How Does Google Ads Removing the Option to Opt Out of Mobile App Targeting Affect You?
Google is known to provide updates that reform the browsing experience for its audience positively. Each update makes the overall browsing experience of the audience slightly more streamlined and effective. However, the same updates are a big headache for the web developers and digital marketers. The same trend carries on with the new update that takes away the control of advertising on mobile apps. Now, developers won’t be able to use controls that allowed them to display the mobile display ads on all different applications. This update is a major problem for the Android digital marketers.
This update will affect the following parameters for digital marketing on application interfaces.
Budget Constraints
Several digital marketers and paid search managers have concluded that the ads on mobile applications generate nearly no interest or revenue for the company. In fact, most organizations lose money by advertising on application interfaces. The audience often gets bogged down with interstitial ads that hamper the overall usability of the application. Therefore, most app developers do not post advertisements in their applications.
The Google Play Store is growing at an exponential phase today and most people will not waste a single second in uninstalling an application filled with ads. The audience knows that it can easily find a different application with a better user interface and no ads for free on the play store. Therefore, most paid search and application managers have decided to block the ads entirely.
The blockage of ads will affect the revenue for app developers by a significant amount. The advertisement is undoubtedly one of the biggest sources of revenue for application developers. Taking that out of the equation, the app developers will face severe budget constraints for the upcoming projects.
Conversion Ratios
The overall conversion ratios through the ads placed on mobile app will suffer too. Most app developers do realize the fact that conversion ratios with the ads on mobile apps are extremely less. They know that application-based ads only hamper the overall usability of the application instead of producing a good conversion ratio.
Until now targeting a specific category of applications for ads was very easy. However, with the latest update, the process of app selection gets very tough. In fact, most digital marketers must invest a considerable amount of time looking at particular applications on which they wish to post the advertisements. This process consumes a lot of time and energy. The return on investment for such process is just not enough. Therefore, most digital marketers will adopt other places to post their ads. This creates a negative feedback loop for the mobile app developers who can neither post their own ads nor invite digital marketers to post theirs.
The lack of a good conversion ratio is evident from the fact the most digital marketers are now focusing on Social Media Marketing (SMM) techniques instead of Google Ads.
Traffic Quality
The quality of traffic will suffer a lot after the implementation of the latest Google update on the mobile app interface. The digital marketers can no longer use the blanket of the adsenseformobileapps.com link to automatically exclude the unwanted applications from their lists. In fact, they will have to do so manually.
Experts agree on the fact that mobile app interstitials are a huge waste of money for most ad campaigns. With the new update, the digital marketers won’t be able to block these interstitial ads anymore. This will directly increase a lot of unwanted traffic on their websites. This process is especially helpful when it comes to PPC marketing wherein the marketer is paying a hefty amount for each click that a potential customer makes.
Google’s Display Network will work in a more streamlined and customer-focused manner. Although it is a boon for the end-user of the application, it is a curse for the digital marketers who have invested a lot of money in highly-specified targeting. Google has also streamlined its device recognition policy to identify only three different types of devices for the advertisers. These include mobile, computer and tablet devices. The new GDN policy will affect all these devices equally.
Bid Management Techniques
With this update, your ads will either be seen on mobile sites as well as mobile applications or none of them. Before the update, it was simple for a digital marketer to switch the settings with the flick of a few buttons. The marketer could easily showcase the ads on the website and leave the mobile app out of the scope. However, with the streamlined ad campaigns, the marketer has no option but to remove the ads completely or show them on both the app as well as the websites.
The biggest problem with this new update is that you cannot participate in bid management practices either. If you do so the overall budget of the project goes out of hand.
What Next? Solutions for Digital Marketers
The digital marketers must adapt to these scenarios as quickly as possible. Without the right coping mechanisms, the marketers will bleed money and lose potential clients quickly. Here are a few ways in which the marketers can adapt to the new Google update.
- Reinvest in Digital Marketing
Several digital marketers think that investing in mobile ads is equivalent to burning hard-earned money. Combining the limited marketing space with the PPC model of ads will easily burn a hole in the pocket of digital marketers. Therefore, the best idea for marketers is to find new ways to invest their money. Instead of throwing money down the well, it is better to diversify your marketing attempt by investing in social media marketing or search engine marketing.
Some digital marketers also believe that stopping mobile ads completely is a fine way for them to revolt against this update by Google. They feel that if they make enough noise, Google will eventually subside to their demands and bring back the necessary opt-out features.
- Change Ad Placements
A simple way to ensure that you don’t get a lot of rubbish traffic is to change the ad placements to more strategic locations. On the modern-day touchscreen smartphones, it is easy for a person to click on an ad by mistake. Every click can cost the digital marketer a considerable amount of money. Therefore, placing the ads in strategic locations will help the marketers filter out the audience that really wants to see the ad in the first place. This placement will eliminate the possibility of ghost-clicks by a major factor thereby saving a lot of money in the long run.
- Reduce Prices for Premium Mobile Applications
Today most mobile app manufacturers have two different versions for their mobile applications. One that is free and full of ads, and the other one that is premium and ad-free. Mobile app developers can reduce the price of their premium applications thereby making enough revenue out of the sales of the application itself. This is a smart way of getting an additional source of income since you can effectively focus on more quantity of users rather than a high price tag.
Simple Technique to Prevent Fraud Clicks
A simple way to prevent fraud clicks is to use a filter in front of the ad for the mobile application. Instead of directly redirecting the audience to your website, you can open a pop-up on the application that asks the users if they really want to go to the website. This is possible only in the scenarios where you have an excellent connection with the app developer and have access to the back-end architecture of the application.
Most companies that are posting ads on their native applications can adopt this method to prevent fraud clicks and save a tonne of money while still running ads.
The Effect on Google
Not only the digital marketers but Google too will see the effect of this massive policy change soon. With most people planning on dropping the idea of displaying ads on mobile applications, Google will lose a considerable portion of its revenue too. Google believes that offering a better user experience is the key to retaining the customers for a long time. Marketers think that this belief will hurt Google’s revenue by a major factor since it directly coincides with the interests of digital marketers.
Digital marketers across the globe have their fingers crossed in the hope that Google rolls these changes back to their original state since it is highly inconvenient for them. Experts believe that Google has more to lose here than the digital marketers themselves. If Google keeps the same type of attitude with its future updates, people will drop the idea of using Google Display Networks completely in a short period.
Till Google understands the mistake and rolls back the changes, we can only sit back and hope that it will do so. In case, Google does not reconsider its decision, digital marketers always have the option to move to cheaper and more effective means of marketing via Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.