Practitioner pattern · Ashley Black (Founder of Candid Consulting, an agency that runs and audits Google App Campaigns for app clients)
Split each Google app campaign into about 5 ad groups, one per app feature
Shows which themes Google favors; one ad group alone tells you little
Unknownpaid-searchexperimentation
What they did
Google won't let you set budgets per ad group or A/B test creatives, so create ~5 ad groups per campaign, each built around one use case or feature (e.g. for a golf app: swing performance, caddies), with all creatives in the group matching that theme. Watch which groups get traffic and engagement. Common mistake: one campaign with one ad group, then concluding Google doesn't work.
What happened
Lets you see which themes resonate; guest does not give numbers.
- Stage
- launch
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Right (and Wrong) Way to Grow with Google App Campaigns — Ashley Black, Candid Consulting“But what I always encourage people to do is you have to build out multiple ad groups, and I I like theme them. You know, think about use cases and/or features of your app, and then that that's what I would create your ad groups around”
“I usually like to build out maybe about five ad groups per campaign, get a little bit of traction, see what's resonating with folks”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Start Google app ads with one campaign per country: $200-300/day Android, $500/day iPhoneExpect a readable trend within 2-3 weeks
- Raise or cut Google ad budgets by at most 20% every 2-3 daysBigger jumps sent the system haywire when the guest tried
- Upload Google ad videos at 6, 10-15, 20 and 30+ seconds, portrait and landscape
- Use plain stock photos for Google image ads, mostly landscape on AndroidPlain images got more volume than designed ads in her accounts
- Write your own Google ad text lines instead of taking Google's suggestions
- Check where each Google ad actually runs, and treat cheap CPMs as a warningAn audit traced poor traffic to ads running only on display sites
- Pull costly Google ad videos a few at a time over a week, not all at onceKept conversions flowing; all were removed after a week
- Refresh tired Google ads by changing a single wordGuest says even removing one word makes Google re-test the ad
- Copy a Google campaign that stopped growing to make Google test it againSometimes unlocks more spend; not a Google best practice
- Give holiday or disaster-season ads their own ad group so you can pause themEasy to switch off; new groups often get little volume
- Tell Google to find trial starts, not paid subscribers
- Try Google's return-on-ad-spend bidding for a short test, but stay skepticalWorked for about half of subscription apps
- Spend enough to get a Google rep, then ask them for specific data