Vegas.com hits Jackpot with Mobile Search ads
Google’s mobile advertising division has started providing stellar results for the search giant’s major desktop customers like Vegas.com.
Vegas.com
Vegas.com is seeing ad click-through rates as high as 20% for their iPhone Android search ad campaign. The search ads appear by the side of search results on iPhones, Palm Pre and devices running the Android operating system.
And with this mobile campaign, Vegas.com has tapped into a very high potential and paying market – commonalty who are looking for Las Vegas hotels and other tourism service providers ‘after’ they land up in Vegas. These customers haven’t terminated any travel research, and they’re looking for last-minute bookings, which makes it an easy sell.
Scarlet Lento, Internet marketing manager at Vegas.com, tells Mediapost that click-through rates on Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system surpasses desktop campaigns. He adds that Vegas.com plans to keep the mobile ad campaign going for now, and since the ads met their ROI goals, they will launch more ads.
And this is not just happening or staying in Vegas. According to ComScore data, 7 million mobile browsers accessed information or services related to travel, spread across the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The US growth in mobile use for travel related info and services was a stunning 62% in 2008.
A research report by London based EyeforTravel Research on the use of mobile technology in travel explores all the issues and things that journey companies need to be aware of before they jump into a mobile ad campaign.
EyeForTravel Mobile Tech report
EyeForTravel’s Andrew Merrie tells Travel Trade that the industry is ‘cautiously excited’ about mobile technology and quite aware of the extending impact of mobile devices and the possibilities it holds to connect with customers.
He adds, however, that most travel companies are still in the dark about how to go about doing this ‘connecting’ and are unsure about where to start, which mobile platform to focus on, whether to go through the internet or conversion to an act apps, and what kind of ROI to expect.
Just so you know, there is no need to put up a separate mobile version of your site, if you’re running an iPhone Android search ad campaign like Vegas.com. It’s a question of knowing how to run an Adwords campaign, and knowing how to create a mobile ad. Here’sitting Google’s full mobile ads faq, which should help you get started.
And you can see the full EyeForTravel ‘Mobile Technology in Travel’ report here.