The Right (and Wrong) Way to Grow with Google App Campaigns — Ashley Black, CandidConsulting LLC

0:00Hello, I'm your host, David Bernard, and my guest today is Ashley Black. After 6 years leading the app ads team at Google, Ashley left Google to found Candid Consulting, an agency that helps apps run effective marketing campaigns for Android and iOS. On the podcast, I talked with Ashley about what makes Google app campaigns so effective for growth, proven optimization strategies, and why lower CPMs can sometimes be a warning sign

0:28rather than a win. Hey Ashley, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Happy to see you again. So, we're going to be talking about Google app campaigns today, and I wanted to kick things off with your experience, cuz you do have a kind of unique perspective compared to a lot of

0:44folks that we talked to on the podcast. So, why don't why don't you share what you've been doing the past 10 years, and then what you're doing now? Yeah, so I think there's a lot of like, you know, UA experts out there, and and a lot of people obviously who work in apps. I guess my specialty lies within Google app campaigns, their ads product. For the last year I've been out on my own, but prior to that I spent 9 and 1/2 years working at Google. Six of those years I led the app ads sales team. So, my team worked directly mostly with game developers, or the marketing teams

1:19within those games. So, I guess I have a lot more insight knowledge as to like the the product and how things actually work. So, my perspective tends to be a little bit more unique. It's really cool that you were in Google for so long, and then you know, kind of a little bit of a backstory that you've told me and shared publicly is that it was frustrating at times to work with customers where you kind of knew certain things that they could maybe be helpful, but weren't really appropriate for you to share as somebody working at Google. And so, you did start a consulting company where you

1:50can say those things and maybe even be more directly helpful to to the customers. Yeah, I think one of the things that this happens at any large company, right? Where you feel that there's a lot of processes that you have to go through in order to actually be able to say anything, or there has to be so much data that's collected in order for Google to say, "Okay, this is how we can position this product." And I always felt really stifled by that, cuz I'm like, "People just want to know." And And I think you guys understand better than anybody, people want to test things, too. So, for us to have to wait

2:26years in some cases to be able to communicate to people what we feel like maybe we already know, but you know, product or legal hasn't given us the stamp of approval to do so, I found to always be like really infuriating. So, now I I sort of offer a lot of those hot takes that I wasn't allowed to do before, but always with a grain of salt, like, you know, it's testing at the end of the day, but yes, I do have I've seen thousands and thousands of these accounts, and so I I probably have a little bit more credibility when I make these statements. Yeah, I was just

2:58talking to Shrina, who was actually the the very last episode. So, for those of you who didn't listen, go back and listen to that one. One of the things we talked about quite a bit in that episode was how important it is to take risks, and how important it is to foster a culture of taking risks when you're doing user acquisition and trying ads, because you have to take some risk, you have to try some new things, you have to kind of go out on a limb in order to find those things that are going to, you know, double your performance. And that's one thing she

3:28talked about, was like they were able to double their performance over the course of a few years through like hundreds of tests. And so, it's kind of cool to hear that. It's like, when you're at Google, you can't it's hard to tell people to take a risk, it may lose them tens of thousands of dollars. Like, that's not what Google wants to do, they want to only share the like tried and true strategies. And so, yeah, it's it's interesting to hear that that one of the bigger frustrations was that you couldn't help people take those kind of risks, but it's those kind of risks that get you that like, you really

3:57do optimize your performance over time. I think one of the things that I felt most passionate about, and it's really how Candid Consulting came to be, was on the iOS front, where Google Google has a very complicated relationship with Apple. And so, we were so limited on what we were able to say when it wasn't regards to SKAdNetwork and how Google's model was working and and what we were rolling out. And I would always advocate internally when I was there to say, like, "Hey, people just need some bit of information. I know that we can't, you know, say definitively this is what we're doing, or we may have to pivot

4:37later based on what Apple changes, and and people I think understand that. What people don't like is silence. And that's what I was really frustrated by a lot of times, was just the silence because there was all of this, you know, back-end complications that honestly I didn't always have visibility into. They were happening I think a lot of times with like the engineers and the product teams and people very high up. But yeah, it was like, "People just want to know something. Like, can't we just tell them something?" Cuz like, I can tell them little things, but it was like, "No, no, no, not yet." And so, leaving has

5:11obviously enabled me to be able to share those insights. Let's just kick things off from the highest level overview then of like, what is Google app campaigns, and you know, why should this audience of subscription app growth practitioners generally, and I mean we have indie developers and CEOs and kind of a broad audience of folks who are going to be listening to this, but like, why should people be thinking about, care about, or what should they know about Google app campaigns? If you have an app and you're starting to think about how you actually pay to get users to download that app, you're probably going to start looking

5:48at Google. Although, I find a lot of people start with Meta first, or if they're heavy on iOS, they'll start with start with Apple search ads, but typically Google is first or second when they're looking to explore. So, Google app campaigns, if we take the, you know, the history of it, I'm going to say it was probably 8 years ago now, maybe nine, where Google actually this was their first machine learning ads product. And it was very novel because people Well, people did not like the idea that Google was taking all of this control. They were basically saying, "Tell us how much you want to spend on a

6:21daily basis. Tell us how much you're willing to pay for whatever it is." An install, I think at the time it was mostly just installs, but now it can be how much you're willing to pay for a subscriber, somebody to start trial. And throw in some creative, and we got it from here. You don't need to tell us anything else. And And that's What's interesting is that's the direction Google has moved with a lot of its

6:43products. And I'm not as familiar on like the website of things, but people talk about PMax, and I think you're starting to see an expansion of this. And the reason why is like, it works. It really does. Like, at the at the time, Google's app ads product contributed nothing. And by large, in comparison to search, it's still a very small percentage of their ads revenue, but it has grown massively, and so the product does really work. So, it started out as UAC, Universal App Campaigns. That's what most people call it, because it's easy, everybody loves an acronym. They dropped the U a couple

7:17years ago, so it is just app campaigns. Basically, it allows you to serve across all different inventory types, but you don't have control over where Well, you kind of don't have control over where your ad serves. So, get into some of the fun little hacks to to get a little more control. That was one of the frustrations when UAC came out, was that it limited so much control, but that trade-off was the performance, you know? We see Meta going that direction as well. I'm giving you less specific control, but then the algorithms have just gotten so good both at Google, Meta, and other ad products, where the algorithm is going to end up

7:51making better decisions, and that's why they did it. So, what what would you say are some of the key benefits then of Google app campaigns, and then we can get to some of the drawbacks that And we've already kind of discussed some of them. Whenever I talk about Google, you really have to talk about it for Android and for iOS. I feel like with Meta, people they don't really care too much, or people don't I don't notice people, you know, sort of like separating the two and talking about them separately, but I feel with app campaigns, or I'll just say UAC, it is really critical because on

8:22Android, you have the benefit of actually serving your ads in the Play Store. That's like super high intent. You cannot get that inventory anywhere else, right? So, that just doesn't exist. You can't buy it, it's not like part of another network. So, I think that's really the main advantage of UAC when it comes to Android. And also, there's a lot of other properties, right? You have Google search and YouTube. So, there there's a lot more that you can leverage there, too, but by and far, the Play Store's huge. On iOS, yeah, like Google's actually not as competitive, but I

8:56really don't feel it can be overlooked. You still have Google search, which again, you can't buy search from anywhere else, and you have YouTube, which still is like the number one app. It's like the most downloaded app in the world, I think, not just in the US. So, those two pockets of inventory are really, you know, those are huge for you to be able to access and be able to advertise your app. And And you know, this is one of the things about Meta and why a lot of apps are finding success right now, is that between the Facebook app and the Instagram app, you're just

9:30getting such broad exposure, but then Google takes it even like multiple steps further, like YouTube, inside the Play Store, across search, across their display ad networks, like it's just a massive scale that is hard to access in any other way. What what would you say then are some of the the drawbacks that that come to mind with UAC? You know, going back to the controls, it can be really challenging if you're testing in particular. You you're like, "Oh, I really want to see if how these

10:00videos perform." On Android, it is really challenging to try and get your videos to get any meaningful traffic. People can do it, right? And it depends on the the vertical of your app. But again, you have the Play Store. It's going to be really high-converting traffic. I always liken the Play Store traffic to branded search. Like when we would talk about, you know, when you have your, you know, branded keywords, right? It's like you're reaching people at the highest intent moment possible when they're actually searching for something. They want something. And that's kind of what the Play Store is, too. They're grabbing them right at that last minute. You

10:38know, being able to really diversify where your ads are showing, that can be a big challenge. Or the opposite of trying to force and and get traffic somewhere else. Um getting it away like I I was talking with a client yesterday. All of their traffic's flowing to display. And we're like, "How can we force it over here?" And, you know, aside from really paying a lot more like manipulating your bids, which isn't always feasible, that can be a big drawback. And so, I think a lot of people despise Google's products for that reason. But as we were kind of pointing out, it's like it's all trade-offs. So, you trade off some of

11:17that control for reach, for the high intent, things like that. And we've kind of been hitting on this already, but any other contrast you want to paint between UAC and the other major kind of user acquisition channels, TikTok, Meta, Apple Search Ads? Oh, yeah. I I think one thing that people look at is a lot of people are like, "Oh, it's just a it's an app network, right? We're using that product to distribute our app." But you have to think about it. If you have Let's just use Meta as the primary example. They have the their two main sources of traffic are Facebook and Instagram, right? And most of that is

11:53app-specific. I mean, if you're doing an app campaign, it's just going to serve there. On Google, we're talking about Let's talk about like the five primary sources of traffic that you get with your Android campaign. You have the Play Store. You have Google Search, which is mostly done in a browser. It's not like in an

12:13app, okay? So, it's in a browser. You have YouTube, which is probably pretty heavy on app, but there actually is still quite a bit of it that happens in a browser. You have AdMob traffic, which is ads in other apps. That's part of Google's network. And then you have what they call MGIDN, which is mobile uh Google Display Network, which is ads in

12:37browsers, on websites, mobile websites. So, a lot more of Google's mobile traffic is served in browser in comparison to these other like app-native platforms like a Meta or a TikTok, right? That just like doesn't exist on web. And so, you have to really consider that. And that's the piece that you really have to understand, especially when it comes to iOS. That's why Google I think had so many challenges for a long time. Uh SKAdNetwork wasn't even counting web-to-app conversions. This is like it you know, we had cases of um some clients where 99% of their traffic was coming from search. And SKAN wasn't capturing any of those conversions like

13:21zero of them. Um now with the SKAN 4.0, that that has changed, but there's still a lot of limitations. And I don't know if people realize like how unique Google's platform is compared to some of the other big players. And one of the things you had shared previously, we we did a webinar, which by the way, this the webinar might be a good adjunct to this if you want to go back and and listen to Ashley's webinar, she has slides and all that. So, kind of a nice compliment to this conversation. But you also mentioned Play Browse. So, so in within the Play Store, you can actually

13:51buy ads where if people are browsing around looking for apps, they're going to see those ads. Is is that serve much traffic? And and is does that perform well? Nobody knows, David. This is the That's the thing That's the other reason why people don't like this is because you have really limited visibility into where your ads are showing. So, in the Google Ads like in the um front end, if you're looking in your managing your campaigns, you'll be able to see a breakout of the four different inventory sources. So, you can see they lump it as search traffic, search network, search partners, which usually is like a really

14:36small percentage. If it's high, that should be a warning sign to you. And then there's this other one called Google Display Network, and that's what we'll talk about in just a sec. And then there's YouTube. But again, what people don't realize is like, "What's included in those?" So, if we're talking about search, yes, it searches on google.com, but it's also searches in Play. Well, you don't have a way of seeing the breakout. If you have a really good I tell people like if you have a really good Google rep, you can. They They do have the ability to see it. They have to have the right

15:08access, but they can show you the breakout. So, there's google.com searches, there's Play Search, and that's all included in search. And then when we talk about the Display Network, that is the AdMob traffic a lot of times. It's the MGIDN, which I was talking about like website images or ads. And then uh it also can include

15:29Play Browse. That's the tricky part is like you're trying to figure out, "Okay, well, is this not working because of this? Or is this happening?" You're making a lot of assumptions about things. And so, a lot of times it can be hard because you're a little bit blind to what's actually at play. But overall, the combination of all these things and Google's algorithm that that tries to figure out where things are going to be performing, it does seem like overall, it is a high-quality source of and especially on Android, potentially very

16:02high-intent traffic as well. Absolutely. Even though you do have to depend on the the algorithm to kind of sort through, there is really high-quality sources of traffic that are flowing through UAC. Oh, yeah. I I don't think that that's that's undeniable. On Android, like we were talking about and also on on iOS, you have Google Search, which again, like I just don't think people understand is like you can't buy that anywhere else. You can't get those types of users who are actively querying for product that you have anywhere else. And so, that can't be ignored. And like you mentioned, the sheer volume of people like I know a lot of people You you can

16:46get good scale on a lot of these other platforms, but I do think a lot of those other platforms have demographics and audiences that they maybe skew a little bit more toward where I feel like if you think about Google and all the the products that we just listed, you're likely to find a little bit of everyone across all of these. You know, everybody's looking at YouTube at some point. Everybody uses Google Search. If you have an Android device, you're sort of required to use the Play Store. We don't have to get into those requirements, but you know what I'm saying. Just feel like it's something

17:17that can't be ignored. And there is a really uh you know, high-quality user that exists out there. You just have to put a little bit of faith into the system that it will find it for you. Yeah. And I think this is a good message for the audience that even if you're finding incredible success on Meta and doing really well, at some point you really should be looking at UAC because it's going to give you access to these sources that are high intent and can potentially be really well-performing ads that you just can't get access to those people and that traffic any other way. So, it's

17:50like you definitely should be considering UAC even as other networks are performing really well. And one thing I want to talk about, and I think we we sort of discussed this offline before, is I find that a lot of people like using the other networks because of the testing capabilities. I mean, I feel like in my LinkedIn influencer world of people who are into user acquisition, there's it's a niche group, but there seem to they seem to be very active. There's so much

18:20conversation around creative testing. And people are developing like 900 videos a month to test out on Meta or on TikTok. And nobody really talks about Google in that in that conversation. And so, I think sometimes people like that control. They like the ability to test, um which we we've talked about as well. Like that that testing environment is exciting. You get to see what's going to be produced. And that doesn't exist to

18:48the same extent on Google. I think if you're really savvy and you kind of know the right levers to pull or or what sort of data to look into, you can force some of that testing, but it's not as obvious to be able to run, you know, a side-by-side test between two videos and see which resonated better with an audience. And so, I think people are looking for that a lot of times when they're going to market their app. And that can be a real challenge to do with Google Ads. And speaking of that, you know, the next topic I wanted to talk about was measurement. So, how is Google

19:24app campaigns measuring the performance? And how should people be thinking about that measurement when they start considering or start running ads? And then we'll get into all the tips and how to run an app strategies and stuff like that. Sure. So, again, this is another example where I very distinctly call out the difference between Android and iOS cuz they are night and day. On Android, you know, Google still has the I'm going to say like GCLID or GAID. I always forget which is which. but they still have the ability to track at the user level, at least for now. I know there's things that they're rolling out,

19:58but most of those conversions that you're seeing in Google Ads are deterministic, meaning like they have confidence that those actually happened, right? Cuz they can see that they did. And so if you're using a platform like an MMP to measure your performance, generally you're going to see that the the measurement there, what Google shows you and what your MMP is reporting, is pretty close. We can talk about discrepancies, but the discrepancies are usually a lot smaller when we're on

20:25Android. iOS is a whole other ballgame. Google introduced modeled conversions. Oh man, people hate modeled conversions. This is Google, you know, they don't tell anybody about it. I mean, I was there when they rolled it all out for iOS, and I felt like I got like nothing from how they actually were modeling these things. They, you know, they talked a lot about stuff, but it wasn't all that practical. Like I couldn't really see understand how it was going to roll out. But the the modeling is Google basically saying, "Hey, we have confidence based on all of these signals that we have that this conversion happened." And by the way, there's very

21:05few deterministic conversions that Google actually has. I'll touch on that maybe in a little bit more detail in just a minute. But so Google models their conversions. Then if you were to go into your MMP again and say, "Okay, well, how many conversions did Google produce?" You're going to see a huge discrepancy. And then when you talk about SKAdNetwork, you're also going to see a really enormous discrepancy there. So Android's pretty reliable in the measurement. iOS, we could do a whole

21:38other podcast on it. So is is Google using SKAdNetwork for now? And and are they capturing those web-to-app or I mean, the kind of dirty secret of the the whole industry at this point feels like is that both Meta, Google, and everybody else doing any kind of measurement is using the IP. And so the quote-unquote, and for those of you listening audio, we're both doing like finger quotes, modeled conversions, is probably pretty heavily reliant on IP address fingerprinting, which then can be fairly confident, but then you're going to lose some of those signals, but then SKAdNetwork should be more deterministic, but just in a not on a

22:20user level. So so yeah, do do you have any understanding of how they are and aren't using SKAdNetwork to to help model those conversions? Just to be clear, on SKAdNetwork, Google, at least I haven't heard anything changed in like the last 6 months, does not ingest any data from SKAdNetwork back into their models. The only thing that they ingest back from SKAdNetwork is the installs that happened, nothing deeper. And I think it is relatively complicated, right? Like you have to figure out what all of those conversion values mean per each individual advertiser, right? Like there's not like a standard set of them to be able to say, "Okay, did this

22:59happen?" So Google's not really using scan in its models. Now, the fingerprinting thing is separate. They just announced as of recent that they will start doing this, um the IP, I mean. I shouldn't say fingerprinting. Um I don't want to get in trouble, but Oh, I know all of these big companies are doing fingerprinting. It's a bad word in the industry, but Google and Apple aren't cracking I mean, Apple specifically, especially post-ATT, is not cracking. They say in the the they say in all the rules like, you know, fingerprinting is not allowed, yada yada, but then all everybody's doing it and and nobody's getting rejected for

23:34it. Yes, they they did announce that they would be using IP as as part of it. Now, whether they had been all along and now they're just being forthright with it, I don't know. So we'll we'll have to see, but I think the one thing that I wanted to call out because I I get calls all the time like I do audits for a lot of people reaching out and they're like, "Hey, just tell me what's wrong with my setup or we have questions." And so they bring me on to do stuff like that. And one of the big things that people are confused by is the the deterministic

24:04conversions. So this is like I always liken it to like, you know, pre-iOS 14, what the environment used to look like. And again, this goes back, David, to what I was talking about where you have to really think about Google and all the different inventory, like all the different traffic sources it serves on in comparison to some of the, you know, the other players. So one reason why you might see Google with like zero conversions in your MMP deterministic conversions or or just a fraction of what Google is reporting or what scan reports is deterministic conversions can still happen if you're able to collect the user's IDFA, right? But again, remember,

24:45so much of Google's traffic happens on on browsers, on like websites. And the opportunity to collect, you know, user consent, the ATT prompt, right? Does not exist on browsers. And so I think people really overlooked that. And then probably the biggest one, and again, this is one of those things that I was talking about where I wish Google had been more vocal about it, is that they

25:10did not prompt for it on YouTube. And that was their biggest source of app traffic on iOS, and they were not collecting those users' IDFAs and for a long time. They launched it, they finally finally back in July of 2024 started to roll it out and actually prompt for consent on the YouTube app. But I noticed even still, Google does phased rollouts of everything, right? So they'll do like they'll launch it to

25:40like 1% of users in one country, right? And then they slowly and bring it out. I didn't actually they launched that in July. I personally didn't get the prompt until December to opt in. Like they hadn't even shown it to everybody. So anyway, that that's all to say that like Google, because of their traffic differences and the choices that they made, you know, back in 2021, people don't understand like why those decisions had a big impact on the the measurement side of things. Yeah, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Well, I did want to shift gears now. I think we, you know, we've we've given a pretty

26:14high-level overview of all this stuff and gone into the weeds on different topics, but I think what a lot of people want to know at this point now is like, "Okay, I'm convinced I should try UAC. How do I do that?" And I think that the first question most people ask is is budget. It's like, "You know, if I want to start spending on UAC, what does that

26:35look like? How much do I need to spend?" One of the things we didn't mention earlier is that it does sometimes take longer for UAC to for the algorithm to to get trained. Um so sometimes it does take higher budget. But yeah, what what are your thoughts on like getting started? I'll be consistent here. I've said it somewhere else. I know people come at me and and say like, "Well, that didn't work for me." And they're like, "Do I really need to spend that much?" I'm going to use this as if you're starting in the US, okay? Because if we're talking about other countries, then that

27:06becomes much more complicated. But in the US on Android, if you're saying like, "What is the minimum budget I need to start testing things?" I would say anywhere from like two to 300 bucks a day. Yes, you could do less and sure, you can do more, but like if I were to say, "Okay, you're just starting out," that's what I would probably want to spend on a daily basis to get enough information to get it fast enough to actually be able to say, "Okay, is this working or what adjustments do I need to make?" On iOS, it's got to be more significant than that. But it's also a

27:38more expensive platform. Installs are a lot more expensive on iOS than they are on Android. The inventory is more expensive. The CPMs are higher. So all of those things need to be taken into consideration. And so on iOS, again, I'm just saying this as a figure, I would say at a minimum about 500 bucks a day to see if you can get enough traffic and then actually have something to do with that traffic to be able to make

28:04adjustments as needed. Once you start spending that and seeing it work, how how do you then scale up from there? What are your tips on scaling budget? Slowly. Slow. You don't want to like, you know, wake the dragon or whatever it is. Um and I I've experienced this personally where I've always the the engineers at

28:26Google were always like, "20%," right? No more than 20% in any given day on bids and budgets, up or down. And so if you are looking to scale, I kind of got burned not that long ago where I was like, "I bet I could push it like a little bit more." And then I did, and what happens is that the system goes goes crazy. It's like, "Woohoo! We got it's like a 10-year-old or something that just got more money." It's like, "Let's go spend it. Let's go figure it out." And it's like, "Whoa, we have to be cautious. Let let's take, you know, let's try and figure out new pockets of

28:59inventory and do this in a responsible manner." And so yeah, that 20% rule does really apply. And I even am maybe more conservative where I only adjust it or I try to only adjust it by 20% every two to three days. I try not to do it every single day because then it just keeps kicking it back into learning mode at too great of a frequency. We'll dive more into campaign management in a bit, but with that budget, would that be on like one campaign or can you have multiple campaigns running at the same time with that $500 just getting started

29:30budget? That's one campaign. But you really don't need more than one campaign if you're only targeting one geography. So if you just have one US-based campaign, actually the guidance is to not have a duplicate one doing the exact same thing. There's a lot of theories out there that like your cannibalizing your traffic if you do that. And that was certainly what I think when we would submit internal tickets sometimes and say like, "Why isn't this working?" That's what the we called them GTech. That was the internal team the Google Tech team would come back and say, "Well, it's because they have multiple campaigns." But that was

30:09always I think really hard to prove that that was the case. But if you're going to set up your campaigns, you only need one campaign per geo. Okay? And then if you do want to get more granular, like you could have an a separate one if you were doing different bid types. Like if you're optimizing for installs versus let's say start trials, you would have two separate campaigns because you do have to set your your event optimization at the campaign level. That's pretty rare too. I I don't see that happening as often. Any other tips as you're kind of ramping up? Like if you're spending $500 a day, how long

30:43is it going to take before the algorithm really figures out where to show your ads, how to show your ads? Um any other tips on kind of ramping up? Usually within like two to three weeks, you can start to see how things are going to likely trend. One other thing that I noticed as like a mistake that a lot of people do is they build out their campaigns as like the bare minimum. So they will create one campaign and then they'll have one ad group. And the ad group is if you're familiar with Meta is like an ad set, right? And it's sort of a grouping of creative that you're

31:17testing. Now, you can't assign budgets at the ad group level in Google. Okay? So Google's just going to make the call and say, "Okay, you know, we're going to send 80% of our traffic to this one ad group and 10% to this other one and five to the last one and etc." So you have no control over that. But what I always encourage people to do is you have to build out multiple ad groups and I I like theme them. You know, think about use cases and or features of your app and then that's what I would create your ad groups around and see what kind of

31:52engagement you're getting on those. So if you have a I'm just going to use like a golf app. Maybe it's swing performance. That's one ad group. And then the next one is like about caddies. That's your next one. And all of your creative should sort of correspond to that central theme. And then you can kind of see what people are interacting with. And I usually like to build out

32:13maybe about five ad groups per campaign. Get a little bit of traction, see what's resonating with folks as opposed to just doing one. If it doesn't work and then you're like, "Well, I tried." Right? It's like, "Well, you didn't." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And And so you already again touched on the the next um thing I wanted to talk about and that's creative strategy. So I know there's like all different kind of assets that you would put into those ad groups. Like how do you think about creative strategy with UAC? Like I was saying, I I theme everything for the most part. I think one another common

32:48mistake that I see people make is Google, not unlike the other platforms, has character limits when you're creating your text assets. Text assets by the way are like the most crucial part of your Google Ads campaigns. Contrary to maybe other platforms where people aren't even reading it, it's like the text asset is it's just like fundamental. And again, if you're thinking about search, search only shows text. All right? Search uh assets, all

33:15right? Like that's just a text strategy. So you got to make sure that that's really fine-tuned. Um and then even in the Play Store, they will pull in your app icon and then a bit of text that you write in the in Google Ads. And that's what your asset the total asset is. And so I think a lot of people oftentimes like overlook them or they use Google's like recommendations to put their text assets. And I don't know why Google doesn't um abide by like regular punctuation and grammar in those. But anyway, um the text assets is really

33:52really critical. The other piece that I talk a lot about, again going back to understanding what Google's traffic is. Thing it's really easy to see in again like Facebook or Instagram that like, "Oh, you always get a 15 or 20-second reel." Okay? And like that's what you see quite often. But I think on YouTube and you don't have reporting into this, you don't realize all the different pockets of inventory within YouTube. So when you're creating videos, I always tell people probably want a 6-second video because

34:26that's one ad format in YouTube. You want like a 10 to 15-second video because you know, we just want to test out that duration. 20-second around 20 seconds is great for YouTube Shorts. 30 seconds or longer is probably going to serve in-stream. So those are more of those like skippable ads that you would see if you're watching just like a regular video. So you have to have a lot of variety in terms of lengths on

34:53Google. And then also the orientations. I mostly default to portrait, especially if we're talking about iOS. But on Android, you can't overlook the landscape orientation because a lot of people still do watch their YouTube videos, you know, in landscape mode. And then what about image assets? Cuz So those are the three primary assets that you provide to Google, right? So within each ad group, you're posting uh text assets, image assets, and video assets. And then the algorithm is just figuring it out. Yes. Usually combining some, you know, aspects of that. Usually text is always with some component with image or with video. But yeah, images are used a lot. Also images are used

35:39sometimes in the Play Store, too. So again, on Android, you'll notice the theme here. I talk a lot about the differences between the two. But on Android, I over-index for landscape orientation images. I as of recent, I've sort of taken this stance that I'm aiming for like an 80/20 rule for images. 80% of them on Android, I want to be in landscape. And then I'll use the remaining 20% for like square portrait. Just because landscape always gets more traffic. And Google also has the option where you can like they have the AI generator assets now where you can actually like type in text and create your own. One thing I tell people

36:16is like you don't have to have a fully designed image asset because Google overlays so much within your asset. So they're going to pull in your app icon. They will in most cases pull in install button. It says like close or install a lot of times. And then they even like pull in a rating. A lot of times people don't realize that your App Store rating

36:39is pulled in to the actual asset, too. So if you have a fully designed image asset with like a bunch of text and an image and a call to action and in your rating if you're calling that out for whatever reason, it's really redundant. Google's already doing it. So I usually tell people like use a

36:58stock image. They work just as well a lot of times. They're free. You can just search for them right as you're creating your ad groups. And um grab grab a few of those and see what works. You don't have to I mean, you can test it. You can And by test, I mean putting something else in there and seeing if it gets traffic. You can't run like an AB test on an image asset. So you got to just kind of like, you know,

37:22throw it up there and see if it sticks. So then the the recommendation here then is like you don't like hire a graphic designer and have this polished like what you would typically perceive as an image ad. Like you said with like a clear call to action, a subtext highlighting your favorite feature or whatever. It's like the the assets should the image assets should just be very kind of plain. No text at all or minimal text or like Again, it's not like a hard and fast rule. I haven't seen those the ones that are fully designed, at least for the accounts that I work on and a lot of my clients, I

37:59haven't seen them get as much volume as the ones that are just images. And again, the whole concept is because it's already overlaid anyway. So in a lot of cases, if you're finding that those aren't working for you or they're not, you know, like the the click-through rate's really low, then sure, go ahead and design a fully. But I I don't think you necessarily need that in order to get started. How do you look at the performance or can you even look at the performance of individual assets in UAC? Yes, you can. But I think there's the difference. A lot of when I was working at Google and working with a

38:39lot of games, they would get really frustrated that they couldn't see what the combination of assets produced. So like they wanted to be able to see, "Okay, well, did this specific text plus this image perform better than this text with the same image?" Google will not let you do that. They're not showing you that level of granularity. But you absolutely can see like, "Hey, is this text asset performing better than another text asset?" And so you can break it down quite a bit. There's actually a performance rating in Google. If you pull up your account, it will tell you Google has a performance rating how your

39:18asset is. Was it like best, good, low, and then like learning. Just don't pay attention to it. I was joking. So I'm like, it's five columns that you can't remove. They serve almost no purpose, at least when I'm optimizing an account. And the reason why is that that performance rating is based on the scale of the campaign and the click-through rate, so the engagement. So it's kind of like how much can Google serve this asset and

39:47then that's what the rating is based on. Not necessarily how it's performing. Performing, right? Like your actual metric that you want to optimize towards. So if you're new and that's how you're approaching it, just go ahead and ignore that. Focus on whatever you're optimizing for, your CPI or your CPA. How do you actually look at the performance of it? So yeah, you you know, you do the asset reporting. I pay a lot of attention to where traffic is serving. So talked a lot about like all the different inventory types. So a lot of times if I'm like, well, why is this ad group performing, you know, worse

40:23than this one or vice versa? A lot of times I'll pull in the field, there's a way to segment it so I can actually see the percentage of traffic that's flowing to search versus display or YouTube. And that to me is a really helpful tool. It guides me to understand like what might be happening here. I also, well, Google doesn't like it you might have to create it as a custom column. I actually spend a lot of time looking at CPMs. I don't know if other people do that quite as

40:51much, but I notice some big differences. Again, like I'm you have to do some guessing work on what's happening here cuz not all of it is exposed. So a lot of times if I notice like a big decline in performance, then I check out, okay, well, was there also a decline in CPM? A lot of times cheaper CPMs mean worse

41:12traffic, not always, but a lot of times. So that's another thing that I pay attention to when I'm going through and actually like optimizing and for performance. Are there any gotchas to all of this as far as any ways to kind of point the algorithm in specific directions? You know, I I've heard folks and of course you would never say this, but I've heard folks say that, you know, Google is going to optimize toward the things that make them the most money and so kind of to your point about like looking at CPMs, if you're getting like lower CPMs, it may be that it's being served to lower quality traffic and

41:47they're they're hitting your budget and you're still getting the performance you want, but maybe you could be getting better performance. How do you think about that? Yeah, you have to pay attention to it. One of the things that people again don't like when Google rolled out UAC is that it blended a lot of the traffic. And so all of a sudden you have your highest like they can

42:11serve at the highest performing traffic. They know that that's going to convert and then they serve the crappy stuff and it all averages out and people are like, well, I don't want the crap, you know, I just want the premium stuff. And so you do have to be on top of it. Those are the sig like I was mentioning like the CPMs, where your traffic is serving. You can to some degree see what sites or apps your ads are serving in or what YouTube videos they're serving in. So I pay attention to that sometimes like if if it's a significant volume and I'm

42:43like, well, this is just a crap site. Like it's super spammy. There's like no 40 ads on there. I don't want my clients to be included in that type of inventory, but And so you can actually go in there and say like, don't show on this site specifically or or you would even just say, don't show in this type of inventory? No, not on this type of inventory. Although I think you can do it for certain apps, but it does block it at an account level. Not just at a campaign level, but that doesn't usually cause too much issue. But yeah, so that's a reality. You do have to sort of

43:15make sure that you're staying on top of it. I know a lot of people are like, oh, you just like, you know, set it and forget it and it keeps doing it. It's like, yes, if you're okay with that. If you're okay knowing that you're getting some of the crap and you can't avoid the crap altogether, but you can try and minimize it or try and increase the the high quality stuff. And would you also then be looking at certain like images or text that's hitting those lower CPMs that are kind of giving you a hint that maybe it's lower quality traffic and actually just remove those assets from the ad

43:47group? Is that how you would kind of approach that? I did it yesterday for one of my clients. Like this one's a little bit tricky that I find is like in this particular case they were getting a lot of traffic from certain videos and that was fueling the majority of their scale. Like that's where all of the volume was coming from. So initially I was really resistant to just being like,

44:10can them, you know, get rid of it. Because then what can happen is that that will tank the whole campaign. All of a sudden it's like we've got no conversions and so it's just like we'll just die out. So you have to sometimes be delicate with that. It's like a a balance between how much you're removing at once. And so in that case I kind of I went in cautiously. I was like, okay, I see these videos. Yeah, they're they have a super high CPA. Sometimes also important to like look at your even further down funnel metrics. Like maybe the CPA's okay, it's within target, but

44:45in this particular case the ROAS was crap. Then I had to make the call and so I just slowly started kind of removing those assets so that it didn't cause the campaign to just have no conversions and then give it a week and then after that I got to pull them all because Google's

45:01trying to get away with something. Gotcha. So we talked about structuring campaigns early on and then kind of that first like just just launch with one app campaign and then, you know, do your testing in in four or five ad groups. How do you scale that up or like what are your kind of campaign structuring and testing? When do you layer on more campaigns? How do you do that smartly? Well, layering on more campaigns I think in any specific geo, maybe you don't want to do it. Although it can be a hack sometimes. I've noticed some people where they're like, I'm not getting enough scale. Like even though,

45:36you know, I've seen people with budgets of like, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a day and just because they want to signal to the system like spend my money and it won't sometimes. So one hack, this is definitely not a Google best practice, but it's something I think I've learned more so like as a

45:55practitioner doing this all the time. Sometimes just like duplicating the campaigns for whatever reason like you duplicate it and that signal to Google is like, oh, we have something new to go out and we have to go test it. And so then you might start to see more scale whereas that existing campaign had just kind of remained very steady. So that's like one hacky way to do it. But again, like the the scaling piece is like it's just sort of slow and steady. I think it's hard if you're reaching your max capacity in one market to really force more scale without getting really

46:28aggressive with your bids. So then I start to look at other markets that might perform well. And then what about ad groups? Who are you constantly like adding or removing ad groups? As you said like if you're targeting specific kind of messaging or, you know, talking about specific features. Are you are is that an area that you're you actively test like add a new ad group more focused on this feature versus that feature and remove that ad group that

46:52wasn't performing? Yeah, so um a lot of times what you'll find though is that they won't the new ones that you add in. Like for whatever reason Google favors like their first child. So like the the first ad group that you create, it I just seen it happen so many times. That is the one that they're like, we're we're running with this one. Even if another one that seems to be performing better, it doesn't always get as much scale. So yes, I do add in new ad groups. Like, you know, around the holidays for example, if we're testing a new holiday theme. I put it in in a

47:26specific ad group. That also makes it easier to manage, right? Like I don't forget about it later on that like, oh, we're running like Halloween creatives. Like that's labeled separately. It wasn't mixed in with a bunch of others. So like I can just pull up that ad group. If there's something seasonal that's going on, like, you know, I work with some apps where natural disasters for example that happen, that's when they see spikes in their traffic and so we run individual like natural disaster ad groups. Like if a hurricane's happening or a tornado or, you know, if it's avalanche season or whatever, we have those separate and

48:03test out those things. So yes, I am constantly going in and and trying new ones, but a lot of times they won't get meaningful volume to really be able to say like was it worth it? So you might have to leave them on for a little bit longer. And then with that kind of first child as you called it, the the kind of one ad group that the app campaign kind of preferences, would you then start to expand the assets in that ad group as kind of an experimentation of adding some new themes and other stuff in that

48:33high performing ad group? Yeah, I mean I think a lot of times I try and just what I've noticed, I don't hear people talk about it as often. I so prior to Google I worked at Pandora and that was more like a brands plays. And one thing we talked a lot more about there, keep in mind this is a really long time ago, but was ad fatigue. And I don't think that we talk about that quite as much and I mean maybe we do in the UA space, but I think that's something that people need to realize is that even in those high performing ad groups, right? At some point people are

49:06just tired of seeing the same thing over and over. It's just hit the same audience too many times and they've tuned it out. And so or Google's just gotten in this like habit of like showing it to the same like on the same inventory or to the same people. So even making a small tiny adjustment actually like if you had something that said like, buy it today and you changed it to buy today, you took out the it, that sends Google into a whole new learning. It's like, we have to figure it out. So it's not a new

49:38concept, but to Google it is. And so, it'll go out and test something new and and, you know, the ad isn't fatigued quite as much. So, we've kind of weaved it into this entire conversation, but any other kind of troubleshooting or analysis tips on like, you know, if things aren't performing well, like these are the first places to look and like how do how do you troubleshoot campaigns and and budget and and things to to get optimal performance? I mean, I guess that's why people bring me on is like that's what I spend a lot of my time doing. It's what my team does as well. The people that

50:14actually like know the platform pretty well, I don't think this comes as any surprise. Everybody uses that the segment called like networks. And that's again where you can see at an asset level how your ads are serving across all those different inventory sources. That is so important. You really need to understand where those ads are serving and, you know, I again, I didn't audit for somebody just this week and they were like, well, we don't understand like why we're getting kind of this crap traffic. And I'm like, it's because all of these assets are serving

50:46on the display network. And you're not getting any of that high-quality search traffic. And so, if you don't know to look at something like that, then you're like, oh, Google's just not working. So, now we you know, have to go back and figure out ways. How do you force it in some ways to spend in these other areas or test this other areas. I guess my big tip for people is like, don't just assume that it is doing

51:11what you think it should be doing. Sometimes it'll go rogue on you. And so, you do have to kind of know how to manage it. And also, what metrics matter. Like I said, I pay a lot of attention to CPMs. I know a lot of other people will pay attention to like IPMs. I don't tend to pay attention to that as much because of the like we talked about it extensively, the network changes. So, your IPM on search is going to be really different than your IPM on display. So, I think that's kind of unfair to hold them to the same bar. Anyway, so, I I

51:44tend to look at those other like early metrics to determine if something ultimately is going to perform well or why maybe it is or isn't performing well. Sounds like it's a a trust, but verify situation where to use UAC, you have to trust the algorithm cuz it's like you you you just can't get around having to trust that it's going to get you performance, but then you verify that it's actually giving you the performance you want. And then kind of subtly nudging it different directions with all these techniques that we've been talking about. Absolutely. That

52:15might be my new tag. Trust, but verify. Trust, but verify. Yeah. Any subscription app specific considerations? So, you know, most of our audience is subscription app practitioners as opposed to, you know, games. So, there anything with like, you know, free trial optimization, you know, targeting the install versus a trial versus the conversion, any kind of subscription app specific tips? I I don't think that this is unique for Google, but maybe just if if somebody's starting out to understand what goes into this. I typically don't like people to optimize their their campaigns for purchases or like, you know, trial complete or something like that because those tend

52:58to happen way too far out, right? Those, you know, if you're a 7-day trial, I think most subscriptions are. For Google to get that data back 7 days later is just too much of a lag. And so, really optimizing for those like earlier signals most of the time is a start trial in most cases. Um, but you can play around with different events to optimize for. So, I think, yeah, for for the subscription apps, that's probably the piece that I would pay most attention to. The other thing I'm getting a lot of questions on and I'll be totally honest, I don't have a super sound opinion just yet. I noticed that

53:34Google, I know Google is pushing their value-based bidding. So, this is tROAS, that's what most people refer to it as. And I think it's still TBD if it really works for subscription apps. It wasn't designed for subscription apps, right? It's really designed for IAPs. And then they have another product that's designed for ad-monetized apps. Same name, still tROAS. But I think with with subscription apps, they've had sort of like a 50/50 hit rate on whether or not that bid type can work for their

54:09business model. So, for that one, if you're feeling like you're being pushed at all on it, I think it's okay to be skeptical, but at the same time, it has worked for some folks, so it might be worth a short test. Yeah. And speaking of being pushed, I know one of the questions a lot of people would be asking, shouting into the car as they're driving listening to the podcast or otherwise, would be, you know, you worked at Google. How do we get in touch with

54:36Google? How do I get a campaign manager? How do I work with Google? And then you already mentioned one and I know you've mentioned others in the past that that a good account manager can actually get you some data that you wouldn't get otherwise. So, It's the easy answer, but it's also the honest one. You got to spend more. You have to think about it, right? Like, I don't know if people don't get mad about that. It's like,

54:58Google has to pay these people, right? And so, they have to make sure that they're getting an ROI on these individuals. So, if you're spending 200 bucks a month and you're like, well, I want to scale. It's like, they need to see proof in that. They're not going with the trust and verify mentality. They're like, no, we need we need hard evidence that you can pay this. You got the budget for it. And then we're going to give you the support. You know, we're paying these people X amount of money. Like we got to make sure it's worth it for us. So, that that's really how you get it. The one

55:29thing I would call out though is that like your that depends on your market. And ultimately you get assigned based on your billing country that you have set up in your Google Ads account. And so, like I have a client, he's based in the US, but his account is billed out of the UK. So, his rep sits in Dublin. So,

55:47there's different like spend criteria. Obviously, in the US, they're going to have like the highest thresholds. You got to be spending a decent amount in order to get support. But if you're in a smaller market, like let's call it Vietnam, you know, that threshold might not be as high. Is it a we'll call you, don't call us kind of situation? Like once you start spending enough, they reach out to you or or how how does that kind of first contact work? Yes, that is the case. They they will reach out to you. And typically, you'll if you're wondering like, well, is today the day

56:17that they're going to reach out to me? No, it happens on a quarterly basis. All of these things happen um, call them like book refreshes, right? This is when the the reps actually like they have their assigned book of accounts that they work with and their goals against. Yes, they have revenue goals. So, they will be pushing you to spend more money. And those get changed out. You rarely can you make a mix-up in the middle of a quarter. And so, if you're wondering, hey, is like, am I going to be able to talk with somebody and it's May, right? April, May, June, that's that's Q2. No, you

56:52might not hear from somebody until July if you think that you are spending significant amount. But I would say once you get a rep, I I feel like people underutilize them sometimes. Maybe my Google folks are going to get mad at me. They're like, oh, no, like, you know, we're we're bombarded with requests. But I think

57:11that if you're smart, like ask for more. Ask for more information. Be specific. They have a lot of it. They can't always share, you know, everything that you might want to see, but I think that a lot of times people don't realize like how much they do have and that they can share. Um, so, make those asks. For people before Google reaches out, are there any like support channels or is there um, like a form they can fill out that that is actually helpful or or do those just kind of get routed to people who can't really help you anyway? When you're reaching out, those are all going

57:45to go to vendor teams. And that's not to say that they're not helpful sometimes. I I haven't found them to be as helpful most of the time. And so, oh, I don't have a great answer. I mean, like, send me a message if you really have a, you know, a question that you're like, I can't figure this out for myself, but that's kind of the best bet

58:06at that point. Yeah, it makes sense. And like you said, and you know, this has been a long time frustration of developers working with Apple as well as Google that like, ah, I can't talk to anybody. Well, yeah, because anybody that you would talk to who could make a decision is being paid, you know, total compensation probably $300,000 that it costs Apple to have that employee to be able to talk to you. And so, it makes sense. Like you said, it's like, they they have to strategically allocate those resources in a way that's going to give them a return on investment. Like this is not a

58:40you know, these are for-profit companies who are beholden to their shareholders and optimizing towards shareholders, not you as an indie developer or even as a large developer. You know, that's something I've kind of come to internalize a little bit more in these last few years is like, okay, yeah, Apple's not like my friend. They're fiduciary as their shareholders. When you kind of really internalize that and you look at all these decisions and the way they do things and, you know, them pushing so hard on on collecting their fees and like all those kind of things, it's like, that's just how the world works. It's

59:16just how it works. Yes. Actually, the ads team at Google is pretty substantial. Like from what I've heard, Meta's made some like major cuts on their support like to the point that like nobody has a rep anymore at Meta. I'm exaggerating, but like not, you know what I mean? Like there's not a lot of support there. Google's ads team, I think, is still pretty healthy as it stands today. So, I mean, I feel like a lot of people do have a rep, even if it's somebody By the way, there's different tiers of reps, right? Like based on your spend. So, there is a difference in support level, but I think

59:49maybe even more frustrating is on the play side of things. Where that team is actually really, really lean. And so, I feel like nobody has support from play. And then also you have to think about it. Like on ads, they're like, "As long as you're spending money with us, great." Play only cares if you're making money for them, right? So, if you're heavy on ad- ad-funded, they don't care. They're not making any money on you, right? Like, yeah, you could be a massive app that has, you know, 100 million downloads or whatever. You're not making any money for play, so they don't, you know, they're not as

1:00:25concerned. But that that team is actually incredibly small, and so there's not a lot of developers. And I think they I'm not trying to say they favor them, but again, if you're thinking about how these companies make money, they work with a lot of the gaming studios. That's where a lot of their support flows. Yeah, it just makes sense. But, I will say that if you're struggling with these things, this is why you created

1:00:49Candid Consulting. Um so, how can people reach out? Are you accepting new clients? Yes, please reach out if if you're interested in talking. I think And I do I have sort of an agency side of the business where I actually do all of this for my clients, but I find that a lot of people do reach out just hoping to like get some information, so I do partner with people in that capacity, too. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name's Ashley Black. You There's not too many of us. You should be able to find me. Or you can reach out directly through the website, which is

1:01:18candidconsultinggroup.com. And yeah, I'm happy to chat with people. I'm always interested to learn what other people are working on, what problems people are seeing, and a lot of times people just want to know like what actually is going on at Google, like, you know, shed some light or like lift the curtain a little bit. And so, that's always fun to talk about, too. Well, it's been so fascinating and and fun to get the kind of inside scoop on a lot of this stuff, but then also like now that you've been out of Google for over a year and worked with so many different clients. Like so

1:01:45many of these insights are are things you probably didn't even know when you were inside Google. And you've done a lot of testing, as we've talked about. And so, thank you so much for being so open to share your experiences and how you optimize all this. Absolutely. I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a

1:02:07review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com to join our private community.