“Fat Finger Effect” Prompts Google to Revise Digital Ads

If you’ve read the McCauley Marketing Services blog before, you know the marketing term “second screen.”  In case you don’t, let us fill you in:  the number of consumers using their mobile devices (i.e., cellular phones or tablets) to communicate and decide where and how to spend their disposable income is growing at a staggering rate. As such, the number of digital advertisements continues to multiply in proportion.  One problem, however, is that the size of most mobile devices’ touch screens do not allow for very accurate clicking; a term that Google engineers have aptly named the “fat finger effect.”

Because consumers can’t always easily click on the link they intend, many mobile ads get clicked unintentionally.  To help consumers get what they need faster, and to help advertisers not have to spend money on unproductive pay-per-click advertising, Google is now instituting PPC ad protocol that requires users to click on a second link labeled “visit site” once they’ve clicked on an ad.

This is a wise move in many marketing eyes as the search giant continues to gain consumers and advertisers hungry for the information and customers they want when they want it.    Detailed in a recent New York Times technology blog, Google reports that early testing of the new ads does decrease the total number of clicks to ads, but increases the number of clicks from users who intend to interact with the information.  Quoted in the blog, Allen Huang, a Google product manager for mobile display ads shared in a Google company blog post, “Implementing confirmed clicks is an important step that we think will benefit users, advertisers, publishers, and the mobile ecosystem overall.”

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