Google Ads for Mobile Games: Best Practices for Apps with Hybrid Monetization

I touch upon these best practices uh when I go through uh different uh parts in my slide. Uh however, there is a few thing I want to you know emphasize on again is on the broad uh targeting right like it's very important to go from like broad to narrow down later.
Yeah.
Okay. uh or another thing that I haven't mentioned which are the seasonality uh factor right so let's say if you are running campaign for um you know uh gamings especially um especially for gaming then
um take into consideration about the
Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of ROI 101 today we're diving into how hybrid game studios can avoid the most common and costly mistakes when

running Google ads. I'm your host Tarak and I'm excited to be joined by Tren from Google. Uh Tren, it's really great to have you here. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
Thank you Tavarak. Um it's my pleasure to be here and thank you for invite me uh representing Google in this podcast. Uh my name is Jyn and for those who hasn't know me yet I have been working in app uh app marketing uh app technology for the last 10 years supporting multiple app developer marketer uh inside Asia Pakistan A&Z market um and u early this year I tried Google so to continue my missions of helping app developer to grow and scale uh their business especially uh using Google solutions.
Nice. Thanks, Tren. Uh, I think we first met when I um when we at Tangjen

published this Pakistani report like on Pakistani gaming studios
and you reached out and we've been in touch since then and talking about doing this podcast. So, it's really great to have you here. Um, yes. So to get started um we've put together some slides that uh touch upon some of the most important topics regarding Google ads such as best practices regarding T Roas campaigns, the most common mistakes you see studios making and advice from Trin who is of course the expert for new studios launching Google Ads campaigns. So let's get started. Um I know you've prepared some slides so maybe you could share your screen with us.
Uh for sure. So I do hope that uh throughout our sharing today is may beneficial for your uh performance. Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks Tren. Okay. So our first

question for you Tren is what best practices can help studios maximize performance with Google ads especially if they're running uh or using TROS campaigns.
Well, I think this is the questions I get asked a lot uh throughout my not only in my Google life but also uh before even joining Google, right? Um and I think before I jump into answer these questions, I do think that we can we should touch upon the fundamentals uh which will be beneficial uh game app studio in long term uh when they understand these um you know uh basic yeah these foundation.
Yeah. So uh first of all um you may you may know that every app has different life cycle and for each life cycle each part each stage of their life cycle

there will be different acquisition goals right so uh as you can see here there's like around like four main stage including launch intermediate growth and mature uh so let's take launch for example right at this early stage um your mission your primarily mission will be focus on how to grow your customer base drive the conversion and engage um you know user so that's why it's very important to acquire more user at this point in time uh so the app campaign solution uh suitable the most will be the app campaign for install however one your apps are getting more mature right and to their toward the scale and growth um their mission will be different I believe so you will not only want to acquire more user um but you want to

acquire the more valuable user right the user who have potential to engage and become your loyal customer so that will be the time where you should use like app campaign for actions or app campaign for rorowass and um this will be the stage where it's perform the most and helping you scale uh to what you are expecting
right
yeah um all right and uh very important as well to touch upon uh the key elements or the three levers when you are launch and optimize your app campaign so I do believe that there's to be successful for app campaign um there are three main component here which including the beat strategy, the creatives and definitely the measurement part that we can touch upon that later. Uh for bit strategy right um as I

mentioned before for each stage you have to define what is the most important objective for your app campaign. If it's early stage definitely in soul however towards like more scale and growth stage then ros or purchases what you should looking for uh and about creative right like creative uh is def es especially for game developer this creatives is something you have to be uh carefully follow up with the latest update with the best practices and not only using one type of format but have to use multiple ad formats including images uh video um yeah to maximize the performance. Yeah. And as I mentioned for measurement I will talk about it later. Uh for the creative these are the creative asset mix uh for maximize the performance that we are recommending. So as you can see here uh for text uh

images and video uh we are recommended like for one ad group right these are number of ads of images and video that we recommend not only come with one side but multiple size so that when the ad display on the inventory uh they can find the suitable ads format and size to display to your audience. Yeah, I definitely go with their high quality as creative. Yeah.
Right. Um Tony, I just had a couple of questions regarding the last slide.
Um so you mentioned like obviously these three levers go together, but
um would you recommend like one over the other or you think all three are absolutely necessary like the same amount or the same way? Uh it's very good questions.

I I have to be honest I haven't seen uh any app campaign successful without one or two missing one or two elements here.
So definitely these three h come hands in hands
and I would say quite like equally uh important. Yeah. Right. Like let's say if you not able to measure your success well or define your goal and measure that track that throughout the user journey
then how you can optimize right uh or let's say if your bit strategies uh you focus on rorowass very early on and not a you know pull out the data at the early stage pull out the data the signal at the early stage uh then how you can feed their data compare to the algorithm and and you know ramp up quickly. Yeah.

Or even you have two element bit strategies and measurement. However, your creatives is not stand out enough right. So it can be exhausted uh and then your competitor will you know if they are come up with more appealing creatives then definitely you easily losing the battles. Um so I would say it hard to choose which one is more important than the other.
Um so I do recommend their app developer to you know like balance the uh and and when they are building their marketing team they should look into uh the factor to choose the right people uh you know having the right mindsets to helping them success. Yeah. Mhm. Do you think like at the moment from what you observe that um what do studios um neglect from these three levers the most?

I would say I I can pick for each uh lever here. one of the thing that they neglect the most
for this strategy. Uh very obvious that a lot of developer want to ram up quickly and you know running even before uh they having the install or enough uh inapp event to optimize. So I think uh that the thing they neglect
for creative um a lot of time they are missing the video part. I know that it's quite time consuming. Uh however, I think with uh AI and with um all of the tool right now to spy the competitor or uh getting their best images or quality definitely should uh leverage the video part. Yeah. Uh especially for Google, right? And for game developer running on Google ads, uh should leverage their short video. So the portrait uh title of

video uh to maximize the performance
uh and for the performance uh for the measurement I would say the the part that I see a lot of app developer um over tend to be overlooking is you know like not to the right event to measure.
Yeah. Not not like um understand the user flow good enough. Right. um to track what is their most and define the most important enough event for them uh it's like of their throughout their life cycle.
Got it. Got it. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Uh I uh very good questions again. Uh and then one thing right um I right now as you say we heard a lot about AI right or the latest company or the tech

company now become AI companies. Uh so the thing that I do believe that AI can help us uh the most is that you know they they have that uh scalability right like before app developer they had to manually uh do and select the right country targeted to the right country from the beginning. However, with the AI uh factor that we have right now, um if you fitting the right signal, the accent, the content uh context and intent plus uh providing enough sets of creative then uh we can mix that together and uh distribute to the right inventory um and find the right user for your app. So it's very important to leverage the AI and running the campaign at the global scale if you do exporting and then from there narrow down to the

country that perform um you know um perform and then from there you can optimize and uh choose the right countries or set of uh region um to targeted to.
Right.
Right. So to summarize, I think I I touch upon these best practices uh when I go through uh different uh parts in my slide. Uh however, there is a few thing I want to you know emphasize on again is on the broad uh targeting, right? Like it's very important to go from like broad to narrow down later.
Yeah.
Okay. uh or another thing that I haven't mentioned which are the seasonality uh factor right so let's say if you are running campaign for um you know uh gamings especially um especially for gaming then um take into consideration

about the their seasonality factor uh testing around this time uh and right now when we are going toward the end of the year which is have a lot of holiday uh then definitely uh building set of campaign and um embrace the seasonal uh testing cycle. Yeah.
Uh and against like rorow s right like shouldn't set up too tie from the beginning.
Yeah. Um to feed the data. Yeah. Mhm. So towards the end of the year when people have more holidays, do they see like um an increase in performance because they have more time people have more time to play games for example?
Yeah, I think it's both from their demands and the supply side, right?
Yeah.
Uh so from their and also from the user as well. So from the user point of view that is the time where you have uh you

know rest time um and definitely you will want to entertain yourself right. So um I would say user user need to um spend more time u with the gaming is definitely there uh plus uh other advertiser right like e-commerce um e-commerce travel that also the busiest season for them so definitely they want to cap out um the season and um promoting their product. So that's why I I do think it's multiple factor and um yeah mostly most of the time we see end of the year is the busiest season and uh the app developer should watch out for that
right I see right
okay so yeah we're at question number two um what are the most common mistakes

you see studios uh making when running Google ads campaigns especially in emerging markets like Pakistan.
Um for um you want me to have the short answer or the long answer?
Yeah. So the short answer is simple with everything is go against the best practices will be the mistake right
uh but to break it down into detail I think here's are a few common mistake you know most common mistake that I have observed in uh growing market emerging market like Pakistan um so it's standing from mark business perspective right a lot of company want to be I positives in the early stage. So that's why um you know they they want to fix on uh specific CBI right they want to be like only uh you know 0.01

in uh you know in in when they are running the CBI campaign. Um I would say um that is something shouldn't be shouldn't be fixated I would say. Yeah, depends on whether they are focused on tier one markets or like tier two market then they should have uh research about the market range and research about their competitor to set a realistic uh CVI and to have a you know like sufficient amount of install. Yeah. Right.
And also thinking long term as well. Um so I think it's very important. Yeah. And then the second party I mentioned here is not having a clear goals. Um against right uh if you are in early stage thinking about you know having more signal getting more user is more important than to be you know running to

and and getting like 80 or 90%. Right. uh because you might able to uh have user uh when you put like high tier OS however thinking of uh you know your product right thinking of to be successful it's not only marketing but also the product piece as well um so you have to uh continuously
um like enhance your product yeah to have like a good retention rate on Day one, day seven, day 30. It also important too.
Yeah. And another mistake that I have observes uh which is uh put insufficient learning budget.
So I see a lot of company uh you know a lot of app developer they put the budget is like5 $10 per day.
Uh I mean uh that is maybe their strategy too. However, um you know if

you put very low budget in early stage then you know uh the the system or the platform will need extra time to learn to collect data. Um so you know have to be very careful on that and I do recommend putting around like at least $50 to $100 uh per day um for your campaign to ramp up quickly. Yeah. And definitely leave it some time too like you know depends on how um you know how you perceive the market. Let's say if it's like you need 30 day at least to put learning time for like at least uh 15 to 20 day. Yeah. Rather than like focus on capping out very early. Um and the last one right the last one uh again I want to mention about the creative um right like there should be a sometime that the

mitch match here uh from what they thinking the user will into um so they set up not really align with their audience. So continuously update the creative uh and also like uh for this seasonality right um uh you should
you know like update the creative that relevant to your audience
right so if I had to summarize um what you've just said um and maybe you can add or correct me if I'm wrong you see that you know in these emerging markets that people are fixating too much on short-term goals and not, you know, being patient enough to look at metrics like LTV or retention and maybe not really like listening to their audience and not looking at the data and not optimizing creatives accordingly. So those would be the main that that would

be the main message you have, right?
Yeah, definitely. And thank you for the summary. I think it capture very well what I have mentioned here. Um yeah it's right these are the tactical part of how you set up the campaign how you run the campaign right but as you mentioned the mindsets is very important right
uh the shortterm mindset will definitely hurt you in the long term um so think in long term um
yeah got it okay so how can game developers better optimize for rorowass campaigns with Google and can it work with hybrid monetization just inapp purchases and ads?
Yeah. Uh so thank you for the questions and uh for this one I think we have touched upon how to better optimize the rorowaz campaign with Google right at the first answer. Um so I would say again it it have to it back to the basic

right you you have to set up everything uh accurately from the beginning
uh leaves time for learning phase and then uh you know like set the right target and optimize accordingly. I think there for me um you you know you may success if you try shortcut in one or two campaign uh but successful in long term definitely you know follow the best practices that we have recommend. So to be very transparent right uh for t for can work very well for hybrid model on Android for now and for iOS is uh in the journey of updating. So keep you know as the developer and if you are running iOS definitely uh keep watching out what is roll out in in the next one or two quarter. Um however right now if you

running IP or IA only on iOS then it's already for TRS campaign is uh already uh generally available. Yeah. Uh and another tips is you know for to run effectively you definitely need to pass their ad revenue to Google. Uh plus um you know start with the max install or value campaign before you narrow to into the t. Yeah I think it's a another two cent that I want to mention here. And what advice do you have for new studios launching their first Google ads campaigns? Uh yeah. So for new studio to launch their first ads campaign, I do think sometime it can be overwhelming, right?

Uh but here's are the few advice that I think can be valuable for you know the one who first start running campaign with Google. Um yeah so uh first of all don't rush the campaign. Yeah I I I I want to emphasize this part. Yeah because uh a lot of time uh at developer they they start running campaign and they want to be I positive. Uh so it it can be very easily frustrated with the result right. So you know bear in mind that for older platform to learn and optimize and to scale yeah invest in the learning first having the user first having the data fit in first um before you scale up and second point here is to you know allocate the sufficient amount of budget for the learning phase and I'm

s me mentioned before it should be around $50 to $100 per day for at least two two weeks. Yeah. And if you are running like meat car uh or casual game, the learning phase may take longer. Yeah. So be realistic of what you are setting and yeah also ensure that uh you passing the conversion uh you are set up the conversion tracking uh properly um through with SDK or through um mobile measurement platform. Yeah. And then uh again think of your audience right think of your user first um you know build up your creative value proposition and the onboarding flow um to maximize or to to deliver um you know their and then you know and the last thing is to think of your audience first. Yeah.

including your creative, your value proposition and the entire onboarding float. Uh so to deliver the best experience to your user for the technical part right uh this here are the three easy step to start with Google ads. Uh first of all the creative assess even before you run the campaign um thinking of you know build up your creative assess um is very crucial right um and as I mentioned right we not only come up with one type of assess but should including the uh text the images and the video yeah to uh max out their performance and definitely uh under uh tracking and the measurement part. Um it's very important to set up your Firebase. Make sure your Firebase your or if you are using app attribution

partner or measurement partner make sure that you set up correctly. Um and then uh after that you know uh the basic back to the basic which including Google ads account building setup uh and align your goal and the KPI uh with the campaign manage management collaboration. Yeah,
got it. And why do you recommend studios to use an MMP or an app attribution partner when scaling their UA with Google ads? Um yeah so uh thank you for the questions and I mentioned from the beginning right there are three important levers when you are consider running campaign not only with Google but with any other partner which including the bidding strategy the creative set and um the measurement

part. So uh why Google right Google Firebase uh already good enough right um however if you want to scale up in long term I do think that uh if you are also having thinking of if they are having another layer of data right to feeding into Google platform uh so you collect more signal data uh to optimize uh with your I think the you ultimate goal here it's to helping you uh deliver the best campaign. Yeah. Um so here you can see that Google have integrated with different ties um different tie of tracking methods. So including Android colas install tracking um plus the Firebase and the app attribution partners and to to be more specific about my ports right I think what are the thing that MMB or AB AB can can add

it here is to ensure um that we get more data point and connect all the monetization data into one place. Yeah, including IA IIB subscription and you know like if you are running you know if you are running TRS campaign or value based bidding um enemy it can also help you to be more scalable as well. Yeah and uh against like you can use uh uh tracking to compare the data and have a holistic view of where user come from uh and optimize accordingly. Yeah.
Right. So just to reiterate like so even though Google ads is a selfattribution uh or attributing network of course um you would recommend that if studios really want to scale then an MMP is the way to go because a you can see like your multi- channelannel tracking data. So if you're um you know advertising on

different channels you get a more holistic view and also it connects all your monetization data and yes again like you mentioned the point about event tracking um that MMPs make this scalable. So even though it's enough to use Google ads as an attribution um self-attributing network you know you can benefit from an MMP if you want to scale long term. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Uh and you know sometime app developer especially uh app developer at early stage they have their confusion right uh whether firebase is good enough or should have an MMB. Um I would say it's just you know they like partner together right to to provide more data and uh helping you to scale. Yeah. thinking of you know the ultimate goal here. Um and you know depends on

your uh skill stage. Yeah. You can choose what are the best uh tool sets uh that can help you to grow. Yeah. All right. and uh for for Google ads intension right also a lot of time right a lot of app developer asking me uh what are the benefits if they running both Google ads and and tension yeah so uh just uh emphasize on the previous point that we have mentioned right like uh tangent definitely can help to consolidate the AI AIP and the AI uh data uh which will make easier to feed the value signal into Google as well. Uh yeah and also if um you know any app developer uh refer through to Google yeah uh it's also a signal for us to know that their app

developer uh is really serious about scaling and grow and you know measure their performance. So uh through that we can help them to audit the of campaign market provide market insight and optimize uh suggestion. Yeah. And on the Google ad side um so I'm I'm I'm not representing the Google ad side. Um we we have a specific campaign which called digital accelerator program for app developer especially app developer from Pakistan. um because I work with this markets and I have seen app developer in this market have been uh very aggressive and want to learn more uh and definitely with the support from Google right uh I do believe that we can have uh your team success with uh Google and you know using other uh platform and using uh a partner as well. So uh for this program

um there will be three states here with including understand about your business uh your set of strategy and uh define the goal and then uh you know launch and plus the advance your strategy uh to help you maximize the performance with Google. Yeah. So uh if you are interested about this program then you can uh scan this QR code and fill in the form and through that form uh we will contact you and um you know if uh it the right fit for our program then we can um support you and onboard you through this program and and helping your team.
Yeah,
great. Um, thank you so much Trin. This has been a very insightful talk and thanks to everyone for listening in. If you have any questions for Trin, please leave them in the comments below. And if

you've enjoyed our content, please like this video and subscribe to our channel for similar content. Thanks again, Trin. It was really nice to have you um in our episode.
Yeah, thank you, Tabarak. Um and um yeah, thank you for having me and uh thank you for for having this uh podcast. I think it's going to be very useful for a lot of app developer out there. Uh and definitely looking for more episode coming from your team.
Thanks Jen. For sure.