IN-DEPTH: Customers expect to do anything on their smartphone that they can do on the desktop. The challenge now is in figuring out how much value or budget to allocate to mobile, says Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager - Travel, Google.

Google recently shared that by the end of 2011, the company saw that 28 percent of all travel related queries in the UK emanated from mobile devices.

Within that, tablets account for nearly one third of queries What's more, during the weekend when bookings are typically highest, these devices account for an even greater percentage of total queries.

So it's absolutely essential for businesses to evaluate their current mobile experience for these consumers and to invest in improvements before being left behind. 2012 will certainly be yet another record-breaking year for mobile, believes the company.

For their part, travellers want to be constantly connected to all the parties in their virtual and physical world.

Travellers want to be able to look up any information on the go, be informed by the various travel service providers, keep in touch with their friends, family, colleagues, and generally be "connected" all the time. This means that the experience has to seamlessly move from one medium to another.

As far as the travel journey is concerned, everything needs to be at the fingertips of the travel consumer at every stage, acknowledges Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager - Travel, Google.

"Mobile is integral throughout and it's surprising how many major companies still offer a relatively poor mobile experience, though it has gotten a lot better in the past year or so," said Bucholz, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2012, to be held in London (April 17-18) this year.

EyeforTravel's Ritesh Gupta spoke to Bucholz about travellers' behaviour, mobile advertising and lot more. Excerpts:

Travellers today expect more information to be readily available at their fingertips throughout the entire travel cycle, as well as more powerful tools to make sense of it all. Mobile, social, search, and local are emerging as key areas of consumer transformation. How do you assess the current status of the online travel sector?

We've found it helpful to put a framework around the traveller's "lifecycle" to clarify the technological, service and sales touch points that are possible as a consumer moves from thinking about travel to telling someone how it went. A typical online travel customer will dream, research, purchase, experience and then share.

When you think of it this way, you can easily see how video and search will play a big role in the dreaming stage. Search, local and social are probably crucial to the research phase, etc. The point here, as you indicate, is that everything needs to be at the fingertips of the travel consumer at every stage and companies need to offer their service however the customer would like to access them.

Mobile is integral throughout and it's surprising how many major companies still offer a relatively poor mobile experience, though it has gotten a lot better in the past year or so. Finally, when people share their experiences by posting on Facebook or Google+ or writing a review, this then fuels the dreaming and research stage of the next potential customer. If a travel company doesn't get it right, they end up paying for it time and time again.

How do consumers engage with mobile devices today? How has this behaviour pushed the case for mobile advertising?

Every advertiser I work with acknowledges there must be a mobile presence in their marketing mix. Over 20 percent of all Google travel queries in the UK come from a mobile device. The simple truth is that customers expect to do anything on their smartphone that they can do on the desktop. Where the consumer spends time is where the advertiser must follow.

I think the challenge now is in figuring out how much value or budget to allocate to mobile. While conversion rates on tablets are pretty much the same as desktop, conversion rates via smartphones are lower. Many people will research travel on their phone and then go to the desktop to make a purchase – we've all probably done this. The advertising on the phone will help form the consideration set when people complete the transaction on the desktop. The challenge is in determining the right value by giving some of the desktop conversion credit to your mobile advertising.

We touched on this a bit already with the stages a traveller goes through, but the bottom line is that mobile is used throughout - from researching to experiencing. Google and other companies have also made it really easy to post reviews via mobile, so we expect that to become even more prominent in the future. I regularly use mobile check-in for my flights and whenever possible I use my mobile as my boarding card. I think consumers are ready to use the phone for more, but companies have been a bit slow overall to offer the services.

When you think beyond travel, you can see the impact of mobile on advertising response and shopping experience. A Google user behaviour study from the US in 2010 found that 74 percent of people had made an in-store purchase due to using their smartphone while shopping. The same study found that 79 percent of users have used smartphones to help them shop...while in the store. This has an impact in how advertisers need to think about all their marketing platforms being intertwined, especially when thinking about messaging and pricing.

Overall, mobile marketing and advertising consists of five categories: text messages, display ads, mobile search, in-application advertising, and in-video advertising. How has the whole category progressed from the travel sector's perspective? What do you think stands out?

One category that should be considered is the application itself, which is a great marketing tool. I don't suggest everyone do this, but there have been instances of apps going viral (such as the Carling beer drinking app) or apps that have fun on-brand catchiness to them (such as Mr & Mrs Smith's useful and playful app).

Back to your question, I think the bread and butter of desktop advertising is the same for mobile; search and display ads (including in-app ads) are well-targeted ways to reach your audience. The opportunities will evolve with location recognition, Google Wallet and the increasingly reasonable mobile roaming tariffs that allow for more Internet-enabled travel application usage.

Retail advertisers are already using mobile as a reach vehicle, indulging in cross-platform advertising and meeting their local marketing needs with mobile to reach out to new customers. Can you provide an insight into the trends pertaining to the travel sector?

Similar to retail, we're finding that customers use their mobile devices throughout the travel cycle, by which I mean research, booking, usage during travel itself and sharing photos and reviews with friends at the end of their trip.

A traveller doesn't consider which channel they use to access information – they just expect it to work and expect a brand to offer consistent experience. Advertisers of any industry should recognise this and make sure they have a coordinated message and experience across any platform its customers would like to use.

What do you recommend when it comes to creating mobile-specific search campaigns for mobile devices?

When an advertising message viewed on a mobile device is optimised for that device, we see a boost in click through rate. By 'optimised' I mean that the advertisement might mention "book on your mobile" or "view our tablet website" etc. This is one advantage of having specific campaigns by device. Another advantage is that you can bid more specifically according to the value you place on clicks from various devices.

One thing I stress however is that you need to consider attribution when determining the value of a click. If someone sees your ad on their mobile device and then books on the desktop, a portion of that booking's value should be attributed to your mobile ad.

There is a resource cost to restructuring your account and optimising more campaigns, so resource-constricted advertisers (which is everyone, to some degree) should first look at the volume they are currently getting from mobile devices and consider splitting out the highest usage or highest value campaigns first.

What sort of benchmarks can one set for assessing the success of such initiatives at this stage?

I advise checking out www.ourmobileplanet.com. You can quickly create charts and compile data related to mobile usage, penetration etcetera by market. Look at your analytics and see how people are currently accessing your site. You might be surprised to see how much is coming from mobile. If you already have your desktop PPC campaigns opted in to mobile, break out the mobile statistics and use this as your performance baseline.

Once mobile has been included in your attribution model, you should have an ROI to work toward and then you can benchmark against yourself for continuous improvement.

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