Create an App campaign for engagement

App campaigns for engagement (ACe) help you to re-engage customers who have installed your app, and encourage them to take specific in-app actions. Your ads can appear across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and within other apps on the Display Network. This article covers how to create an App campaign for engagement. You can either select a marketing objective that will apply campaign settings based on insights from past performance, or create a campaign without selecting a marketing objective. If you select a marketing objective, the applied settings can be overridden at any time.

Before you begin

To create an App campaign for engagement, your app needs to have a minimum of 50,000 installs. You’ll also need to provide text, image assets, and videos (optional). Learn more about Asset requirements for App campaigns for engagement.

Your campaigns must:

Have a Universal Link (iOS), an App Link (Android), or custom scheme (both). Learn more About deep links.

Use an audience list of app users. Learn how to Add, edit, or remove audiences for App campaigns for engagement.

Have mobile app conversion tracking set up and use Firebase or a supported third-party, known as an App Attribution Partner (AAP), to track conversions.

Have conversions from Firebase or an AAP set up properly. Learn how to Set up conversions from Firebase or App Attribution Partners for App campaigns for engagement.

Have a privacy policy that discloses sufficient information about your use of re-engagement campaigns and complies with Google’s EU user consent policy.

Have a minimum of 50,000 installs.

Instructions

Click on this interactive tool to learn how to create your ACe campaign.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click Overview.
3. Click the plus button , and then select New campaign.
4. For your campaign goal, select App promotion.
5. For your "Campaign subtype," pick App engagement.
6. Select your app's platform.
7. In the search field, enter your app name, package name, or publisher, and then select your app from the list that appears.
8. Under “Select a marketing objective for your app engagement campaign”, choose whether you want your campaign settings to be pre-filled with suggestions based on your marketing objective. The suggested campaign settings can be overridden at any time.
   1. Choose one of the following objectives to automatically set up your campaign with suggestions for settings like audiences, assets, bidding, and deep links.
      • Re-engage lapsed users: Reach people who have installed your app but haven’t opened it in the past 7 days.
      • Re-engage lapsed purchasers: Reach people who previously made a purchase in the past 540 days but not opened your app in the past 7 days and get them to become return customers.
      • Re-engage non-purchasers: Reach people who haven't made a purchase in the past 540 days and get them to become customers.
      • Re-engage unnotified users (Firebase SDK and FCM setup recommended): Reach people who haven't received push notifications in the past 7 days and get them to take action.
      • Re-engage all users: Reach all users who used the app in the past 540 days.
        • Note: Based on the objective selected, rule based audience lists are created for you in Google Ads using events from Firebase SDK when available, or from your third party SDK. If we are unable to detect the events required to create an audience based on the marketing objective you will see a prompt in the UI with a suggested audience to create
   2. Choose “Create a campaign with a different marketing objective without using automated selections” to select your own campaign settings.
9. Click Continue.
10. In the "Campaign name" field, add a name for your campaign.
    • To help find the campaign easily in the future, give the campaign a name that indicates that this is an App campaign. It is also recommended that you include the operating system (Android or iOS) in the campaign name.
11. Under “Locations”, select locations to target, and select “Location options” to specify how you want to target and exclude users.
12. If needed, under “Languages”, update language settings. Keep in mind, Google Ads doesn't translate your ads, so you should only target languages that match your ads.
13. Under “Budget”, set your average daily budget.
14. Choose which in-app actions you want to optimize your campaign for, and then enter a target Cost-Per-Action (target CPA).
    • Note: We recommend aligning your Target CPA with the value of the in-app actions that you’re optimizing for. Learn more About bidding for App campaigns for engagement
15. (Optional) Change the start and end dates for your campaign.
16. Click Save and continue.
17. Enter your ad group name.
18. Under “Ad Assets,” add at least 2 headline ideas and one description idea (it’s recommended to add up to 5 of each). You can also view reports on asset performance to help optimize asset usage.
19. You can add text, image, and video assets to your App campaign.
20. Under “Ad targeting”, select audience segments to define who should view your ads.
21. Choose the audiences that you’d like to target.
    • Note: If you haven’t already created an audience list, learn how to Create an audience list for App campaigns for engagement.
22. Click Save and continue.

Related links

• About App campaigns for engagement
• Measure your app's acquisition and retention
• Edit an App campaign for engagement