In-App Purchases & Subscriptions at Google I/O 2022

Google I/O 2022 wrapped up this week and we've got you covered on the key announcements relating to monetization on Google Play:

• Subscription Offers
• Custom Store Listings
• LiveOps Events
• Play Billing 5.0

🔥 Subscription Offers

Perhaps the most exciting announcement is the introduction of Subscription Offers.  App publishers no longer have to create different subscription products for each  promotional or test variation.

Now, each of your subscription products have a base plan which represents your standard pricing.  Then, you can create offers for your subscription products with different eligibility rules:

New customer acquisition

The offer is for users who have either never had this subscription or any of your subscriptions.

Upgrade

The offer is for users who currently have a specific subscription. For instance, this is for cross-grading to a longer bill term or upgrading to a different tier of service.

Developer

The offer type allows you to determine a user's eligibility. Google suggests using this for use cases like a second-chance free trial or a winback offer.

Subscription Offers can also be limited to certain countries or regions and support up to 2 pricing phases.

👉Read more: Set Up IAP Google Play Android App

🏪 Custom Store Listings

Custom store listings have been a useful way to target users with an alternative store list by country or region. This year, there are three major changes to custom store listings:

Deep links

Now users can reach your custom store listing through a deep link. This is a powerful way to tie these variations to other marketing campaigns.

10X more custom store listings

Deep links will make custom store listings much more valuable. So, you can now have up to 50 custom listings.

Store listing experiments

Your store listing A/B tests now offer fine grain control such as setting a confidence level. Play also gives you estimates for when your experiment will complete or flag when your experiment has been running too long.

🎟 LiveOps Events

Similar to the App Store's in-app events, LiveOps now includes an Events feature. Events are surfaced throughout the Play Store giving you more exposure.

Offers

Now, LiveOps events can now have offers attached such as a discount or special Subscription Trials.

Deep Links

LiveOps events can now deep link to shorten the path to the related content in your app, improving conversion.

Reports

Now you can view reports for all your events. Measure conversion rate by different outcomes such as acquisition, open, or update.

While LiveOps is still in beta, Google is expanding access. If you're interested, you can express interest at: g.co/play/LiveOpsbeta

🤖 Play Billing 5.0

Google has released new client and server APIs with the release of Play Billing Library 5.0. This release rolls out some of the features announced last year, Subscription Offers, and some other nice improvements including:

In-App Messaging

Users at risk for involuntary churn due to a declined payment can now receive an in-app message from Play promoting them to correct their payment method.

Prepaid Subscriptions

In markets where pay-as-you-go is standard, Play Billing now supports prepaid subscriptions. Prepaid subscriptions can be extended through a top-up by the user. In Google's early tests, this can result in 2X better subscription recovery rates.

Nami SDK for Android

As always, Nami helps you adopt the latest from Google without worrying about the implementation details. Our current stable Android SDK supports Play Billing 4.0, which will continue to operate until May 2024. We plan to roll out an SDK update with support for Play Billing 5.0 in the second half of this year.

👉Read more: Play Billing Response Code: Item Unavailable

Final Thoughts

Google I/O 2022 brought a lot great new monetization announcements for app publishers. From Subscription Offers, to Custom Store Listings with Deep Links, Play apps have never had such a robust solution for commerce.  

Combining Google’s latest with Nami’s entitlement engine, native paywall manager, and paywall A/B testing, it’s never been easier to grow and optimize your app revenue. If you’re interested in giving Nami a spin for your own app, you can create a free account here.

       

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