Smart strategies for growing your app business with ads

Every year Google I/O showcases the delight that technology can bring to our lives. Mobile apps have extended that delight to billions of people around the world, paving the way for app developers to unlock new business opportunities.  

Today we’re sharing a few ways to help scale your business using Google’s growth and monetization solutions.

Find the right app users

Smart user acquisition starts with reaching the people who will be most engaged with your app and help you generate the most revenue. With Google App campaigns, you can choose a bidding option that best supports your growth goals. Target CPA bidding, for example, makes it easy for you to find new users who install your app and take an in-app action.

To grow profitably, it’s also important to also consider how much revenue you generate relative to the cost of driving those installs and actions. That’s why, you’ll soon be able to bid on a target return on ad spend (tROAS) so you can automatically pay more for users likely to spend more, and pay less for users likely to spend less. If you’re looking for users who will spend twice as much as they cost to acquire, you can set that multiplier for your tROAS bid, and it will find you the right users accordingly. tROAS will be available next month for Google App campaigns on iOS and Android globally. Learn more.

Bidding is a great lever to reach the customers you want. The next step is to win and keep these customers’ attention. That’s why we’re giving you new ways to develop and manage your creatives, making it easier for you to show your customers more relevant ads in more places.

• YouTube–you automatically qualify to promote your app in two new YouTube placements when you have at least one landscape image and one video. The first placement is on the YouTube homepage feed, and the second is on in-stream video.
• Ad groups–starting later this month, you can set up multiple ad groups in the same campaign and tailor the assets in each ad group around a different “theme” or message for different customers. Learn more.
• Agency partnerships–we’re teaming up with 8 trusted agencies including Vidmob, Consumer Acquisition, Bamboo, Apptamin, Webpals Mobile, Creadits, Kaizen Ad and Kuaizi to help you manage creatives end-to-end, from design to reporting.

Monetize more easily

The second piece to building a profitable apps business is creating a sustainable revenue stream. In other words, you need to keep users engaged with your app, while still monetizing it effectively, which can be tough to balance. That’s why AdMob is investing in automated solutions to help you earn more from your app while delivering a great user experience.

Last year we announced a new monetization model called Open Bidding that helps you maximize the value of every impression automatically. Since then, dozens of developers have joined the beta and are seeing meaningful revenue lift, including Korea-based game developer Sticky Hands.

“We’re really excited about Open Bidding. In one month, revenue and ARPDAU have grown by 14% and 15% respectively, and we expect them to keep climbing as more demand sources come online. What’s even better is that we’re spending almost no time managing it.“
- Minu Kim, CEO of Sticky Hands

In addition to the revenue lift, Open Bidding offers simplicity and time savings compared to traditional mediation--fewer SDKs means less time spent on integrations and more stability for your app. Stay tuned, as we’ll be expanding the program to all publishers later this year.

In the meantime, here are a few more ways AdMob can help you grow your overall app revenue and protect user experience more easily:

• Image search is a robust new search tool that helps identify and remove bad ads across every size, campaign, and rotation, using just a screenshot of the ad. Learn more.
• Maximum ad content rating can prevent inappropriate ads from being shown to young users. Learn more.
• User metrics, such as daily active users and average session time, will be available soon in a new dashboard card, so you can quickly see how changes to your monetization strategy (e.g. adding a rewarded ad) impact key indicators of user engagement. These insights can help you optimize the lifetime value of your users across all your revenue sources - ads, in-app purchases, and commerce. Learn more.

To learn more about how these solutions will help you save time while growing your business, join our ads keynote at 10:30am PDT, Wednesday May 8th at Stage 1 of Google I/O or watch the livestream.

Also, stay tuned for more app advertising news at Google Marketing Live, kicking off next week at 9am PDT, Tuesday May 14th. Sign up for the livestream here.