Acquire users who are more likely to engage with in-app ads using Target ROAS bidding

Having the right bid strategy for your App campaign can help to improve performance and return on investment for your business. 

Starting today, target return on ad spend for ad revenue, or tROAS for ad revenue, will allow you to directly improve revenue earned from ads shown in your app. This means that you can now focus on acquiring players who engage with ads at scale and dynamically pay depending on how likely a player is to engage with in-app ads. 

This is an update to the Target Return on Ad Spend, or tROAS bid strategy, which is recommended if you are seeking a specific Return on Ad Spend from your App campaigns. If you have an Android app using the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK conversion reporting, you can calculate tROAS by passing a dynamic revenue value from in-app events in Google Analytics to Google ads, in order to improve the average dollar value you want back for every dollar spent on user acquisition. 

To use tROAS for ad revenue, developers will have to send all AdMob or third-party ad revenue data to Google Analytics for bidding. Third-party ad revenue in Google Analytics enables revenue import from any monetization platform into Google Analytics for tROAS bidding. 

To get started with tROAS for ad revenue bidding for App campaigns:

1. Add your publisher data (i.e. ad revenue data) into your Google Analytics property
   1. For AdMob data: Link AdMob to Firebase 
   2. From other ad monetization platforms: Measure ad revenue by Firebase
2. Link your Google Analytics property to Google Ads
   1. Link Google Ads and Analytics
   2. Import Analytics conversions into Google Ads
3. Send your Google Analytics ad_impression event to Google Ads
   1. Mark your Ad_Impression Event as a Conversion in Google Analytics. To mark it as a conversion, first navigate to the events panel in Google Analytics.
   2. Mark the ad_impression event as a conversion event in the far right column with the sliding selector.

After these steps are completed, you can set up your tROAS for ad revenue App campaign and select the ‘ad_impression’ event to optimize towards ad revenue. 

For more tips on managing and guiding the performance of your App campaigns, check out our best practices for App campaigns and bidding types within App campaigns. 

Posted by Jennifer Lui, Senior Product Manager, App Ads