Earlier today Performics reported another mobile search milestone: "mobile paid search traffic is now 12% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), while mobile clicks are about to cross the 12% threshold." The search-marketing firm based this report on aggregated client data from 1H 2011. Mobile by itself, excluding tablets, is about 10 percent of search impressions. Tablets account for almost 2% of all paid search impressions and roughly 14% of all mobile impressions. Thus mobile + tablets = 12 percent of overall paid search impressions. Here are some other findings fr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Mobile | Search Ads: Mobile Search

No matter where you are in your mobile marketing efforts – whether you are an advertiser still developing a mobile strategy or a growing mobile ad network selling to national advertisers – you should know how to effectively measure mobile and your measurement efforts should include call tracking and attribution metrics. Mobile attribution is key to helping validate the channel and monetizing the high quality leads it delivers. Mobile Searchers Need It Today Consider the mobile searcher profile. Leads that come from a mobile search program are not only more likely to buy, but will ofte [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Credit Is Due | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile

One of the most competitive and interesting sports in reporting on what's happening in the online world is the ongoing game of predicting the future. Just as we're seeing regime change in North Africa and the Middle East, it looks as if we're experiencing another tectonic shift in the universe of online ads. I spent the past couple of days at Borrell Associates Local Online Advertising Conference in New York City. This event was primarily focused on strategies and tactics that executives from traditional media companies should be looking at to survive and thrive in the increasingly competi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry: Conferences | Top News

Last week financial analyst Gene Munster created something of a stir when he said that there was a "70 percent" chance that Apple would build or buy a search engine for the iPhone in the next five years. Here's a longer excerpt from the research note: We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company's App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google's search engine. An iPhone specific search engine could be a difficult undertaking, but we feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Mobile | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

At the Where 2.0 event in San Jose yesterday afternoon, Danny Sullivan moderated a panel entitled "The Big Picture from the Big Players." In addition to Danny it featured Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Microsoft), Tom Wailes (Yahoo!), John Hanke (Google, Inc.), Dylan Swift (Yelp). The session sought to cover a lot of ground in a very tight 35 minutes. Danny initiated the compressed session by asking the time-honored question about local online marketing and small business: "Why aren't local businesses getting it?" Interestingly most of the panelists disagreed with that chara [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Foursquare | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News | Yahoo: Maps & Local

Congratulations! You are now the Mayor of Search Engine Land! If that sounds familiar you are one of the growing number of people using/playing Foursquare, a mobile app that uses the location of your mobile device to encourage users to "check in" wherever they might be in exchange for points and recognition like becoming the Mayor of McDonald's, or wherever else you might happen to be. Yelp recently launched a similar feature and GoWalla provides its own spin on this conceit. So more people are checking out checking in. You might wonder, what does all this have to do with local search? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Local Search | Search Ads: Mobile Search

OneRiot has announced the full rollout of RiotWise, a service that it calls "the first ad network for the realtime web." Today's launch follows a pilot phase that the company says was successful in allowing developers to monetize mobile apps, desktop clients, social search engines, and similar applications. Partners during the pilot phase included Digsby and UberTwitter, among others, while advertisers included sports networks, news organizations, and entertainment sites. Here's an example of ads from the program being shown in OneRiot's feed, tied to the "Conan O'Brien" trending topic: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search

Google is going mobile in a big way. Following the announcement of Nexus One, the official Google phone, and the acquisition of adMob, Google is ready to make some serious moves on the small screen. Early days of mobile advertising Before smart phones hit the market, mobile advertisers were confined to the small screens of traditional mobile units. Web access on those phones was painful and expensive"web pages" on those phones often consisted of nothing more than several hyperlinks. Needless to say, the technology never really took off. The iPhone changed all of that in late 2007, by off [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile | How To: PPC | Search Ads: Mobile Search

SEMPO yesterday released a "POV" white paper that seeks to orient search marketers to the growing mobile market, mobile SEO and mobile paid search in particular. It cites the dramatic growth of mobile web usage and anticipated future growth in arguing that search marketers now need to take mobile seriously. Developed by SEMPO's Emerging Technologies Committee, the report asks (and seeks to answer) several key questions: What mobile channels are available to search marketers and which show the most promise? What are the prospects for search, particularly local search, on mobile devices, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEM Industry: General

First to pounce on the SEC 8-K filing by Yahoo was PaidContent, which provides an extensive bulleted list of many of the deal terms not revealed last week during the frenzy of conference calls and articles that followed the official announcement of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal. CNET also writes about selected aspects of the deal contained in the filing, specifically an "escape clause" (termination) for Yahoo (see below). And the AP has a short piece on how the deal terms require Microsoft to hire at least 400 Yahoo employees. Here are some verbatim excerpts from the SEC filing: Negotiat [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees | Microsoft: General | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Top News

Tim Cohn tipped us to his blog post about the end of Google's Business Pages for Mobile Ads product. When logged into his AdWords account, Tim found this alert: "AdWords Business Pages for mobile ads are being retired. As the first stage, you will no longer be able to edit your mobile Business Page after March 23. Please make any necessary changes before that time." Business Pages for Mobile Ads was a free service tied into mobile ad campaigns, and it included a "wizard" to simplify the creation of mobile business web pages. Google launched the service in November, 2007. Tim suggests [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile | Search Ads: Mobile Search

Google has announced new mobile advertising options to target the iPhone, G1, and other mobile devices with full HTML web browsers. Advertisers can now create separate campaigns that are targeted specifically toward mobile searchers with smart phones. You can write mobile-specific ads and get performance data separate from your other AdWords campaigns. This new mobile targeting is turned on by default for current AdWords advertisers. To throttle it on or off, look for the "Device Platform" option of the "Networks and bidding" section on the "Campaign Settings" page in your account ( [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile

Not long ago, Google rolled out its "Geolocation API" (via Google Gears). Initially it was intended to enable third party publishers and developers to get location for their apps on mobile devices using a combination of the phone's inherent location-awareness technologies (i.e., GPS) and Google's cell-tower database (which has been expanded now to include WiFi locations). However it also works for destkop browsers, provided that Gears is installed on the computer. Here's the Google Code Blog discussing the impact: When we originally proposed the Gears Geolocation API our goal was to make i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: General | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Yahoo: Display Ads | Yahoo: Search Ads

There is a belief, held by many, that there is a bright future for ad-supported or subsidized mobile services. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt floated this idea as far back as November 2006. Now, the long-delayed Blyk in the U.K is live and MySpace in the U.S. has announced an ad-supported model (and a richer subscription model) for a mobile version of its application in an effort to attract usage. Blyk is a mobile operator aimed at 16-24 year olds and will offer a limited number of free, ad-supported minutes and text messages. According to the site: When you join Blyk you get a free SIM with 217 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Mobile | Search Ads: Mobile Search

Google recently opted-in many of their clients’ PPC ads to appear in Google Mobile search results. Yahoo has been offering a small suite of mobile ads for a while now, too, so I thought it’d be interesting to compare their current mobile ad offerings. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search Engine Land, a special look at local search marketing issues in the run-up to our SMX Local & Mobile conference next month. Google’s announcement that they would automatically opt-in many of their ads to appear on the mobile platform seems somewhat controversial, since one su [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search Week | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Yahoo: Mobile & Go

The Kelsey Group added its mobile forecast to the range of other forecasts out in the market. The problem with all of these is that, like local search forecasts, there are fundamental definitional issues about how the marketplace is framed and conceptualized. Kelsey says "U.S. mobile search advertising revenues to grow from $33.2 million in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 112 percent." eMarketer has lower numbers and Jupiter has higher numbers, among several others. Google's decision yesterday to push its AdWords advertisers out via mobile ( [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Stats: General

An Ingenio sponsored survey conducted by Harris Interactive, released today, captured a broad range of user attitudes and behaviors toward mobile phones and mobile advertising. The survey polled just over 4,000 adults in the US. Among other things, it confirmed that more people own mobile phones than landlines and that users were most receptive to the equivalent of paid-search ads vs. other types of mobile advertising. Below are some of the highlights from the survey findings. Forty-nine percent of mobile phone owners currently use their phones for more than just making and receiving phone [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior

Last Thursday I did a webcast for Search Marketing Now on local search called "Local Search Advertising: Challenges and Opportunities." The slide presentation and a recording of the webcast are available here. Those who didn't attend can still hear the webcast and access the slides by registering for free. The presentation was intended to be a very broad introduction and discussion of the topic and some of the complexities and issues associated with local search. One of my personal "projects" is to expand the definition of "local search" from the currently narrow idea of "searches performed [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Local Search | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

Seemingly in parallel with the land grab going on online, mobile M&A is heating up. Earlier this month, Microsoft acquired EU ad firm ScreenTonic and prior to that voice services and directory provider Tellme. Today, mobile ad network Third Screen Media went to AOL and will become a subsidiary of Advertising.com. Microsoft had been seen as a Third Screen suitor earlier in the year. Third Screen is a strategic acquisition for AOL, as mobile becomes a more important category and advertising becomes the source of more and more revenue for AOL. [...]

Related Topics: AOL: Mobile | Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing 411 | Microsoft: Outside US | Search Ads: Mobile Search

Directory assistance vendor PocketThis has rebranded as PhoneSpots and relaunched a new mobile ad "exchange." The company has been around since 1999 and pioneered the "send to mobile" feature now in widespread use on local search sites. PocketThis originally offered enhanced results (additional content and links) from directory assistance queries when users opted to receive them as text messages. Its relationships were primarily in Europe. Now the company has changed its name, greatly expanded its model and is announcing a partnership with AT&T's YellowPages.com. PhoneSpots will power the de [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines