Place your app front and center with Google Play’s premium growth tools

Personalization is increasingly critical to conversion. For apps listed on Google Play, understanding how to work with Premium Growth Tools for audience segmentation can impact performance significantly. With features that let you create targeted app store listings and deliver timely offers, marketers are empowered to find and engage audiences more effectively. These features make it easier to get the right message in front of the right users—exactly when it matters most.

To best explain what premium growth tools are, let’s first go over what they are not. As a starting point, you will have a listing for your app on the Google Play Store. A good best practice is to start with app store optimization (ASO) efforts, which work to boost your position in organic search results on the app store. One way to test—and experiment with—the results of these efforts is to leverage Google’s Store listing experiments. This allows you to run A/B tests to optimize your default store listing by tweaking visuals or localized text.

These experiments are designed to help you increase installs and retention organically by identifying the most effective store listing elements. You can test how different user segments respond globally, comparing acquisition and retention metrics for each version of the listing. Store listing experiments are the Google equivalent of Apple's Product Page Optimization.

On the paid campaigns side are custom store listings, which enable you to create up to 50 variations of your listing, each of which can be mapped to a specific ad targeting a specific segment. This is the Google equivalent of Apple’s Custom Product Pages. Combined with the organic options above, this is the standard process for Android app promotion via Google Play.

Premium growth tools are an additional range of audience and revenue-maximizing tools and features offered by Google Play—for those that qualify (specifications below). Google's premium growth tools let apps create more variations of their app store listings via one of two methods:

1. Additional custom store listings: Create up to 100 custom listings (compared to the standard 50) for different segments of your audience. Read more on localization and segmentation.
2. Promotional content: Highlight fresh in-app events, special offers, and major updates. Think seasonality and re-engagement. Placements include the home page, my apps page, store listing page, events tab, and search results.

Unfortunately, premium growth tools aren’t available to all apps on the Google Play store. To access these features, your app must meet one of the below performance thresholds:

• 1.6 million 28-day active users (DAU) for the past 3 months AND 1.6 million active installs.
• 2 million 28-DAUs in the past month AND 2 million active installs.
• $40,000 in monthly consumer spending over the last 3 months OR $50,000 in the past month.

There are reduced criteria available for developers in the Google Play Partner Program or the Media Experience Program, as well as for titles consistently ranking in the top 10 by DAU in key countries and categories.

It’s important to note that there is no application process. Apps are added to the program on a monthly basis, and are applied automatically once qualified. If your app then dips below the qualifying threshold, Google will give you a three-month heads up before removing your access.

Promotional content can significantly increase your app’s visibility. According to Google, “Running high-quality and frequent promotional content is an important signal to Google Play that you're continually investing in your app.” The resulting benefit? Apps that use promotional content see “over twice as many explore acquisitions during a featuring window.”

There are various types of content (all of which are referred to as ‘events’) that you can promote using this feature:

• Offers: Discounts, bonuses, or rewards.

• Competitions and challenges: Events where users compete for rewards or rankings.

• Live events: Real-time streaming like sports or concerts. Users can choose to receive notifications to remind them when live events begin.

• Limited time events: Any time-sensitive event.

• New features and announcements: Major updates with new capabilities.

• New content: Recently added shows, games, or media/content.

• Pre-registration updates: Inform users of new content, demos, or release milestones.

Beyond just awareness and acquisition, promotional content impacts post-install metrics as well. According to Google, when best practices are followed, “Promotional content drives 2% more 28-day active users and 4% higher revenue for developers who use the feature than those that do not.”

Google Play reviews all promotional content to ensure it meets high standards, so focusing on crafting engaging, visually compelling assets is key. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your promotional content:

1. Plan ahead to submit events within 30 days of the start date.
2. Use the tagline’s first 40 characters to convey the value that the user gets.
3. Make your text specific and transparent.
4. Emphasize the limited-time nature of the event.
5. Write in short paragraphs rather than bullet points.
6. Be mindful when marketing the priority of an event as high or very high that you can only have three high and one very high priority events each quarter.
7. Use deep links to bring users directly to where within your app is relevant to the promotion. (Hint: Adjust’s deep links will take your promotional content to the next level!)

Adjust’s deep linking solution, TrueLink allows you to guide users directly to the specific in-app content tied to your promotion. This allows you to create a seamless experience that eliminates friction. Using deep links also ensures that each promotional event can be tracked accurately, giving you deeper insights into user behavior and campaign effectiveness.

Also pivotal to any performance analysis is unbiased attribution. Attribution is key to understanding the impact of your promotional content by measuring installs and in-app behavior. It allows you to measure user actions triggered by events like special offers, live streams, or new content, giving you insights into what resonates most with your audience. This data helps you refine your strategies, ensuring future promotions deliver even better engagement and results. With precise attribution, you can maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns and grow your app’s success.

For more information on how to measure the impact of your marketing efforts, or for a TrueLink demo, chat with the Adjust team.