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Google Mobile App Tracking, Remarketing Tools On The Way

Looking-at-Smartphone-Developing and getting users to download an app remains the first part of the challenge; promoting and tracking consumer performance is the other. Google will release an AdWords feature that allows marketers to track specific user engagement through the app campaign tool in AdWords after an app that has been downloaded. The app tracks conversions such as signups, video views, purchases and reaching a certain level in a game. It's available in beta for iOS and will become available for Android in July or August.

Cameron Grace, Google display product launch lead, in a webinar calls the tool a "proxy for conversions." Someone who downloads items to a shopping cart, even if they don't complete the purchase, typically shows a higher lifetime value, compared with those who only opened the app once. Chances are if I have put something in an online shopping cart and closed the browser window, I'll come back to make the purchase within a week. Advertisers can also include the value of the conversion.

Marketers need to track how users in each marketing channel engage with their app. They must integrate the Google tracking code in iOS apps. The goal is to measure post-download engagement to analyze acquisition costs, as well as optimize media spend to acquire users that drive brand engagement.

Google also will offer in early Q3 a revised app remarketing tag and tool that allows marketers to remarket and track app users who visit or use pages in a brand's mobile app. Advertisers integrate the new remarketing code and define custom sections. Users download the app. Marketers create custom logic for marketing campaigns based on levels that users reach or do not reach.

Mobile users have downloaded more than 85 billion apps from the iTunes App Store and Google Play, according to Google. Building an effect app creates challenges, but getting users to find and download your app among the 1.5 million is even more difficult. Google recently made changes in Enhanced Campaigns to make promoting in apps easier through a mobile app creation flow and app ad download format. It pulls in information about device use and integration with third-party tracking programs.

George Meredith, global mobile display performance manager at Google, outlines through the process in the Webinar (Registration required through the Learn With Google section). The tool aims to streamline the creation of an ad campaign. It allows the marketer to target countries, location, manually set mobile bids, and set it up to avoid exceeding a specific cost per click. He shows how to name the ad group and choose a category, such as news app, as a descriptor. The ability to target categories ranges from games to laws.

Adding conversion tracking requires marketers to add the destination URL to the ad that lead directly to the Google PlayStore. After running the ad for a few days, the Google system should have enough information to lower initial costs to install, according to Meredith.

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