Inside AdMob: March 2015

Our AdMob Support Team is Here for You!

March 19, 2015

Over the past year, we’ve worked tirelessly to create and improve content on the AdMob Help Center so that you can easily find answers to your questions. However, we also understand that sometimes you just want to communicate with a real person.
That’s why beginning of this year we launched a new Contact Us flow. Anyone with an AdMob account that’s making more than $25 a week can reach us for assistance via the Help Center. Simply click on the “Contact Us” button (upper right hand corner). This applies to AdSense too. If you don’t qualify and can’t find that “Contact Us” button, don’t worry! You can still reach us via the issue-based troubleshooters found throughout our Help Center.
To give you a better idea of what we do, here are a few common questions we get:

Of course, that’s not all. We support up to 650k apps across 35 different languages via our email support, and we make it our top priority to answer your questions as quickly as we can. Our average response time is less than 1 business day, and last month, we achieved an 80% survey satisfaction rate through our support interactions with developers!

Here are a few more resources to help make your life easier!
AdMob Quick Guide
Help Center troubleshooters
Help Center “Contact Us” button
Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
AdMob website
AdMob blog
Admob Google+
AdMob twitter

Don’t be shy in reaching out to us- we’re excited to hear more from you and see how we can improve your experience with AdMob!

Posted by Pauline Wang Partner Support Specialist

Why do users stop using your app and how do you keep them from leaving?

March 14, 2015

Lowdown is a weekly series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team. Keeping users on your app is just as difficult as getting downloads. What kind of users abandon you? Why do they stop? What needs to change to keep them engaged? These are all critical questions that are hard to find clear answers to. Fortunately, Google Analytics for mobile apps and a methodical, metrics-driven approach can help. We’d like to introduce you to two key reports within Google Analytics that will help guide you towards increased retention.
Finding Design Flaws: Behavior Flow Report
Users might have stopped using your app because of design flaws. Behavior Flow report, a type of report within Google Analytics, can help you identify sticking points and take targeted action. The Behavior Flow report measures the various screens or events that users visit within your app and provides you with the percentage of people who go on to engage other screens or drop off altogether. This makes clear:

What screens users are seeing
Which ones are most popular
How long users stay on each screen
How they navigate from one screen to the next

This information can help you in a number of ways. For example, if you had a game app and each of your game’s levels used a different screen, you could track what percentage of people pass through each level. If there’s a level that has massive user drop-off, that may indicate that the level is too hard. Further, you may find that the exit rate on the “Game Over” screen is particularly high. This could mean that the image or text isn’t incentivizing users to play the game again. You can learn more about this report in the “Know your Flows” section here. Google-Analytics-App-Behavior-Flow- Report-Screenshot

Google-Analytics-App-Behavior-Flow- Report-Screenshot

Finding Technical Flaws: Crash and Exceptions Report
Crashes and Exceptions reportshere Google-Analytics-App-Crashes-Exceptions-Flow-Report-ScreenShot

Google-Analytics-App-Crashes-Exceptions-Flow-Report-ScreenShot

websiteGoogle+

Posted by Sarah Xie

Mobile Strategic Partner Manager

AdMob App Spotlight Video Series: Freaking Math

March 11, 2015

YouTube channelGoogle+

Posted by Raj Ajrawat,

Product Specialist

How do you find your most active users and keep them engaged?

March 4, 2015

Lowdown is a weekly series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team. Paul Buchheit, the Googler behind Gmail and now partner at Y Combinator, is famous for emphasizing that, “It’s better to make something a small number of people love, than something a large number of people don’t care about.” This is absolutely true for your app business. Scaling something mediocre isn’t going to fare well for your business in the long run. Its crucial not to settle for exclusively measuring fluffy metrics like overall downloads or general traffic. You’ve got to dig deeper to find out who’s using your app the most, what they love about it, and eventually double down on what’s working well. We’d like to introduce you to two key reports from Google Mobile App Analytics that will help you to do just that.
Loyalty Report within Google Analytics
The Loyalty Report within Google Analytics shows you the number of sessions for the nth occurrence in your app. You’ll see the number of “1st interactions” with your app, then the number of “2nd interactions”, then the number of “3rd interactions”, and so on.
This report can help you determine at what point in your app users drop off. For example, your Loyalty Report may show you that users with fewer than three sessions have lower conversion rates.
With this information, there are many tests that you can run. You could go through the app yourself to see if there’s anything within the user experience that hinders engagement past 3 sessions. You could segment the users that drop off before 3 sessions and investigate whether they share any common attributes–maybe they came from a marketing campaign that’s bringing in the wrong audience or there could be a language difference. You could even try to use advertising to motivate users early with incentives.
By clearly recognizing the engagement drop off point in your app, you can begin to take methodical action towards increasing engagement. Check out the help desk for more detailed information. Google Analytics Loyalty Report Screenshot

Recency Report within Google Analytics The Recency Report within Google Analytics shows how much time passed between app sessions. This provides a great way to segment users based on frequency of engagement, and enables you to know who uses your app once a month, or once a week, or even once a day. With this information you can begin to target new customers that are similar to your most engaged segment. You could also try using notifications or advertising to bring less engaged users back more frequently. Google-Analytics-App-Recency-Report-Screenshot

Google-Analytics-App-Recency-Report-Screenshot

websiteGoogle+

Posted by Sarah Xie

Mobile Strategic Partner Manager

Why we try, buy and say goodbye to mobile games

March 3, 2015

AppFigures As a developer, understanding why people choose to interact with certain games is the key to success. Understanding this behavior can be the difference between a hit game or a download dud. Let’s take a look at some of the latest industry trends we’re seeing.

How users discover new apps
According to a recent survey with Google/Ipsos, Consumer Mobile Apps Study in 2014, 27% of smartphone app users rely on search engines to find a new app. Search advertising is a key way for you to get your apps discovered and grow your audience.

Why users download games
There are various reasons why someone might download a new game. But according to the same survey, 60% of gaming app users downloaded a gaming app simply because it sounded interesting and fun. Engaging app listings and positive reviews will help you capture their attention.

Why users try games
Consumers love getting things for free. We found that 67% of gaming app users prefer free games supported by ads, rather than paying to download the app. They also love their snack-sized entertainment, with 78% playing games simply to kill time.

Why users stop playing
On the flip side, 61% of game app users say that the reason they quit an app is because they’ve lost interest in it, with 58% of game app users going so far as to uninstall the app after it fails to hold their attention.
Use analytics to help you understand the consumer’s experience in your app – are they experiencing crashes, getting stuck at a certain level, or is something interrupting the flow of the game – so you can give them a better experience and keep them coming back.
We’ve compiled these stats and insights in this easy-to-share infographic below. Also, you can visit www.google.com/admob to learn more about our integration with Google Analytics in AdMob to monetize intelligently.

Why Users Say Goodbye to Mobile Games Infographic

Posted by Desiree Motamedi
Product Marketing, AdMob

Research Methodology - Google/Ipsos, Consumer Mobile Apps Study, 2014
Google partnered with Ipsos MediaCT on the Mobile Apps Consumer Research to uncover consumer smartphone app acquisition and usage behaviors. Online survey was conducted Sep. 12-22, 2014 among 8,470 smartphone users aged 18-64 who have used any smartphone apps in the past 7 days and have used Entertainment, Finance, Gaming, Local, Retail, Social, Tech, or Travel apps in the past 30 days.

New AdMob features to help you monetize your app the smart way

March 2, 2015

Game Developers Conference

AdMob In-App Purchase House Ads are a free, new format that can completely change how you think about your in-app purchase monetization strategy. You can use this format to create a customized ad to promote items to sell to your users, then AdMob’s audience-aware platform will predict those users who are likely to buy, and show them the ad. For all your other users - the ones unlikely to spend - AdMob can show them a regular ad. This approach means you can keep your high-value users engaged in your app, and for everyone else you’re making each impression count towards monetization. Currently in beta, this feature will be coming to all AdMob accounts in the next few weeks.

Audience Builder is a powerful tool in AdMob that enables you to create lists of audiences based on how people use your app and then create customized experiences for users, ultimately growing your app revenue. For example, you could create an Audience List that defines those users who have not used your app in 14 days. Import that list into Google AdWords, and you can show ads to this list to re-engage users while they’re in other apps, or across the web. Audience Builder is available in all AdMob accounts now, and you can find out how to get started here.

AdMob Native Ads are now in limited beta on the AdMob platform. Participating developers will be able to show native ads in their app from Google advertisers, and customize them to match both the form and function of their app. We pay close attention to user experience, so our native ads are designed to be clearly identifiable as ads to users. We’re thrilled to be working closely with Atari to bring native ads to RollerCoaster Tycoon® 4 Mobile; check out the screenshot below with an app install ad for Zagat:

The user-friendly focus of native ads was an important consideration for Atari’s Chief Operating Officer, Todd Shallbetter: ‘Atari creates great game experiences for our broad audience. We're happy to be partnering with Google and be the first games company to take part in the native ads beta and help monetize games in a way that enhances our users' experience.'

We’re testing native ads on non-gaming apps, too, partnering with developers globally, including CocoPPa in Japan.

These new features in AdMob can provide you with many new ways to supercharge your monetization. You can find out more about them on the AdMob website.

If you’re going to be at GDC, don’t miss my talk on Thursday, ‘Smart Strategies to Acquire, Retain and Monetize Gamers,’ where I’ll be discussing these new features. And if you can’t attend, check out our live sharing on Google+ and Twitter to stay in the loop with what’s happening with #MeetAdMob.

Posted by Jonathan Alferness
Director of Product Management and Global Lead

for Mobile Display Ads and AdMob

Inside AdMob

Our AdMob Support Team is Here for You!

Why do users stop using your app and how do you keep them from leaving?

AdMob App Spotlight Video Series: Freaking Math

How do you find your most active users and keep them engaged?

Why we try, buy and say goodbye to mobile games

New AdMob features to help you monetize your app the smart way

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