I/O 2023 – What’s New in Google Play? | Mobile Marketing News

Industry News Mobile Marketing

Sarai Oppenheimer 16 May 2023

The latest updates from Google Play and Console are set to revolutionize how app developers and marketers approach their work. With a focus on seamlessness and performance, these changes promise to make building and showcasing high-quality products on the platform easier than ever. 

In addition to streamlining the development process, Google is making significant improvements to visibility and discoverability within the store, helping users find the apps and games they want with greater ease. But that’s not all – Google is also rolling out some innovative AI tools to help you optimize your app’s store listing and approach your audience more easily.

In this article, we will break down everything you need to know about these exciting updates and show you how to incorporate them into your workflow to boost your app’s visibility in the Google Play Store. So buckle up and get ready to optimize your app for growth!

Drive Growth to Store Listings

Google’s recent updates to its platform include customization options for app store listings, with the ability to target specific audience segments. This helps enhance your app’s discoverability and engagement for your ideal user base.

Additionally, Google has introduced store listing groups to streamline managing multiple listings. By creating a primary template or base listing, you can now modify different aspects for different audiences based on factors such as country, pre-registration status, inactive users, and Google Ads campaigns. This feature simplifies marketing efforts by allowing the creation of tailored campaigns for specific custom product pages.

Key Takeaway

These updates enable marketers and developers to optimize their app’s visibility and increase user acquisition rates, resulting in higher revenue and profits. Utilizing the new customization options for store listings and store listing groups can improve discoverability, target specific audience segments, and streamline the management of multiple listings. Overall, these changes promise to make building and showcasing high-quality apps easier and more efficient than ever before.

P.S. – Google Ads App campaign ad groups will soon have custom store listings for a more streamlined user experience from Google Ads to Play.

Google’s AI-Powered Features Make Their Way Into the Console

Google Play has recently introduced AI technology to produce custom store listings seamlessly. Google Play will create your next custom store listing by inputting target audiences and critical theme prompts. Google has also presented AI-powered review summaries to showcase your app’s best aspects. 

While Google Play’s new AI features are definitely a good start and show that the platform is emphasizing localizations and reaching out to more audiences, we still need to highlight the fact that these cannot replace a true ASO expert, and CSLs are not indexed. It’s still recommended to check the received metadata before posting to ensure it aligns with the app features and values. 

To create a custom store listing, provide input for the theme, tone of voice, and intended audience (can be ‘lapsed users’ or even ‘members’). Review the generated draft before editing and submitting it to Google Play. Reviewing and editing the draft is important, as you are responsible for the content submitted.

The platform has also presented the machine translation model from Google Translate in the Play Console for ten languages. This innovative feature can help marketers and developers engage with potential customers in their native language by quickly translating app and store listings at no additional cost, broadening reach, and making apps more accessible to non-English speaking users.

Key Takeaway

This update can enhance your app’s global appeal and streamline your marketing efforts. By using the machine translation model, you can effortlessly create multilingual content for your app and store listing, tapping into new markets, catering to diverse user preferences, and driving higher downloads and engagement.

While the AI-powered features can assist in optimizing your app store presence, it’s essential to remember that proper app optimization requires expert knowledge and strategy. Partnering with an ASO agency or utilizing ASO services can further ensure that your app stands out from the competition. ASO experts can help you craft compelling and relevant content that resonates with your target audience, leading to improved visibility and conversion rates.

Maximize Your App’s Exposure with Google Play’s New Promotional Content Placements

Google Play is taking audience growth to the next level by introducing promotional content events and high-traffic surfaces designed to elevate store-wide acquisitions and reacquisitions. These new placements for promotional content will be showcased across Google Play’s homepage and in search results, allowing you to effectively promote significant events, fresh content, or enticing discounts to your target audience.

• Leveraging these innovative features will boost growth and enable tracking through new reporting tools in the console. Participating games have experienced a median 20% increase in store-wide acquisitions and reacquisitions, fueled by an astounding 60% rise in organic Explore traffic.

Key Takeaway

Marketers can view an overview of promotional content performance with charts showing unique viewers and converters, conversion rate, and active days. Event performance is also shown for live or canceled events. 

• High-priority promotional content may be eligible for additional featuring across Play, with in-page messages and chart annotations to track impact.

Get Featured with Google Play’s Unified Framework for App and Game Quality

App marketers and developers can now efficiently monitor the direct performance of promotional content & ASO efforts and gain valuable insights on delivering an exceptional app or game experience using the newly launched unified framework for App and Game Quality.

• This comprehensive framework outlines Google’s evaluation criteria for promotion and featuring across various dimensions, ultimately assisting developers and marketers in meeting the platform’s stringent quality standards. 

Key Takeaway

To increase the chances of your app getting featured on Google Play, it’s crucial to focus on improving various aspects highlighted in the platform’s unified framework. These include enhancing your app’s user experience, technical quality, and usefulness. 

• For instance, incorporating appealing visuals, refining navigation, offering seamless performance, and providing valuable content can boost your app’s overall quality. 

By meeting these standards, you can improve your app’s discoverability and increase its chances of getting noticed by the right audience.

Increase Revenue with Enhanced Monetization Features

Google Play will introduce a range of advanced monetization features to help you optimize revenue generation. These include A/B testing price experiments for in-app products, featured products, and significant updates to subscription services.

Subscription services have been revamped to boost conversions and improve retention by enabling multiple prices per billing period. This flexibility allows developers to offer varying auto-renewing and prepaid plan prices, such as recurring discounts for “VIP” users.

Soon, you’ll also have a new way to draw users to your in-app items in the Play Store with the latest form of promotional content – “Featured Products” – which allow you to market in-app items directly in the store. This way, you can feature special in-app items in various locales or offer discounts to entice users and boost conversions.

Key Takeaway

Marketers and developers will be able to experiment with diverse price points across different markets, identifying potential pricing pitfalls or undervaluing their in-app products. Furthermore, featured products provide developers the opportunity to sell in-app items directly on Google Play, sparking user interest and driving up conversions.

Privacy & Security Enhanced to Create a Protected Ecosystem for Developers and Users

The Play Integrity API verifies user actions and server requests originating from unmodified app versions on genuine Android devices; with the new beta integration option, it offers verdicts ten times faster, and status.play.google.com keeps you updated on the service status.

Automatic integrity protection has also been expanded, providing one-click anti-tamper and anti-piracy protection without the need for API integration in a backend server.

Key Takeaway

Google Play is developing new tools to guide users away from broken app versions with update prompts. Automatic update prompts for crashing apps are triggered when a more stable version is available, and developers can also prompt users on specific app versions to update. This feature will be accessible to all apps built with app bundles in the coming months.

The redesigned App Content page highlights outstanding tasks, making it easier for developers to comply with Google Play policies. Upcoming declaration requirements and deadlines will also be displayed, allowing for better planning.

The Bottom Line

Google Play offers a plethora of tools for marketers and developers to grow their user base, reach new markets, and monetize their apps without sacrificing privacy or security. With the latest updates, there are even more opportunities to maximize app visibility, improve user experience, and increase revenue.

From improved features to changes in customer support policies, it’s essential for marketers to take advantage of these new features and tools to ensure they get the most out of their app store experience.

Marketers can also benefit from consulting with an ASO agency to unlock their app’s full potential, maximizing visibility and growth. As Google continues to advance, now is the perfect time to start building or updating your app on Google Play.

Sarai Oppenheimer

Sarai is an ASO & CRO analyst at Moburst, specializing in optimizing visibility and enhancing performance to increase downloads, conversions, and engagement. When she's not working, you can find her outdoors exploring nature and capturing beautiful memories with her camera.

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