Details on how Google Ads plans to buy media on apps and an update on Google bidding with third-party app monetization platforms.
Marketers are investing more in their apps. In fact, 81% of retailers and 75% of e-commerce companies plan to increase their investment in promoting their mobile apps over the next 12 months.
People search across various sites and apps before taking action, with the average consumer switching five times between mobile web and apps in a 30 minute-session
It’s also essential to prioritize frictionless web-to-app experiences for customers that already have your app — which you can do with deep linking. For example, let’s say a customer is searching for new shoes on her mobile browser and sees your ad. With deep linking, she will land on the in-app product page and can check out faster, improving the customer experience and driving better campaign performance. On average, advertisers who have implemented deep linking are seeing over 2X uplift in conversion rate.
Canadian Tire, one of the leading retailers in Canada, has already seen success implementing optimized experiences with Web to App Connect.
Web to App Connect made it easier for my team to collaborate with our developers to ensure our app users aren’t having clunky experiences.
Web to App Connect will be available in beta early next year. You can express interest in being a part of the upcoming beta today and explore this guide to learn more about the toolkit.
To be set up for long-term success, today’s leading marketers should prioritize measurement solutions that both deliver performance and protect user privacy. Google Analytics for Firebase, our privacy-forward measurement solution, provides powerful cross-platform measurement capabilities to help you understand how your users engage with your app and optimize your App campaign attribution, reach and performance.
Vinted, a European marketplace for secondhand clothing, wanted to improve app performance by achieving more in-app actions and optimizing their cost per in-app action. After implementing and bidding on conversions from Google Analytics for Firebase, they were able to achieve 128% more in-app actions on iOS compared to their existing measurement solution, increase installs by 92%, and decrease their cost-per-engagement by 22%.
After the transfer, we saw an immediate iOS performance impact and unlocked new opportunities.
When you implement Google Analytics for Firebase, you also unlock exclusive features like audience management and tROAS bidding for App campaigns. And over the next few months we’re rolling out additional benefits, including:
User expectations for privacy continue to grow, and updates such as last year’s rollout of the AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework on iOS have made measurement more complex. That’s why we’re supporting solutions that help advertisers navigate these changes, including the new version 4.0 updates to SKAdNetwork, Apple’s measurement API.
Throughout 2023, we’re improving modeled reporting consistency for iOS app installs across measurement platforms in Google Ads. Next year, we’ll also release tools for advertisers using the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK, which streamline setting up SKAdNetwork conversion values and help better optimize their campaigns for in-app actions.
Developing these new solutions will take time, but you can start taking steps today to get ahead. For example, to enhance conversion modeling and reporting accuracy, you can adopt on-device conversion measurement, a privacy-preserving solution we released earlier this year. With on-device conversion measurement, user interactions with app ads can be matched to app conversions in a way that prevents user-identifying information from leaving a user's device. You can also start setting up SKAdNetwork conversion values yourself or work with a measurement partner, such as our App Attribution Partners. Lastly, explore this guide to learn more best practices for your iOS App campaigns.
And while nothing is changing today for Android App campaigns, we recently provided an update on our participation in the Privacy Sandbox on Android initiative. We regularly share feedback with Android about its public proposals so that the new privacy-preserving technologies can help you reach the right audiences, and more accurately measure your campaign results with less reliance on tracking identifiers. And we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned throughout 2023 on the experiments we participate in.
Apps have transformed the way billions of people engage with the world — making it more convenient to play your favorite game, stay connected with loved ones and buy everyday essentials. In fact, our new research shows that 63% of consumers will continue to seek out the best app experiences even once stores reopen.
But as the demand for apps grows, it's increasingly challenging for developers to get their app discovered and convert new users into loyal customers. That’s why today, we’re sharing new ways to reach more people, activate insights to help improve performance and keep your valuable users coming back.
App campaigns make it easy for you to reach new app users across Search, YouTube, Google Play, Discover and over three million other sites and apps.
People are increasingly moving across multiple devices to get stuff done. Even as mobile usage continues to surge, worldwide, 46% of total time on websites is spent on desktop, and we want to help you meet consumers where they are. Starting in June, we are expanding the reach of App campaigns on Android to users in the desktop versions of Google.com and the Google Display Network.
If a user clicks on your app ad in her desktop browser, she will be directed to the Google Play Store desktop website. From there, she can choose to install your app directly onto any Android device linked to her Play account.
Reach users on desktop with App campaigns on Android.
No additional action is required if you are already running App campaigns on Android today. Desktop traffic and performance for your app ads will automatically show under “Computers” in your campaign reports.
Connecting with new users is a critical first step in the life cycle of growing your app business. But it’s important to understand what happens after the first install by measuring the right in-app events.
With the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK, you can measure events that matter to your business and get important insights about how your users engage with your app. Previously, both coding and an app update were required if you wanted to create a custom in-app event, like logging a “purchase” when users reach your confirmation screen. We’re now introducing event creation and modification directly from the Analytics interface so you can configure the right in-app events based on your marketing objectives — without requiring any code updates.
Make changes to events directly in the Google Analytics interface.
Now, you can change an event name or parameters, or create new ones without any developer resources required. With the ability to quickly make adjustments to your event schema, you can ensure you always capture the most relevant conversion events for your app.
Once you’re measuring all the right events, you can improve performance by bidding on your Analytics conversions in App campaigns. According to internal data, we found that the median campaign that switched to using Google Analytics for Firebase conversions for bidding saw a 13% increase in installs and a 20% increase in in-app events, with no significant change to cost per conversion.
And we’re seeing success across the industry — Just Eat Takeaway.com, a leading global online food delivery marketplace, saw a 20% increase in app orders and a 15% decrease in cost per order after migrating to Google Analytics for Firebase for bidding.
To learn more about new capabilities with the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK, watch our Google I/O technical session.
Loyal customers stick with brands that make it easy for them to get things done. Deep linking brings users into specific places in your app to make it easier for them to find what they’re looking for, whether it’s buying a new product, booking a trip or jumping back into their favorite game. This helps improve your ad performance — on average, deep linked ad experiences drive two times the conversion rates.
Shopee, a Singaporean e-commerce company, boosted their checkouts by 126% by using deep links to send traffic to the app if customers already had it installed.
Take app users directly to the products they want to see with deep linking.
But we’ve heard that getting started with deep linking isn’t easy — it takes collaboration with technical teams to create joint KPIs and to prioritize key updates.
To make it easier for you to work with your developers, this week we announced adeep link validator and impact calculator at Google I/O.
Marketers can use these tools in Google Ads to see which types of deep links they have, how to fix ones that aren’t working and estimate the ROI opportunity of implementing deep links. For a deep dive into each tool, visit our Google I/O technical session.
See how implementing deep links can boost your ROI.
App deep linking directs customers to the right content in your app to take action, often leading to more conversions. But the path is not always linear — people search across various sites and apps before taking action, which makes it harder to pinpoint which ad drove a conversion. That's why we're introducing data-driven attribution (DDA) for deep linked campaigns to help you understand which channels and ad interactions are most influential to driving conversions.
For example, let's say you're a retailer and you want to see what led your customer to buy a pair of sandals from your app. Now you can identify which specific mobile web ad clicks led your customer into your app to complete the purchase. This helps you make bidding for your web campaigns more effective by giving it a more complete understanding of performance that includes in-app conversions.
Assign credit to the actions that drove your conversions across web and apps.
To get started, you can reach out to your account manager to sign up for the beta or visit our Help Center.
To learn more about how you can reach more people, activate insights to help improve performance and keep your valuable users coming back, visit our Advertising Solutions Center.
Life looks very different now for my family than it did earlier this year. From juggling work priorities to managing distance learning for my kids, there never seems to be enough hours in the day. As we adapt, we’re relying on our phones to get things done.
How can brands lend a hand? We believe there are three key ways to put consumers at the core of your strategy: help people quickly get what they want, deliver relevant information and make it easy for your customers to take action.
Today, we’re sharing new ways to put your customers first and achieve your marketing objectives.
The stakes are high on mobile. If you don’t give people what they want quickly, they’ll take their business elsewhere. In fact, we recently found that for retail sites, improving your site load time by 0.1s can help you improve conversion rates by 8 percent.
Test My Site has been an important tool for helping diagnose site speed and providing custom tips on how to make it faster. Today, we updated the tool to provide specific recommendations on how you can improve your mobile site—beyond speed—and deliver more personalized and seamless experiences. Key updates include:
Aligning speed metrics with Web Vitals, an initiative by Google to provide unified guidance for quality signals that, we believe, are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web. When marketers and developers share the same definition of success, it’s easier to agree on what’s driving results.
Customized tips on how to make your site experience relevant and easy to use. For example, learn how to build a one-step checkout and keep customers coming back with relevant push notifications.
Improve your mobile site to boost your business
To get started, visit Test My Site to see how your site is doing and download your customized report—with sections for both marketers and developers—that you can share with your team.
Many marketers already use feeds in Display, Shopping and Local campaigns to quickly upload and showcase products in your ads. With more product images directly in your ad, consumers are able to easily and seamlessly find what they’re shopping for. In the coming months, we’ll roll out feeds in App campaigns globally to all customers. According to beta testing, advertisers using feeds saw, on average, 6 percent more installs from Google.com and 17 percent more in-app actions (like log-ins and purchases) on sites and apps in our network.
Surface relevant information about what your app offers
Wish, an e-commerce company, used feeds to display diverse products from its marketplace. Wish also enabled deferred deep linking, which gave new app users a smoother onboarding experience—from app install straight to the item they saw in the ad.
Here’s how it works: if a new user taps on a Wish ad for running shoes, she will be directed to her app store to install the Wish app. After installing and opening the app for the first time, she would automatically land on the running shoes’ product page to learn more or make a purchase.
Take new app users directly to the products they want to see with deferred deep linking
Since adopting feeds and deferred deep linking, Wish has seen a 105 percent increase in purchases from its app at a similar CPA. “These features have made our app more discoverable and appealing to customers,” says Krishanth Kathiresan, Wish’s Head of Growth Marketing. “It’s a scalable way for us to drive more lower-funnel user engagement and, most importantly, mobile orders.”
To get started, you can reach out to your account manager to join our beta or learn more.
Loyal customers stick with brands that make it easy for them to get things done. For customers who already have your app installed, deep linking lets them get to the relevant page in the app without having to log in or re-enter information.
Last year at Google Marketing Live, we announced app deep linking from Search, Display and Shopping ads. In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out deep linking from YouTube, Hotel, Gmail and Discovery ads. On average, deep linked ad experiences drive 2X the conversion rates.
Let’s say, your customer is watching a cooking video on YouTube and sees a discount for “2-hour grocery delivery.” Once she taps on the ad, she’s taken directly to a page in the store’s app to place an order.
Direct customers from your YouTube ad to your app
Rakuten Ichiba, a Japanese e-commerce company, found that enabling deep linking helped its loyal customers take action on ads directly in the brand’s app, resulting in 4X mobile purchases and 3X conversions.
App deep linking introduces an important and seamless path to conversion. To give you better insight into where consumers are landing and converting from your ads, you can start to use ad destination reporting in Google Ads—available globally starting today.
See where consumers are landing and converting from your ads
For example, let’s say you’re a retailer with both a website and app. With the ad destination report, you can see in the “App deep link” row that these ads drive a higher conversion rate at a lower cost per conversion.
To get started with reporting for your app, use Google Analytics for Firebase or work with one of our App Attribution Program partners.
To learn more about how you can be there for your customers while achieving your app and mobile marketing objectives, visit our Advertising Solutions Center.
