Google is rolling out new ad units for mobile games and introducing new ‘smart segmentation’ technology.

The new ad units are designed to re-engage inactive audiences and generate revenue from non-spending players.

In order to target non-spending players, Google would first need to predict who is likely to spend and who isn’t.

With smart segmentation, Google’s in-game ads can automatically create advertising groups out of spending and non-spending players.

The non-spending players can then be targeted more frequently with ads for in-app purchases.

If they’re not going to spend money in the app, they can at least help generate ad revenue.

The idea behind showing ads to spending players less frequently is to not disrupt gameplay for users who are most likely to make a purchase.

“We’re bringing a new approach to monetization that combines ads and in-app purchases in one automated solution. Available today, new smart segmentation features in Google AdMob use machine learning to segment your players based on their likelihood to spend on in-app purchases.”

Smart segmentation is only available for gaming ads at the moment, but it sounds like it could benefit advertisements in other app categories as well.

Google is rolling out another gaming app with features that could also be useful to apps in other categories.

Targeting Inactive Users

Google has developed a campaign type designed to target people who downloaded a game and then stopped engaging with it.

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The majority of players a game acquires is not going to continue coming back after a few days, Google says.

Google is helping game developers capitalize on the opportunity to bring back lapsed players.

“We’re introducing App campaigns for engagement in Google Ads to help players rediscover your game by engaging them with relevant ads across Google’s properties.”

Google’s new app campaigns for engagement can reach people across all of Google’s properties.

So imagine browsing a website and seeing a display ad encouraging you to play the game you downloaded yesterday.

App campaigns for engagement can be used to:

Encouraging lapsed players to complete a tutorial

Introduce new features that have been added since a player’s last session

Get someone to open the game for the first time on Android

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Again, this campaign type is just for games at the moment. But it sounds like it could also work well for service-based apps.