Google Ads: 4 features for better App campaign performance

Introducing Google Analytics 4—an all-in-one analytics solution by Google Ads that offers comprehensive and privacy-centric insights into user behaviour across web and app platforms. With the power of AI-driven insights, you can now optimise your campaign performance like never before!

App marketers using Google Analytics 4 have already reaped the benefits of its advanced features, such as tROAS bidding, audience exclusions, predictive audiences, and more. Take the example of Gameberry Labs, an India-based game developer, who sought to scale their profits and attract users more likely to make in-app purchases. By implementing a tROAS bidding strategy with Google Analytics 4 events, they achieved remarkable results. In just 4 weeks, their D7 ROAS increased by a whopping 59%, and they successfully acquired high-quality users, leading to a 6% surge in D7 retention rate.

But that’s not all! Google Ads has been hard at work, constantly improving the experience for app marketers who use Google Analytics 4. In recent months, they’ve rolled out a host of exciting new audience, performance, and measurement features. Curious to know what’s now available? Here’s the latest update for you!

Robust audience tools

Finding and retaining your most valuable app users just got easier and more exciting, all thanks to Google Analytics 4. Now you can take advantage of some fantastic audience management tools designed to connect you with the perfect users for your app. Let’s explore the latest audience features:

• New unnotified users suggested audience: Engaging existing app users who haven’t received push notifications is a breeze with this nifty new feature. It’s a game-changer, especially considering that only 37% of consumers enable push notifications upon app download across various categories. Say hello to reaching and engaging more of your users effortlessly.

• Seamlessly re-use app and web audiences: Why juggle multiple audiences when you can streamline the process? Google Analytics 4 automatically targets the relevant app users for your App campaigns for engagement if you’ve already created an audience spanning both app and web users.

• Access Google Analytics 4 Audience Builder in Google Ads: We’ve got some exciting news! In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to create Google Analytics 4 audiences directly within Google Ads. This means you can efficiently build audiences while setting up and managing your campaigns. Talk about convenience!

Google Ads has already witnessed some remarkable success stories with these audience tools. Take Ratel, a European auto-subtitle generator app developer, for instance. By leveraging Google Analytics 4’s flexible segmentation options to target the right users in their iOS campaigns, they achieved astounding results. Building an audience that focused on paying users while excluding free trial users led to a jaw-dropping 3X more in-app actions at a remarkable 157% lower CPA compared to their previous campaigns.

Additional performance uplift

With Google Analytics 4, you now have the power to utilise additional consented, signed-in data for automatic campaign optimisation. To unlock this fantastic feature and witness the performance uplift, all you need to do is activate Google signals in your linked Google Analytics 4 property.

For App campaigns aimed at boosting engagement on Android, enabling the use of consented, signed-in user data in Google Analytics 4 led to an incredible up to 10% increase in conversions per dollar.

Comprehensive web-to-app conversion measurement

When it comes to the path to conversion, things can get pretty intricate, especially with users interacting across various touchpoints and platforms—from web to app. Google Ads understands the complexities that arise due to new privacy frameworks on platforms like iOS. That’s why they introduced the privacy-safe URL parameter, gbraid. This allows for better iOS app conversion measurement in web campaigns, seamlessly deep linking users right into your app. Google Analytics 4 plays a crucial role in this integration. By embracing the gbraid parameter, it enables full web-to-app iOS conversion coverage, providing you with comprehensive measurement and bidding optimisation like never before.

Better iOS campaign measurement and performance

Lastly, Google Analytics 4 enables privacy-centric solutions to help you better measure and optimize your iOS campaigns such as:

• Integrations with SKAdNetwork: Google Analytics 4 already helps you integrate your app with SKAdNetwork to get improved cross-channel install reporting and attribution, and now provides tools to configure your SKAdNetwork conversion value schema. Setting up your schema is important for better in-app event measurement and optimisation, and now advertisers can do this through either Google Analytics 4, a Google-approved App Attribution Partner, or the Google Ads API directly. 
• On-device conversion measurement: For apps with sign-in experiences, on-device conversion measurement uses consented, first-party email data to increase the observable conversions available for campaign optimisation. And now, they’ve added support for more types of consented user sign-ins, like phone numbers. This solution works without any user-identifying information ever leaving a user’s device or being disclosed to external parties, including Google. Based on recent experiments, for apps with a majority of users logging in, implementing on-device conversion measurement drove a median 12% increase in user installs on Google’s owned inventory.
• Geo-based conversion lift measurement: You now have the ability to run controlled experiments to more accurately understand the causal, incremental effects of your iOS App campaigns. This functionality works with your Google Analytics 4 events to report results and is currently available in beta.

Businesses are reaping the rewards of using Google Analytics 4, especially on iOS. One shining example is Revolut, a prominent banking technology company based in the United Kingdom. Recognising the value of their iOS users and aiming to expand their reach in top markets, they turned to Google Analytics 4.

The results were nothing short of impressive! By implementing Google Analytics 4 events and bidding on them, Revolut experienced a fantastic 12.5% surge in additional first-opens. But that’s not all—they also managed to slash their CPI by an impressive 11.2%.

Exciting times lie ahead for app marketers using Google Analytics 4! The features we’ve mentioned so far are just the tip of the iceberg.

Need help with Google Ads? Reach out today!

(source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13780704?sjid=3502749496722572185-EU)