💎 Growth Gems #33 - Gems from "Thinking Out of the Black Box to Win with Google UAC"
Hi there,
I'm back in the mine, hard at work to consistently bring you the best mobile marketing insights in 2021!
Today's gems are mined ⛏️ from an episode of "The Mobile User Acquisition Show" with Natalie Drodz (Digital Marketing Manager, previously Marketing Manager at Hily).
💎 #1
Your bids can influence where your ads will be shown. If you bid higher it does not mean you will automatically get more valuable users, it means you will get to more competitive auctions. That's more valuable for Google, not necessarily for you.
💎 #2
Advertising on YouTube and Admob is "passive" marketing because people are not specifically looking for something. This leads to more impressions but less conversions. On Google Play Search and Play Browse, users have intent ("active" marketing).
💎 #3
If your goal is to make sure that everybody knows about you then YouTube is probably a place you want to advertise on. Do not expect high ROI or LTV. YouTube is a place you go to scale and create demand, not for the highest quality.
💎 #4
If you want stability, have CPA campaigns for specific in-app actions, as this usually results in placements on Play Search and Play Browse. These campaigns try to find valuable traffic and are typically pretty stable because the amount of users with high intent doesn't vary too much (unless there is high seasonality).
💎 #5
If you need to grow then you go on YouTube. You'll need to use videos and either bid very high or run an "install volume" campaign.
💎 #6
You can ask your Google rep to run video-only campaigns (they modify something on the back end) in order to not compete with your other Play Search and Play Browse campaign.
💎 #7
Don't run different campaigns for the same optimization event in the same location. Google will prioritize the campaign with the highest bids.
💎 #8
What you can do is run a campaign optimized for an in-app event (targeting valuable users on Play Search & Play Browse) and an install volume campaign (targeting cheaper impressions on YouTube). You can also treat each behavioral event (e.g. subscription vs. IAP) as a different kind of user so your campaigns don't overlap.
💎 #9
*Usually bid 10% higher than what you want to get *(besides during holiday season) because Google tries to stay low on your bid and bidding a bid higher will allow you to scale later on.
💎 #10
Don't run campaigns in multiple geos because LTV can be different from region to region, which makes it harder to define your bids.
💎 #11
Ad groups need enough data to optimize. Try to keep at least 10 events per ad group per day.
💎 #12
Google optimizes its audiences at the ad group level, as they find different people through different creatives. So use different themes (or use cases) and semantic for each ad group.
💎 #13
If you add an ad group when a campaign is already running, this new ad group will be prioritized. So do not create too many ad groups because they will "steal" traffic from other ad groups. Instead try to refresh creatives in an existing ad group.
💎 #14
If possible, test new assets (especially videos) in install volume campaigns, then add what worked to an ad group in your CPA campaign.
💎 #15
Your videos need to be high quality and make people want to react/comment. Any comment on a YouTube video is more valuable than no comment, as it sends a signal to Google that the video is good. Example: eToro campaign. Following this logic means it's better to have your videos public (instead of unlisted) so people can find them (and comment).
💎 #16
Especially for games, you can also run English-speaking creative tests in India to get learnings before using in core geos.
💎 #17
Do not make changes more than once a week. Too many changes at the same time will prevent machine learning from optimizing (too many signals). You typically want to wait a couple of weeks after a change.
💎 #18
Natalie plans her Google UAC work by assigning 1 day to 1 region: Monday for US campaign, Tuesday for Europe, etc. With 1 change each time. It leaves enough time for each campaign to learn before you think about new changes.
💎 #19
Run one campaign per language, but ideally also per timezone. Google takes into account 24 hours seasonality and if you run a worldwide campaign it will not know how to optimize what time to show the ads. Example: Spain and Argentina have different timezones and different purchasing power.
💎 #20
Structuring your campaigns by geos/languages/timezone is not about the audience size,** it is about the volume of events you're sending to Google** (and therefore depends on the events you're optimizing for).
Stay savvy!
⛏️ Sylvain