A couple months ago, Google announced a new extension to their growing list of ad extensions in Google AdWords, called the Mobile App Extension. Although “click-to-download” ads had existed before this, advertisers were still restricted by the “one-domain-per-ad-group” policy Google enforces on ad URLs, thus making it necessary to have two ad groups if you wanted to advertise both your iOS and Android versions of the same app.
Now with the Mobile App Extension, you can not only have both versions of your app in the same ad group, but your ads can be about something totally different than your app. Of course, reinforcing a consistent message is still important, but the flexibility to test different combinations of ads with the new App Extension opens up avenues not available before.
At the same time, Google has also made it possible to set up conversion tracking of the actual download of the Android version of your app. This not only gives one more data to help improve text ads and extensions, but can also provide data that may help with optimizing what little content you have access to change on the two app stores, such as descriptions and screenshots.
One side note to the Mobile App Extension conversation is that these only show up on small mobile devices like smartphones. These do not show up on tablet devices at this time.
