we will see a raft of later signups once this is officially launched. Further to that you can lock Google Wallet for greater security and can also store offers, loyalty cards and gift cards.

Image: Search Engine Land

It is perhaps indicative of Google’s confidence that the initial retailers signed up read like a whos who and include Macy’s, Subway, American Eagle, Noahs Bagels, Wallgreens and many more.

Image: Search Engine Land

At the same event, Google also announced Google offers – what would appear to be a first step into the realms of Groupon/Living Social. Google Offers will deliver offers as deals of the day – and can subsequently be integrated with Google Wallet. This will initially be limited to just rollouts in the US (Portland, San Francisco and New York initially) however I for one would be hugely suprised if we didn’t see both products integrate heavily with other Google products such as Hotpot in the future.

Image: Search Engine Land

There is no doubting, mobile is a huge part of the new Google strategy not just in terms of advertising revenues but Google would appear to want to completely dominate the mobile marketplace. No matter where you look Google are there and be in no doubt, when mobile really does ‘mature’ – Google are likely to have a very big say in what and what doesnt happen on mobile too !

Last year was a good year for both mobile and video with recent stats suggesting around 34.7 Million Internet Users in the U.K watched 6 billion videos. Mobile also saw a significant surge in both commercial usage driven heavily by the smartphone revolution.

Two significant players with big parts to play in 2011 so where did our experts feel would 2011 be the year of?

Will 2011 be the year of – Video/Mobile/Other (if other please specify)

David Harry

The Year of the Gypsy! Ok, well maybe just in my fantasy world. While, as stated earlier, local/personalization/social will continue to be strong, it’s more about strategy. Many SEOs get locked into systems (and tools) which become the program. This belies the true nature of search evolution (and the web itself). We need to be adaptive and sensitive to change. There were a TON of game changers last year we didn’t see coming. So, this year, just be aware, adaptive and fluid to the changes. Guessing at, or locking into, the ‘IT’ for 2011 here in January is a fool’s game methinks. Ask me in December, then I will tell you what 2011 was all about ;0)

Ben Bisco

In will be [another] Year of Mobile.

Paul Reilly:

All of the above. but mobile really will change the game this year due to network effects and largely due to android adoption through accessibility. to the masses. I’d have though Apple would have learned their lesson last time round when they got there arse kicked by Microsoft. Locking down the software to the hardware failed in the home computing war, it will fail in the mobile war. With 2 Android activations to every 1 iPhone activation, it’s game over! however this is good for the consumer and great for the ecosystem. Yes. I’m excited about mobile in 2011 and with it comes video and mainstream location based social applications.

Bas van den Beld

Oh no, not another “year of”. Mobile is already here, so is video, it will just be emerging more, as goes for social. There is no one thing which it will be “the year of”

Nichola Stott

Yes! Video and mobile from the get-go and augmented reality coming to search by the end of 2011. I betcha

Judith Lewis

Chocolate Well, I think really more than anything 2011 is the year of social. We’ve turned into a nation of ADD kids who have regressed back to thinking we are ourselves the single most important thing in the universe. Yes, mobile will play a part in that but I think we have to be careful about what we consider “the year of mobile”. Plain handset adoption is way higher than Smartphone adoption and in India and Africa I believe that web consumption is higher over handset because of the lack of PC/laptop ownership (and infrastructure). Also, what constitutes a year being the “year of X” anyway? We live in a mixed technology world. I wouldn’t be surprised in 2011 was the year of the wiki(leak)

Andy Beard

How can I say video, that would be biased as I now for for a video platform.?

I think 2011 will be the year of leveraged syndication of viral content in whatever form, though infographics were only really scratching the surface.

That is possibly even more biased but at least other platforms have a bit of a head start and I have been telling them to do some of what I hope to help uQast achieve for over a year.

Andy Redfern

A successful case study will push this concept to the front of mind, but we won’t see accelerated growth until 2012. The 2011 boom in mobile commerce will see mobile affiliate marketing becoming a growing revenue stream for clients. Like all fast growing technology there is a negative side and Mobile will also become the subject of malware, phishing attempts and fraud that will plague all mobile application providers in 2011. The BBC’s flagship consumer affairs show, WatchDog, will highlight these with great enthusiasm in the 2nd quarter of the year. And finally QR codes will start to become understood by a mainstream audience, and will appear on tee-shirts aimed at “wacky” students, who will see it as a new form of “cool art”.

Shaun Anderson

Timewasting – on social media sites – thinking you are doing something useful for your business. I’d go as far to say you should keep social media to non-work hours to get the best out of all your real work efforts. I am at the moment and i feel a lot better anyway. Social media consultants *might* have a slightly different take on this.

Peter Young

I think its going to be a bumper year for a number of channels however mobile in particular I can see having another bumper year, driven on by some increasingly impressive apps – and in my opinion will probably finally have the year so many forecasters have said would happen for a number of years. However I think we will certainly see significant growth in local. A dark horse may well be the decline of aggregators within the search engines as Google ramps up its comparison ads framework throughout the Googlesphere….
.

Will Critchlow

Mobile. Please. Just so we don’t have to hear that 2012 will be. (Note from PY – You do know if it doesn’t it will be back next year )

Other parts in the Experts View series:
Q1 : Do you think a viable competitor to Google will emerge in 2011?
Q2 : Where do you think the growth area in search will emerge in 2011?
Q3 : Do you think Social media’s influence on SEO will continue to increase or fade away?
Q4: With many recent figures suggesting a ‘mini-revival’ – do you think 2011 will be a bumper year for search
Q5: What do you think will be the 3 biggest challenges facing search practitioners in 2011
Q6: With Google appearing to favour ‘brand building’ do you think we will continue to see affiliates struggle in the new year?

This is a guest post from Magnus Nilson, Search Marketing Director at Banner Corporation

While the year of the mobile seems to have come and gone several times over the past few years, many marketers are yet to fully launch a mobile search campaign. Here’s a checklist to make sure you’re getting a head start.

1)       Make sure the landing pages are mobile friendly. If you get this wrong you might as well stop the campaign right now. By now we’ve probably all heard the expression “running on rails” to avoid the need for horizontal scrolling or constant zooming in and out on text and graphics. Also particularly consider the page loading time, complexity of forms and finger friendly button-sizes.

2)      Optimise your assets. Make sure any downloadable assets are mobile friendly. Even in big cities you’re not always blessed with perfect 3G connection and without it it’s no fun downloading a 4MB white paper PDF (and it will significantly eat into light users monthly download allowance). The same goes for video and any other kind of band-width hogging assets.

3)      Use a toll-free number in PPC ads to improve click-to-call rate. But make sure it’s actually accessible through a mobile phone. I recently tried to call a local plumber through a PPC ad, and was rejected as the toll-free number in the ad wasn’t actually accepting calls from mobile. Big fail.

4)      Separate your PPC campaigns. Just like it’s best practise to separate search and display campaigns, you want to increase your optimisation control and creative testing by separating mobile and desktop campaigns.

5)      Show off your mobile website in the ad copy. Even if the latest smartphones can render full sites pretty well, people still prefer to click-through to optimised websites. Let them know already in the ad copy that the can expect a brilliant mobile experience at the other end of the click.

6)      Use your analytics. Smartphone browsers are typically abreast of Javascript and consequently most analytics tools can, and should, be used to analyse any post click activity. And as you can use javascript, it’s also possible to use tools such as Google Website optimiser for conversion optimisation.

7)      Search for yourself. Don’t just copy across your existing desktop search campaign into a mobile campaign and hope for wonders. You can pretty much forget about the long-tail, so instead take the time and test search for your products via your mobile to discover possible misspellings and shorthand’s that other searches could perform.

While it’s no exhaustive checklist, the above should help you move in the right direction. What are your best mobile search tips?

Caption: TopTable’s mobile site provides a finger friendly touch interface. I arrived here by doing a search on Google maps.

Caption: A simple form with just three fields is all that’s needed to book a table. Note that to keep the site “on rails” the field names are placed above the forms instead of aligned to the left. These are small touches that make a big difference to users.

By line: Magnus Nilsson works with integrated search campaigns at Banner Corporation and frequently shares his thoughts on his search marketing blog.

Today the news broke that Google had acquired Admob, a company specialising in serving display ads on mobile devices including the iPhone. In return Admob will receive a cool $750 million in stock. Whilst Google do have some mobile traction, the deal with Admob provides them with significant muscle in an increasingly booming mobile market.

According to the BBC, Google said mobile advertising had “enormous potential” and praised AdMob’s “exceptional progress”.

“AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley start-up, generating impressive year-on-year revenue growth, and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management.

It would also seem that Google have purchased VOIP startup Gizmo5 (according to reports from TechCrunch) further expanding Googles telecoms credentials and could further aid their Google Voice product and in the long term could provide Google with a serious rival to Skype.

However it is the Admob acquisition which is getting the majority of column inches. It is no secret that Google have been trying to develop the display credentials, particularly looking at their behavioural display platform and with the acquisition of Admob they should be able to expand their available inventory within this sector quite significantly.

What it also means is that the mobile market really does have a significant player backing the mobile market (excluding search) outside of the traditional hardware and operator players such as Apple, Orange and Blackberry – and the first to make a real statement of intent of mobile within their future plans.

Its certainly an interesting purchase, and one Google will have to be careful to nuture. There is no doubt though, it shows Googles’ serious interest in the mobile market, and provides a clear warning to rivals that they are not just happy at dominating the online market. TIme will tell whether this goes a similar way to previous attempts from Yahoo and Microsoft or whether this is the start of a ‘golden age of mobile’ as the mobile market sees hastened development and innovation.