Google Begins Testing Mobile App Ads In The Google Play Store

Google has just announced the launch of a pilot program to provide mobile app developers with the ability to advertise their products directly within the Google Play store. In its blog post, the company explained that in the coming weeks, a limited set of users will begin to see ads from a pilot group of advertisers.

These ads will initially be made available to advertisers who are already running search ads on Google.com, and will also only be shown against Google Play search results. In other words, they won’t randomly appear in other sections of Google Play, such as category pages or in the middle of Google Play’s Top Charts. Instead, advertisers will be able to bid on ads that match a specific search query, like “hotel apps” or “coupon apps” as two examples.

The advertiser’s mobile app will then appear at the top of the ranked search results returned from Google Play’s store. It will look the same as other results, except for a small “Ad” button that will appear under the app’s name.

“App discovery plays a critical role in driving your continued success, and over the past year Google has provided best practices to enhance app discovery and engagement, as well as app promotion tools to get the most out of search and display advertising for developers,” Google wrote in its blog post. “We are always looking for new ways to help you get your apps in front of potential new users. That’s why, in the next few weeks, we will begin piloting sponsored search results on Google Play, bringing our unique expertise in search ads to the store.”

Google’s announcement continued by explaining that its 100 billion-plus Google.com searches per month have improved content discovery for both users and advertisers. Now, the idea is that the search ads on Google Play can do the same for app publishers. The program could be greatly beneficial to smaller developers by giving them an opportunity to gain visibility in an app store that Google says now includes over one million applications.

Of course, in addition to helping developers to better promote their apps, this move will generate more revenue for Google.

Due to the fact that the program is only entering a pilot testing phase, there aren’t many specific details available at this time. For now, the ads will only run in the latest version of the Play Store mobile app on Android smartphones, not on tablets, or on the mobile or desktop web. And, as mentioned earlier, only a small number of users will see the new ads initially.

Certainly, there’s a great deal of competition for the ad budgets of app developers, with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and other players vying for a share. Interestingly, Google’s pilot program makes it the first major OS maker that is allowing app publishers to advertise directly in its app store search results. Apple, so far at least, has reserved the promotional space in its App Store for its own services and products.

As part of its Google Play ad pilot announcement, the company provided an update on its payouts to Android app developers. Last year, Google said that it paid out $5 billion to app developers in the previous year. Now, the company says that this number has jumped to $7 billion. Although this is still less than the $10 billion that Apple recently announced, it certainly shows that Google is catching up when it comes to revenue.