For app developers, Google unveils pre-registration ads, Engagement App campaigns, more

The company announced five new features aimed at customer acquisition, retention and app monetization efforts. Google made several product and feature announcements for app developers Wednesday. The features track to the phases of the app life cycle from driving awareness and interest in a yet-to-be-launched app to re-engaging existing installs. Of the five new features, four are currently in beta. Pre-registration ads. Targeted at the pre-launch phase, this ad product is aimed at getting users to sign up for an app that’s launching soon. Available for Android apps, the ads can run across Play Store, YouTube, the million or so apps that are in the Google Display Network and Google.com. The ads feature a “Pre-registration” button and an opt-in for users to be notified to sign up early for other new games Google thinks they might like. Line Games tested the ad units to promote its multi-player game Destiny Child ahead of release in order to have a critical mass of users ready to play. It had 10,000 users at launch. This product is currently in closed beta. Rewarded ads in Play console. Google’s rewarded ads for AdMob have evolved over the past couple of years. They offer another way for developers to monetize their apps by giving users the option to watch an ad in exchange for an in-app benefit like advancing to the next level or earning tokens in a game. Last year, Google introduced rewarded video ad formats for AdMob. Now, it’s bringing the model to the Play console to make it easier for developers to test how and where the formats will execute while they are prototyping. No need for an SDK or Google Ads account set up. This is currently in beta.