Ariel Bardin and Peter Hazlehurst presented and described the massive and far reaching value of the mobile space.
The Google Wallet presentation at Money 2020 in Las Vegas had attendees on the edge of their seats as Ariel Bardin, the vice president of Google payments, placed a tremendous spotlight on the future of the mobile payments service and on the importance of being in the mobile space.
He used the example of the Google AdWords platform and the data delivered to companies.
Bardin explained the idea that the AdWords platform and the information that it delivers to companies through the advertising space at Google does not currently reflect the mobile sphere. This suggests that the data is skewed unless the focus of advertisers is exclusively on the desktop and laptop using market.
Bardin provided examples to show the importance this makes on data collection through mobile payments.
Among them was the keyword “Flowers”. In this area, the data provided through the AdWords platform is that there are 10,000 impressions associated with that keyword, that there are 250 clicks, that the price is $1 per click and therefore the cost is $25 per click, and so on. However, this does not reflect the use from smartphone and tablet users, of which there are a rapidly growing number.
Bardin pointed out that the use of data collected through mobile payments would provide a considerable amount of strength to the AdWords platform. This information would help to enhance the accuracy of the data provided to marketers regarding their costs as well as the expected and actual effectiveness of their campaigns.
Bardin was joined by Peter Hazlehurst, the director of product management at Google Wallet – who wore Google Glass augmented reality glasses, though did not make mention of them during the presentation – and they explained that Google Wallet has new directions in its future, as well. For instance, though the program has been based on NFC technology, they will be adding a non-NFC version of the mobile payments service so that phones that are not equipped with this tech will remain compatible. In fact, an iPhone was used for the demonstration, to prove the point.
Google is now working on attracting as many merchants for their mobile payments program as possible, and have added an instant buy button for the users of Google wallet in order to make it more convenient and appealing to both sellers and buyers. This, in combination with other efforts, has allowed them to achieve a 20 percent higher conversion rate and a 14 percent larger total cart size through smartphone based transactions.
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