Outrider, a leading global, integrated search marketing agency and division of GroupM Search, introduced today a mobile search practice group, adding to its comprehensive scope of advanced search marketing offerings. The focus of the mobile search group is to guide advertisers through the education, adoption, strategy development and execution of mobile search programs that compliment their comprehensive search marketing program and overall marketing strategies.
“Mobile search will emerge as a critical component of many programs, as user behavior is evolving toward lean-forward activities on mobile. Increasingly, consumers are using mobile devices to find information they need now. This creates exciting opportunities for advertisers to reach consumers at the moment of impulse,” said Michael Nevins, GroupM’s Group Director of Mobile Technologies for North America.
Early adopters of mobile search have an advantage over their competition, reaping the benefits of testing strategies, gathering a wealth of historical and behavioral data, and identifying which platform perform best for their brands. For one entertainment client, mobile search delivered substantial exposure that otherwise would have been a missed opportunity with more than 1.6 million impressions in the first 30 days of the campaign, and for less than 1 percent of their annual search budget.
At SMX Expo, I caught up with Mike Dowd, Technology Manager and Mobile Practice Lead, and he told me the group is heavily focused on trying educate and provide tools for people to have a mobile channel. Making mobile part of their campaigns are low risk, both in terms of cost and effort. He did note that the results and reports might be different than what people are used to seeing with a typical report from an SEM campaign might look like.
What Do We Think?
More Agencies need to get on the mobile bandwagon and start to address this space. However, I would caution that mobile search is not just about SEM (Search Engine Marketing). While its important to have branding, what happen to leading to transactions and what about mobile search for digital goods like ringtones, games, images, and other applications? Ad networks are all the rage it seems, but ultimately all the partnerships and connections must lead to transactions!
