ASO Academy

Google Play Promotional Content

February 19th, 2024

Google Play Promotional Content
David Bell

by David Bell

CEO at Gummicube, Inc.

In the modern age, App Store Optimization goes beyond mere metadata and creative optimization. No more is the sole focus on refining user acquisition strategies. Rather, developers need to build an ASO strategy that considers every stage of the user journey – from discovery to post-installation.

New features aimed at improving engagement and retention elevate ASO beyond just discoverability. Google Play Promotional Content (previously LiveOps) opens up the opportunity to look past search discovery, providing an avenue for targeting existing and lapsed users. Through visually engaging display cards, developers can highlight a variety of content to help foster activity in a way not possible through other native Play Store tools.

What is Google Play Promotional Content?

Like Apple In-App Events, Promotional Content acts as Google Play’s resource for attracting users in a way that differs from the usual screenshots or preview videos. Displaying relevant, time-sensitive content, promotional content provides developers with a way to shine a light on important events taking place without performing an entire metadata update.

google play promotional content
Represented through cards with distinct imagery, promotional content can highlight promotions, updates, new features, and much more.

Promotional content can appear in a number of different placements throughout the Play Store. Google states “Our algorithm is optimized to display the most relevant promotional content, so not all users will see the same events.” This aids developers in creating different experiences for different subsets of users while targeting all of them at the same time. Perhaps some users might be more interested in an offer you’ve recently launched. Others in a new feature rolling out soon. Promotional content will appear according to their relevancy for each user.

promotional content placements
Source: Google

Promotional Content & Mobile App Marketing

Effective App Store Optimization should encompass refining the user experience at every stage of the journey. Promotional content gives users a new way to discover relevant events and promotes re-engagement and retention. This is essential in targeting users who may not have interacted with an app in some time and have yet to discover features that can be relevant to their current needs. It can also be effective in displaying new features to users who may have uninstalled an app and looking for an alternative.

Additionally, the engagement resulting from promotional content serves as a trigger for the algorithms to recognize the app as relevant to more users like the one who just interacted with it. The increased relevance can then help your app rank higher and appear in favorable positions for terms related to the search queries associated with the promotional content. The result? Higher discoverability. This creates interdependence between ASO engagement and discovery strategies, that justify taking into consideration all stages of the user’s Google Play experience.

Examples of instances when you should promotional content campaigns are:

  • Holidays
  • Major Updates
  • Offers & Promotions
  • New Features
  • Loyalty Programs & Rewards

Google Play Promotional Content - Get Started

With ASO evolving to cover even more aspects of mobile app marketing, developers will need to adapt to adopt all strategies at their disposal to attract (and retain) users. Promotional Content is the segway into further improving your mobile app marketing strategy by expanding beyond the realms of discoverability.

Need help with your Promotional Content? Get in touch with the ASO experts at Gummicube today!

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