UPDATED 00:42 EDT / SEPTEMBER 03 2015

NEWS

Google’s mobile app ad study was “flawed”

While all the attention has been on its new logo, Google courted a bit of controversy this week when it said it will tweak its mobile search algorithm to demote sites that run full screen ads for apps that effectively take over the whole screen.

Google points to the findings of an internal study it carried out to justify the decision, saying that “Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page.”

But while the move might be welcomed by consumers, some people are less than happy with the decision. Omar Restom, a mobile product manager at LinkedIn, is one of them, and on Tuesday he publicly stated his disapproval in a blog post, going as far as to say that Google’s study was “flawed”.

According to Restom, Google’s problem is that it deployed lousy targeting that diminishes the draw of creative ads. To prove his point, Reston cites a study of LinkedIn’s full-screen app-install ads, which shows that they’re not nearly as unpopular as people might think.

Restom says the problem with Google’s study is that it was focused purely on the Google+ app. That alone sets the alarm bells ringing, because Google+ isn’t exactly the most popular social network, so it’s not hard to imagine that most people wouldn’t want to download the full-blown app. According to Google, almost 70 percent of users quickly did an about turn when faced with a big app-install ad for Google+, presumably because they didn’t want to download the app. But LinkedIn’s study suggests a bounce rate of just 26 percent, while 20 percent of users actually went ahead and downloaded its app.

“Google admits that it was showing their interstitial even to users who already have the app — that’s bad mojo and fundamentally bad audience targeting,” Restom argued. “Again, Google should only have shown this promo to people who actually want and need the app.”

LinkedIn has since provided a statement to Re/Code in which it points out that Restom’s opinion is his own, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of LinkedIn itself.

Image credit: RyanMcGuire via pixabay.com

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