Google Adwords

refreshe · 08-26-2008, 12:30 PM

Anyone considering using adwords to promote their apps? I've noticed while browsing some apple/iphone related sites that ads are now popping up for different apps, through Google.
I think we may give it a go to see how much of an impact it makes.

**Chris Stewart** · 08-26-2008, 01:07 PM

I definitely think you'll begin to see a lot of advertising for iPhone applications. Google Adwords/Adsense will be that starting point but I believe that as the applications mature, you'll find direct and CPM advertising taking over. Contextual advertisements are nice, but image ads in front of the right audience are far more successful for the developer. I've noticed a HUGE difference in my Adsense revenue since moving from text based ads to images.

refreshe · 08-26-2008, 02:09 PM

Oh yeah, I definitely see image ads/banners as the way to go! Taptaptap's banners are what caught my attention to this. They're definitely appealing.

kshep · 08-27-2008, 02:58 PM

We are going to give ad sense a try for our next major release due out in a few weeks. Definitely looks like a good way to get the word out there, I'll report back on our success / failure using AdSense.

-Keith

refreshe · 08-28-2008, 05:09 PM

We started running image ads this morning, and half way through the day we already hit our daily budget (so we increased it). Needless to day it's obvious they're getting a lot of attention. It'll be interesting to see how today's sales are in comparison to the past few.

**Chris Stewart** · 08-28-2008, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by refreshe

We started running image ads this morning, and half way through the day we already hit our daily budget (so we increased it). Needless to day it's obvious they're getting a lot of attention. It'll be interesting to see how today's sales are in comparison to the past few.

Very cool! Be sure you have very specific terms that are being used to determine when to show you ad. There's nothing worse than having your ad show up in a place nobody would care to see it. It has happened here a lot with Adsense.

I started a small campaign on Adwords today for iPhone Dev SDK's advertising efforts. So yeah, I'm advertising to promote our advertising services. We'll see how effective the campaign is after a few days. The keywords are so specific, I can't imagine seeing many impressions. But the impressions we do get will probably lead to a high click-thru rate and hopefully to successful ad campaigns here.

kshep · 09-12-2008, 12:41 PM

Are you all using a Cost Per Click or Cost Per Impression? We just launched our ad campaign and aren't getting any ad placements yet. This is with a $1 per click max CPC rate. This is the first time I've ever used google for Ads, I'm just trying to figure out if my approach is reasonable.

-Keith

ritajones · 09-15-2008, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by refreshe

We started running image ads this morning, and half way through the day we already hit our daily budget (so we increased it). Needless to day it's obvious they're getting a lot of attention. It'll be interesting to see how today's sales are in comparison to the past few.

It's amazing how well those image ads work. They do grab the attention of the reader and they usually make a decent amount of people click on them. How are your sales going now using this strategy?

kshep · 09-15-2008, 04:35 PM

Well it actually took quite a while for our Image ads to go live. I guess they all have to be manually approved, which I was not aware of. Today is the first day they started running.

I was actually surprised how expensive they are. Currently I'm paying about $0.85 per click. Pretty pricey. Hopefully it helps with sales, but it's too early to tell.

-Keith

dmw · 09-21-2008, 07:10 AM

Hi Keith,

i am a long time adwords user and a short time imanji user (its great!).

adwords is all about the conversion rate and not the cpc per se.

85c CPC seems very high for you given that you only get $2.79 after apple has taken its cut.

Let's say you had a conversion rate of 50%, meaning one our of 2 clicks bought your product, then it would be a profitable exercise as you would be making $2.79 for every $1.70 you spent.

The problem is that 50% conversion rates where people must spend real money are almost unheard of. Conversion rates are more normally in the 1% to 10% range depending on the product, the price, etc.

Another real problem is that because the transaction is done at The App Store and not on your own web site you have no way of telling which keywords are generating conversions or what your average conversion rate is. adwords provides code for this but it must be embedded on your transaction thank you page.

Because of the low cost of iPhone apps and the lack of conversion reporting through the app store i see big limitations to how adwords can work for iPhone developers.