Google opens up app advertising across a range of its services

Google’s business model relies on advertising and the company has just announced two new ad products at Advertising Week in New York, which may help the tech giant make the most of its huge advertising platform. Google has a new ad product known as “Customer Match” and is also looking push through a greater number of app promotions by making use of its own services.

Beginning with Customer Match, this is a new way for advertisers to reach out to a greater audience. It works in a similar way to Facebook’s Custom Audiences product that has been running for a number of years. It allows advertisers to upload and match email addresses to signed-in Google users and helps to target ad campaigns at specific users. This is done “in a secure and privacy-safe way,” and only matches Gmail addresses that customers have voluntarily given out to companies, according to Google.

Furthermore, the system can be used to find “Similar Audiences” who share related interests and traits as the email accounts already used by the advertiser. This cross referencing will allow advertisers to reach a wider range of customers with targeted advertisements. These two products will be rolling out in the next few weeks, according to Google.

“Whether they’re searching on Google, checking promotions on Gmail, or watching videos on YouTube, we can deliver the most relevant information based on what they’re doing, wherever they are, when they’re looking, and on any device they’re using. Today, we’re building on these capabilities with new ads innovations to deliver even more relevance.” – Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s SVP of ads and commerce

The other half of Google’s bolstered advertising product line-up is its “Universal App Campaigns”, which was originally unveiled back in May and switched on this weekend. You have probably already spotted app advertisements across various sites and within other apps that take you to the Play Store, and this new campaign will roll out these type of advertisements across a range of Google services. Google Search, Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network, which covers over 2 million websites, will all feature advertisements that push app installs going forwards.

Google has good reason to pursue this type of revenue strategy, as EMarketer predicts spending on mobile app install ads will grow 80% year-on-year, reaching a total of $3 billion and accounting for 10 percent of total mobile ad spending. With over 1 billion YouTube users and a huge number of daily visits across a range of other Google services, advertisers will likely be keen to reach these viewers too.