Google’s New Universal App Campaigns Push App Promotions Across Search, YouTube, AdMob, Display

New campaign type is designed to give developers big scale for minimal work.

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Google will unveil a new campaign type designed specifically for app marketers at Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, which kicks off Thursday.

Dubbed Universal App Campaigns because the ads automatically reach across Google Search, mobile app network AdMob, sites in the Mobile Display Network and YouTube on iOS and Android devices and the Google Play store on Android.

Developers can set up and launch the campaigns either through AdWords or the Google Play Developer Console. Think of it as AdWords Express for Developers with scale and pricing based on outcomes rather than clicks. Advertisers put in four lines of ad text that can be used interchangeably and have the option of uploading a video for YouTube ads. They then set their location and language targets, budget and bid strategy such as target cost-per-install (CPI).

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Once the campaign is set, Google dynamically generates the ads and bids based on the developers’ CPI targets.

Google began piloting search ads in the Google Play Store in February to help developers stand out in the increasingly crowded app store. The scale and ease of set up offered by universal app campaigns are likely to appeal to app developers

Universal app campaigns was just one of the slew of new ad tools and features announced for app developers during the keynote at Google’s I/O event, including attribution partnerships in AdWords. For more news for AdMob and Analytics, see our full coverage on Marketing Land.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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