Promotional Content
The Promotional Content allows developers to share special content, time-limited events, major updates, and offers. It helps to attract new users, and re-engage users that have previously downloaded your app and are looking for new content or offers.
The Promotional Content can be very valuable if it gets featured in Google Play, driving a great boost in visibility and Explore downloads. Keep in mind that the number of featuring requests is limited by quarter, so you must choose wisely the best event or promotional content that fits more with your app (or specific seasonal campaigns).
Promotional Content Placements
All Promotional Content will be shown in your Store Listing Page, ensuring higher visibility. As we mentioned before, it can also be featured in other placements, such as events tab, home page, search results and more. This will drive a higher organic exposure for your app.
Source: https://play.google.com/console/about/programs/promotionalcontent/
Types of Promotional Content
Offers
- Special offers, discounts, bonuses or rewards
Time-limited events
- Special events
- Real time streaming
- Challenges and competition for rewards, rankings or other goals.
Major updates
- New content in your app
- New features available
- Pre-registration updates
Case Study - Cycling App
We at Applica have prepared a couple different events for one of our clients, a Smart Bike App, where you can track your rides and easily find new paths. This app is available worldwide but the main audience is from Europe.
From April to November 2025, we have launched 6 different Promotional Content, 2 time-limited events and 4 major updates. They were released worldwide and translated to the app's main audiences: EN, CZ, DE, FR, IT, PL and ES.
In this article, we will focus on 3 different examples of Promotional Content, outlining their differences and the positive impact they've had on our customers' metrics.
Upgraded Route Planner (Featured!)
The Upgraded Route Planner was a Major Update that improved the main feature of the app. The developer improved the algorithms behind the app's route planner, making the experience faster, better and richer in terms of route options . It was a very strong update and we chose to highlight that in the Store Listing. We created a very eye-catching image that showcases the updated feature really well, which is an important factor in the success of the promo content.
When comparing Explore Visits and Downloads, we can see a great uplift comparing these indicators before and during the event (same period range), especially when we got featured:
Extra visits by the event: (+50.18%)
Extra downloads: (+34.21%)
We got a great visibility boost (specially good for promoting an important update like this), resulting in more visits and downloads. We learned that if we have a really important product update, its 100% worth it to promote in the stores.
World Bicycle Month (Not Featured)
World Bicycle Day (June 3rd) is an International celebration founded by the United Nations, to draw attention to the benefits of using the bicycle, either for human health or a greener environment.
We took this concept and created the time-limited event “World Bicycle Month", with two different challenges:
- Explore five new routes
- Ride on at least ten days
This event was not featured, so we had less organic exposure. Still, we had some good metrics:
Unlike our other examples, there is no clear spike in the Explore Visits and Downloads.
Extra downloads: (+11.61%)
Extra visits by the event: (+7.59%)
We clearly saw a smaller organic uplift since we weren’t featured, but we still achieved a positive increase in visibility and key metrics. Simply creating the visuals and descriptions (plus translations) led to a great spike in additional downloads in under a month, showing that Promotional Content can be valuable even without being featured.
Tour de Cycling (Featured!)
It is extremely important that the event calls for action, encouraging users to participate in a challenge, so this time the Applica team decided to combine the most famous event that could be associated with the app with the challenge. This was an event inspired by Tour de France, and it was launched at the same time as the real event was happening this year, and it was very important to surf the hype and grab this seasonal opportunity. For even more engagement, we created two special challenges for our users:
- Climb at least 2600m – 5% of the total elevation gain of this year’s edition.
- Ride at least 330km – 10% of the total distance of this year’s edition
In terms of numbers and metrics, this was our most successful event of the year. We got featured by Google Play and got more than 1 million unique viewers.
When comparing Explore Visits and Downloads, we can see a great uplift comparing before and during the event (same period range), especially when we got featured:
Extra visits by the event: (+78.32%)
Extra downloads: (+39.68%)
The event and the competition itself are challenging in their own terms, and by involving users and inviting them to participate with us, we achieved remarkable and enviable results. The combination of a real event, challenge and great fit with the app, the hype created by one of the biggest sports events in the world, and the right timing to launch our Promotional Content brought enormous results. This was crucial for catching the attention of new users and Google Play editors to get featured.
Summary
Across the three Google Play promotional events, we generated an average of +28.5% extra installs (counting just these 3 events). The strongest impact came from featured placements, with Upgraded Planner and Tour de Cycling with a 35% to 40% uplift in downloads, while World Bicycle Month, which wasn’t featured, delivered a smaller uplift of 11%. This demonstrates that featured visibility significantly amplifies install growth, but still other promotions remain an effective lever for seasonal acquisition boosts.
In addition:
- Visuals are key assets for capturing user attention.
- Special dates and live events can significantly boost engagement.
- The better the content fits the app, the higher the chances of success.
- The hype around major, high-visibility events (like the Tour de France) can be leveraged to increase app engagement, both from new users and existing ones.
- Major updates should be truly impactful for users if we want strong exposure.
- Promo content is a great opportunity to highlight new features or product improvements.
