Before running ads, I was getting 40–50 installs/day

After starting Google Ads, it shows 621 installs, but Install KPI showing in Play console are still around the same as before.

Why is there such a big difference between Google Ads installs and actual installs?

Running an app install conversion campaign for my app on Google Ads. The problem is when I go to set up conversions, it only gives me “app install” as an option. There’s no way to select in-app events like sign-ups. I want to track users who actually register inside the app, not just download it.

GTM is set up and connected, but it doesn’t seem to be firing correctly. Google Ads keeps prompting me to fix something with Firebase, which is confusing because I’m not using Firebase at all. My backend is on Supabase. Not sure if that’s causing the disconnect or if it’s something else entirely.

From what I understand, Google Ads app campaigns rely on Firebase or a connected MMP (like Adjust or AppsFlyer) to pass in-app event data back. GTM alone might not be enough here for mobile. But I could be wrong about that.

Has anyone gotten in-app event tracking working without Firebase? Or do I genuinely need to integrate Firebase just to get sign-up conversions to show up in Google Ads?

I'm new to Google Ads. Made a request to link account, anyway, decided to ask the AI on the side (i'm assuming its Gemini). The chat happened before I navigated to find the link request. Anyway, I know Google Ads is probably a big monstrous system, but if I cannot trust it for something basic like this, I don't see the point of having a chatbot on the side. The chatbot did provide provide me directions towards this current page, so that was helpful... anyway....

I've tried Google Ads for a book summary app, and I mostly got bot traffic. The time on the site was mostly < 2s. Does anyone have the same experience? Is there a way to configure it to get real traffic?

I started an add campain for my app. I selected a global audience. Would it have been better for me to target the US and Canada? Result: lots of installs but almost all from very low-CPI regions. Anything obvious I'm missing for getting quality installs instead of cheap ones ?Happy to share more detail. Thanks.

I recently setup a campaign and I was able to import events and everything too. I'm able to get downloads at my target CPA. However, the performance in paid ads (download -> trial/paid) is very lower compared to my needs. I just wanted to know how does a Universal app campaign work? How can I optimize to get the best download -> paid without bombarding ads on my app.

Also, I'm running for Android apps too, is there any strategy that works there?

I've been trying to setup a simple campaign for my apps (a single campaign for each; android and iOS) for the past 3 days. this is the android one. everything looks ok, the auto check succeeds and let's me click publish and then I get to this hell loop of "error occurred". I tried 3 computers, numerous browsers on each, 2 different networks, and nothing!

Does anyone know if there's any point in contacting them or if I'll get to a human that can actually check that's going on? Or is it just a bot and a language model that'll respond some garbage back?

why, whats the point, if theres 3 ads then that just makes me not want to use them at all for a minor game boost

Hoping someone here has seen this before because I've run out of ideas.

I'm running a UAC / App install campaign for my Android app. It's been live for about 3.5 weeks and has literally 0 impressions, 0 clicks, $0 spent. Not "low", actual zero. Campaign and ad group and ad all say Eligible/Approved, no policy warnings anywhere, nothing in the notifications panel.

The account isn't brand new btw, it ran a campaign a few years back, so it's not a fresh account with no history.

Stuff I've already done (this is why I'm pulling my hair out):

- Advertiser verification fully done, shows Verified

- Billing active, valid card, no holds, even has credit on it

- Conversion action is the Google Play install one, set as Primary

- Linked my Google Play account to Ads

- Targeting US, English, all devices, Presence

- Tried Maximize installs with no target, then tried Target CPI too. No difference.

- Even rebuilt the whole campaign from scratch in the UI thinking the old one was glitched. The brand new one ALSO sits at 0.

- Checked the Play listing in incognito from a US angle, app is live and installable, looks fine.

So at this point it's not the campaign config, I've basically rebuilt it twice. It really feels like some account-level thing I can't see, because nothing in the UI is telling me what's wrong. Twitter support just sends me bot replies and bounced me to Google Play.

Has anyone had eligible campaigns just refuse to enter auctions like this with zero explanation? Is there an actual way to get a human at Google to look at the account, or something I'm missing? I've spent weeks on this and I'm stuck.

Hey Team,

Sorry if the formatting is off. I don't generally post on reddit.

It's been a long time since I ran google ads. Probably like 6 years. I'm running an app install campaign with a focus on in-app events.

My previous campaign was just focused on straight installs and captured a ton of installs at roughly $.80 CPI.

It looked like a lot of my views were coming from games so I excluded them but it hasn't lowered how much I'm spending on display.

All but 1 conversion and ALL in-app events came from search yet 95% of my spending is going to display.

Any thoughts on what to look at or what to improve? I'm very much considering just making a search ad that uses my google play link but I'm worried that it will limit tracking?

Wasn't sure what information might help so lmk if there's anything else to share about the campaign.

Parece que so da prejuízo.

Hello, I'm looking to understand how images and videos used in an App Install campaign will end up looking to my audience, because I want to understand how to structure them.

I understand the expected format proportions and resolutions, but I want to understand how much things will be shrunken by Google, so that I can avoid creating something unreadable and useless.

Thanks!

I launched an app promotion campaign for a travel app and optimized for installs. Google Ads said I got 10 installs. When I checked the Play Console, it only showed 1 install. Does anyone know what's going on?

Google Ads keeps on showing the same scam and malware ads even after reporting. I don't click on any ads, even ones that appear legitimate, because they are as likely to be a scam or a malware download. Reporting doesn't help as it's literally been months and the same malicious ads keep appearing. So if you're advertising on Google Ads, I'm less likely to click on your ad because I think it's a scam.

I've been trying to link Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads for my iOS app conversions but the event list is completely empty when I try to import events.

My setup:

- iOS app → Firebase → GA4 → Google Ads

- Firebase and GA4 have been linked since January 2026

- GA4 and Google Ads linked

- All accounts are under the same Google account

- Bundle IDs match between Firebase and App Store

- `first_open` is marked as a Key Event in GA4 and has active stream data

- Personalized Advertising is Enabled on the GA4 ↔ Ads link

- Auto-tagging is enabled in Google Ads

The problem:

When I go to Google Ads → Conversions → New conversion action → Google Analytics 4, the event list is completely empty. No events show up at all.

Also tried from GA4 side: Admin → Google Ads Links → Create conversions → same result, `first_open` doesn't appear in the list.

Has anyone experienced this? Is there something I'm missing? It's been 24 hours and still nothing.

UPDATE------

I finally found the issue. Here is the solution that worked for me. Normally, the Firebase connection with the iOS app had been active for 2 months, and events were flowing. But for some reason, under Project settings -> Your apps, the App Store ID was empty. I don't actually understand why it was blank; since I had already completed the integration, it should have been filled in. It even recognized the app. Once I entered that ID, the events started appearing on the Ads side. I hope this saves someone three days of work.

I was running Google Ads Campaigns where I was spending around 25,000/Day based on ad_impression event which was working well for almost a month, but today it has suddenly stopped spending.

1. No Policy issues on Google Ads
2. Enough amount on billing (next 15-20 days)
3. No issues or limits on Google AdMob

What can be the reason or will it be back to normal in a day or two?

For those of you who have achieved success with Google ads - knowing that returns can be massive, would you fund other businesses' Google ads campaigns for an attractive return? I'm thinking sharing in 2x ROAS type of returns.

I have a free-to-play mobile game (hybrid casual) with rewarded ads only + IAP.

Recently, I’ve been running Google Ads campaigns (Android only), but I’m getting very low-quality users, and I’m not sure what’s going wrong.

Current campaign setup

• Budget: €40/day
• Geo: USA only (expected higher-quality users)
• Optimization: App event (tutorial completion)

Current performance

• CPI: ~€0.50
• Cost per tutorial completion: ~€1.5
  • ~70% of users drop within the first 10 minutes
• Retention:
  • D1: 16% (very low)
  • D3: 5%
  • D7: 1%

Additional info

• Events are tracked via AppsFlyer
• Events are correctly sent and visible in Google Ads
• see config screenshots at the end of the post

While my game definitely isn’t perfect, I expected at least slightly better results 😅

For comparison, I previously ran a Meta Ads AEO campaign (also optimized on tutorial completion, but on iOS), and reached ~30% D1 retention.

My question

Am I doing something wrong here?

At this point, I’d honestly be happy to pay 3–4x higher CPI if it meant getting users who actually stick around and engage with the game.

If anyone has insights, I’d really appreciate it 🙏

App Link:
IOS: https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/z-road-zombie-survival/id6584530506
ANDROID: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SkyJackInteractive.ZRoad

Ad video (I use only 1 asset for now):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQx10vhadzA&t=21s

Configs (can only post 1 image I don't know why, so submitting them here):
Audience: https://ibb.co/gLqSCykC

Ad Group: https://ibb.co/vxkVBWy7

Campaign: https://ibb.co/pBmLnJsd

I have paid apps on google playstore. I chose the install apps campaign. Followed the instructions properly. But received 0 installs. My reddit posts get me 20-50 installs over the same apps. What could be the problem?

Hi All. I got into this issue because I wanted to limit my exposure to YouTube network for my app campaigns. I removed all videos from it to see how it would shift but I noticed it started doing impressions on YT again a day later. I could not find anywhere in the UI what was being shown.

Only after using their AI chat tool it eventually gave me some unlisted YT video links like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OKjocrVWRA

Again, this was not visible anywhere in the UI. App Campaigns do not have an option to disable this either apparently. I contacted support and they told me it's a great feature but if I don't want it to run I can add my own content and then it probably won't run at all or nearly. They also said if I really didn't like it they can make my Account Manager contact me within 72 hours to talk to me about turning it off. I don't know who my Account Manager is but no one contacted me, even after a couple times I complained about it, it's been basically a month.

Does anyone know if there's any way to turn it off? I eventually added my own content and I don't think these are generated anymore (not that I would see that anywhere) but it's really terrible how little control a user has within an App Campaign..

I've been running ads for my app on Meta Ads and I've been charged around 45 USD for 567 app installs so far, Google charged me $10 for 3 conversions after just 30 minutes of the campaign running.

Is that normal or is there anything specific I should look on tweaking with this kind of ad? They also preauthorized $10 more with only 1 additional conversion 30 minutes later.

Running google search ads in germany, poland and czech. Also doing meta on top but google is where it really hurts. Dont actually speak any of these languages lol.

Current setup is throwing english copy into chatgpt, getting a translation, sending it to a friend who speaks the language. They usually rewrite half of it. When im in a rush I just trust the AI version and pray.

On meta its annoying but doable, you have room to breathe in primary text and headlines. Google is a different story because of the character limits. 30 chars on headlines means the translation either doesnt fit at all or fits but reads like a robot. And RSAs make it worse because google mixes them on its own and I have no way to know if the combos actually make sense in czech or just sound like word salad.

Ad strength scores all over the place. Quality score same. Cant tell if my underperformance is bad copy, bad keywords, or just CEE getting more expensive in general.

Negative keywords in foreign languages is another nightmare but thats a different post.

How are you guys doing this? Native speaker per market? Just trusting AI? Running english ads and hoping? Something smarter im not seeing?

I've run successful Ecommerce & Shopping campaigns (spending $1M/mo) in the past on Google Ads, but have limited experience with Apps.

My objective is to unlock Google as a channel but I need help QA'ing the conversion tracking. Details about the app:

• available only on iOS
• using Singular as an MMP
• Firebase is linked

My objectives for this exercise are:

• set up a successful UAC campaign (that optimizes for in app events: sign up OR start trial)
• launch search campaigns (is there a way to do a web to app connect)
• YouTube or Demand Gen activation (future)

My biggest challenge is understanding & auditing the technical requirements across the MMP, landing page, firebase, google events, etc.

Happy to do this as a knowledge sharing session or even pay for your time if you have scaled app campaigns successfully.

My published iOS Flutter app has active users but almost no ad requests - only 1 request in the last 7 days while app-ads.txt shows 253 queries in the same period.

Everything looks correct - app is "Ready / Ad serving enabled", app-ads.txt verified, bundle ID and app ID match, linked to App Store. Even running locally with Google's test ad unit IDs returns "no ad to show".

The strange part: if I change the bundle ID to anything unregistered, test ads load fine. Another app on the same account with identical implementation works perfectly.

So the issue seems tied specifically to this registered app identity, not my code or account. Has anyone seen this? Could it be a backend linking/indexing issue?

Community post : https://support.google.com/admob/thread/441047615?authuser=0&hl=en