Dynamic remarketing for apps setup guide

1. Add feed attributes for your app

With dynamic remarketing, you'll create a feed which includes all of your products or services along with attributes like unique IDs, images and prices. When ads are shown to people who visited your website or app, details about the items that they viewed will be pulled from your feed and used to show these ads.

There are different types of feeds for different business types. For example, an airline might create a 'flights' feed. People who visited the airline's website or app might then see ads containing information about the flights that they searched for, viewed or started to book. To learn more about feeds, read how to Create a feed for your responsive ads.

Getting started

Upload your feed:

In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools icon and click Business data.

If you’re a retailer, format your feed adhering to product data specification and upload it to the Google Merchant Center.

Use deep links to direct users to your app's landing page:

(Recommended) Android app links and iOS universal links: Modify your app to support these Android and iOS deep link types, which lets the device OS decide whether the user should be directed to the mobile web page or the app deep link.
Custom schemes: Add some additional feed attributes to provide Android and iOS app deep links (1 for Android, 2 for iOS).

Note: Links that support browser redirects are not currently supported. To enable these links for Dynamic Remarketing for apps, it is recommended to enable these links as app links or universal links to prevent a browser redirect.

Android app links and iOS universal links: how to implement link tracking

Android app links and iOS universal links look like standard web URLs (such as https://example.com), but are configured so that the device OS will decide whether to open a browser or an app. The decision is based on whether the user has the relevant app installed.

When Android app links and iOS universal links are used, tracking templates will work the same as they do with a standard web URL. You wouldn’t need to modify your feed.

Custom schemes in Android

Additional feed column (Android landing screens)

Business data feed: Add 'Android app link' as a column to your business data feed. These columns are added under Business data > Settings > Attributes. You can use this new attribute (Android app link) to deep link users to your Android app. Learn more about Handling Android app links.
Google Merchant Center (GMC) Feed: Add mobile_android_app_link as an attribute to your Google Merchant Center (GMC) Feed.

App URI format

android-app://{package_id}/{scheme}/{host_path}

package_id: the app’s ID as specified in the Android Play Store.
scheme: Used to pass to the application. Can be http or a custom scheme.
host_path: identifies the specific content within your application.

Android app URI examples

Deep link: example://gizmos?1234
- App URI: android-app://com.example.android/example/gizmos?1234
Deep link: example://gizmos/1234
- App URI: android-app://com.example.android/example/gizmos/1234
Deep link: example://gizmos/toys/1234
- App URI: android-app://com.example.android/example/gizmos/toys/1234

If your example app package_id is 'com.example.android' and supports deep linking, the app URI for the 'Android app link' attribute should have a similar format to the example below:

Example: android-app://com.example.android/example/gizmos/toys/1234?campaign={campaign}&placement={placement}&custom_params=ABCD12345

Note

When a user clicks on an Android deep link, Google Ads uses the app’s URI and ignores the tracking_template. If you need tracking parameters to track deep links, you must add the associated parameters to the app URI in your feed. Deep linking supports unencoded ValueTrack parameters.

Custom schemes in iOS

Additional feed column (iOS landing screens)

Business data feed: Add the following two columns into your business data feed if you want to send users to the iOS app from your creatives when they install the app. The following columns are added under Business data > Settings > Attributes.
1. 'iOS app link' – Mobile iOS app landing page URI. Examples:
  - //gizmos/toys/1245
  - //gizmos/toys/5678
2. 'iOS app store ID' – Mobile iOS App Store ID. Example that goes with the URLs above:
  - 123456789
Google Merchant Center (GMC) Feed:
- iOS GMC – 'mobile_ios_app_link'
- iOS GMC - 'mobile_ios_app_store_id'

App URI format (to be included in iOS app link column)

{scheme}://{host}/{path}

Where:

scheme: Tells iOS which app to open
host: Host to be opened within the app
path: Additional information regarding the location within the app to open

iOS app URI examples:

example://gizmos/1234
example://gizmos/toys/1234

Mobile iOS App Store ID

Advertisers should provide the App Store ID to identify the app and determine if it’s installed on each user’s device.

The mobile iOS App Store ID can be found in the iOS App Store. The URL for the “details” page of your app contains the App Store ID.

Example

The iOS App Store URL for the Google calendar App is as follows (ID in red):

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-calendar-make-the-most-of-every-day/id909319292

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