Power the next wave of games growth with ads innovation

Every year, the games industry continues to stay at the forefront of innovation by adopting new technologies and growth strategies. Today at the Google for Games 2024 Developer Summit, we’re sharing how our latest ads tools and solutions can help mobile app developers enhance creativity, diversify revenue and make data-driven decisions.

Easily scale and test creatives

Asset variety, a key ingredient for campaign success, can be a challenge for app advertisers building a cross-channel campaign. Now, you’ll be able to select new assets for your App campaign in just a few clicks with image and text suggestions powered by Google AI. Headlines, descriptions or image suggestions sourced from your website, the Google Play store, asset library and stock images will appear for you to review and add to your campaign during construction. Image suggestions for App campaigns are generally available today, with text suggestions in beta.

Next, you’ll need to test new variations of your hero creatives for performance. We recently launched Uplift Experiments for App campaigns to help you test the performance of your video assets across three confidence intervals — 80%, 85%, 95% — so that you can choose between speed and precision of results. Uplift Experiments are equipped with a Health Check to guide you through a successful setup.

Diversify revenue and deepen in-game engagement

Earlier this year, we released target return on ad spend (tROAS) for hybrid monetization.This value-based smart bidding strategy uses AI to find players most likely to drive revenue from diversified methods including in-app purchases, ad revenue or a combination of both.

Lessmore, the mobile game studio behind the hit title ‘Eatventure,’ successfully scaled tROAS for hybrid monetization across its games portfolio after achieving significant revenue results. With this bid strategy, Lessmore was able to intelligently put its advertising dollar behind acquiring the user who would generate the most revenue in-game whether from ads or in-app purchases. After testing tROAS for hybrid monetization, Lessmore discovered not only a new user segment but also achieved a 3X higher Average Revenue Per User.

Other App campaign features to help you drive player growth include:

• Automated App campaigns for engagement (ACe) setup: Easily create your next ACe campaign with suggested inputs and updated use cases such as lapsed payers, users who have never purchased before or players who have not received any push notifications in the last 7 days.
• Reach uninstalled users (beta): Bring back valuable players who have uninstalled your game with the Play uninstallers list out-of-the-box or create your own customized uninstallers list.

Deliver tailored, immersive ad experiences

We’re also introducing a series of enhancements to the AdMob mediation platform to amplify revenue impact for app publishers. First, we’re making new real-time bidding buyers available in AdMob. Unity Ads Network and ironSource Ads will soon be able to bid on publisher inventory available with AdMob.

We’ll also be releasing an upgraded mediation toolkit to help improve your ad operations. For publishers implementing a hybrid monetization strategy, AdMob’s mediation segmentation feature can tailor ad experiences based on different user behaviors. For example, you will be able to customize mediation settings like price floors, to ensure you’re optimizing for ads interactions for those less likely to purchase in-app content. And, for publishers who experiment with multiple mediation setups, AdMob’s improved A/B testing tool will deliver results in days, alongside reporting visuals and metrics. AdMob mediation segmentation and improved A/B testing are coming to beta soon.

In addition to an optimal mediation strategy, an elevated ad experience can bring even more player engagement and lifetime value. Now with immersive in-game ads, publishers will be able to reimagine the in-game ad experience and display an ad that blends naturally into game environments. It works across a spectrum of game genres, with ample placement opportunities such as intermission breaks, level progressions and more.

Immersive in-game ads are available through AdMob in closed beta. Developers like APPS, NewStory, Supercent and Unico Studio are actively experimenting with this new ad format in their games.

Measure success with privacy-centric solutions

As we continue to navigate the evolving privacy landscape, we want to help advertisers invest in privacy-centric measurement solutions to drive results. This is why we’re introducing geo-based, controlled experiments to more accurately measure the incremental return on investment of advertisers’ iOS and Android App campaign spend. This solution is available for campaigns targeted to select countries.

As we continue to share more innovative ads solutions, we hope you’re empowered to expand the scale and possibilities of your advertising campaigns and monetization strategies. Watch our full Ads keynote to learn more about these games growth solutions.