Richard Hartley There was a time in the not-so-distant past when mobile digital ads were an afterthought for many businesses and desktop computers garnered the lion share of all web traffic. In 2014, however, smartphone and tablet sales grossly outnumbered PC sales, and that gap has only continued to widen. What savvy marketers now realize is that the vast majority of transactions do not occur after only one website visit.

In fact, Google reports that 90% of consumer transactions are started on one device and finished on another, which further corroborates the idea that reaching today's consumers requires a multifaceted digital marketing strategy that recognizes mobile ads being just as important as ads viewed on desktops.

What Companies Tend to Overlook With Their Mobile Ads

Sitelink extensions are a primary culprit behind subpar mobile ad performance. Sitelink extensions are the links that appear underneath normal PPC ads, usually appearing at the top of the page where you can specify your text and destination URLs.

These extensions enable advertisers to deep-link users straight through to deeper pages within their websites, which leads to higher conversion rates, plus it helps the ads stand out, which significantly improves click-through rates.

What some companies fail to realize is that sitelink extensions follow the same mobile-preference rules that ads now follow in a post-enhanced campaign world. So, now you can get PC ads with mobile-preference properties. This is accomplished by selecting a box during the ad set up, which causes those ads to be shown on mobile devices only. If you have just standard ads in there, then the standard ads will get shown on mobile devices, making for a more cumbersome viewing experience.

What Marketers Need to Know About Mobile-Preference Ads

It's important to keep in mind that mobile sitelinks follow the same mobile-preference rules as the ads do. So, you can have mobile-preference sitelinks and non-mobile-preference sitelinks. If you don't specify the mobile sitelink, then the desktop ones will show — even if you have a site that has its own dedicated mobile URL and is designed specifically for mobile devices.

Additionally, Google requires up to six mobile-preference ads to be live before desktops ads begin showing alongside them. If you've only specified three mobile sitelinks, it will back-fill with three desktop links. Even if you've got a mobile-preference ad and some mobile-preference site links, you still might be sending traffic through to your desktop site, which could prove disastrous for your mobile site's conversion rate.

Additional Tips: What Marketers Can Use to Reach Their Highest Value Prospects Via Mobile Devices.

According to industry benchmarks, only 2-4% of site visits result in a transaction. Subsequently, a customer's online path to purchase can involve several related commercial searches and site visits. If a marketer knows which searchers represent higher value prospects, the marketer could respond by bidding higher, showing on broader keywords or presenting different ads to improve its conversion results.

Last October, Google added a feature to Google AdWords called remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) that now makes this all possible. RLSA works through search, allowing marketers to target first party data and enabling marketers to know whether a person searching keywords has ever visited their website. Previously, marketers were relegated to targeting a keyword and guessing the intent of the user.

Now, marketers can finally know who users are, they can track them and can even send messages based on a lot more information than just the proxy of what a keyword is. RLSA is a change that allows marketers to use their existing remarketing lists to more effectively reach past site visitors, which ultimately yields higher conversion rates — and a higher ROI.

Richard Hartley is PPC director for Jellyfish Online Marketing. He can be reached at Richard.Hartley@jellyfish.net or 443-720-0421.

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