• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 20, 2019

It's a nuance in strategy, but on Wednesday Google announced the rebranding of its Universal App campaigns to App campaigns.

For some reason, the company simply wanted to drop the word “Universal.” This move requires no action from marketers and will not affect campaign features or functions.

App campaigns will join Search, Display, Video, Shopping and Smart as the top-level campaign names available in Google Ads. Perhaps they ran out of characters.

App campaigns -- which has helped drive more than 17 billion app installs, according to Google’s internal 2019 data -- uses machine-learning technology. It aims to help marketers find the most important users based on the brand’s predetermined business goals across Google Search, Play, YouTube, and more than three million sites and apps.

Companies are constantly rebranding products and services. Google rebranded AdWords to Ads. Toys “R” Us plans to relaunch under a new brand name Tru Kids, focused on ecommerce and technology. Samsung’s Android Store rebranded to Galaxy Apps. Groupon will rebrand its Groupon+ service. It’s not always the name that gets a rebrand.

Walmart wants to rebrand the company as the most trusted.

Google says that during the next month, marketers will begin to see changes. The plan is to talk more about it at the Game Developers Conference in mid-March.