Google Play Games on PC

Google Play Games has officially expanded and is now available on PC, marking a game-changing moment in the world of digital entertainment. Google Play Games has partnered with Adjust to empower developers and marketers to measure attribution for their marketing campaigns.

By integrating Adjust, developers and marketers can gain valuable insights into user engagement, acquisition sources, and performance metrics, enabling them to optimize their games and marketing strategies. This partnership ensures that Google Play Games on PC can effectively attribute player activity to the right channels, facilitating data-driven decisions and enhancing the overall gaming experience on this platform.

This guide describes the process of setting up and configuring your app with Adjust to run your campaign on PC. Using Adjust to measure your campaigs allows you to diferenciate users across platforms and prevent attribution duplication.

Before you begin

Here's what you need to know before getting started.

Requirements

• Minimum Android SDK Version 4.36.0 is required.
  • In case you use the Unity engine for game development, a minimum Unity SDK Version 4.36.0 is required.
• Follow Google's set up documentation to release your app on Google Play Games on PC.
• Admin, Editor, or Custom Editor permissions.

Here are the steps you need to follow to set up game attribution for Google Play Games on PC:

1. Have your development team integrate or update the Android SDK in your app.
2. Create an app in AppView.
3. Set up a campaign in Campaign Lab.

1. Integrate the Android SDK (Developer)

The Adjust Android SDK enables you to measure attribution, events, and much more in your Android app. Follow the steps in this guide to set up your app to work with the Adjust SDK.

1. Follow the Android SDK getting starter guide until step eight before building your app.
   • Make sure to set up install referrer using Google's Play Install Referrer API as described here. By doing this, Adjust can attribute installs deterministically.
2. Build your app as described in the last step of the Android SDK getting starter guide.

2. Set up an app for Google Play Games

Setting up an app for your game follows the same process as setting up an app for Android. Follow these steps to set up your app:

1. Under AppView, select All apps.
2. Select New app.
3. Under Enter your app details, enter the app name, choose your reporting currency, and check if your game needs to comply with COPPA. Under App information, you can customize how all links for your game will appear when shared on social media apps.

1. Select Add platform to connect a platform to your game. You need to add Android and Windows platforms to sort attribution per OS Name.
   1. From the Platform tab, select Android > Google Play Store.
   2. Enter you App ID and select Save.
   3. From the Additional platforms section, select Connect additional platform.
   4. Select Windows.
   5. In the Advanced settings section, enable Redirect all clicks to a custom URL.
   6. Add your Google Play Store link in the Custom URL field, and select Save.
2. On the Events tab, add an in-app event name to measure user activity in your game.
3. On the Attribution settings tab, set attribution settings (for device matching, probabilistic modeling, and temporary attribution) and reattribution settings.
4. On the Data management tab, set up server callbacks or cloud storage uploads to receive raw, user-level data, or use the Testing console to see test device data.
5. On the Protection tab, set up fraud prevention, data privacy, SDK signature, and S2S security. You can also view your data residency setup here.

3. Set up a campaign for Google Play Games

As Google Play Games on PC are Android mobile apps, you can create a campaign for your games in the same way as a mobile app campaign. Here's what you can do when setting up a campaign:

• Add the networks that you work with.
• Add Self-Attributing Networks (SAN).
• Create custom links.

Add a network

Set up your ad networks to receive data for your campaigns, your game's app installs, and in-app data measured by Adjust.

With this end-to-end setup, you can:

• Create links associated with your ad network for your app
• Enable data sharing
• Set attribution settings at the link level

The steps that you need to follow to set up your ad network depend on the network that you select. To get started with setting up your ad network, follow these steps.

1. Under Campaign Lab, select Partners.
2. Select New partner.
3. In the Partner selection screen, choose the ad network that you want to set up.
4. In the App selection screen, choose the app for which you want to create the link.
5. (Optional) In the Data sharing screen, configure the integration between your network and Adjust, and choose data sharing options.
   • You will skip this step if you've already configured data sharing for the network and you're creating multiple links for a game.
6. In the Link structure screen, do the following:
   • If you're running campaigns with partners that support cross-device measurement, choose the use case of your link.
   • Provide the link name, and review the default link structure parameters provided by the network and update the values, if needed. If you're creating multiple links for an app, ensure that you provide a unique link name for each additional link that you create.
7. In the User destinations screen, make sure to include the URL of your game store as a redirect parameter.
8. In the Attribution settings screen:
   • Set custom attribution settings for new and existing users.
   • Make sure that probabilistic modeling is enabled for both clicks and impressions in the attribution settings.
   • It is highly recommended to set the attribution window for probabilistic modeling for both clicks and impressions to 24 hours. If you want to go beyond the 24-hour limit, contact the Integrations team.
9. In the Setup review screen, review your choices, and make any changes as necessary.
10. Select Create link to generate the click URL, impression URL, QR code, and link token, and enable data sharing, if set up.

Add a Self-Attributing Network

Self-attributing networks (SANs) perform their own attribution. To measure your campaigns with SANs, you don't need to create a link. Links are automatically created via integration. SANs receive all of your installs from Adjust and then self-attribute using their own engagement data.

To learn more about how to add a SAN, see Self-Attributing Network setup.

Create a custom link

Custom links are links created for campaigns that are not run through an ad network. These links can be used in emails, social media posts or profiles, owned websites, influencer campaigns, and so on.

To create a custom link:

1. Under Campaign Lab, select Custom links.
2. Select New link.
3. In the App selection screen, choose the Windows apps for which you want to create the link.
4. In the Link structure screen, add a name for your top-level channel link. Optionally, add campaign, adgroup, and creative sub-levels to set up your link structure.
5. In the User destinations screen, make sure to include the URL of your game store as a redirect parameter.
6. In the Attribution settings screen:
   • Set custom attribution settings for new and existing users.
   • Make sure that probabilistic modeling is enabled for both clicks and impressions in the attribution settings.
   • It is highly recommended to set the attribution window for probabilistic modeling for both clicks and impressions to 24 hours. If you want to go beyond the 24-hour limit, contact the Integrations team.
7. In the Link review screen, review your choices, and make any changes as necessary.
8. Select Create link to generate the click URL, QR code, and link token.

View your reports on Datascape

After setting up your app and launching your mobile campaigns, you can analyze your data and review your campaign performance with Datascape's reports. Adjust automatically detects the name of the OS (operating system) and separates attribution accordingly. To view your report and detect PC users:

1. In the left navigation pane, do one of the following:
   • Select next to Reports.
   • Go to All reports and select New report.
2. Select the apps that you want to analyze.
3. On the right-side pane, you can choose the metrics that you want to measure, and the dimensions by which you want to group the data.
   1. Under Dimensions, choose OS name and any other dimensions by which you want to group the data.
   2. Under Metrics, select the metrics that you want to measure.

1. If you change dimensions, metrics, or any settings, you need to select Reload data to generate the report again.
2. Select Save on the upper-right section of the page to save your report. You must save your report for it to be available on the All Reports page. For more information, see Manage your report.
   1. Name your report.
   2. Select your sharing settings:
      • Private (default): Only available to you on the report list
      • Public: Available for anyone in your team on the report list
   3. Select Save.