New tools to help drive success for one-time products

Posted by Laura Nechita – Product Manager, Google Play and Rejane França – Group Product Manager, Google Play Starting today, Google Play is revamping the way developers can manage one time products, providing greater flexibility and new ways to sell. Play has continually enhanced the ways developers can reach buyers by helping you to diversify the way you can sell products. Starting in 2022, we created more flexibility for subscriptions and a new Console interface.

And now, we are bringing the same flexibility to one-time products, aligning the taxonomy for our one-time products. Previously known as in-app products, one-time product purchases are a vital way for developers to monetize on Google Play. As this business model continues to evolve, we've heard from many of you that you need more flexibility and less complexity in how you offer these digital products.

To address these needs, we're launching new capabilities and a new way of thinking about your products that can help you grow your business. At its core, we've separated what the product is from how you sell it . For each one-time product, you can now configure multiple purchase options and offers .

This allows you to sell the same product in multiple ways, reducing operational costs by removing the need to create and manage an ever-increasing number of catalog items . You might have already noticed some changes as we introduce this new model, which provides a more structured way to define and manage your one-time product offerings. Introducing the new model We're introducing a new three-level hierarchy for defining and managing one-time products.

This new structure builds upon concepts already familiar from our subscription model and aligns the taxonomy for all of your in-app product offerings on Play. One-time product: This object defines what the user is buying. Think of it as the core item in your catalog, such as a "Diamond sword", “Coins” or “No ads”.

Purchase option: This defines how the entitlement is granted to the user, its price, and where the product will be available. A single one-time product can have multiple purchase options representing different ways to acquire it, such as buying it or renting it for a set period of time. Purchase options now have two distinct types: buy and rent .

Offer: Offers further modify a purchase option and can be used to model discounts or pre-orders . A single purchase option can have multiple offers associated with it. This allows for a more organized and efficient way to manage your catalog.

For instance, you can have one "Diamond sword" product and offer it with a "Buy" purchase option in the US for $10 and a "Rent" purchase option in the UK for £5. This new taxonomy will also allow Play to better understand what the catalogue means, helping developers to further amplify their impact in Play surfaces. More flexibility to reach more users The new model unlocks significant flexibility to help you reach a wider audience and cater to different user preferences.