Google Play updates ahead! Google I/O was held yesterday and here are the key takeaways and opportunities for app publishers.
More customization options
In addition to last year’s 50 custom store listings, Google Play will now allow customizing for inactive users. This is designed to re-activate those users by emphasizing why they should consider giving your app or game another try. Custom listings will soon extend to Google Ads App campaign ad groups as well. This allows a coherent user experience for those users coming from specific ads on AdMob or YouTube. To manage this easier Google will allow the ability to cater to various user demographics by creating a fundamental listing and subsequently customizing specific elements. Customization to different languages will be assisted with new machine translation models for 10 languages.
AI helper
For listings in English, Google has published new AI-powered features. The features allow you to bring out the best in your app by generating descriptions. AI also helps you to summarize the highlights of your reviews. Google is aiming to provide more efficient listing management and a AI-powered helping hand.
Promotional content
Promotional content will be available for more titles this year if the app is of high quality. The app needs to be in accordance with Google’s quality framework in order to be featured. This could potentially pose a threat to smaller studios but at least the intention is to provide increased user experience.
Additionally, Google is introducing more high-traffic surfaces, such as Play notifications, to aid drive traffic. Google has also made changes to the reporting system for publishers to better track performance.
Monetization
To make generating revenue effective, Google is rolling out the following features:
- In-app price experiments to find the best price point
- Featured products is promotional content that allows the sale of in-app items on the Play Store
- Subscriptions will allow multiple prices per billing
- Exploring new payment methods
More on monetization 👇
Privacy and safety
Here’s what Google is rolling out or enhancing to ensure user safety.
- Google Play Protect scans malware and policy-violating apps
- Play Integrity API and Automatic integrity protection makes sure the app isn’t tampered with and is easily applicable to apps and games
- New tools to prompt updates to help users identify broken app versions
- Data deletion option that allows publishers give users the choice to clean up their data
- App content page redesign to easily identify how to stay policy compliant
Conclusion
The Google Play updates could potentially be major wins, but there are some doubts that we have identified. The rise of AI hasn’t gone unnoticed and while it may make sorting reviews and learning form them faster, it won’t replace the human touch (yet, at least…). Also, quality over quantity is usually a good thing. However, we shall see how the new quality framework affects the success of smaller publishers or indies.
Source: Android Developers Blog
