[neom]

16,171 converted and pre-registered for the app

1,371 either installed it when they got the push notification or selected auto install when they pre-registered (it's oped in)

Cost was $22k USD ish.

This is extremely normal... it's almost exactly as I would expect, maybe even good! I'm curious why they would expect differently?

[lostSeaPlan]

If you didn't tag your app as having Ads, or having in-app-purchases but it is tagged later or released that way all the pre-registrations that happened while not having the appropriate will not be able to auto-install.

For legal reasons, the user needs to know what it is signing up to at the moment that agrees to install (auto-install = deferred install). I think that makes sense but obviously apps become less attractive when those tags are displayed.

I also think the pre-registration program makes sense for games rather than apps.

[DangitBobby]

I agree with the author's assessment that only 1371 users were actually converted and they were charged inappropriately.

[neom]

This complaint is tantamount to me saying: I spent $20,000 advertising my new cloud provider on twitter, 5000 people signed up for an account but only 5 of them ever logged in so only 5 converted. That isn't how it works.

In google ads a conversion is clearly defined as the users clicks the link and then completed a second action (pre-register in this instance). When you create a campaign, you define the goal like this: when a user clicks the link and pushes the pre-registration button the user goal of conversion is complete.

Just because you don't like what happened thereafter isn't the concern of the ad platform.

[danpalmer]

To take this even further, the install isn't what matters either, it's the user buying an in-app purchase, or it's the user still being subscribed 1 year later, or it's the user buying high margin merchandise after 3 years as a loyal customer...

Every part is a step in the funnel, and every step down the funnel is harder and slower to analyse. Ad marketplaces only have the data of the very first step most of the time.

Doing this analysis is The Job. That's all of what marketing (particularly digital marketing/PPC) is, and being good at this and building the loop is the difference between buying clicks from people who aren't actually that interested, and buying clicks from people who will pay for a product.

[tehwebguy]

It's because Google clearly wants it to seem like pre-registration is actually pre-installing when in reality is closer to pre-nothing.

[DangitBobby]

No, it amounts to Google claiming that 13k users will install the app and billing for their hand in that when the actual install base was 1.3k.