We came across a compelling piece of research, 'Mobile Life', and article published this week by TNS:

One in ten UK consumers now use ‘mobile wallet’ whilst one in five use mobile banking

The use of ‘mobile wallet’ technology amongst UK consumers has more than doubled in the last 12 months with more than one in ten people now making payments via their mobile, says Mobile Life, a TNS research paper into use of mobiles in the UK. Moreover, one in five UK consumers now use their mobile to perform basic banking functions such as checking their account balance - also up more than 100% on last year.

Thanks largely to the surge in smartphone technology and the accessibility of such products to the wider market, in the UK 11.9% of consumers now use their mobiles to make payments online. The figure, up from only 5.9% twelve months ago, means more than one in ten of us now uses mobile wallet technology. The percentage of people who regularly bank via their mobile is now 20.4%, up from 9.7% in 2010, again demonstrating the rapidly growing adoption of mobile technology.

Mobile wallet technology allows the consumer to use their phone like a debit or credit card to pay for items online or in-store. It doesn’t require a bank account and can be topped up with money to store in order to facilitate easy transactions at any time. Mobile banking encompasses the more basic functions of online finance, like checking your account balance or making purchases securely, both of which can be performed either through apps or mobile internet.

Stephen Yap, Group Director at TNS Technology, said, “The huge increase in the use of mobile wallet technology in the UK shows the dramatic effect technology is having on our lifestyles. The incredible success of the smartphone is encouraging people to migrate many of their key online activities onto their mobile. In the last twelve months in particular the openness of the Android platform has increased handset competition and driven down prices, meaning that more and more people are able to use their handset as a payment tool.”

“As we become more familiar with smartphones and as mobile networks improve, we should see this number increase further, until mobile is the primary platform for most everyday online functions, including making payments,” said Yap. “Soon we could be seeing phones as our primary portals for all online needs, particularly as the growth of the cloud will place less emphasis on storage space and more on mobile access points.”

On the rise in mobile banking, Yap said, “The increase in mobile banking is a further proof point that mobile is the coming platform. Banks need to get their house in order to ensure that their mobile offer is as strong as their online one, as this could rapidly become a key differentiator for consumers.”

Source: TNS 'Mobile Life' 2011

As soon as the March Budget was announced, we saw a spike in interest in 'first time buyer' mortgage related queries online. Clearly the FirstBuy scheme has generated interest: queries shot up immediately and have shown a continued rise since then.


Source: Google internal

For advertisers and providers with an interest in this sector of the market, this gives a window of opportunity to capture customers, while they research and may look to purchase alternate mortgage products online.

We've looked at trends in what people are searching for and put together a keyword pack (access here) which is a good starting point for advertisers looking to expand their coverage of the first-time-buyer sector. In less than one month since the Budget announcement, there have been over 80,000 queries against these specific terms.

Remember that there are many free Google tools to help you build out AdWords campaigns in the Opportunity Tab within your AdWords account.

A big thank you to everyone who joined us on Wednesday for our first 'Google Loves Mobile' Financial Services event at The May Fair hotel. The feedback so far has been really positive and we hope to run more events like this in the future and make them even better, so please do take a moment if you were at the event to let us know what you thought.

We had a day full of great speakers - we heard from Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!; Google's Ian Carrington and Amanda Rosenberg; then Jon Mew, Head of Mobile for the IAB; Daniel Rosen of AKQA and lastly Reto Meier from Google, before heading into an engaging panel session. Jedward were also seen wandering the hotel, so a day of big hitters ;)

You can revisit the presentations from the day (for the speakers who used slides), and download them here

You can also watch video versions of Amanda's mobile Search and Display demos:

Thanks again to everyone who contributed, and we hope to see lots of you at the next Google UK Finance event!

Take a look at the YouTube UK Homepage today, for More Th>n's 'More Than Freeman' campaign - proof that you can make a splash with insurance!

Their Click-to-Play masthead plays a short clip from the 'rooftile' home insurance ad and then leads through More Th>n's branded YouTube channel for more TV ads, a 'making of the ads' film, and other features such as links through to follow on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information about YouTube and the opportunities for your brand, just get in touch with your Google contacts :)

As the snow continues to disrupt travel plans across the UK and beyond, we've seen a peak in travel insurance queries. Travellers concerned for the impact of cancelled flights, missed connections and other disrupted travel plans may find themselves in the market for last-minute travel insurance.



Our advice?

• Make sure you have good keyword coverage for seasonal related searches
• Try some eye-catching seasonal creative related to snow or bad weather
• Ensure your daily budgets are allowing for spikes in queries

Searches around savings pick up immediately after Christmas as people resolve to save more for next year after the expensive festive season. Spotting and having the flexibility to act on this trend can help you cash in on consumer desire to save money.

The two week period between Christmas and the first week back at work represents the best possible time to build cost efficient market share in the Savings market.

While Queries see a huge jump in this window, CPCs move in the opposite direction (32% down in 2009) as advertisers tend to overestimate the reduction in demand over December and misalign budgets during this seasonal spike.



Our recommendations?

READ MORE from the Google Finance Team on how to make the most of the Savings market this Christmas .

Today, a great example of a UK financial services company using the YouTube homepage takeover masthead ad format to gain brand visibility. Visa are running a 'Pay with Visa' competition and driving traffic to their own competition site through the YouTube masthead.

• The YouTube homepage delivers ~9,500,000 daily impressions in the UK
• 54% of YouTube users in the UK are aged 35+

(Source: Nielsen Sep 2010)

For more examples of finance (and other) brands using YouTube please visit our YouTube Creative Hub