With Nokia Windows Phone’s launch in Europe, Bing set to Grow its Mobile Adoption

Last week marked a major milestone for Microsoft as the first Nokia phone running Windows Phone 7.5 was released in retail in UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands following a high profile consumer marketing campaign that you could not have missed. It was just eight months ago that Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop announced the strategic alliance between both companies. The first phone produced is simply stunning: it combines the might of Nokia’s industrial design heritage with the simplicity and elegance of Windows Phone 7.5. But beyond the sheer appeal to own a beautiful and user-friendly product, you may wonder what are the implications for you, as an advertiser.

As a matter of fact, Bing is at the core of the Windows Phone operating system, and with Nokia joining an already vast number of Windows Phone manufacturers and defaulting its Symbian devices to Bing in the UK and France, we can expect the number of mobile searchers growing in the coming month. Bing has made significant efforts lately to address the needs of mobile searchers, irrespective of the platform they use. In the UK for instance, our engineers have just released an iPhone app which brings the rich and visual Bing search experience to British iPhone users. Building on the mobile version of Bing available at m.bing.com, the new Bing app brings Voice Search, Bing Vision, Facebook sharing and more to the iPhone. This release comes not long after another smartphone manufacturer, RIM, announced that it would adopt Bing as its default search engine provider for its Blackberry devices.

With over 20% contract bound phones in the UK being smartphones and growing, the possibility to search from a web-browser (m.bing.com), from an app or like with Windows Phone devices in one click, the mobile search is bound to grow, and fast. Currently 80% of data plan subscribers are using mobile search, a number that is growing by +90% year on year. We expect that by 2012 mobile search queries will exceed 3B queries per month globally, which represents 13% of PC volume and (again) growing. Finally in the next four years the Global Mobile audience should exceed that of the desktop space, reach reaching 1.6 billion users…

The long-awaited “Year of Mobile” seems to finally be upon us. And with a growing user base and a growing usage, marketers may want to take a closer look at this advertising opportunity. Here are some thought-starters on how to optimise your mobile search advertising.

Performing a search from your mobile phone adds a brand new dimension to your query: it is obviously the geo-localisation. If you search for “coffee” at your desk or in a street, your intent and expectations are significantly different. A mobile intent is:

- Immediate: 70% of mobile search intents are fulfilled in 1 hour versus a week on a PC;

- Transactional: a Microsoft research in the US highlighted that 39% use their mobile phone to compare prices while shopping for electronics; 52% are more likely to shop at retail locations that offer digital electronic coupons;

- Local: search is connected to location where the user is: find a store nearby.

This difference in mobile search behaviour unlocks a whole new advertising ecosystem:

- New advertisers first: net new companies are bound to finally adopt digital marketing channels because they address different needs. As a matter of fact, some companies may not require a website to promote their activity; they may just be after creating footfall to a shop. Capturing a local intent by pointing a consumer to a map or a coupon page may be suddenly a lot more interesting for these businesses.

- This leads me to new search advertising tactics. We could talk at length about the differences between a mobile search query and a PC one. I have already eluded to some of the most significant ones above, but think about the fact that the query is performed on a mobile device: keyword strings will be shorter, user journeys need to be optimised to point to mobile-friendly landing pages, etc. It is thus worth putting a bit more efforts in setting up your campaign specifically for mobile.

Enabling a mobile campaign in adCenter is easy and straight-forward: you just have to elect the option in your campaign settings. But optimising your campaign, from the keyword selection to the landing pages and the ad copy or even your bidding strategy, may be required as there are many opportunities for you to really capture that audience.

So keep an eye on this blog because mobile search advertising case studies and tips are coming your way…

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