>>BELINDA: Hi, I’m Belinda Langner, and I’m a Group Product Manager on Google’s App Ads team.
Today, I’m here to talk with you about how your app can help you connect
with more customers and grow your business.
COVID-19 has really propelled us into a mobile-first world.
And in 2020, mobile spend reached $143 billion at a 20% year-over-year growth.
That’s a lot of growth!
Consumers have shifted more of their needs, from food delivery to picking up a prescription.
And they do this now all on their mobile device.
And this shift has made it really easy now for users to stay connected to their favorite brands and,
more importantly, to get things done quickly.
So let’s walk through an example.
Every morning, I pull out my phone,
and I preorder my daily coffee on my local coffee shop’s app for contactless pickup.
I get an alert as I’m walking to the shop that my order is ready, skip the lines,
and I even manage to get back in time for my early morning meetings.
Not only that, becoming a loyal member has been even easier.
I gain points and rewards each time I make a purchase.
And I don’t have to pull through my purse to find my wallet.
This online to offline experience has really transformed
the way that I interact with the coffee shop that’s down the block.
It’s simple, it’s convenient, and it just really makes my overall experience that much better.
And now, I’m a loyal customer. I have no plans to remove this app from my phone.
And I am not alone in this.
Mobile adoption has advanced 2 to 3 years in 2020 alone.
The demand for apps continues to grow globally, up 7% year over year to a whopping 218 billion downloads.
And the trend now is extremely clear:
apps are here to stay, and brands, such as yourselves, need to meet their customers where they are.
App users will continue to seek out top app experiences, even when stores reopen.
And that is why it’s absolutely critical to unlock the full potential of your app
by making the experience entirely seamless, making it easy for customers to get things done,
whether it’s purchasing to signing up to membership programs or anything in between.
Users are going to reward brands that make it easier to get things done
with both their loyalty and their dollars.
Leading sportswear firm adidas built a close relationship with its most dedicated customers through its apps.
And they found that when it comes to converting and engaging loyal users, apps win by a factor of 3.
Let’s take a look at this video to learn even more.
>>SCOTT: adidas is about sport, culture, and innovation.
It’s about making the world a better place by bringing the best of sport to the world.
adidas Running and adidas Training are our sport apps,
and it’s the way for people to track their fitness activities and performance quickly and easily.
But in 2020, when the pandemic first hit, we saw the shutting down of every major race on the planet.
And then the gyms soon shut down.
So we made it a priority to deliver an experience that was not only engaging
but helped our consumers stay motivated and connected to the broader community.
But one of the first things we had to do in order to make this successful
was ensure that our app was discoverable
[“workout apps”] and reached the right people.
So we doubled down on our App campaigns to reach new users across Display, Search, and YouTube.
And the outcome just blew us away.
We used Google Analytics to measure the conversions that mattered,
from the app install to getting involved in your first workout or joining your first community.
By analyzing the results beneath the surface, we uncovered that the demand of our sport apps
rose by 240% year over year, even growing by 600% in a single day.
But beneath the numbers, one of the most valuable insights we uncovered
was that our users weren’t just using our sport apps to stay fit.
They sought a sense of purpose and connection to a community.
[MAKE YOUR WORKOUTS MATTER] So we launched the #HOMETEAMHERO Challenge.
Every hour that users worked out or every kilometer run or walked,
[STRONGER TOGETHER] we would donate $1
to the World Health Organization in support of health workers and researchers battling the pandemic.
Through sport, we have the power to change lives. That’s the mission and the spirit of adidas.
>>BELINDA: And today, I’d like to share some new ads and measurement features
to help you grow your business in the following 3 ways:
how to connect with more of the right customers,
how to deliver relevant experiences,
and, last but not least, how to keep your customers coming back.
There’s an untapped market of valuable users who engage with your business but don’t yet have your app.
What we found was that 53% of smartphone users do not have the app of their favorite brand installed.
But that’s where App campaigns comes in.
It can help you build more loyal users and connect with you more customers through your mobile app.
Consumers are increasingly moving across multiple devices to get stuff done,
whether it’s to buy their morning coffee or simply to redeem reward points.
And what we want to do is make it easier for you to meet your customers exactly where they are.
And that’s why earlier this month at I/O,
we announced that we will be making it easier to connect with more users looking for new brands
and content across all their devices.
Starting in June, if you run App campaigns on Android, you’ll be able to reach customers
as they browse the desktop versions of Google.com and all the various sites on the Google Display Network.
When a user clicks on your app ad in her desktop browser,
she’ll be directed to the Google Play Store window to install your app.
From there, she’ll be asked to choose the Android device linked to her Google Play account,
she’ll enter her credentials, and just like that, the app will automatically be installed
and appear on her device, ready for her to use the next time she picks it up.
When measuring the success of an app acquisition campaign, it’s critical to think beyond the install.
Counting new app installs doesn’t fully capture the value delivered to your business.
You also need to also focus on how many people are staying engaged with your app
and how many people are taking meaningful actions.
Google Analytics 4 properties allows you to combine the app
and the web data for unified reporting and analysis.
You can measure the customer journey across websites and apps and then use those insights
to make your Google Ads campaigns more effective.
Deeper integration with Google Ads in the new Google Analytics 4 means you can now use cross-platform
and cross-device Analytics data, and you can use this data to optimize your Google Ads campaign,
whether it be through bidding or through remarketing.
In addition, using Google Analytics for Firebase can help you improve your App campaign’s performance.
According to Google’s internal data, the median campaign that switched
to bidding on Google Analytics for Firebase conversions saw a 13% increase in installs.
And if that wasn’t enough, we also saw a 20% increase in in-app events
with no significant change to the cost per conversion of that campaign.
Surfacing the right information at the right time is essential to driving transactions.
And 62% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites
or their apps offer relevant recommendations on the products and the services
that they might be interested in.
And one powerful way to demonstrate that is to actually surface more product images in your ads.
When you connect the product feeds to your App campaigns,
you actually make more information available on what your app has to offer.
And today, when you attach feeds to your App campaigns,
this information is used in the ads shown on Google.com
and on the sites and apps in the Google Display Network.
And that’s not enough because we are now expanding feeds in App campaigns to appear on YouTube as well.
This can help your brand reach over 2 billion logged-in users a month.
App campaigns tap into your feeds, match the relevant products and services to users’ interests,
and if your app offerings are similar to what a user is actually looking for,
we can surface your app ads with the relevant content under the YouTube videos
as they’re enjoying the content.
By giving your ads greater opportunities to be served to the right audience,
feeds help make your app more discoverable.
And that is why, on average,
advertisers using feeds for App campaigns see 6% more installs from Google.com
and 17% more in-app actions.
Mercari, one of the leading e-commerce companies in Japan,
used feeds to display diverse products from its marketplace.
And since implementing feeds,
Mercari has seen a 15-point increase in conversion rates
at a 16% improvement in their cost per registration.
Those are some great numbers!
Customer loyalty, as you know, is really hard to gain and can be really easy to lose.
With the acceleration that we’re seeing in the apps usage now,
it’s increasingly a competitive landscape for brands, such as yourselves, to put your best foot forward.
This is a lot to juggle, and so App campaigns for engagement
makes it really easy to stay connected with existing users and to encourage them
to continue to interact with your app either by directing them to fresh and relevant deals
or to the new content that your team is working on.
But because today’s consumers move across web and apps to fulfill their needs,
it’s really critical to make sure it’s easy for users to take action, no matter where they’re engaging.
Deep linking directs your customer from your Google Ads to the relevant page in their mobile app
where they can complete the desired action
(whether it’s buying something, ordering takeout, or just getting to the next level in a game).
And they can do this entirely seamlessly.
Let’s walk through an example.
Imagine that you have a customer who’s interested in buying a new dining room table set.
She engages with your Display ad
and sees that you’re actually offering a discount for dining room table sets.
Once she taps on the ad, she’s taken directly to the details page in the app,
where she can learn more about that table set and ultimately place an order.
On average, deep linked ad experiences drive 2 times the conversion rates.
For example, Buscapé, an online Brazilian e-commerce company,
increased their app’s users by 55%
and they boosted their app conversions by 43% using deep links to optimize their app strategy.
But we know that this isn’t easy.
Because deep linking requires collaboration with your technical teams,
it can actually sometimes be very difficult to find a common language to work together with.
And that’s why we offer our new deep link validator and impact calculator in Google Ads,
which can help you direct users to the relevant pages in your app
whether it’s from organic channels or your paid channels.
These tools help you with a number of things, including which type of deep links you have,
how to fix ones that aren’t working, and, more importantly,
how to estimate a return on investment on which new deep links you should implement.
Developers can use the downloadable report for clear steps to fix deep links that aren’t working
and to implement deep links where you’ve all agreed it’s most impactful.
But providing a seamless user experience is just the first step.
So, to make it easy for you to take action in the areas that are driving results,
we’re rolling out data-driven attribution for your deep linked campaigns so that you can measure conversions
and attribute value across the entire web to app journey.
To get started, you can reach out to your account manager or visit our Help Center
to learn more about the new deep linking tools and about data-driven attribution.
Make sure to visit our Advertising Solutions Center to learn more about
how you can build brand love and how you can continue to drive business growth with your app.