Practitioner pattern · Ashley Black (Founder of Candid Consulting, an agency that runs and audits Google App Campaigns for app clients)
Try Google's return-on-ad-spend bidding for a short test, but stay skeptical
Worked for about half of subscription apps
Mixedpaid-search
What they did
Google pushes value-based bidding (tROAS), designed for IAP (and a variant for ad-monetized apps), not subscriptions. If your rep pushes it, run a short test rather than switching wholesale.
What happened
Roughly a 50/50 hit rate on whether tROAS works for subscription apps.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Right (and Wrong) Way to Grow with Google App Campaigns — Ashley Black, Candid Consulting“So for that one, if you're feeling like you're being pushed at all on it, I think it's okay to be skeptical, but at the same time, it has worked for some folks, so it might be worth a short test.”
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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
- 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
- Spend enough to get a Google rep, then ask them for specific data