Last week we launched our new mobile image ads, which give mobile web publishers the flexibility to display image ads in addition to text ads on their sites. As of today, AdSense for mobile content publishers who have configured their sites to display mobile image ads can now have ads served to their sites from DoubleClick Mobile. This means more advertisers for AdSense for mobile content publishers, more inventory for DoubleClick Mobile advertisers, and more ad relevance for browsers of the mobile web.
The mobile ads team is happy to announce the launch of mobile image ads. These look like standard image ads for desktop web pages but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile content network. Take a look at the mobile image ads example page to see samples. Also, watch the video below to see my interview with Sanjay Agarwal, a mobile ads engineer, and his demo. Note that all mobile image ads are keyword-targeted, are priced on a cost-per-click basis, and must link to a mobile web page.
For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page. For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. They can now choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both and Google will dynamically return the ad that we expect will perform best at the time the ad is shown. Publishers who are already using AdSense for mobile content just need to update their AdSense code to start displaying mobile ads on their site.
For those of you who are mobile web surfers, mobile image ads provide a new way to interact with mobile content. Contextual targeting keeps ads relevant, and with only one mobile image ad shown per page, you can uninhibitedly browse mobile websites while clicking only on the ads that interest you.
Mobile image ads are currently available in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK, and the US. As always, leave questions and comments below or on our YouTube channel.
Last time we explained how to get My Location [0] and Traffic [7] with the help of some of your phone's shortcut keys. We've got a new video that shows all the most common numeric shortcut keys in one place. And you may have seen Steve and Mark's duel video setting "convenience keys" for speedy access to your favorite apps on BlackBerry, Blackjack, and Nokia N95 devices. Now we've added a shorter video about the convenience key settings on BlackBerry devices. Time to stop fishing around in menus and start impressing your friends with fast-as-lightning mapping!
As always, we'd love to get your ideas for more features you'd like to learn about, so give us a shout on the blog or video comments. To see all our videos in one place, check out the Google Mobile Help channel. You can always subscribe to it to get the latest videos on using Google Mobile.
A recent article in the Evening Standard introduced a "new, peculiarly 21st century affliction" called nomophobia or "no mobile phobia," which is exactly what it sounds like - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Besides citing research that claims up to 53% of mobile phone users feel great anxiety when their phones run out of battery life or have no network coverage, the article also suggests ways to avoid nomophobia, such as carrying a charger at all times or remembering your most important phone numbers.
So are you a nomophobe? If you are, you're not alone. I suspect that many of us on the Google mobile team are nomophobes too!
We've found that a lot of you that use our services like Google Maps for mobile haven't yet tried some of the great features that are available. Well, those days are hopefully coming to an end. Today we're launching a new video series to help you Better Know Your Mobile by showing you some cool tips and tricks for getting information on the go.
If you've ever wondered how to get the most out of Maps for mobile, then this post is for you. These first two videos highlight the My Location and Traffic view features of Maps for mobile. Stuck in terra incognita? Check out the My Location video to learn how you can quickly find yourself on the map. Once you know your approximate location, you can also figure out whether there's traffic nearby using the Traffic feature. We'll even show you exactly what the different traffic colors actually mean.
If there are any features you'd like to learn more about, give us a shout on the blog or video comments - we'll be rolling out more videos in the near future. To browse all of our videos, hop over to the Google mobile help channel. While you're at it, bookmark that channel to catch new videos about using Google mobile.
We at Google would like to congratulate all the members of the Open Handset Alliance and the fantastic Android developer community for this well-deserved recognition. Android's growing momentum is the result of an amazing effort and collaboration among many different people.
Coincidentally, this week marks five months since the Open Handset Alliance and Android first went public. A lot has happened in this short period of time. Among the things of note:
We released an early look at the Android software development kit (SDK), allowing anyone to learn and start creating apps for the platform.
Feedback from developers has contributed to numerous fixes, improvements, new tools, and major updates to the SDK, the latest version of which you can find here.
Google announced the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in total awards for the best Android apps -- and the first phase has nearly wrapped up. (Be sure to get your submissions in by April 14!)
When Joe Walnes showed off the shiny AJAX interface on the iPhone version of Picasa Web Albums I started thinking - can we make an AJAX interface work on new Windows Mobile devices? After all, Internet Explorer Mobile supports many of the advanced browser features that we used to build the iPhone version. Joe and I wanted to give it a try so we got to work. Today we're pleased to tell owners of Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen devices that you can now enjoy a much faster and slicker way of browsing Picasa Web Albums on your phone.
Working with Windows Mobile also meant that we could add some cool features using the newly announced Google Gears for mobile, which gives web applications the ability to work even when there is no internet connection available. This means that you can view albums of your choice offline. Gears also lets you add a Picasa icon to your Program Files folder so you can have faster access to your favorite photos. If you'd like to learn more about how we leveraged Google Gears for mobile, watch Dion Almaer's interview with Joe.
To try out Picasa Web Albums on your WinMo 6 touchscreen phone, just go to picasaweb.google.com on your Internet Explorer Mobile browser. Let us know what you think!
