shannon low: myname is shannon low. thanks very much, brendan,for the introduction. i head up the googleplay apps and games business development teamfor europe, middle east, and africa. and i'm very happyto be here today to speak to you about how toreach more users for your apps. for this session,i'll also be joined by my colleague, brucekerr-peterson, the emea
regional lead forapp developer sales. so a quick rundown of whatwe're going to talk about today. first of all, i want to talkabout some of the things that we've been doing to bringmore users to the play store and to you. i'll touch a bit on searchand discovery and some tips to improve discoverabilityof your app on play. then i want to talk also alittle bit about best practice to reach users outside of play.
and finally, bruce will alsotalk about how to leverage google's paidpromotion solutions to acquire even moreusers for your app. so let's start withthe marketing campaigns that we've been runningto drive awareness and bring more usersto google play. nice picture out here--we've been investing heavily in promoting googleplay around the world and running marketing campaignsso that users know about all
the high-quality apps andcontent available on the store. this is an example of an outdoorcampaign in waterloo station here in london where we've beenfeaturing great apps and games. we've also donesimilar campaigns in piccadilly circus andnew york in times square. we've also beenrunning tv commercials in several countries,such as uk and japan. on the left, you see what wecall a "play your heart out" television commercial.
and on the right is a televisioncommercial specific to games. and again, these heavilyfeature google play content, including apps and games. here are some examplesof digital campaigns that we've been runningin the uk and the us. as you can see, googleplay brand and the content are featured prominently inthe mastheads of websites-- bring attention to play, driveusers to play in front of you guys.
obviously we are doingcampaigns on mobile as well. we're running digitalcampaigns in korea, a couple of other markets. here are some examplesof a rich media mobile campaign that we have. and this is what you cansee on tablets and phone if you're exposedto these campaigns. and being google,we're constantly pushing the boundaries,figuring out
what new things we can do topromote new apps and games. here's an example of anexperiment we did in the us with editorial collectionsand promotional videos in the google play store. what you see here is apage on the google play store with a videofront and center. you click on that video. you see a shortcommercial of fun apps that you might wantto use in the summer.
and below that is aneditorial collection of those same apps thatwere featured in the video. so all that is about bringingusers into the store, driving awareness, anddriving users to you. once the users areon the play store, how do they discover your app? so that's why we need to talkabout search on google play. i'll start with search. for the average app,search makes a large share
of installs. i think we all know that. as an app developer,when a user searches for something that's like yourapp, what do you want to do? you want them to findyour app first, right? and optimizingthat process means understanding the types ofsearches that users are doing and making sure thatthe data for your app supports these searches so thatwe can surface these to users.
so what are the types ofsearches that users do on play? there are two types of searches. the first is searching by title. this is when a user knowsexactly what they're looking for. they know the title of your app. so all they do is just typein the title of your app into the search bar. and they do thatsearch based on that.
what's important here? the really importantthing to remember here is that a high-qualitytitle is really, really key. titles are not justabout branding. it's important to be as clearas possible in the title to communicate whatthe app is about and what it doesfor the user, right? is your app aboutinternet radio? is your app abouttravel planning?
is it about podcasting? make this clear inthe title so that you capture the attentionof interested users. that also makes your app standout in a sea of competitors. and it also helps us surfaceyou in relevant search queries. second type ofsearch that users do is when they don't know exactlywhat they're looking for, and they're searchingby keywords. and these keywordsmight correspond
to features in yourapp or characteristics of your app or game. so for example, my friendmight tell me, hey, there's this new cool game out. it has something to do withpuzzles and goblins, right? so i might search forpuzzle games with goblins and see what comes out of there. what supports thesekinds of searches? this is where your storelisting is really important.
your app's description shouldclearly tell us and tell users what your app does and whyit matches to users, right? make sure that you get allthat information up front. and once that'sdone, then you can brag about howsuccessful your app is, all the awards you'vewon and so forth. but make sure front andcenter right at the top tells what your appdoes, why it matters. so getting users toyour store listing
to land on there from search isjust one part of the equation. the other part is getting themto download, hit that install button, convertthem in that way, reaching the users that way. so keep in mind that thereare many users out there who judge apps by the quality ofthe screenshots and videos. because if you haven'tdownloaded an app yet, there's no otherway you can tell what that app is like when youactually have it on your phone.
so make sure you havehigh-quality screenshots and videos that theuser can scan through. and the more you can communicatewhat the app experience is like, the more likely it is thatusers will download your app. of course, you don'thave to do all the work when it comes to search. google play is constantlycollecting statistics about installs,uninstalls, and install retention and engagement.
and apps that are successfulin all of these metrics are more likely to be highlyranked in search results. so what does that mean? it means that the mostimportant thing you can do is to create the bestexperience for your users no matter what your app does. because if you've got agreat app that users love, they're going to install it. they're less likelyto uninstall it.
if they do uninstallit at some point, they will keep it for along time, finish playing through the game, whatever,before they uninstall it. and they will be very engaged. they'll spend a lotof time on your app. and these are the signalsthat we pick up on to recognize what isa high-quality app. so sometimes usersmight just want to browse through the play storeand check on new apps, right?
that's discovery by browsing. and there are generallytwo categories that browsing falls into. the first is browsingon the apps homepage, and the second is browsingthrough top charts. so when a user opensthe play store, we all know wherethe apps homepage is. you tap apps, and then you getto this place called the apps homepage.
and here is whereusers can discover apps from different clustersand categories. for example, they mightfind new and updated apps, health and fitness apps,communication apps. and this page ispersonalized for each user, so remember that. so the apps homepage isa browsing experience that let's googleplay offer great apps that the user maybe interested in.
and finally there's top charts. so these lists, liketop-selling, top apps, top grossing, top new,trending, are common ways that we provide forboth new and returning users to quickly discoverthe most popular apps. so that's search and discoveryon play, some quick little tips on how to improvediscoverability. now i'd like to talk about afew more concrete things you can do to acquire users foryour app outside of play.
so you've built your app. you've published it. you obviously wantto publicize it on your website, marketingmaterial, ad campaigns, social mediachannels, everything. get it out there. remember to use googleplay official badging when you do that. that's really important.
why? because users are 47% morelikely to trust and download your app when theysee that badge. if you happen to have a webservice that accompanies your mobile app or usersuse your service across web and mobile, itmakes a lot of sense to also consider using googlesign-in on your website so that users who signin with a google account have the option tosend your app directly
to their device over the air. it just works likethat, like magic. you sign in one timeon your website. the user gets this buttonthat says install on device. you tap that, bang, it appearson your device seconds later. and what's even better is thatonce the user is signing in on your device, he'salso automatically signed in on the app. so there's no frictionat all in getting
that user intoyour app that way. so developers have seena 40% install acceptance rate using this. so this is really worth doing,really worth trying out. now we all knowthat social media is really importantfor acquiring users. and youtube is a greatmarketing channel for apps, especially games. we have a huge audience ofpotentially interested users.
and this survey by blitzfound that about 95% of gamers discover new games by watchinggameplay videos or trailers. that's significantly morethan the percentage of users who discover games by readingreviews, going to game makers' websites, and so forth. so think about creatinga youtube channel to share your game trailers,to share gameplay videos, game tips, even user-generatedcontent around your games if you're a game developer,to engage and acquire
potential new users. if you're an appdeveloper, think about how this mightapply to you as well. maybe you want to create-- ifit's, for example, a utility or productivity app, youwant to create a channel that shares tips aroundhow you can use your app to drive productivityin your life. finally, one more thing youcan do to acquire more users, which is if you have aportfolio of apps, and your app
shows ads, you can showfree house ads using admob and promote yourother apps for free. this works because userswho downloaded one or more of your apps alreadyknow your product and should be more receptiveto other apps that you offer. so this is offered for free. try it out. it's no harm trying, definitely. so that's some ofthe things that you
can do to acquireusers for free. now i'd like to welcome bruce totalk about how you can leverage google play's paid promotionsolutions to acquire even more users for your apps. bruce. [applause] bruce kerr-peterson: hello. thank you very much, shannon. it's always difficult to followsomething about paid promotions
when the last sentence isabout doing it for free. so my name's brucekerr-peterson. i help developers find the rightusers for their applications through paid promotions. you as developersare just developing these incredible applications. some of the things thatellie talked about earlier are just brilliant. the next step, though,is to actually find
users to download and engagewith your application. today i'm going to show youhow you can drive discovery and engagement throughour paid solutions. there are millionsof apps out there. take some time to think abouthow you could possibly leverage some of these to actuallymake your app stand out, stand out from the crowd. when i speak to appdevelopers, the first thing that jumps to mind whenit comes to app promotion
is in-app promotion. however, when youthink about your user, your user can be found inmultiple different places. and it's not justabout an app promotion. every day, ouradvertising solutions are becoming smarterand more effective. we currently have theability to advertise on three great platforms. there are 2 billionvideo hours watched
on youtube mobile per month. there are 100 billion searcheson google.com per month. and through admob, we can reach900 million unique devices per month. so the questionreally comes then, how do you choosethe right campaign? and that logic comesdown to the users that you're tryingto engage with. do you just want thoseusers to download your app
and actually open itfor once, one time? or do you actually wantthem to open that up and take a very specificaction and continue to open that up and takevery specific actions? i was speaking to adeveloper the other day. she had done a lotof market research about her financialmanagement app. and she found an app that couldreally meet a consumer need. she developed the app,and it was brilliant.
the difficulty she was findingwas actually driving discovery and getting that app installedand for users to actually use that app. it's a commonconversation that i have, and it's one of thebiggest problems. you're out there developingthese revolutionary apps that consumers and users mightnot have even thought about. the possibilities withinthese apps are untold. and that's why using things likeyoutube and trueview campaigns
is such a great way toexplain what your app does to the users that couldpotentially be using it. these campaigns help reachpeople on youtube who are actively watchingor have watched videos that are related toapplications like yours, or have an interestin similar apps. ad rules will onlyshow these ads to people on relevant devices,and not on desktop or computer. one of the things thatyoutube is very well known for
is boosting awareness. this is a great example ofwhen a situation has happened and awareness has been boosted. game of war-- fire age wasdeveloped by machine zone. it was the top-grossingapp on ios and android. the goal for them when theystarted their youtube campaigns was to drive a highvolume of engaged users to install their appand play it again. once they launched thosecampaigns and the results
were in, they figured out thatthe value of the users coming from youtube and thosecampaigns were 15% more valuable than any other video platform. youtube is an incrediblypowerful platform to use. it can be used for bothbranding and performance. performance and googlesearch-- the two words are very synonymous. an increasingly more powerfulway to drive user engagement is through the mobilesearch network.
mobile app install campaignson the search network help people who are alreadylooking for apps or businesses like yours find your app. the key to creatingany successful search campaign, as many of you know,comes down to the keywords. and shannon touchedon it a bit earlier. these keywords, and throughthe new user interface, can be generated throughpulling in keywords from google playand google search
to give you a few suggestionsthat you could use. in addition tothat, you can think about what yourapp actually does and the functionality thatyour app has within it and use those wordsin combination with the word "app"-- forexample, hotel app, car app, shopping app. in addition tothat, you can look at brand words, brand keywordsand long-tail keywords.
these are particularlyuseful if you're trying to drive towards avery aggressive target cpi. in addition to mobile appinstall campaigns on the search network, you alsohave the ability to use mobile app install adcampaigns with extensions. so it's not alwaysthe case that you only want to drive app downloads. it could be possible that yourweb presence is incredibly strong, and you havean equal preference
to whether you get a websiteclick or an app download. so in this particularcase, using app extensions like the ones describedby rhonda hanson can be an excellent way togive the user the opportunity to do one or the other. so as i mentioned before, oneof the most used advertising platforms is throughan app or admob. and these typesof campaigns drive a huge volume of impressions.
now, that volume ofimpressions is a great way to get your awarenessout there and to make users aware of the typeof app that you have. they're very easy to set up. you literally selectyour app and what you want to promoteit on, and we'll set up the rest ofthe campaign for you. in the long run, you canuse a conversion optimizer as well to maintain thatcampaign, that sustainability,
towards the target cpi. the shift of thefocus in the past has largely been on theselarge burst campaigns that would get you up the rankings. however, what we seemore and more now is marketers and developersworking on longer term strategies to make surethat they can profitably drive these app downloadsand then follow that up with engagement strategies.
as we've discovered,in-app advertising is one of the fundamental partsto an advertising campaign. app promotions ads are templatedto create text, banner, and interstitial adformats, driving users to either the itunes storeor the google play store. these ads run on mobilesearch, on gdn, and in apps, and are the mosteffective format for driving app downloads. once again, reachingthe right user
is not just aboutin-app promotion. developers and marketers arelooking at more holistic ways to reach these consumers. and that's done through googlesearch, the display network, and youtube. and these can allbe done and managed through the adwords interface. remember, these ads are smart. they're purpose built tohelp drive app downloads.
the first step, asi've just covered, is very much about discovery,driving app downloads. the second step isabout engagement. and this is really where youget to push that lifetime value of your usersand to increase the profitability ofyour app over time. users need to be kept updatedto what's going on in your app. otherwise it acts as a silo. and they neverreally know when you
have new updates or potentiallydifferent games or levels that they can play. so through paidpromotion, i'll show you a couple of ways inwhich you can reengage with those users over timeto sustainably increase the profitability of your app. so in order to do that,there are really two ways. the first is throughapp engagement campaigns on the display network.
these are appengagement ads that are targeted towardsusers who already have your app installed. it encourages the userto open up your app and to engage againwith the content. on the search network, itis a similar principle. app engagement campaigns onthe search network target users who already haveyour app installed. they drive peopleback into the app.
and the aim is to make theaction relate to the search query that they have justsearched on to get them there. so the question is, how do yourelate that search query back to the content within your app? and that really comesdown to deep linking. for ads on the web, justto give you an analogy, you would have yourlanding page example.com. but driving users toexample.com might not be the best user experience.
so we make it more specific. if this user searchesfor shoes, you drive them to example.com/shoes. that principle isthe same for apps. it's just called deep linking. so to give you a few examples ofhow it could potentially work-- and some of these mightrelate to the apps that you actually have--when a user is logged in and they actually havethe app on their device,
they could search forflights to beijing on the google search network. and you could direct them intoyour app to flights to china. winter coats would be anotherexample where the search would be winter coats, andyou could direct them into your app on the coats page. and lastly, if the user wassearching for boston movie times, you could directthem into your app to the boston showtimes page.
to give you some gamingexamples as well-- because they arekind of interesting. if, for example, auser was searching on the search networkfor a gaming app, you could potentiallyshow them an ad that's related to thatquery if they once again had your app installed ontheir phone already, or their tablet, drivingthem back into your app to a page that said play again.
and once again, instead ofthem looking for other apps to download, othergaming apps to download, you drive them back intoyour app to reengage. or if you knowthat your users get stuck on a particularlevel within your game, for example, level 10, and theywould go onto google search to figure out howto beat level 10, you could have an ad thattriggered for the search query, "beating game of war--fire age, level 10."
you could direct themback into your app to a page where they couldpotentially purchase something that would help thembeat that level, or take them to aspecial level where they could progress from there. so it's a very, very powerfulway of engaging and tailoring your apps to yourspecific audience. so that's very muchon the search network. on the displayside of things, we
fall back on something that'sslightly more traditional. and that's remarketing. so you can remarket in apps. these remarketinglists are created once your app hasbeen downloaded and you add peopleto specific lists. you can then retarget them whilethey're engaging in other apps with content thatis relevant to them and can help them comeback into your app
and take a specific action. i'll give you three examples oflists that are commonly used. so people who didn't use yourapp recently-- so your app's been downloaded. you've taken the effort. you pay the money to actuallyhave your app downloaded. but your app hasn't been engagedwith in the past 30 days. you could add that cohort ofusers to a particular list that you could retarget withmessaging that encourages them
to come back into your app andeither look at a new feature or take a particular action. but in that way you candrive that reengagement. if people are using aspecific version of your app and haven't taken advantage ofsome of the cool features you might have developed,you can once again tailor a message tothem where you explain some of these new features andwhat they could potentially use by going back intoyour app and upgrading.
people who took a specificaction in your app, if you know that apercentage of your app users are the ones thatmonetize very well, you could add them toa cohort or a group. and you could retargetthem with discounts, or particular offers,or new features that they couldpotentially purchase. and in that way you'rereally, really increasing the lifetime value of that app.
and that drivesthe profitability of that app in the long run. now, when you thinkof these two combined, it becomes very, very powerful. so you have the deeplink on one hand, and you have the remarketingand reengagement on the other. but imagine if you combinethat into one ad format where you can tailor and grouppeople into specific lists. you then show them ads that arevery particular to that group,
and deep link themback into your app, where they can takeactions that are very specific to theparticular user group that they are and related tothe app where they'll find them. it's an incredibly powerfulway of retargeting people and increasing thatengagement over time. and it's one inwhich it's really going to drive the lifetimevalue and, as i said, the profitability of the app.
so in closing, paidpromotion is all about reaching the rightuser at the right time. it's always been about that. the first step isdriving up discovery. shannon talkedabout ways in which that could be done for free. and these are some ofthe ways in which you can do it throughpaid promotion. the second step isconsistently engaging
with that user over time. thank you very muchfor all your time and for consistently pushing theboundaries of what is possible so that we can all build betterproducts for our consumers. i'm going to hand over tomatteo, who once again is going to talk to you about free waysto engage with your users. thank you very much.