The Apps Four to drive growth

Your app is where your highest-value users interact with your brand. Whether you are an app-first advertiser or your app is just one of many digital touchpoints, Google App campaigns help you reach the audiences that matter most while maximizing ROI. With 86% of consumers using Google and/or YouTube daily,¹ your app is put front and center while your customers search, stream, scroll, and shop, connecting with them across Search, YouTube, Google Play, Display, and beyond.

To help you maximize your ROI, we’re introducing the Apps Four: four essential building blocks for your app marketing strategy. Let’s dive into each one.

1. Strengthen your data with the latest Firebase SDK and Integrated Conversion Measurement

Campaigns perform at their best when fed the high-quality signals. To set your campaigns up for success, prioritize building data strength by following these steps:

• Set up Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F). GA4F works hand-in-hand with Google Ads, enabling your app data to power campaigns and drive greater ROI. Bidding on app conversions from Firebase unlocks a suite of exclusive features designed to boost performance.

  • Tip: Ensure you update to the latest Firebase SDK version (12.12.1 is the minimum version required) to leverage on-device conversion measurement using event data (ODM) for your iOS campaigns. This solution helps you see more conversions and improve your iOS campaign results while respecting user privacy.
• Enable Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM). After implementing ICM, advertisers running iOS App campaigns see an average 159% uplift in reported installs within their third-party App Attribution Partners² (AAP). You’ll see a more holistic, accurate, and real-time view of your campaign performance directly within your AAP dashboards. This solution is available for both Android and iOS.

2. Align your business goals with an AI-powered Smart bidding strategy

Now that you have the foundations in place and high-quality data flowing in, it’s time to put that to work. App campaigns offer a variety of bidding strategies, focused on either driving installs, conversions or conversion value. Choose the AI-powered bidding strategy that best matches your business goals across Android and iOS:

• tROAS bidding (target return on ad spend): profitably acquire high-value users at a set target ROAS and maximize the return on your App campaigns
• tCPA bidding (target cost per action): this bidding strategy is ideal if your goal is to drive users to perform a specific action within your app at a target CPA
• Maximize conversions bidding: this bidding strategy uses Google AI to automatically set bids to drive maximum in-app action volume or total value for a campaign within a daily budget

With your bidding strategy in place, it’s critical that you set up adequate bids and budgets to ensure the AI has the ability to optimize and sustain performance. The daily budget of your tROAS campaigns should allow for a minimum of 30 unique in-app conversions per day. As for your bids, set a target that is aligned with your goals but that is achievable at the same time. If your ROAS targets are too high, especially during the learning period, the campaigns will struggle to scale.

3. Drive deeper impact with High Engagement formats for your creative assets.

Your creative is the ultimate performance lever. It’s how you stand out and convert attention into action. Google provides a powerful suite of AI-driven tools and innovative ad formats to help you build and optimize your creative strategy.

Asset Studio is your central hub for creating, editing, and managing your ad creatives, all within Google Ads. It’s packed with Google’s latest GenAI image and video creation tools, such as Nano Banana and Veo, to help you build a diverse asset library with speed and efficiency, from AI-Powered Image and Text Suggestions to Image-to-Animation and automated video enhancements.

Google is constantly innovating with new high engagement ad formats designed to capture user attention and drive interaction, including Video + Playable end-cards, up to 60s Rewarded Video, and Clickable Video with expanded interaction areas. Aim for excellent ad asset coverage in order to be eligible to access all available inventory across Google Play, Search, Youtube, Shopping, AdMob and others.

4. Connect web and app journeys to maximize ROI

For most of us, moving between a website and an app is second nature—we do it all day long. But for you as a business, connecting the two can be a challenge. App connect helps you unify these marketing touchpoints to capture the full converting power of your Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Shopping campaigns. App Connect delivers 2.8 times higher conversion rate for clicks that land in your app versus your mobile site³.

App Connect is a three-step process:

• Track in-app conversions using either GA4F (recommended) or a third-party AAP (App Attribution Partner)
• Bid towards in-app conversions in your Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Shopping campaigns
• Drive users to the app by deep linking your web URLs. To set it up, use the deep link agent in Apps Links Assistant to automate in-app deep link creation with the help of AI, reducing implementation time from days to minutes.
  

In a hyper-competitive market, re-engagement can help drive positive return on ad spend and increase long-term profitability. Once you’ve implemented App Connect, leverage App audience re-engagement and access cross-channel inventory by implementing Performance Max or Demand Gen campaigns.

Recap

Your app is a powerful channel for engaging with your most valuable customers. By bridging the gap between discovery and in-app engagement, you maximize your app’s conversion potential, resulting in a distinct competitive advantage and sustained ROI growth. When you apply the Apps Four —Data Strength, Bidding Goals, Creative, and User Journeys— and follow best practices, you are in the best position to reach the right users at the right time in the right place with App campaigns.