Since mobile searches has exceeded desktop last year, most of us are all aware of the importance of mobile. Now, Google is rolling out a few new interactive ad types to help advertisers drive engagement on mobile.
How many times have you downloaded a game on your phone only to delete it minutes after because it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be? Google has caught on to how difficult it can be for advertisers to get consumers to download their app. The company also knows that a lot of its own revenue comes through advertisers on its mobile network; that’s why they have introduced Trial Run Ads. This ad format allows users to play a game for up to one minute prior to downloading the app by streaming content directly from the app before the download.
Getting this type of preview should help to drive more app downloads for games and should also lead to more relevant ad clicks for advertisers. It’ll be interesting to see if 60 seconds is enough time to judge whether the app is worth the download. It’ll also be interesting to see how creative advertisers can get to deliver the app experience to consumers within that 60-second window. Either way, developers and advertisers in the game category should be happy with this new ad type.
Interactive Interstitial Ads
People might have been getting sick of seeing the same old static advertisements inside of mobile apps, but that may be about to change with Google’s release of Interactive Interstitial ads. These are HTML5 ads that can be customised and tailor fit to your mobile app audience. Think of these ads as GIFs—interactive advertisements that will stand out among the rest of the generic advertisements that are cluttering our mobile devices. You can already run similar ads on Google’s Display Network, but as you’ll see below, these ads are a lot more interactive and user-friendly.
Similar to the Trial Run ads, these interactive ads give consumers an experience of the app before they download it, which Google is expecting to lead to more app installs and better overall ad engagement. Unlike Trial Run ads, these ad types aren’t just limited to Games. Instead, Google is portraying this ad format as geared more toward everyday apps. I think they’ll be especially successful for eCommerce brands.
The best part about these ad formats is that they can be customised by tweaking the standard Google template or by completely developing a custom creative, and live app content can also be used to create real time ad formats. What this will allow for is easier split testing, whether it be of the CTA or the creative itself.
Before the introduction of these two new ad formats, advertisers were limited to telling consumers about their app through text or static banner ads—now they can show them.
What does it mean?
What this means is that advertisers and developers now have more robust and interactive tools at their disposal to drive app downloads. As more companies adapt to responsive design and see desktop users decrease, you can expect to see more money put behind mobile across the board (keyword search, display, remarketing, etc.) for 2016.
Trial Run and Interactive Interstitial ads are both in beta right now. If you’re a digital agency with a Google Partners team or have an account manager at Google, you can reach out to them to join the beta.