Not sure if anyone is doing mobile app/game installs on adwords. I recently got back into it this week. Everything was fine in Oct. However they made a change in Nov. which only affects in-app traffic & apps.
Here's the link on adwords : https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6295665
I'm not a huge techie, so I don't understand all the details but I guess instead of using the URL redirect in the browser, it pings the 3rd party tracker in the background and loads the market:// final URL instead of redirecting from the 3rd party tracker.
Clicks still show up in all tracking, however conversions are pretty much non-existent.
All the clicks have urlloadedinbrowser=false attached now and other traffic sources with these apps convert like normal (so it isn't the apps).
The current flow here is: Google ->
These are all direct linked, no landers.
Anyone have a solution for this? or running into the same issue?
This is little bit tricky. Google changed a lot this time to improve the user experience.
For search network:
Unless you are the developer of the app, You can't track downloads in 3rd party tracking tool. You can still track app opens in tracker if you implement "App installs (first open)" type conversion.
For display network:
You need to enable Auto tagging.
Read more @ https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6255257?hl=en
I'm using display network. But the problem I'm having is tracking doesn't seem to work properly on the network -> advertiser level.
I've been testing a few ideas and the one thing I've noticed is targeting web pages works fine. Advertising in apps is the problem. Which seems to be exactly what Google mentioned in the link I originally posted.
If someone clicks my link via an app it uses http://play.google.com (Always in-app traffic)
If someone clicks from a website, it immediately goes to market://details etc... (Always web traffic)
Conversion rates are normal for the market URL.
The http link is 1-2 conversions total. This is after thousands of clicks.
All my old traffic was based in-app. So trying to re-target that inventory is posing a problem for me.
It seems like it'll affect all mobile in the future on Google using display. Not just in-app. I've spoken to Tune (HasOffers) and they don't have a viable solution yet. So I'm hoping someone has found a temp. work around on Google itself or via another method.
We are facing similar issue with one of our account. Did you find any workaround? We were able to get all data for an app that we own.
The same issue. Does anyone found solution?