Google Makes Subscriptions Easier For Developers

Aiming to make subscriptions a more lucrative option for companies and individual app developers, Google rolled out a slew of new tools within the Google Play Console.

According to a report, Google launched a new subscription dashboard with the Play Console that lets users see new subscribers, cancellations and total subscribers. It also shows users daily and thirty daub revenue data and provides highlights of the top performing products or, in this case, apps. The idea is that Google can track the important data for a company, which could help it pinpoint an issue with its subscription model or be used to determine if it should move ahead with the app.

Another new tool, which will be available to developers in June is account hold, according to the report. Account hold provides a way for an app to block premium content from being accessed by a user if the payment doesn’t go through. Based on Google research, the report noted companies that use account hold enjoyed a 25 percent uptick in renewal rates because they held back premium content or features until the payment method was updated or the subscription was renewed.

In a blog post last week, Google executives George Audi, Tom Grinsted and Larry Yang said the subscription business model is “one of the best ways to make more regular, reliable and recurring revenue on Android and Google Play. In fact, both developers and users love subscription apps so much that we’ve seen a 10X growth in consumer spend over the past three years and double the number of active subscribers in the past year.”

The executives went on to write that app developers have a big opportunity to make money from subscriptions. “While pricing elasticity varies by category, few users cite price as a reason to churn from a paid subscription, and 64 percent either budget on a per app basis or not at all (as opposed to budgeting across all app subscriptions),” they wrote.