Mobile advertising is growing mature, adapt itself to the new user dynamics over the years, and marketers have to be aware of the new approaches to use mobile app advertising effectively. Undoubtfully, there are some crucial ways to promote your app apart from advertising and also in parallel with it. We’ve already mentioned 20 Creative Ways to Promote Your App For Free and 100 Websites For App Store Promotion before. Besides other advertising models and platforms, mobile app stores have their ad opportunities as well. Now, we are going to provide you an updated set of suggestions to promote your app in the App Store and Google Play by force of advertising.
First and foremost, to keep in mind that iOS and Android have different dynamics in terms of users is vital to start advertising for your app in these app markets. For the very reason, their ad policies and algorithms are different. Inherently, you all want your app to be downloaded and engaged more in both of them. Then, enjoy your content, and after reading it, start to put into practice them!
What Is App Store Advertising and How Can It Be Used For Ad Campaigns?
1- Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads (ASA) are sponsored text ads which are used for driving awareness and downloads for apps in the App Store. Apple announced App Store Search Ads in 2016. It was a new opportunity for publishers to advertise their apps in the App Store itself. It is still a remarkable ad model when we consider that %70 of App Store visitors use search to find an app, and over %65 of downloads occur directly after a search on App Store.
Apple Search Ads have two sub-models for publishers: Basic and Advanced. Basic is ideal for developers with limited resources as time and budget. It is suitable for budgets up to $10.000 per app /per month and publishers who don’t need all the features of Advanced. If you are a developer or an agency who want access to power to control campaigns all details and the audiences who see your ads, Advanced can be more appropriate. The main steps you should follow are:
Optimize Your App
Before starting to give advertising on the App Store, you should review and optimize your app info. Your app name, screenshots, and other information have to be updated and suitable for your audience so that your ad runs well, best possible version of your data goes in your ad.
Analyze Your Keyword Possibilities
As we mentioned above, especially Advanced campaigns give you a level of control over your keywords and how your keywords match up with the audience’s searches. These campaigns are equipped with broad and exact match keywords setting. If you are inexperienced yet, you can use both keyword options at first and test their performance. You can also add your negative keyword list to raise your campaign performance. You have a chance to adjust your bids over campaign time.
Create Your Ad Groups
The vital point in this phase is to create ad groups according to how users might search for your app (in other words, user search intent) instead of putting all of your targeted keywords in one group.
Use Creative Sets
Creative Sets is the testing system for Search Ads Advanced, which is launched by Apple in 2018. It allows you to test the performance of different visual assets, images, and videos an ad group and monitor them over time.
Expand Your Campaign to Other Locations
Apple Search Ad campaigns are limited by country.
Advanced is available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Switzerland. Basic is accessible only by developers in the United States. However, Advanced makes it easy to clone your best performer ad campaigns and run it in other App Store locations.
Why Is It Useful?
You can not find a better moment and place to make your app visible to possible users than the point when they need you and search about you. The payment method also has an advantage in that the app owner will only pay if users click on the ad.
2- Google Play App Campaigns
In the first quarter of 2019, the app users had chosen to download between 2.6 million Android and 2.2 million iOS apps. So, there is a massive potential in the Google Play store for app developers. Like Apple Search App, Google has its ad model for app stores, but this model is based on multichannel, unlike the Apple Search app. With the App Campaigns, you can promote your iOS or Android app on different Google platforms like Google Search, YouTube, Google Play. This ad technology can optimize your app store ads to reach your target audience at their search time.
Google provides three types of app promotion campaigns to publishers:
- Universal App Campaigns: You can generate ads that can be used across all channels like Search Network, Display Network, and YouTube.
- Mobile App Installs: You have to choose one of these channels above to promote your app.
- Mobile App Engagement: You can focus on remembering your users about your app and in-app actions.
To get started an app campaign, you’ll need to provide text, a starting bid, and a budget. Then, inform Google about the languages and locations for your ads. The platform also strongly recommend that you provide at least one landscape image, one portrait video, and one landscape video, and where relevant, HTML5 assets. The algorithm will test different asset combinations and serve ads that are performing the best more often, with no extra work needed from you. You can adjust your daily budget anytime.
Why Is It Useful?
Google uses machine learning by analyzing over 300 million potential signal combinations in real-time to rotate your ads and adjust your bids automatically. The platform can optimize your ads, bids, and budget once it has got enough data. So, Google can show your ad to people who had searched for terms and apps that are highly relevant to your app. The best advantage is that your app is shown to possible users at the right moment and the right place.
You can also use the Keyword Suggestion Tool from Google for assuring improved performances and to being sure that possible users are looking for the exact expressions that you are assuming.
Final Thoughts
Today, we’ve mentioned about App Store Advertising with it’s two significant representation: Apple Seach Ads and Google App Campaigns. They have different unique features but have the same idea and power at the and of the day. If you are an app developer, you have a chance to be in the right place at the right time in the face of your audience, thanks to App Store Advertising. However, you should remember that your app has to be ready in terms of it’s all assets to make the App Store Advertising any sense. Don’t forget to optimize your app correctly before you start an ad campaign.