Create promotional content

Note: Promotional content is available for apps that meet our eligibility criteria for premium growth tools.

Create promotional content

Promotional content can be created at any time but must be submitted within 60 days of the event start date. It can take up to four days to approve your event; submit your event at least four days before the start date to ensure it goes live in time.

To create a promotional content event:

1. Go to the Promotional contentpage (Grow > Store presence > Promotional content).

2. Click Create Event.

3. Add the following information:

• Event name: An internal event name that is only displayed in Play Console.
• Event type: Choose an event type (see Types of promotional content).
• Offer type: If your promotional content is an offer, specify what type of offer it is. This allows Google Play to display offers correctly, helps our review team to quickly evaluate them, and enables users to see offers of similar types.
  • Note: It’s important to choose the offer type that matches what users will see and get in your app. The available types are as follows:
    • Discount: Offers that give users a discount on one or more items, or for performing an action. For example, "10% off gems," "$5 off when you spend $25," or "15% off sale across the store."
    • Value-add: Offers that give items away for free with other things or increase overall value. For example, "Buy 1 get 1 free," "Get 60 coins for the price of 40," "Free muffin with a latte," or "Starter pack bundle for $4.99, normally worth $20."
    • $0 item or free reward: Offers that give users a $0 item for performing an action. For example, "Race in this week's tournament and get 100 gems for $0," "$0 shipping for this week only," or "Bonus item if you open the game today."
    • Subscription trial: $0 or discounted trials for a subscription. For example, "50% off your first 2 months."
• Countries/regions: One or more countries or regions where this event will be displayed
• Start date and time and End date and time: The start and end dates and times for your event, which can have a maximum duration of four weeks. Note the following:
  • Offers can be set to have no end time. This is useful when you have a standard offer for a type of user, such as a new-starter offer. Selecting this will automatically set eligibility for your offer to new users only. We plan to introduce more eligibility criteria such as buyer-state, time since the last engagement, and churned users in the future.
  • Major updates have a set duration of 28 days, and pre-registration announcements have a set duration of one week.
  • Preview event: Choose whether or not you want to show your event on Google Play before its start time and specify a date and time. Preview events are selected by default, so make sure you change the selection if you don't want to show your event before the start date. You cannot preview offers.
• Priority: If you have multiple events for your app or game, this selection determines which event will be shown first. You can choose Normal (selected by default), High, or Very high. Note the following:
  • This selection doesn't impact how your event is shown in relation to other apps or games.
  • Important: You can submit one Very high priority and three High priority events, offers, or major updates per quarter. Very high priority and High priority events must be submitted at least 14 days prior to the event start date.
  • User eligibility: If your event is an offer, you can select which users are eligible to see it. This ensures that Google Play only suggests offers to users who can actually benefit from the offers and limits the possibility of getting an offer that wasn't intended for them. For example, special offers for new users, such as heavily discounted starter packs, a discount on the first three meal delivery kits, or new trial subscriptions should only be seen by users who have not used your app or game before. Currently, you can select the following:
    • Everyone: For offers that are applicable to anyone in your selected countries or regions.
    • New users: For offers that can only be redeemed by users who have never used or purchased in your app before.

4. Provide your event’s text and graphical assets:

• Tagline (required): Make sure your tagline is descriptive and specific to your event. Don’t use a generic tagline that could be reused for other events or by other titles. If you're configuring an offer, include the items that are being discounted, and by how much. For example: "Holiday sale! 25% off when you spend over $50," "New course: try Prince’s Highway this weekend and unlock your exclusive legendary car," or "Buy any 4 books for the price of 3."
• Description (required): Don't duplicate your tagline text in your event’s description; it will be shown alongside the tagline in Google Play. Make sure your description is relevant to the event. If you're configuring an offer, include any relevant limitations or conditions, such as eligibility, total number available, number per user, or how to claim. The description should be as expressive as possible so that even users who may not know your app or game would understand it. See description requirements.
• Primary image (required): Make sure your image is relevant to the event and helps users to visualize the event. Don't include any text on images (including brand logos, slogans, or app/game names), and don't include critical visual elements into cutoff zones. See image requirements.
• Square image (required): Required to be shown on various Google Play surfaces and lists. See image requirements.
• Video (highly recommended): This must be a public YouTube video with monetization turned off. See video requirements.
  A common reason for events and offers being rejected by our review team is that they have been entered in the wrong language. Make sure that you enter your tagline and description in the correct language(s).

   

  Note: The default language is the language the developer has set when the app was created.

5. Recommended: You can also localize your event into different languages so you can reach users in different countries, similar to custom store listings. Select Manage translations > Manage your own translations and select the additional languages you’d like to provide for your event.

Note: Other languages will use the graphic assets you uploaded in step 6 by default. You can manually provide locale-specific assets by selecting a language and uploading the required graphic assets for each locale.

6. Click Submit event to publish it on Google Play. You can click Save as draft to save your work without submitting it to Google Play.

Important: You can’t edit your event after you submit it, so double-check your work before submitting it.

View your events

The Promotional content page has several tables that provide an overview of all your events, so you can quickly see event statuses and key information, such as countries, start/end date, and priority level, along with the following:

• Promotional content events: Contains draft and published events
• Rejected events table: Contains events that have been reviewed and rejected
  • If your event is rejected, you’ll receive a rejection notice and a reason for rejection in Play Console.
• Previous events: Contains expired or canceled events

Copy an event

To make it easier to create similar events, you can copy information from previous events.

Prerequisite: Review the content quality guidelines to ensure that this event is sufficiently different from the original. You cannot have events that are identical or very similar to each other live at the same time.

To copy a promotional content event:

1. Go to the Promotional content page (Grow > Store presence > Promotional content).
2. On the main page, click Copy to new event.
3. A copy of the event will be created. You can edit the details you want to change (these details are described in the preceding section Create promotional content).

Import events

You can bulk-upload events using a CSV template.

To import events:

1. Go to the Promotional content page (Grow > Store presence > Promotional content).
2. Click Import events.
3. On the Import events page, click Download CSV template.
4. Complete the template using the tips below.
5. When you have the completed template, drop your .csv file in the upload box or click Upload event.

Tip: If you want to make edits, there’s an option to download drafts only. Click the Download events drop-down, select whether or not your event has images, and select Draft apps. You can then make your edits and re-upload the changes. When making changes using the CSV, remember to provide the event_ID.

Tips for completing the CSV template

• event_ID: Leave this blank for new events
• Event_type: Must be one of: OFFER, TIME-LIMITED_EVENT, MAJOR_UPDATE
• Priority: Must be one of: NORMAL, HIGH, VERY_HIGH
• submission_state: Must be one of: DRAFT, SUBMITTED
• start_time_utc and end_time_utc: Times are in UTC and must follow the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
• default_language_code: Enter language code separated by ";"
• countries: Enter country codes separated by ";"
• taglines and long_description: Should use the format: language code=tagline and separated by ";" for each language.
  • For example: en-US=testUS;en-GB=testGB
• images/video_ids: Similar to taglines, you can target graphic assets by language. If you don’t have localized assets, just use the default_language_code and we will use that same asset for all other languages you are targeting. For example:
  • en-US=testus.jpg;en-GB=testgb.jpg
  • en-US=YeT0t1C_y20;en-GB=r-ERajkMXw0
• user_eligibility: For offers, one of EVERYONE, NEW_USERS_ONLY (keep this empty if event_type is something other than OFFER)
• preview_opt_in: Is one of: OPT_IN, OPT_OUT
• preview_time_utc: Follows the format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
• Event_subtype:
  • If Offer must be one of: DISCOUNT, VALUE_ADD, FREE_REWARD, SUBSCRIPTION_TRIAL
  • If Time-limited event, must be one of: COMPETITION_CHALLENGE, REAL-TIME, or SPECIAL
  • If Major update, must be one of: FEATURES_&_ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEW_CONTENT, or PRE_REGISTRATION _UPDATE