Google’s ad products are what generate much of the company’s revenue. There are ads in search results, ads in YouTube videos and ads on almost every other website on the internet that are powered by the company’s AdSense service. Safe to say one can assume that Google would expand its ads products to some of its other offerings as well when it feels that the time is right. That’s precisely what the company is doing with search results in Google Play Store.
Over the next few weeks Google is going to roll out ads in Google Play Store searches from a “pilot group of advertisers” that already pay the company to promote their apps in Google search results.
It won’t be that different from sponsored results in search. Just like those links show at the top of a search on Google, sponsored apps will show up at the very top once you’ve searched for an app on Google Play Store.
Google is testing this new program at a small scale right now so it says that only a “limited set of users” will see sponsored app results. It will look at the results and feedback from users before disclosing further plans for this program.
The company believes that search ads in Google Play will be a useful addition for both users and developers. Google also mentioned in its blog post today that in the past year it has paid out more than $7 billion to developers that distribute their apps and games through Google Play.
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