Practitioner pattern · Ashley Black (Founder of Candid Consulting, an agency that runs and audits Google App Campaigns for app clients)
Copy a Google campaign that stopped growing to make Google test it again
Sometimes unlocks more spend; not a Google best practice
Mixedpaid-searchmarket-selection
What they did
When a campaign won't spend more even with very high budgets (some set $100K/day), duplicate it: Google treats it as new and tests it, sometimes finding more scale than the steady original. Otherwise scale slowly; when one market is maxed out without aggressive bids, expand to other markets likely to perform.
What happened
Guest says you 'might start to see more scale'; admits it is a hack against Google's guidance.
- Stage
- Scale (scaling)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Right (and Wrong) Way to Grow with Google App Campaigns — Ashley Black, Candid Consulting“one hack, this is definitely not a Google best practice, but it's something I think I've learned more so like as a practitioner doing this all the time, sometimes just like duplicating the campaigns.”
“And so then you might start to see more scale whereas that existing campaign had just kind of remained very steady.”
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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
- Split each Google app campaign into about 5 ad groups, one per app featureShows which themes Google favors; one ad group alone tells you little
- 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
- 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