Google's recently unveiled app streaming feature, which allows users to access apps without needing to download and install them first, is being expanded to advertisements.
The inclusion of app streaming into advertisements will allow users to save time, money and data spent on downloading games by having the chance to try out the games first for a limited time.
Trial Run Ads will allow users to try out demo versions of the apps for a short time of about a minute, so that users can have a better idea of how games play before downloading them.
"The immersive demo increases the likelihood that an install is coming from someone who enjoys playing the game," said Sissie Hsiao, director of mobile advertisements, and Pasha Nahass, product manager at Google, in a blog post.
According to the blog post, the Trial Run Ads will provide users with game advertisements that are very immersive, with the free game trial possibly leading to more relevant clicks on advertisements, game downloads and prequalified users of apps. Users will be able to search for games that they really like to play through the game demos, which is good news for developers as these users would be more likely to spend on in-app purchases.
A spokesman for Google added that advertisers will not have to pay Google each time a user would try out the demo of the game. Instead, they will only have to pay for whenever a user clicks on the advertisement's install button.
The app streaming feature that allows users to try out the games through the advertisements works by having the app run on virtual machines on the cloud platform of Google. The virtual machine is the one rendering the app and executing the touch commands of the users.
The feature is now available, but only for a limited number of testers, one of which is the matching puzzle game Cookie Jam.
