Hi, Habrahabr! Over the past year alone, we have registered 50 billion installations of applications from Google Play, and we don’t intend to stop there: for that, thank you, developers for creating great products.

In February, we announced that we had paid over seven billion dollars to application authors and expanded our market at the expense of regions such as India, South Asia and the Middle East, so now Android application developers can find their clients in 190 countries around the world.

We have already talked about innovations in Android M, but today we will talk about other innovations that we presented at the Google I / O conference, or rather, new tools that will help you grow your business: more accurately predict the consequences of decisions based on more accurate data and more effective to attract users with interesting content.

Developer Campaign Campaign

Once you have created a cool application, you get the following question: how to find ways to promote it and expand the user base. One of these ways - ads that offer users to install the application. Over the coming months, you will be able to quickly and easily customize your advertising campaigns right in the Google Play Developer Console.


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All you need to do is indicate the total budget of the campaign and the cost you are willing to pay for one attracted user. Your advertising message will be able to be seen on the display and search network of our services, such as Google Search, YouTube and Google Play (ads for the latter are currently being tested). Thanks to this feature, you will be able to quickly find users who are interested in your application, and they will install the application in one tap.

Accurate statistics

Even if you do not pay for attracting customers, you probably wonder where they come from. In the next developer console updates, a new feature will appear, thanks to which you can find out how many users have viewed your application page, as well as how many of them have installed or made purchases within it. But the most important thing is that you will be able to understand through which channels the most valuable (that is, solvent) audience finds you. The new feature works with both normal and attracted (paid) traffic, and allows you to better understand what you should focus on to increase the audience of your application.

A / B Testing Application Page

The page of your application on Google Play is perhaps the most important component of promotion, because it is from it that users most often begin to get acquainted with your product. Starting from this day, optimizing the application page has become easier due to the support of A / B testing .



You can run experiments with different versions of texts and pictures, and then compare which of them were more effective, that is, led to more installations. The effect of the innovation is simply stunning: the Kongregate developer with the help of new tools managed to increase the number of installations tenfold.

Testing applications on devices using Cloud Test Lab

To date, there are almost two tens of thousands of different models of Android devices. Of course, many of them have very similar hardware characteristics, some of the models are outdated and almost never occur, and, nevertheless, a variety of devices is something that we have to put up with, allowing users to choose devices that they really like (and pocket). The Android architecture allows developers in most cases to avoid many problems associated with differences in the hardware component of these or other devices, but nothing will replace the application testing on real hardware.



Since even the thought of buying all the more or less popular models and carrying out manual testing on them sounds crazy enough, we present you the new Cloud Test Lab service , which can be found in the developer console. With it, you can automatically test your applications on hundreds of real Android devices, moreover, completely free of charge.

All that is required of you is to download an APK file for alpha or beta testing. Next, Google Play will perform fully automated application tests on real devices that meet your criteria. After that you will receive a report with a detailed analysis of the problems encountered, screenshots and reports. Cloud Test Lab's experimental service will be open source and will be available to all developers later this year, but for now you can sign up for closed testing.

Games under the new rules

Google Play Games is the fastest growing platform for mobile games. Over the past six months, we have registered more than 185 million new players, and their number continues to grow.

In March, we launched Player Analytics, a free reporting tool that helps you manage your gaming business. To make it even more efficient, we add new categories of data collected: player segments, game metrics, event types, etc.

A detailed reflection of the slice of the audience, game preferences, needs and wishes of users will allow you to quickly and accurately update the game content, that is, to make the game more alive and meet the needs of players.

Effective application search

Users love good games and high-quality applications, therefore, they should be easy to find. To facilitate interaction with the audience there are several ways, and today we are adding another one. Now you can create branded pages within Google Play , featuring unique design and content. Add bright colors, nice pictures, tell us about your company and select the key application that you want to draw the attention of users. Such a page will allow you, as a developer, not to waste resources on the promotion of individual applications, focusing on your page on Google Play.

Of course, we have not forgotten about the users. We are well aware that each of them has their own interests and hobbies, and therefore we offer users personalized search results. Individual approach allows you to find exactly those who may be interested in the game, and therefore most likely will want to buy it.



Especially for users with a wider range of interests (for example, shopping), we have developed a new principle for finding suitable applications. The basic idea is that the correct search results greatly narrows the scope of interests and focuses the user's attention. As an example, grouping applications by topics such as coupons, fashion, sales, etc. This way, users can see exactly those applications that interest them, and this, in turn, increases the chances of your application (if it is is in this group) to be noticed and actively used.

Content for the whole family

Now users do not have to search for your "family" content throughout Google Play. We have added the section “For the whole family” to the “Applications and games” and “Films” pages, which contains offers for specific age groups.

On the “Books” page, a similar section is called “Books for Children”. Content is divided into age categories, which allows you to find the most appropriate application. If you have already registered your applications in Designed for Families and they have passed our test, they will be included in the "For the whole family" section, and parents will be able to quickly find them among other offers. Detailed information about this program can be found here .

You can watch the video of the conference, as well as find other materials about these and other updates, on the developers.android.com/distribute page.