Practitioner pattern · Ashley Black (Founder of Candid Consulting, an agency that runs and audits Google App Campaigns for app clients)
Use plain stock photos for Google image ads, mostly landscape on Android
Plain images got more volume than designed ads in her accounts
Workedpaid-search
What they did
On Android aim for ~80% landscape images (landscape gets more traffic), 20% square/portrait. Skip fully designed image ads with text, CTA and rating: Google already overlays the app icon, an install button and often the store rating. Use free stock images found while building ad groups (or Google's AI asset generator) and see what gets traffic. Only design full images if CTR is really low.
What happened
In the accounts she manages, fully designed images have not got as much volume as plain images.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Right (and Wrong) Way to Grow with Google App Campaigns — Ashley Black, Candid Consulting“So I usually tell people like, "Use a stock image. They work just as well a lot of times. They're free.”
“I haven't seen those the ones that are fully designed, at least for the accounts that I work on and a lot of my clients, I haven't seen them get as much volume as the ones that are just images.”
Related topics
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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
- 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