The Pros and Cons of Google App Campaigns (UAC)

0:02So what, what would you say are some of the key benefits then of Google App campaigns and then, 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 if people don't, I don't notice people, you know, sort of like separating the two

0:22and talking about them separately. But I feel with app campaigns, or I'll just say UAC. It is really critical because on Android 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.

0:43It's not like part of another network. So I think that's really the main advantage of UAC when it comes to Android. 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 yet. Like Google's actually not as competitive, but I really don't

1:05feel 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

1:25huge 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 getting 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,

1:49like it is 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, if you're like, oh, I really wanna

2:07see if how these videos 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, it depends on the, the vertical of your app. But again, you have the play store, it's gonna be really high converting traffic. I always liken the play store traffic to branded search.

2:32Like when we would talk about, you know, when you used to have your. 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 know, being able to really diversify where your ads are showing that can be a

2:52big challenge or the opposite of trying to force and, and get traffic somewhere else. Um, getting in a way, 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

3:13your bids, which isn't always feasible, that can be a big drawback. And so I think a lot of people, I. Despise Google's product for that reason. But as we were kind of pointing out, it's like it is all trade offs. So you trade off some of that control for reach for the high intent, things like that. And we've kind of been hitting on this already, but any other contrasts you

3:32wanna 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.

3:51If 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 app 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

4:10primary 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 app. 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.

4:30That 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 MGDN, which is mobile, uh, Google Display Network, which is ads in browsers 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,

4:59like a Meta or a TikTok, right? This 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's. Why Google, I think, had so many challenges for a long time. Uh, SKI network wasn't even counting web to app conversions. This was like it, you know, we had cases of, um, some clients where 99% of their traffic was coming from search and scan, wasn't capturing

5:27any of those conversion like. Zero of them. Um, now with the scan 4.0 that, that has changed, but there's still a lot of limitations and I don't people realize that 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

5:49get back and, and listen to Ashley's, uh, webinar shift slides and all that. So kinda a nice compliment to this conversation. But you also mentioned play browse, so, so in within the play store, you can actually buy ads where if people are browsing around looking for apps, they're gonna see those ads. Is is that serve much traffic and, and is, does that perform well?

6:10Nobody knows David. This is the thing. 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 and you're managing your campaigns, you'll be able to see a breakout of

6:34the four different inventory sources. So you can see they lump it as search traffic, search network, search partners. Usually it's like a really small 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.

6:55But again, what people don't realize is like what's included in those. So if we're talking about search, yes, it's 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, you know, I always 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 access,

7:18but 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 MGDN, which I was talking about. It's like website. Images or ads. And then, uh, it also can include play browse. That's the tricky part is like you're trying to figure out, oh,

7:42okay, 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 performance, it does seem like overall it is a high quality source of, and especially on Android, potentially

8:10very high intent traffic as well. Absolutely.