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Google announced a couple new features for its ad products at the DMEXCO digital media conference.
These include an upgrade to its Universal App Campaigns to let all advertisers target app-install ads based on users' in-app activity, and the new ability to add call-to-action (CTA) buttons in YouTube TrueView ads. The latter update will boost Google's yield from TrueView ads, while the former will expand Google's client base in the app-install space:
- Integrating CTAs into YouTube TrueView ads. TrueView are a premium YouTube ad format that advertisers pay for only when the ad is viewed through to the end, or leads to a download or purchase. Advertisers will now be able to include interactive call-to-action buttons like "Sign Up," "Get a quote," or "Book now" inside these ads. Google  that YouTube helps 47% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 54 (around 70 million people) make a purchasing decision on a monthly basis.Â
- Opening Universal App Campaigns to everyone. This product promotes developers apps across search, display, Gmail, Youtube, and Google Play. Earlier this year, Google launched an ad targeting option based on the likelihood that a user would complete a given action. This behavioral targeting option is now available to advertisers too, who will need to link their AdWords account to a third-party measurement partner, Firebase Analytics or Google Analytics, to track users' activity and send the data back to Google, so that it can apply its machine learning algorithms to user intent signals.
Google also said that it had generated over three billion app installs from ads â up from the two billion installs announced at I/O in May, when Facebook announced that it had driven two billion app installs. The numbers show how quickly Google has caught up to Facebook â which was a long head start in the app install ad market â reflecting the success and effectiveness of Universal App Campaigns, as noted by Marketing Land.
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