Supercharge business growth with new app solutions for retailers

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Who is this guide for?
This guide is best for retailers who have a mobile app and a Google Ads account. If you need help getting started with a Google Ads account, you can find more guidance here.

 

This guide provides a comprehensive overview of app products that help grow your business by optimizing your ads to find and keep your most valuable customers. These products include: Web to App Connect, App campaigns, feeds in App campaigns, promotion assets for App campaigns, and seasonality adjustments for App campaigns.

 

Apps Deep Dive: tl;dr Ads News & How Tos series

1. Improve your customer’s omnichannel experience by linking your app to your web campaigns with Web to App Connect

• Why: 
  • Apps are a critical tool for omnichannel success. That's why it's important to prioritize removing friction points for your customers when they interact with your web and app content. 
  • With Web to App Connect, you can easily establish in-app conversion measurement, bidding, and deep links to deliver a better shopping experience for your customers. Web to App Connect consolidates all these steps into a clear guide for you to implement, and improves the customer experience for users that already have your app and your overall web campaign performance.
  • Conversion tracking and bidding helps you more accurately measure and optimize your campaign performance. You’ll be able to compare the performance of your app clicks vs. web clicks.
  • Deep links help ensure that customers who already have your app installed land on the best in-app product pages when they click on your mobile ads. That way, if a customer who has your app sees your ad while browsing for a gift, rather than being directed to your mobile site, they will land on the most relevant in-app content where they can checkout faster.

Note: Web to App Connect is available on Android and iOS, and across all web campaigns, such as Search, Shopping, and Performance Max. Please contact your Account Manager for more information on how to access Web to App Connect today.

Tip

Watch the Web to App Connect product deep dive video to learn more about how to use Web to App Connect in Google Ads. The video guides you through the three key steps to take—conversion tracking, bidding, and deep linking—and showcases key resources and the metrics to keep an eye on throughout each step.

 

 Performance Insight

On average, Web to App Connect delivers a 2x higher conversion rate for clicks that land on your app versus your mobile website.¹

 Case Study

Online fashion retailer boohoo.com is a powerful example of using Web to App Connect to improve its bottom line. Like many companies, boohoo’s mobile app users have higher conversion rates than customers on the web, but the brand’s usual digital ad campaign practice of driving all users to its website resulted in a suboptimal experience for app users. Web to App Connect helped boohoo enhance their web-to-app experience, and helped them achieve a 25% increase in revenue, with more than 5 times higher conversion rate when driving users to their app versus to their mobile website, and a 33% higher return on ad spend.

Learn more about Web to App Connect

Learn more about deep links

2. Find more valuable app users with App campaigns

• Why:
  • Beyond helping you improve web campaign performance, apps help you increase customer lifetime value. Investing in your app can help you drive overall business success.
  • App campaigns was built with AI at its core, helping you promote your app across Google’s largest properties, including Search, Google Play, Youtube, and more—all from a single campaign.
  • You’ll be able to define the business goals that matter to you—whether that’s driving app installs, acquiring customers who will make an in-app purchase, or reminding shoppers to complete check-out. All you have to do is upload your creative assets, and App campaigns will build your ads, optimize your bids, and match them with high value customers.

Learn more about how to set up App campaigns

Learn more about choosing a bid strategy for your App campaign

3. Make your ads more shoppable with product feeds

• Why:
  • Adding product feeds from your Google Merchant Center or Business Data feed to your App campaigns enhances their targeting and format capabilities.
  • Rich in-app product listing content, including product imagery, from your app makes your App campaigns more shoppable. This way, you’ll reach existing and potential app users more effectively.
  • We’ve expanded our inventory for you to turn your ads into a storefront across more surfaces. You can now add your product feed to your App campaigns in YouTube Shorts, YouTube In-feed, and mobile Google Display Network banners.

Tip

Use deferred deep linking with App campaigns for installs and deep links on App campaigns for engagement to ensure the best user experience at every instance your feed is shown. Further optimize your product feed in Merchant Center. Provide sale prices in your Google Merchant Center feed so promotional pricing is showcased in your feed ads Enable ad group feed filtering to customize and align which products are shown with your ad group themes. This will help make your ads more customized and better targeted to existing and potential users.

Performance Insight

• On average, advertisers that add product feeds to their App campaigns achieve an 11% uplift in conversions.²
• On average, advertisers that add product feeds to their App campaigns achieve a 14% uplift in app installs.³

Learn more about using feeds in App campaigns

4. Let your customers know about your promotions with promotion assets

• Why:
  • Shoppers are constantly looking for the best deals online, and promotions are an effective way to boost sales by offering discounts or other incentives; to reach new customers who may not have been aware of a business or product before; and to build relationships with new and existing customers.
  • With promotion assets for App campaigns, you can now easily let your customers know about your latest promotions, whether that’s $10 off a product or 20% off their next purchase.
  • Powered by Google AI, promotion assets optimize how and when they appear in Display and YouTube formats to maximize results. This removes the need for you to manually apply your promotion details and custom creatives into each campaign you’re running.
  • Promotion assets allows you to apply your promotional details according to your needs: at the ad group, campaign, or account level.

Note: Promotion assets for App campaigns will be available in the coming months. Please contact your Account Manager for more information on accessing the open beta version.

Tip

• Leverage promotion assets whenever you are running a promotion, whether it’s seasonal, such as New Year’s Eve or during the holiday season, or for everyday deals.
• Use the start and end date feature to define your promo window, ensuring messaging is relevant when you want it to be.
• Provide details on promo codes to make sure your shoppers have the information they need to tap into your promotion offerings.
• If your promotion is occasion-specific, select that occasion to increase the relevance of your offerings.

Note

If you create promotion assets at different levels (account, campaign, or ad group), the most specific will be used. So when you add promotion assets to an ad group, those assets show instead of your campaign- or account-level promotion assets. For instance, if you have a promotion attached at the ad group and account level, your promotion will be served more at the ad group level.

Promotion assets are also available for Search and Performance Max campaigns. Learn more here.

5. Capture moments of peak user demand with seasonality adjustments

• Why:
  • In key moments for your business, like seasonal promotions during critical holiday moments, or a release of exciting content on your app, you may expect higher conversion rates due to spikes in user demand. These spikes tend to disrupt campaign performance during and after promotional events because of the unexpected changes in conversion rates.
  • Seasonality adjustments allow you to manage these moments by letting you inform your campaigns about these promotional cycles. Input details of the upcoming event and the conversion rate changes you’re expecting, and your campaigns will optimize bids during the events and return to their regular performance post-event. No negative adjustment is needed once the promotion is over.

Note: Seasonality adjustments will be available in the coming months. Please contact your Account Manager for more information on accessing the open beta version.

Tip

• Use the start and end time feature to define your promotion window, ensuring your messaging is relevant.
• Create an ad group within an existing campaign, and add your promotion asset in your ad group.
• Create a seasonality adjustment for your ad group at least 2 business days ahead of the promotion.
• Seasonality adjustments should only be used for events that are less than 14 days.
• Take a look at your historical promotion events to figure out what your conversion rate adjustment should be.

Seasonality adjustments are also available for Search, Display, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns. Learn more here.

Note

This article will be updated to keep you informed on the latest App Ads best practices for retailers. Read about more ways to drive online and in-store sales with this retail best practices guide. This article was last updated on April 7, 2023.

 

 

1. Google Internal Data, Global, Feb - March 2022 experiment.
2. Google Internal Data, Global, February 2023 experiment
3. Google Internal Data, Global, February 2023 experiment