Google App Campaigns: What Is It?

Global Mobile App Market is growing continuously, recent data suggests that up to 90% of the user’s mobile time is spent in various apps, as opposed to only 10% that is spent browsing the Internet. It is predicted that by 2025 there will be 7.49 billion mobile app users across the globe. A successful app growth strategy comprises many components, such as testing different channels and means of getting through to the potential users. One of the components that can help you promote your app is using Google Ads App Campaigns.

Google Ads App Campaigns is a huge market with estimated 18 000 game advertisers and 70 000 non-game app advertisers profiting from it monthly. It is important for mobile app developers to apply working strategies to attract users and increase visibility in the Google space. How can this be done?

There are ways that are time-tested and really show high efficiency in practice. For example, Google Universal App Campaigns allow you to quickly set up ads for mobile applications by automating most processes. Advertisers who optimize embedded actions in apps with the help of universal campaigns, on average, receive 140% more conversions per dollar than in other Google products to promote apps.

What is Google UAC?

Universal App Campaigns, or simply Google App Campaigns, help to connect your app with consumers by promoting your app on various platforms, such as Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, etc. Google App Campaigns are suitable, convenient, and beneficial for all categories of apps that are designed for Android or iOS.

Considering the fact that creating Google Ads for Apps is a largely automated process, it does not require any extraordinary skills for creating an app and allows everyone to do so. Google App Campaigns automatically manage targeting so that you get the maximum profit from each download. Targeting can be optimized to attract the most valuable users who will perform the actions you need, such as in-app conversions. It is also possible to select the type of the campaign depending on its goal, for instance, whether it is aimed at increasing (1) App installs, (2) App engagement or (3) App pre-registration. Thus, each campaign type focuses on different actions. For instance, App installs attract new users to download your app. Google Ads also help advertisers to get the most out of the installs by automating targeting and bidding. Moreover your campaign targeting may be optimized and focused on your ads being shown only to the right people, who will perform the actions you encourage them to do. App engagement allows you to redirect the users, who have already installed your app to a landing page you want them to visit. App pre-registration, which only works for Android, is useful for making the users informed and excited about your app before its release on Google Play. It lets the consumers click on your Google Ads and then pre-register for your app in the Play Store.

How to make your app the most effective?

In the target, the advertiser can specify the region and language, then it is needed to set a budget, deadlines and upload text, images and videos that Google will independently form into ads and evaluate which work best. These images and videos along with HTML5 creatives are also referred to as assets. Mobile App Campaigns provide an opportunity to upload up to 5 assets in each category and it is advised to make these assets diverse in both format and content. For example, the images you choose as the assets should be of various formats, such as gif, jpg, png, various sizes as well as of a varying content, and should not be overloaded with information. The same applies to the videos, they should be as diverse as possible. You should utilize both horizontal and vertical videos and should show various aspects and features of your app. Another crucial aspect of creating a video asset is making sure that it grabs the attention from the first seconds, otherwise the user is likely to skip your ad. Diversifying the assets and making them attractive to the users increases the chances of Google finding the best placement for your app. When writing a text of your ad, stay concise and precise, try to persuade the user to install the app by describing it and enumerating its benefits.

Best practices for iOS App campaigns

For a person who is engaged in optimizing and promoting their app on the App Store, it is crucial to take into account that the positive dynamics of results using UAC is not immediately traceable. Algorithms need time to adjust, collect enough data to understand which creatives, which advertising format and at what time leads the user to the desired conversion. On the basis of this, further actions are built and only then positive dynamics appear. The more data received – the more profit and less expenses are experienced.

Here are some more of the best practices for App Campaigns. First of all, try to set your bids right in the morning and not later in the day, as this will help you reduce your bids when your campaigns reach daily goals. Secondly, if your budget is relatively small, you should not change your target bids often, leave it for a minimum of several weeks, otherwise, Google will not have enough time to optimize your assets, their placement and your budget. Another successful strategy is not expanding your geographical reach, until the bid-to-budget ratio is somewhere around 20x. Unifying budgets into one campaign will lead you to maximizing your daily budget. Finally, using exclusions is beneficial for avoiding your App Ad being shown to the irrelevant audience.

There exist the best practices for iOS App Campaigns specifically. It is also recommended to use universal links for iOS to send the users directly to the relevant pages of your app. Furthermore, importing events from Firebase or linking your Google Ads account to the third-party analytics tool is useful for tracking first opens, in-app purchases, and custom events.

Google App Campaigns along with some other channels, such as Apple Search Ads can help you boost your app growth. If you want to ensure your app growth, you can contact SplitMetrics experts to enhance your strategy.