Google Marketing

New Innovations To Grow Your App Business With Ads

31 July 2019 by

App developers around the world are pushing the limits of innovation to meet consumers’ high expectations. In an increasingly competitive global market, it’s more important than ever for app developers to find better ways to build and grow their businesses.

Today at Think Games at ChinaJoy, we are sharing innovations that help you find more users and grow your revenue with Google’s latest solutions.

Reach more users when they’re looking for something new 

Connecting with the right people at the right time is key to building a strong user base. Google App campaigns make it easy for you to find app-happy users across Google Search, Play, YouTube and over 3 million sites and apps in our network. Here are some new ways App campaigns can help you expand your global reach.

Discover (formerly known as the Google feed) helps over 800 million monthly active users uncover fresh and interesting content related to the things they care about—like global news and topics of interest like sports, music, and mobile games. Now, you can access Discover inventory through App campaigns to make a strong impression on more users with relevant and visually engaging ads.

App campaigns running in the United States will now automatically reach more potential users on Discover who are open to exploring your app. And in the coming months, your app ads on Discover will also serve in Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. We aim to bring app ads in Discover to all available markets before the end of this year. 

In addition to Discover⁠, we’re introducing new reach opportunities on two more platforms:

  • App ads on YouTube Search: Your app promotion ads are now eligible to show in the top slot of YouTube’s mobile search results. Combining YouTube’s global audience with rich intent signals helps you deliver relevant and useful ads to more prospective app users.
  • In-stream video ads in our display network: Display in-stream video ads are skippable video ads that play before, during, or after a video a user is watching. Starting next month, you can reach more people with your ads while they’re viewing video content on mobile apps and sites in our network.

Grow revenue and deliver a better user experience

Finding the right users is important, but developers need to think about growing overall revenue in order to build sustainable businesses. By integrating ads during natural break points in your app you can build a new revenue stream and deliver a better user experience.

Our new app open ad format allows you to show ads to your users as they wait for your app to load. Designed to seamlessly integrate with your app’s branding, this format gives you new ways to earn revenue while creating a good user experience. Reach out to your account manager to get started with this format in alpha.  

In addition to the new app open ads, here are two more ways we are helping you grow revenue while delivering better ad experiences for your users:

  • Smart segmentation is now available for rewarded ad units. This feature, announced earlier this year for interstitial ads units, only shows ads to users unlikely to make purchases in your app. This protects the user experience of your purchasers while growing your ads revenue.
  • AdMob Insights: Our new Insights feature provides alerts to your AdMob dashboard when our system detects abnormal changes to your key metrics like eCPM, impressions and revenue. This new beta lets you know instantly if changes in your app are impacting user experience.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Grow Your Games Business With Ads

13 March 2019 by

There’s so much that goes into building a great mobile game. Building a thriving business on top of it? That’s next level. Today, we’re announcing new solutions to increase the lifetime value of your players. Now, it’s easier than ever to re-engage your audience and take advantage of a new, smarter approach to monetization.

Help inactive players rediscover your game

Let’s face it, the majority of players you acquire aren’t going to continue engaging with your game after just a handful of days. One of the biggest opportunities you have to grow your business is to get those inactive players to come back and play again.

We’re introducing App campaigns for engagement in Google Ads to help players rediscover your game by engaging them with relevant ads across Google’s properties. With App campaigns for engagement, you can reconnect with players in many different ways, such as encouraging lapsed players to complete the tutorial, introducing new features that have been added since a player’s last session, or getting someone to open the game for the first time on Android (which only Google can help with).

Learn more about it here or talk to your Google account representative if you’re interested in trying it out.

Generate revenue from non-spending players

Acquiring and retaining users is important, but retention alone doesn’t generate revenue.  Our internal data shows that, on average, less than four percent of players will ever spend on in-app items. One way to increase overall revenue is through ads. However, some developers worry that ads might hurt in-app purchase revenue by disrupting gameplay for players who do spend. What if you could just show ads to the players who aren’t going to spend in your app? Good news—now you can.

We’re bringing a new approach to monetization that combines ads and in-app purchases in one automated solution. Available today, new smart segmentation features in Google AdMob use machine learning to segment your players based on their likelihood to spend on in-app purchases.

Ad units with smart segmentation will show ads only to users who are predicted not to spend on in-app purchases. Players who are predicted to spend will see no ads, and can simply continue playing.  Check it out by creating an interstitial ad unit with smart segmentation enabled.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Grow Your App Business With Google’s New Education Program For Universal App Campaigns

17 January 2018 by

Today, we’re launching a new interactive education program for Universal App campaigns (UAC). UAC makes it easy for you to reach users and grow your app business at scale. It uses Google’s machine learning technology to help find the customers that matter most to you, based on your business goals—across Google Play, Google.com, YouTube, and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network.

UAC is a shift in the way you market your mobile apps, so we designed the program’s first course to help you learn how to get the best results from UAC. Here are a few reasons we encourage you take the course:

  • Learn from industry experts. The course was created by marketers who’ve been in your shoes and vetted by the team who built the Universal App campaign.
  • Learn on your schedule. Watch snackable videos at your own pace. The course is made up of short 3-minute videos to help you master the content faster.
  • Practice what you learn. Complete interactive activities based on real-life scenarios like using UAC to help launch a new app or release an update for your app.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Win Over More Users With A New Playable Ad Format In Universal App Campaigns

4 December 2017 by

The holiday season is upon us, and millions of consumers around the world are looking forward to unwrapping their new devices and downloading their favorite apps. People have so many choices when it comes to apps, so it’s critical for you to capture their attention and give them a reason to engage with your app.

That’s why we’re rolling out HTML5 playable ads in Universal App campaigns (UAC)—so users can quickly spin a wheel, score a point or jump into level two, right from the ad.

Playtika gets more people in the game

To show how playable ads in UAC benefit game developers and app marketers, let’s take a look at how Playtika, a leading mobile gaming company, used this format to reach more users for its game: House of Fun. People can spin a wheel directly in the ad and experience the thrill of the game before downloading. This gives game lovers a sense of how the game works, and what it takes to win, before installing.

After introducing interactive and engaging playable ads and testing multiple creative formats, Playtika increased its return on ad spend (ROAS) by 1.8X.

According to Nir Schlaen, Marketing Team Leader, “We want to put Playtika’s games in the hands of more potential players at scale…We’ve found that playables drive more engagement and long-term customer value because users have already had a taste of the game.”

Here are three tips to help you get started with playable ads in UAC.
1. Make it short and sweet: Keep playable content short and engaging so that users don’t choose to skip your ad. We recommend that your ad be between 30-60 seconds long. Tailor the length for your app; it can vary depending on the vertical and complexity of the ad. And gameplay in the ad should be easier to complete than in the actual game.
2. Be engaging but accurate: Make sure to include how you want users to interact with your ad in its design. This starts with a good first impression. Focus on the aspects of your game that capture people’s attention and get players to come back. Set clear user expectations by including clear instructions and captions about how the gameplay works—for example, “swipe to scroll” and “shake your phone to jump”.
3. Have a clear call to action: This is your chance to summarize your game and to encourage users to play the full version by downloading your app. As an example, “Enjoyed playing? Download now to beat level two.” It’s important to make the call to action as clear as possible with a clickable area for a smooth transition into your game.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Find More Of Your “Star” Customers With Universal App Campaigns

9 October 2017 by

We recently announced that we’ll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC). Starting on October 16th, all new app install campaigns created in AdWords will run on UAC. Existing Search, Display, and YouTube app promo campaigns will stop running on November 15th, so it’s important to start upgrading to UAC as soon as possible.

Check out our UAC best practices for more tips on creatives, bidding strategies and conversion tracking options.

How UAC helps you find the customers that matter most

UAC uses Google’s unique machine learning technology to help find your “star” customers based on business goals you define like signing up for a free trial or even making a purchase — across Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network.

Advertisers across the world and in different industries have found more of their best customers with UAC. Here are some of their stories.

STARZ is the second-largest premium content provider in the U.S. that features movies and original TV series. Alison Hoffman, Chief Marketing Officer, says “A new slate of STARZ customers now use our mobile app to watch their favorite shows and movies. STARZ partnered with Google to support the new seasons of our hit series Power and Outlander. (We) used Universal App Campaigns to drive potential fans to sign up for the STARZ mobile app … Universal App Campaigns helped STARZ nearly double the number of fans found through Google.”

Viber is a free messaging and calling app owned by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc. Viber’s growth team used UAC for Actions to acquire users with a 21% higher retention rate. “Using Universal App Campaigns with action optimization helped us acquire more high-quality users with better budget utilization. It allowed us to directly optimize our campaign for our business goal, which is to acquire loyal users,” says Moshi Blum, Head of User Acquisition.

Looking for more balance and mindfulness? Then the personalized meditation training and guidance in the Headspace app may be for you. Universal App Campaigns makes it easier for Headspace to improve the health and happiness of the world. According to Head of Growth, Robert Lamvik, “Headspace has a small, yet ambitious team, so we partnered with Google and use UAC to create more scalable campaign activity that brings us higher quality users. What’s great is that UAC finds people likely to take the actions we care about — like starting a meditation session or subscribing.”

Looking for more balance and mindfulness? Then the personalized meditation training and guidance in the Headspace app may be for you. Universal App Campaigns make it easier for Headspace to improve the health and happiness of the world. According to Head of Growth, Robert Lamvik, “Headspace has a small, yet ambitious team, so we partnered with Google and use UAC to create more scalable campaign activity that brings us higher quality users. What’s great is that UAC finds people likely to take the actions we care about — like starting a meditation session or subscribing.”

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Universal App Campaigns: Optimize For The Right In-App Action

26 September 2017 by

As you may have heard, we’ll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC) later this year.

With UAC, you can reach the right people across all of Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network — all from one campaign. Marketers who are already using UAC to optimize for in-app actions are seeing 140% more conversions per dollar than other Google app promotion products.1

Over the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how to steer performance for UAC using goals and your creative assets. In today’s post, we’ll talk about another very important topic when it comes to UAC — optimizing for the right in-app action.

This is important if you want to find app users who will do something specific after they’ve installed your app — whether that’s adding something to a wishlist for your shopping app, entering their frequent flier info to your traveler app or joining a group in your game.

First things first: take a look at what’s happening inside your app.

Track and send AdWords your in-app events

You wouldn’t stop measuring at the landing page of a website, so why would you stop at the install for a mobile app?

Each post-install event that you track and pass back to AdWords is a chance to learn more about how users engage with your app. The more we learn about your best app users, the easier it is to find more people like them. If you’re not sure what to track, look at this list of events by app category. Pick the one that’s most like your app and use it as a guide.


Let’s go back to our mobile game example: Before you start advertising your new mobile game, you pay a visit to the part of your office where the developer team sits. You kindly ask them to implement all the in-app events that apply to a gaming app — and you take some to discuss whether there are any other in-app events that are specific to your game.

Understand how users interact with your app

Once you’ve built up a user base, follow your users along their journey beyond the install. Create what’s called a “user funnel.” What are the key steps people take that lead to a purchase?


Example: You happen to sit next to your analytics team so you swivel your chair around to see if they have a moment to chat. You’d like to get their thoughts on a user to funnel you’ve created for your game: installs, opens, completes the tutorial, reaches level 5, joins group, reaches level 10, and then finally — makes a purchase. You and the team agree that this stuff is important to track so you schedule a regular meeting to analyze your game’s user funnel. Constant review of the metrics with your analytics team will help determine if your ads are bringing in the right users.

Pick the right in-app action for your campaign

Now comes an important question: what do you want new app users to do in your app? The answer will help determine the in-app action(s) you’ll pick as the optimization goal for UAC.


Example: During a one-on-one with your boss, you learn that driving in-app purchases is a priority for the business right now. You’re worried because you don’t see many in-app purchases happening per day (at least not yet), and you remember that UAC needs to optimize for an in-app action that happens at least 10 times a day.  You need to pick another in-app action that’s more common. You remember that your analytics team pointed out that users who join a group are very prone to making an in-app purchase 30 days later. And your data shows that this in-app action happens about 40 times a day so you set “Join a group” as the in-app action to optimize for.

Improve the user experience

What else can you do with the information you’ve collected? Review your user funnel. Identify where people are having trouble and see if you can help them out.


Example:During one of your meetings with the analytics team, you spot a big drop off at the tutorial section of the app. After your meeting, you rush downstairs to where your UX team sits. You work with the team to brainstorm a different way to teach beginners how to play your game. You want to see if this can improve how people get onboarded. If you’re successful, not only will you get better conversion rates for your ads — but you’ll create a better app experience for everyone! 


Review these principles for more ideas on how to improve user experiences and conversions for your mobile app.

And don’t forget to check out our best practices guide to learn more about how to get the most from your Universal App Campaigns.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

At Google I/O, New Features To Find The Right Users For Your App

18 May 2016 by

Last year at Google I/O, we shared our mission to make app growth easier with the launch of Universal App Campaigns – one simple campaign that surfaces apps to billions of consumers who use Google Play, Search, YouTube, and more. It’s working, and more people are discovering apps on Google than ever before. Over the past year—and thanks to Universal App Campaigns—we’ve more than doubled the volume of app installs driven by ads, and to date, we’ve delivered more than 2 billion downloads to developers.

Today at Google I/O, we’re announcing multiple improvements to Universal App Campaigns to make it an even more powerful tool for app developers to find the right users for their app. 

Making app growth simple for iOS developers 

First, Universal App Campaigns are expanding beyond Android to help developers grow their iOS apps. Now, all app developers can tap into the simplicity and power of Universal App Campaigns to reach billions of Android and iOS users on YouTube, the Google Search App, and the Google Display Network. Universal App Campaigns for iOS are available in beta today and will roll out to all developers in the near future.

Finding more valuable users with less effort 

Second, we’re helping developers more easily grow an active user base by finding the right user from the start. Instead of reaching any user to install their app, developers can now also find customers who are likely to be valuable users of their app. A recent study1 showed that 17% of users drive 85% of app revenue, which is why successful apps are shifting their focus from volume to finding more of the right customers.

Universal App Campaigns will automate targeting, bidding, and creative generation to find your most valuable users based on your in app conversions. Just tell us the in app events that matter to you, whether it’s reaching level ten in your game, subscribing to your service, or making a purchase in your app, and we’ll do the rest. Our models evaluate countless signals and constantly learn and adjust, meaning every ad is based on the freshest, most relevant data. The best thing is that we do all the hard work in the background, predicting which users will be valuable and acquiring them at the right price. These innovations are in testing and will roll out in the coming months.

Pocket Gems has already been leaning on the automation of Universal App Campaigns to find quality users at scale, as David Rose, Director of Performance Marketing said:

“Universal App Campaigns have helped us acquire users with a higher LTV compared to other acquisition channels. We’re particularly excited about how the next generation of Universal App Campaigns will enable us to iterate quickly and optimize for the actions that matter most to our business. This is an app marketer’s dream.”

More ways to reach the right customers at the right moments 

That’s not all. We’re creating more chances for developers to show ads where users go to watch, discover, and communicate. Universal App Campaigns will soon reach more users on YouTube, as well as introduce a new opportunity to reach users on top of tabs in Gmail.

Insights made for apps Finally, we know app developers need the best user insights to build better apps and power their marketing campaigns, so we’re particularly excited about Firebase Analytics, our new analytics platform designed for apps from the ground-up that was announced at Google I/O earlier today. It provides prebuilt engagement and in-app actions that will help manage your conversions and lifetime value for AdWords campaigns and over 20 third-party ad networks. If you’re an AdWords user you can funnel these conversions into AdWords so it’s even easier to optimize campaigns to the things you care about.

SparkPeople, one of our early testers in the health and fitness sector, is already gaining more insights and taking a longer term view of app audience growth by linking AdWords accounts to Firebase:

“AdWords is a crucial part of my customer acquisition strategy. Linking my AdWords account to Firebase was incredibly easy, and now I can see total lifetime value for all users I’ve brought in from AdWords, broken down by campaign. The ability to sync my AdWords data to Firebase Analytics has simplified my daily management and optimization from hours to minutes, so I can spend more time building an app my users will love.” – Joe Robb, Digital Marketing Director, SparkPeople

We look forward to helping many more developers build and grow successful businesses. At Google I/O, we’ll be sharing essential insights and best practices on how to drive growth with Google tools. You can take part too by viewing the live streamed and recorded sessions here. Happy I/O!

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

New Ad Formats And Targeting To Find, Keep And Monetize High-Quality Gamers

14 March 2016 by

When mobile users are looking for entertainment they often turn to game apps. In 2015, an estimated 41% of all apps downloaded were games.1 However, while a user may be excited about downloading an app, it can soon be forgotten; studies have shown that 1 in 4 installed apps are never used.

For game developers, building a successful business has often depended on an approach of acquiring as many users as possible, then trying to keep them engaged in the game as their interest wanes. While volume is important, it’s more important to find the right kind of user, who’ll open the app and keep on playing. That’s why today, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we announced a host of new features in AdWords and AdMob that make it simpler for developers to reach the right users at scale.

Let users try your app before downloading from Google Search
We recently introduced Trial Run Ads on the Google Display Network which lets users stream your game from a display ad for your app before they download. In the next few weeks, we’ll extend these ads to search results on Google as a beta for selected U.S. advertisers. With Search Trial Run Ads, when a user searches for a game on Google, they can click ‘Try Now’ from within a search ad and try the app before installing it, similar to streaming apps from organic results. These ads will appear to smartphone users on WiFi, and the user can play for up to 10 minutes, then download the app in full if they choose. This format drives highly qualified users who are more likely to stay engaged with the app after install. Contact your Google representative to learn more about using this new format.

Showcase your game with portrait videos
More than 80% of video ad views in mobile apps on the Google Display Network are from devices held vertically, but often, the videos are created for landscape viewing. Over the next few weeks, we’re launching Portrait Video Ads so users have a full-screen, immersive portrait video experience without having to re-orient their device. We’ve seen significant improvement in both click-through and conversion rates from game developers using Portrait Video, resulting in a much lower cost per install and a larger number of downloads.

Promote your app to game-lovers
Advertisers have long been able to control who sees their AdWords ads, and in the coming weeks we’ll be launching even finer options to reach high-quality users with Active User Targeting for Games. This new type of targeting for Android apps can show ads to users who have spent more than 30 minutes playing games, or who have played a Google Play Games integrated game in the last 30 days. Game developers can show their ads to game lovers, and combined with other types of targeting, such as a particular game category (e.g., Adventure), they can reach a very precise audience.

Earn money from rewarded ads with AdMob Mediation
AdMob helps app developers around the world earn through in-app advertising with best-in-class formats and smart tools to maximize revenue. Increasingly, rewarded advertising is becoming a popular form of game monetization: users are given the choice to engage with ads in exchange for in-app rewards. Today, we’re introducing a way for developers to easily monetize apps with rewarded video ads from a number of ad providers in AdMob Mediation. Supported networks and platforms include AdColony, AppLovin, Chartboost, Fyber, Upsight, and Vungle, with more being added all the time. So if you’re a developer monetizing with these providers, you can easily manage and optimize them through the AdMob interface. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to provide app developers with a first-class mediation solution, and follows our recent launch enabling SDK-less mediation.

We’re working closely with developers to innovate our ad solutions and help them build strong businesses. If you’re a game developer, come and meet with our ads teams at GDC at the Google booth between Wednesday and Friday, to discuss developing great games, growing your user base and earning more money. We’ll have a series of great talks in our booth mini-theater each day, and on Thursday morning we’ll be part of the main GDC sessions, with a discussion on user acquisition and monetization.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog