1. Case Study | Google Mobile Ads
Mobile Drives Efficient Conversions
Razorfish uses Google mobile ads to drive incremental,
efficient conversions for their Fortune 100 retail client
The Opportunity
Razorfish is a global digital advertising agency founded in 1995 that has driven
the online marketing efforts of many of the world’s biggest brands. In the past
three years, Razorfish has consistently ranked as one of the top five top search
advertising agencies in the country, by Ad Age magazine. According to Danny
Huynh, associate search director for Razorfish, their goal is “to treat search as one
At a Glance of many consumer touchpoints and explore new opportunities that can help our
Who they are: clients to be ahead of the curve.”
• www.razorfish.com With more and more people searching the internet from their phones, mobile
• search advertising agency advertising has become one of these new opportunities. “Mobile advertising
seems to be a well-kept secret,” says Huynh. “Some clients have initial concerns
Goals: that mobile won’t deliver results on par with the same online ads on desktop and
• Learn whether their customers were searching laptop computers, but we’re finding that mobile can actually deliver a lower cost per
on mobile devices conversion than desktop targeted ads.”
• Drive efficient conversions through mobile ads
One client, a retailer, was looking to reach more potential customers. Huynh and his
• Test and optimize mobile ad messaging
team had been managing the client’s Google AdWords account for about two years,
Approach:
but they had never tried mobile advertising before. “There was previously no mobile
website built out for this brand,” Huynh recalls. “However, phones have evolved
• Launched mobile ads campaign through
Google AdWords to drive incremental, efficient to include full internet browsers, meaning that a separate mobile website isn’t
conversions. necessary to creating a good experience for users. As a result, mobile advertising
really became possible for this client.”
Results: So after Huynh and his team suggested testing mobile advertising, they set out with
• Efficient conversions: Generated conversions the goal of maximizing the volume of conversions in a campaign targeted to users
on mobile devices that were 7.5% more of high-end mobile devices.
cost-efficient than conversions on desktop
computers.
Mobilizing
• Optimized ad text: Tested three variations of
ad text against the version used for desktop Huynh explains that getting started with Google mobile ads was easy – they simply
campaigns and were able to increase conversion duplicated the regular online ad campaigns in their AdWords account but switched
rates by 9.3%. the settings to target high-end mobile devices. The team started with their branded
keyword terms, so that they would be able to learn quickly from significant levels of
traffic. To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including
whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded
a coupon from the site.
Brian Bartek, search manager at Razorfish, performed the campaign analysis.
“We were pretty surprised with what we were seeing,” says Bartek. “There wasn’t
a lot of competition, so our CPCs were lower than what we saw in the same
campaigns on desktop. Even more impressive was the cost per conversion – it was
7.5% more efficient!”
Encouraged by the results, Razorfish and the client decided to test ways to optimize
the mobile campaigns. First, they tested whether variations in the campaign’s
landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that there
might be a few targeted actions that their customers seek out to complete on their
mobile devices. By starting the experience closer to that action, the client would see
better results.