As the smartphone app market becomes more active with the spread of smartphones, in order to acquire new mobile users, it is necessary to develop video advertisements that allow users to download apps on the spot. Google calls this an “advertisement method to promote downloads,” and acquiring users when an app is released is a major strategic theme for each company.
In this article, we introduce case studies of companies that improved their creativity and increased install rates by leveraging Google’s app advertising.
Key points for effectively operating Google app ads
One of the Google Ads is “App Campaign” for the purpose of promoting apps. App campaigns are different from other Google ads because they are automatically created by Google’s systems. App campaigns streamline the advertising process and allow advertisers to easily promote their apps without having to create their own ads.
The main Google services where app ads are displayed are:
- Google search network
- Google Play
- YouTube
- Google display network
- Discover in Google Search (available only on English version of Android)
In order to encourage installs through app campaigns, Google lists the following two points as key points in advertising operations.
1. Operate the app campaign with “Google recommended settings” to advance machine learning
2. Optimize your ad creative
With app campaigns, Google Ads automatically optimizes your bids and targeting settings to acquire as many new users for your app as possible. It is important to use the settings recommended by Google without changing them as much as possible, as ads with high results are displayed frequently after testing a combination of various assets (data set by advertisers).
Additionally, for ad creative optimization, Google recommends a setting of 4 or more text proposals and 1 or more video. If you have these, images and HTML can be omitted.
Examples of creative optimization for app video ads
Forward Works, which develops game apps for smartphones, has released a popular PlayStation title as a completely new smartphone game, “Ark the Lad R.” In order to get more users to install this new game, the company decided to improve its video creative and run YouTube ads.
What Forward Works and Google’s analytics team did was to visually break down the creative into elements and analyze their impact on install rates. As a result of this analysis, it was revealed that ArcTherad R’s installation rate was further improved by creatives that incorporated elements such as “vertical format” and “exclusive benefits.”
Furthermore, data analysis using elemental decomposition revealed that elements such as “promoting the sequel” and “promoting the characters,” which were seen as effective within the company, had no effect on conversion. By understanding what factors influence conversions, Forward Works was able to improve its existing creative to include elements that were effective in converting.
Proven great results with improved ad creative
When advertising creatives improved through elemental decomposition were distributed, the cost per install acquisition decreased by 21% and the install rate increased by 31% compared to the creative before the improvements. Forward Works plans to utilize this analysis method to implement similar measures for other smartphone game titles.
In addition, this time, the person in charge had to visually disassemble each element of the video creative, which took a lot of man-hours, which was an issue. In the future, for efficient analysis, the company is considering using the Vision API, which extracts information from images with industry-leading predictive accuracy.
summary
◆App campaign, one of Google’s ads, is an advertisement that is automatically created by Google’s system and streamlines the process of advertising.
◆The following are points to encourage installation through app campaigns.
1. Operate the app campaign with “Google recommended settings” to advance machine learning
2. Optimize your ad creative
◆In order to improve the install rate of new smartphone games, Forward Works worked with Google’s analysis team to break down creative elements and analyze their impact on the install rate.
◆When the improved ad creative was distributed, the cost per install acquisition decreased by 21% compared to before the improvement, and the install rate increased by 31%, demonstrating significant effects.