While every year for the past five has been heralded ‘the year of mobile’, will 2010 take the crown?  I don’t think it’s quite time yet, but it is time we all sat up & took notice of how consumers are using search on mobile phones.

There are two ways to target paid search ads to consumers using mobiles:

1. Users on WAP-enabled mobile phones (eg BlackBerry and the host of internet-enabled standard handsets)

2. Users on smart phones with full internet browsers (eg iPhone)

Given WAPs stabilisation &/or decline I’m going to focus on high-end devices with a full web browser.

Your AdWords campaign automatically opts you in to target mobile devices with full browsers, however there are some key differences in the ads being displayed:

• Mobile device search results show 2 paid ads at the top of the page, followed by approximately 10 organic results & snippets, followed by 2 to 3 paid ads at the bottom.
• If you utilise the full character limit allowed (the same as desktop search), your ad will actually fit over 4 lines rather than 3, hence pushing your competitors further down the page.

Given a rank of 1 – 2 is much more critical on a mobile platform to ensure visibility and share of voice, slightly different optimisation techniques should be applied.  We recommend setting up a unique campaign targeting the mobile platforms, which enables you to employ the most appropriate optimisation strategies, utilise your creative character limits, send consumers to a mobile-device-friendly landing page (WAP or no flash!), and also importantly target your creative message to consumers on the move.

Whilst search volumes on mobile devices are still small (less than 1% of desktop from the data we’ve seen), they are growing.  Google Australia has outlined some impressive growth charts over the recent Christmas period.  Now we can only wait for telco providers to make data plans more accessible, and search will be revolutionised!

Oh, and if you are targeting mobile devices from the one Google AdWords campaign you can now see a breakdown of traffic by device (desktop v. mobile); go to Filters and views > Segment by > Device.