Outrider, a search marketing agency within WPP Group PLC's GroupM Search, introduced a mobile search practice group to guide advertisers through the education, adoption, strategy, development and execution of mobile search marketing.

The mobile search practice group will work under the direction of Michael Nevins, GroupM's new senior partner and group director of mobile technologies for North America (see story). Outrider will lead the search portion of GroupM's mobile advertising initiatives and manage mobile search campaigns for clients across GroupM agencies.

"We're seeing interesting results," said Michael Dowd, mobile practice lead at Outrider, St. Louis, MO. "Granted clicks and impressions are much lower at this stage than traditional search.

"Howevever, for an entertainment client, for example, mobile search drove more than 1.6 million impressions in the first 30 days of the campaign," he said. "An automotive client is getting great results at a lower cost-per-click on general terms than those terms would be in traditional search.

"It is definitely an interesting channel at the moment and likely to continue to evolve rapidly as more and more advertisers start to get comfortable with taking their brands mobile."

Outrider's team, led by Mr. Dowd and mobile tactical lead Tim LaGrone, currently manages mobile programs for clients in the entertainment, automotive and quick service restaurant categories.

According to market researcher Nielsen Mobile, 144 million U.S. mobile subscribers are using their devices for data purposes.

Outrider's mobile search strategists will help business-to-consumer and business-to-business clients identify opportunities to tap into this mobile audience and create campaigns with appropriate mobile presence.

Early adopters of mobile search have an advantage over their competition, according to Outrider. They can reap the benefits of testing strategies, gather a wealth of historical and behavioral data, and identify which platform performs best for their brands.

For one undisclosed client in the quick service restaurant category, early adoption has enabled the company to explore how its target consumer engages in mobile and what influences or impedes a conversion or sale, per Outrider.

One factor to marketers' success is the approach to keywords and creative -- including misspellings more likely on a mobile device -- that differ slightly from desktop search, but resonate better with mobile search behavior.

"Engagement and measurement in mobile search differ from traditional search campaigns," said Patrick Garrett, U.S. managing director at Outrider.

"Our job is to help advertisers assess the right tasks in engagement with their brand by mobile users," he said. "We then identify and dissect the right learnings from our clients' mobile programs and turn the data into actionable items."

According to an M:Metrics report from January 2008, mobile content consumption across the total market is strong, but jumps significantly for users of the Apple iPhone and smartphones.

Mobile consumption is also the driving force behind market opportunity for advertisers, according to Outrider.

In 2007, mobile search advertising spend reached $34.5 million domestically and $83.3 million worldwide, based on eMarketer estimates. It is projected to reach $1.4 billion domestically and $3.7 billion globally by 2012.

"Our perspective is advertisers should be adopting now in the early stages of growth and reap the benefits of testing strategies, establishing quality scores on the engines' platforms, identifying how their consumers are engaging with mobile, dissecting data to analyze and turn into actionable items -- all while the competition among mobile is low," Mr. Garrett said.