Create promotional content

Promotional content can be created at any time but must be submitted within 60 days of the event start date. It can take up to four days to approve your event; submit your event at least four days before the start date to ensure it goes live in time.

Note: Google Play Partner Program for Games participants must submit promotional content at least 14 days in advance of the event start date in order to experience the quality feedback benefit.

Step 1: Create a promotional content event

To start, create your promotional content event:

1. Go to the Promotional contentpage (Grow users > Store presence > Promotional content).

2. Click Create Event.

Step 2: Add event information

After you've created your event, you must add the following information:

• Event name: An internal event name that is only displayed in Play Console.
• Event type: Choose an event type (see Types of promotional content).
• Countries/regions: One or more countries or regions where this event will be displayed
• Start date and time and End date and time: The start and end dates and times for your event, which can have a maximum duration of four weeks. Note the following:
  • Offers can be set to have no end time. This is useful when you have a standard offer for a type of user, such as a new-starter offer. Selecting this will automatically set eligibility for your offer to new users only. We plan to introduce more eligibility criteria such as buyer-state, time since the last engagement, and churned users in the future.
  • Major updates have a set duration of 28 days, and pre-registration announcements have a set duration of one week.
  • Preview event: Choose whether or not you want to show your event on Google Play before its start time and specify a date and time. Preview events are selected by default, so make sure you change the selection if you don't want to show your event before the start date. You cannot preview offers.
• Choose audiences: You can choose to target different audiences, these are defined by Google Play:
  • Everyone or potential users:
    • Everyone: Everyone on Play who already has your app, or is eligible to install it
    • Potential users:Users who have never installed your app from Play
  • A specific audience:
    • User state:
      • Churned users: Users who uninstalled your app
      • Lapsed users: Users who haven't opened your app in the last 28 days
      • Lapsed and churned users: Users who uninstalled your app, or haven't opened your app in the last 28 days
    • Buyer state:
      • Non-buyers: Users who installed but never bought from your app
      • One-time buyers: Users who only bought from your app once
      • Repeat buyers:Users who bought from your app more than once. This includes subscription payments.
      • Lapsed buyers: Users who bought from your app, but haven't bought in the last 180 days
    • Custom audiences: You can create your own audiences based on your data that is unique to your users. Learn more.
    Note: Buyer state options are only compatible with purchases that use Google Play billing system.

• Request featuring: You can request to have your events featured. A limited number of events can be featured each quarter. This quota resets every quarter and varies depending on the target audience. For example, some game developers have this quota split:
  • Everyone or potential users: Most games have 4 feature slots per quarter.
  • Specific audience: Most games have 2 feature slots per quarter.
  By default, your events will appear on your store listing. Events that meet our quality guidelines may also show up on high-visibility areas of Google Play, including the homepage and search results. You can create as many events as you'd like each quarter without requesting featuring.

  In addition, you can request featuring to signal to Google that you'd like this event to be featured more prominently. You can do this for a limited number of times each quarter

  • Four times for any event type targeting everyone and potential users.
  • Two times for any event type targeting a specific audience which may be user state, buyer state, or a custom audience.

  Important: Events that request featuring must be submitted at least 14 days prior to the event start date.

  In addition, you can request featuring to signal to Google that you’d like this event to be featured more prominently. You can do this a limited number of times each quarter:

Events that request featuring have a greater chance of showing up more prominently on key surfaces such as top of the homepages, in search, and in the future across more of Google Play and beyond. This radically increases the potential spread, visibility, and value.

How featuring works:

• We calculate a quota based on your event's start time and the quarter it's scheduled for.
• The quota count on the page updates only after you submit an event, not when you just request featuring.

An event uses your quota only if:

• You requested featuring for the event;
• The event starts in the current quarter; and
• You submitted the event (not a draft).

An event won't use your quota if:

• It's a draft;
• You cancel it before it starts; or
• You resubmitted it after it failed a quality review.

Draft events scheduled cannot be submitted if you have exceeded your quota.

Deep linking: You can use deep linking to direct users to specific content and track their engagement. Add deep links to your events to guide users to a precise location within your app. This not only improves user experience but also allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your events by tracking user actions initiated from those deep links. Learn more.

Step 3: Add event text and graphical assets

Next, provide the following text and graphical assets event:

• Tagline (required): Make sure that your tagline is descriptive and specific to your event. Don’t use a generic tagline that could be reused for other events or by other titles. If you're configuring an offer, include the items that are being discounted, and by how much. For example: "Holiday sale! 25% off when you spend over $50," "New course: try Prince’s Highway this weekend and unlock your exclusive legendary car," or "Buy any 4 books for the price of 3."
• Description (required): Don't duplicate your tagline text in your event’s description; it will be shown alongside the tagline in Google Play. Make sure that your description is relevant to the event. If you're configuring an offer, include any relevant limitations or conditions, such as eligibility, total number available, number per user, or how to claim. The description should be as expressive as possible so that even users who may not know your app or game would understand it. See description requirements.
• Primary image (required): Make sure your image is relevant to the event and helps users to visualize the event. Don't include any text on images (including brand logos, slogans, or app/game names), and don't include critical visual elements into cutoff zones. See image requirements.
• Square image (required): Required to be shown on various Google Play surfaces and lists. See image requirements.
• Video (highly recommended): This must be a public YouTube video with monetization turned off. See video requirements.
  A common reason for events and offers being rejected by our review team is that they have been entered in the wrong language. Make sure that you enter your tagline and description in the correct language(s).

  Note: The default language is the language the developer has set when the app was created.

(Recommended) Step 4: Localize

We recommend that you localize your event into different languages so you can reach users in different countries, similar to custom store listings. Select Manage translations > Manage your own translations and select the additional languages you’d like to provide for your event.

Note: Other languages will use the graphic assets you uploaded in step 3 by default. You can manually provide locale-specific assets by selecting a language and uploading the required graphic assets for each locale.

Step 5: Submit and publish your event

Click Submit event to publish it on Google Play. You can click Save as draft to save your work without submitting it to Google Play.

Important: You can’t edit your event after you submit it, so double-check your work before submitting it.

Copy an event

To make it easier to create similar events, you can copy information from previous events.

Prerequisite: Review the content quality guidelines to ensure that this event is sufficiently different from the original. You cannot have events that are identical or very similar to each other live at the same time.

To copy a promotional content event:

1. Go to the Promotional content page (Grow users > Store presence > Promotional content).
2. On the main page, click Copy to new event.
3. A copy of the event will be created. You can edit the details you want to change (these details are described in the preceding section Create promotional content).

Import events

You can bulk-upload events using a CSV template.

To import events:

1. Go to the Promotional content page (Grow users > Store presence > Promotional content).
2. Click Import events.
3. On the Import events page, click Download CSV template.
4. Complete the template using the tips below.
5. When you have the completed template, drop your .csv file in the upload box or click Upload event.

Tip: If you want to make edits, there’s an option to download drafts only. Click the Download events drop-down, select whether or not your event has images, and select Draft apps. You can then make your edits and re-upload the changes. When making changes using the CSV, remember to provide the event_ID.