Learn How to Work With Google UAC

The following is a manual on Google UAC from our friends at Affmy!

What is UAC?​

Google UAC (Universal App Campaigns) is a universal advertising campaign for mobile apps.

Where are the ads shown?​

• Google search;
• Youtube;
• Google play;
• Google display (КМС, banners)

Pros of working with Google UAC​

• A wide variety of creatives (text, images, videos, HTML5 banners);
• Easy and quick to set up;
• Large audience reach;
• Works independently by using the machine learning algorithm;
• Auto-optimization of advertising campaigns (CPI or CPA)

Cons of working with Google UAC​

• It is impossible to control the quality of traffic and optimize it;
• Scale complexity (see “Advertising and problem solving” for more info);
• Can't change targeting;
• Google Search: you need to add sufficient negative keywords to your campaigns, otherwise your ads will be shown to the wrong users;
• YouTube: There is no opportunity to work with other platforms;
• No narrow targeting settings;
• You cannot optimize the images or creatives of your app

Requirements for running ads in Google UAC​

• Google Ads account;
• Attached credit card;
• App (Android, iOS);
• Creatives (texts, images, videos, HTML5 banners)

Google Accounts​

Accounts purchasing​

The easiest way to quickly and effectively launch an advertising campaign for the desired Geo is to buy the already existing Google accounts from sellers. There are quite a few of them in affiliate chats and forums, and all you have to do is to ask the right question at the right place. It is best to buy with some sort of warranty if you are afraid to be screwed over.

When choosing purchased accounts, you have to pay attention at:

1. Account warm-up: at least $100;
2. Account life: from 1 month.

Where else can I find accounts?

Advertising agencies, freelancers, and targeting specialists often have old inactive accounts that can be bought back from them. Such accounts are already warmed-up and have probably been already used for advertising purposes, hence you should not have any problems with them.

Farm your own accounts​

What should be done? Buy email that was created in 2015 or 2016 and use 100 USD to run any mainstream offers on it.

Your account must be fully geo-friendly. For example, if the account is for the USA, the payment must be in USD, as well as the proxy should be for the USA. After you are done running the first ad, you can then upload the other geo. Otherwise, during the initial campaign the ad may not be approved, or you can even get a freeze (no impressions, clicks, spin) or a ban for bypassing the system.

Payments and cards​

• If the account has been warmed-up enough, both prepaid and postpaid will work well. However, a more trustworthy payment option is Prepaid;
• If the account is not warmed up, then the postpaid payment may be banned for suspicious payments. Yes-yes, that’s Google for you;
• Credit cards: Using an individual card is a good option for Google Ads;
• Top-up services such as ZaleyCash or getUNIQ are also good. The biggest con is the 20% VAT. So keep that in mind.

Replenishment​

It is recommended to top up your account with small amounts. The first replenishment should be around 50-100 USD, then you can increase your ad spending to $350. Large top-ups are suspicious for Google, and as a result you will face an account freeze followed by a ban. If you wanna avoid that, start with the lower amounts.

Setting up an advertising campaign ​

General Tips for Tuning and Spilling​

In order for the account to live for a long time, it is recommended to do everything in the account gradually. Especially:

• A gradual increase in the daily budget. 15% at the start is optimal. On a warmed-up account, with a long lifespan and a large spread: 30-40% per day, but not more than 50%;
• Gradual addition of creatives (images, texts, videos). For example, at the start: add text, after half an hour a picture, add a video on the next day. This way any action you take in the account will be more trustworthy, and moderation of each creative will bypass faster, as opposed to loading all creatives at once.

Budget​

• Be sure to set the cost of the installation, otherwise Google will offer its own price, which will be at least two times higher than the optimal one.
• If you do not know the average price of an installation for your preferred Geo and vertical, you can check it with our manager.
• For Tier-1 countries, you can start with the installation price ranges between $ 0.3 to $1, then gradually increase it based on your impressions. The US installation price may warry between $2-3, but the audience there has a higher purchasing power;
• CPI: According to the official Google manual, the price of an installation should be at least 50 times lower than the daily budget. For example: if the price of the install is $1, then the daily budget should be no less than $50;
• CPA: the daily budget should be 10 times higher than the cost per action.

Creatives​

Before you upload a creative, you can see what Google sees on it using the Google Vision service: https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/drag-and-drop

Video​

You need to upload a video to Youtube, copy the link and insert it into the advertising campaign.

You can take a creative from Facebook (or use FB's SPY services such as AdHeart to find a video creative).

How to use resolutions correctly:​

Landscape 16:9. For example:

• 2160p: 3840x2160
• 1440p: 2560x1440
• 1080p: 1920x1080
• 720p: 1280x720
• 480p: 854x480
• 360p: 640x360
• 240p: 426x240

Square 1:1:

• 1080×1080;
• 500x500

Portrait 2:3:

• 1080×1620

Portrait 9:16 (see Landscape format)

Images​

Available formats for photo-creatives: 320x50, 320x100, 468x60, 728x90, 250x250, 200x200, 336x280, 300x250, 120x600,160x600, 300x600, 970x90, 980x120, 930x180, 250x360, 580x400, 240x400, 425x600, 300x1050, 480x320, 480x32, 768x1024, 1024x90, 1024x768, 300x50, 320x480, 970x250, 375x50, 414x736, 736x414, 250x250, 450x50.

Image size shouldn’t exceed 1 MB. IF you need to compress an image, use https://compressor.io/.

To optimize your image creation we recommend using Figma because this program allows you to create a bundle of creatives of different sizes.

Link to a Figma template for auto-resizing: http://webdesigner.tilda.ws/banner

Text​

• At the start of mastering Google UAC and uploading to a new account in general, try not to do too much at first. Especially when it comes to dating apps. Make creatives with smiling girls and add a plain text. In no case should you write in the text “this girl wants to meet” and anything like that — this is a quick way to get your account banned without any warning or investigation. Google machine learning is much smarter than humans, so such texts get banned faster than you think. You should be smart and resourceful, and always consult with your manager in order to achieve the best results!
• Don't be afraid to go through the mainstream options at the start and see what is approved/not approved.
• Please note that Google has its own triggers in the texts. For example, keywords such as "S*x", "C*m", "F*ck", etc are prohibited. It may seem obvious, but such cases are far from uncommon!
• Trying to manipulate text is also not recommended. For example, an ad which has the text "I will sh00w u my b00bs", where "00" are numbers, can pass 1 in 1,000 times. However, with a 99.99% probability, you will get a ban for manipulating the text (bypassing the system).
• Good examples of the texts that can bypass the moderaton:
• Wanna drink some tea?
• Join now and start chatting!
• What do you like to talk about?
• Do u wanna know my secret?

After a certain time, you can try to put more rigid text in the duplicate of the ad. There is a chance they will pass.

Tips​

In order of priority, pay attention to the following formats:

1. Video (!!!)
2. Images (!!)
3. Text (!)

• On Google (as opposed to FB), CTR can have a big impact on ad engagement and traffic quality/price. If the CTR is small, but the result is good, you can keep your ad running further. For the rest, it is recommended to get used to working on results.
• After a certain number of installations (around 1,000), Google can show statistics on how the app gets evaluated.

Advertising and problem solving​

Almost no clicks ​

Recommendations:

• Change your creatives (videos, pictures, text);
• Change your current install rate (increase /decrease it). Please note that if an installation rate is too high, it can crush your daily budget in a matter of hours;
• Increase your daily budget: Increasing your budget gradually is recommended as Google hates drastic increases (and a lot of account activity in general). After the start, you can change the budget by 15-20% daily;
• Change the filling method: For example, fill in a large number of advertising campaigns with a small budget ($5-10) instead of one for $100;
• Duplicate Advertising campaign. If you are confident in your creatives, try re-uploading it several times, sometimes it works.

Scaling​

• Found a good bundle — use it with other accounts;
• There are never too many ad formats and creatives. Never;
• Re,member to increase your daily budget by 10-15%;
• If the advertising campaign works and is bringing you money, it is absolutly not recommended to edit it;
• Duplication of the advertising campaign. Do not go “full-house” and do 20 copies at once. 1-2 copies daily to build momentum is a great strategy. But do not make more than 15 copies, as a ban is inevitable for bypassing the system. And Google will do it without a hesitation.

Small activity (freeze)​

Freeze — the ad is approved, but it barely gets any impressions (clicks) and nothing can be done about it.

• If there is no spin or it is small, try changing your CPI/CPA rate.
• If you have a high CPI/CPA rate and a decent daily budget, but there is no spin:

This freeze can be extended to the account as a whole and is linked to the account billing data. The reason for the freeze usually is: either the start-up budget is too large, or a large amount was poured into the account at once. In this case, it is recommended to delete the campaign and message support to see why your ad doesn’t convert. You will most likely get a response similar to this one: "Your ad will be reviewed automatically, it may take up to 3 days.". If this happens: delete the advertising campaign, wait for 3 days, and then message Google again. And ... you will either get a ban for bypassing the system, or everything will be ok and you can run ads.

Everything is set up, but it doesn't work, at all.​

Try moving your ad campaign to another account. Everything may turn out differently, you should not test all your hypotheses and workflows on one account, these statistics will not be entirely accurate. We recommend that you have at least 2-3 accounts, so you can test your advertising campaigns faster and more efficiently.

Freeze at the high spread​

• How to solve this problem — create a lot of ACs with a small budget. Let’s take $200 for example, your AC drains a maximum of 30% of the budget. Create 10 advertising campaigns of $20 each, and if this method does not work, try lowering your budget. Or you can also try increasing the price of the installation.
• Or you can also go in the opposite direction. Try increasing the budget little by little. Remember if you make big increases in the budget, Google freezes the advertising campaign.

Account blocking​

• Perhaps it is worth repeating, it is by no means recommended to go too crazy with creatives, even the most sneaky manipulations are still blurted out by Google, and for this a ban for bypassing the system is inevitable;
• Shadow Ban. It occurs that your ads do not start running and automatically get frozen;
• If your app gets banned, the same thing will happen to your ads. So make sure to check your app regularly, and if it gets banned, immediately stop all campaigns.

Additionally...

Use Official Google’s help on UAC: https://support.google.com/google-ads/topic/10011871?hl=en

Here you can find answers to any question you might have, we recommend that you read it to have the successful launch of your advertising campaigns.

Well, that's the end of the manual for working with Google UAC. If you have any questions, feel free to ask your manager and we will definitely help you.

Good luck with your campaign settings! Sign up to Affmy and get the best exclusive offers and the highest rates from a direct advertiser!