With more than 50 billion apps and games downloaded in total, Google Play is helping developers and content creators around the world build successful businesses. In fact, we paid out more than $5 billion over the last year to developers for creating incredible apps that are changing the way people communicate, live, work, and play.
Developing an app or game and distributing it on Google Play is a good start, but it’s only the first step to building a sustainable business. That’s why we’ve written “The Secrets to App Success on Google Play,” a detailed playbook on the best practices and tools you can use to maximize the reach, retention, and revenue of your new app.
The guide is separated into the following sections:
Publishing on Google Play — using the Google Play Developer Console to distribute your app to over 1 billion Android users worldwide.
Quality — The fundamentals of building a great app and an insight into the Google Play guidelines and policies.
Discoverability & reach — Maximizing your app's discoverability and reaching the widest audience possible.
Engagement & retention — Converting installations into active users and improving user retention.
Monetization — Monetization strategies to generate ongoing, growing revenue streams.
Measurement with Google Analytics — Understanding your users and improving your app experience, conversions, and marketing.
Going global — Launching your app in local markets around the world.
Today, we’re excited to introduce the latest version of Google Play services to help you easily build on the newest features from Google and optimize your apps.
Google Play services 6.1 adds Enhanced Ecommerce analytics support from Google Tag Manager and offers new improvements to the Google Drive Android API. With the latest release, we’re also including a refresh of the Google Fit developer preview, so that you can test your fitness apps on any Android device.
Analytics
Launched in Google Play services 5.0, Enhanced Ecommerce is an analytics extension designed to provide richer insights into pre-purchase shopping behavior and into product performance. It’s a great way to gain visibility into the full customer journey, helping you understand how different user acquisition campaigns are performing at a granular level. By including support for Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Tag Manager with the latest release of Google Play services, we are supercharging your ability to regularly update and manage tags on mobile apps more easily, so that you can consistently measure product impressions, shopping funnel events, and more.
Drive
To make it easier to use Drive, we added enhancements to the Google Drive Android API. With the new Completion Events feature, you can see when actions are committed to the server and improve the response time to conflicts. Material design elements have been incorporated into the File Picker UI, along with the addition of Recent and Starred views. A new setParents() method enables you to organize files and folders, while the previous Contents class has been replaced with a simpler DriveContents class.
Google Fit
Initially introduced in August, the Google Fit Developer Preview has been refreshed to enable you to test your new fitness apps on any Android device. We expect to make additional changes to the APIs, so please check back with us on new developments.
Stay tuned!
We will be rolling out Google Play services 6.1 over the next few days, after which we will publish the documentation and make the SDK available.
Google Play services 5.0 is now rolled out to devices worldwide, and it includes a number of features you can use to improve your apps. This release introduces Android wearable services APIs, Dynamic Security Provider and App Indexing, whilst also including updates to the Google Play game services, Cast, Drive, Wallet, Analytics, and Mobile Ads.
Android wearable services
Google Play services 5.0 introduces a set of APIs that make it easier to communicate with your apps running on Android wearables. The APIs provide an automatically synchronized, persistent data store and a low-latency messaging interface that let you sync data, exchange control messages, and transfer assets.
Dynamic security provider
Provides an API that apps can use to easily install a dynamic security provider. The dynamic security provider includes a replacement for the platform's secure networking APIs, which can be updated frequently for rapid delivery of security patches. The current version includes fixes for recent issues identified in OpenSSL.
Google Play game services
Quests are a new set of APIs to run time-based goals for players, and reward them without needing to update the game. To do this, you can send game activity data to the Quests service whenever a player successfully wins a level, kills an alien, or saves a rare black sheep, for example. This tells Quests what’s going on in the game, and you can use that game activity to create new Quests. By running Quests on a regular basis, you can create an unlimited number of new player experiences to drive re-engagement and retention.
Saved games lets you store a player's game progress to the cloud for use across many screen, using a new saved game snapshot API. Along with game progress, you can store a cover image, description and time-played. Players never play level 1 again when they have their progress stored with Google, and they can see where they left off when you attach a cover image and description. Adding cover images and descriptions provides additional context on the player’s progress and helps drive re-engagement through the Play Games app.
App Indexing API
The App Indexing API provides a way for you to notify Google about deep links in your native mobile applications and drive additional user engagement. Integrating with the App Indexing API allows the Google Search app to serve up your app’s history to users as
instant Search suggestions, providing fast and easy access to inner pages in your app. The deep links reported using the App Indexing API are also used by Google to index your app’s content and surface them as deep links to Google search result.
Google Cast
The Google Cast SDK now includes media tracks that introduce closed caption support for Chromecast.
Drive
The Google Drive API adds the ability to sort query results, create folders offline, and select any mime type in the file picker by default.
Wallet
Wallet objects from Google take physical objects (like loyalty cards, offers) from your wallet and store them in the cloud. In this release, Wallet adds "Save to Wallet" button support for offers. When a user clicks "Save to Wallet" the offer gets saved and shows up in the user's Google Wallet app. Geo-fenced in-store notifications prompt the user to show and scan digital cards at point-of-sale, driving higher redemption. This also frees the user from having to carry around offers and loyalty cards.
Users can also now use their Google Wallet Balance to pay for Instant Buy transactions by providing split tender support. With split tender, if your Wallet Balance is not sufficient, the payment is split between your Wallet Balance and a credit/debit card in your Google Wallet.
Analytics
Enhanced Ecommerce provides visibility into the full customer journey, adding the ability to measure product impressions, product clicks, viewing product details, adding a product to a shopping cart, initiating the checkout process, internal promotions, transactions, and refunds. Together they help users gain deeper insights into the performance of their business, including how far users progress through the shopping funnel and where they are abandoning in the purchase process. Enhanced Ecommerce also allows users to analyze the effectiveness of their marketing and merchandising efforts, including the impact of internal promotions, coupons, and affiliate marketing programs.
Mobile Ads
Google Mobile Ads are a great way to monetise your apps and you now have access to better in-app purchase ads. We've now added a default implementation for consumable purchases using the Google Play In-app Billing service.
And that’s another release of Google Play services. The updated Google Play services SDK is now available through the Android SDK manager. For details on the APIs, please see New Features in Google Play services 5.0.
Hey game developers, back in March you may remember we added new game statistics in the Google Play Developer Console for those of you who had implemented Google Play Games: our cross-platform game services for Android, iOS and the web.
Starting today, we're providing more insights into how your games are being used by adding country, age, and gender dimensions to the existing set of reports available in the Developer console. You’ll see demographics integrated into Overview stats as well as the Players reports for New and Active users.
In the Overview stats you can now see highlights of activity by age group, most active countries, and gender.
With a better understanding of your users’ demographic composition, you'll be able to make more effective decisions to improve retention and monetization. Here a few ways you could imagine using these new stats:
You just launched your new game globally, and expected it do particularly well in Germany. Using country demographic data, you see that Germany is much less active than expected. After some digging, you realize that your tutorial was not properly translated to German. Based on this insight, you immediately roll out a fix to see if you can improve active users in Germany.
In the Players stats section the new metrics reveal trends in how your app is doing across age groups, countries, and gender.
After Looking at your new demographics report you realize that your game is really popular with women in their mid-20s. Your in-app purchase data corroborates this, showing that the one female hero character is the most popular purchase. Empowered by this data, you race to add female hero characters to your game.
Additionally, if you're already using Google Play game services, there's no extra integration needed! By logging in to the Google Play Developer Console you can start using demographics to better inform your decisions today.
Today, everyone is a gamer. In fact, 3 in every 4 Android users are playing games, allowing developers to reach an unprecedented audience of players in an Android ecosystem that’s activated over one billion devices. This has helped Google Play Games — Google’s cross-platform game service and SDK for Android, iOS and the web (which lets you easily integrate features like achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud save into your games) — grow at tremendous speed. The momentum continues on Google Play, where four times more money was paid out to developers in 2013 than in 2012.
With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, we'll be launching a number of new features for Google Play Games and other Google products. As they launch over the coming weeks, these new services and tools will help you unlock the power of Google to take your games to the next level.
Power your game and get discovered
With game gifts, players in your games can send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through multiplayer search.
To help players get the most out of your games, Play Games will be expanding engagement and discovery options.
We'll be introducing game gifts, a new service that lets players send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through player search. The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover your game and keep them playing. And the Google Play Store will also feature 18 new game categories, making it easier for players to find games they'll love.
Tools to take your game to the next level
Further enhancing Google Play Game services, we're expanding multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS.
To further help with cross platform game development, we're updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.
In addition, we're launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.
Ad features to better optimize your business
Of course, once you build a great gaming experience, it's important to get rewarded for your work, which is why we'll also be introducing new features to the AdMob platform. We're making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your app. Turning those insights into effective action is vital, so we're excited by the opportunities that in-app purchase ads will offer — enabling you to target users with specific promotions to buy items in your game. Advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers' success, so we're also bringing you new ways to optimize your ads to earn the most revenue.
Where to find us at GDC
That's just a taste of some of the things we'll be talking about this week at GDC. On Tuesday, March 18, when most of these features will become available, we'll be hosting a Developer Day to dive into these topics in more detail. We'll be talking with you about how to reach and engage with hundreds of millions of users on Google Play, build Games that scale in the cloud, grow in-game advertising businesses with AdMob, track revenue with Google Analytics, as well as explore new gaming frontiers, like Glass.
If you can't make any of the Google Developer Day sessions, don't worry; all the talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC). You can also meet the Play, AdMob, Analytics, and Cloud teams at the Google Education Center in the Moscone Center's South Hall (booth 218) from March 19-21.
When we’re not guiding a tiny bird across a landscape of pipes on our phones, we’re getting ready for our biggest-ever Developer Day at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
On Tuesday 18 March, all the teams at Google dedicated to gaming will share their insights on the best ways to build games, grow audiences, engage players and make money.
Some of the session highlights include:
Growth Hacking with Play Games
Making Money on Google Play: Best Practices in Monetization
Grow Your Game Revenue with AdMob
From Players to Customers: Tracking Revenue with Google Analytics
Build Games that Scale in the Cloud
From Box2D to Liquid Fun: Just Add Water-like Particles!
And there’s a lot more, so check out the full Google Developer Day schedule on the GDC website, where you can also buy tickets. We hope to see you there, but if you can’t make the trip, don’t worry; all the talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC).
Then from 19-21 March, meet the Google teams in person from AdMob, Analytics, and Cloud at the Google Education Center in the Moscone Center’s South Hall (booth 218), and you could win a Nexus 7.
The latest release of Google Play services is now available on Android devices worldwide. It includes the full release of the Google Cast SDK, for developing and publishing Google Cast-ready apps.
You can get started developing today by downloading the Google Play services SDK from the SDK Manager.
Google Cast SDK
The Google Cast SDK makes it easy to bring your content to the TV. There’s no need to create a new app — just incorporate the SDK into your existing mobile and web apps. You are in control of how and when you publish your Google Cast-ready app to users through the Google Cast developer console.
You can find out more about the Cast SDK by reading Ready to Cast on the Google Developers Blog. For complete information about the Cast SDK and how to use the Cast APIs, see the Google Cast developer page.
Google Drive
The Google Drive API introduced in Google Play services 4.1 has graduated from developer preview. The latest version includes refinements to the API as well as improvements for performance and stability.
Google client API
This release introduces a new Google API client that unifies the connection model across Google services. Instead of needing to work with separate client classes for each API you wanted to use, you can now work with a single client API model. This makes it easier to build Google services into your apps and provides a more continuous user experience when you are using multiple services.
To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Services area of the Android Developers site. Details on the APIs are available in the API reference.
