Most Android developers think about monetization in terms of what happens inside their app: launching a billing flow, presenting a paywall, handling purchase results. But Google Play also merchandises your products outside your app, recommending them to users on store surfaces, in notifications, and during the browsing experience. These out-of-app surfaces drive purchases that many developers never actively manage. Now, Google is consolidating three separate merchandising features into a single ML-driven page, and there is a hard deadline to prepare.
In this article, you’ll explore what the three existing out of app merchandising features are and how they work, what Google Play is changing by unifying them into the new Merchandizing and optimization page, the timeline and March 16 cutoff that affects your existing configurations, special considerations for each feature during the migration, concrete steps you should take before the deadline, and how out of app purchases connect to your billing stack.
Background: How Google Play merchandises your products outside your app
Before diving into what is changing, it is important to understand what Google Play already does to promote your products beyond your app’s own UI. Out-of-app merchandising is significant because it reaches users who are not currently inside your app. A user browsing the Play Store, receiving a notification, or exploring related content may encounter your products without ever opening your app first. This creates an additional acquisition and conversion channel that operates independently of your in-app purchase UI.
There are three distinct features that handle out-of-app merchandising today, each configured separately in the Google Play Console.
Purchase flow recommendations
Purchase flow recommendations allow Google Play to suggest your products to users as they browse the Play Store. When a user is exploring apps, viewing related content, or navigating purchase surfaces, Google Play can display your in-app products or subscriptions as recommendations. These suggestions are based on the user’s purchase history, browsing behavior, and contextual signals.
You configure purchase flow recommendations by selecting which SKUs are eligible for promotion and optionally targeting specific countries. Google Play then decides when and where to show these recommendations to relevant users. The configuration lives on its own dedicated purchase flow recommendations page in the Google Play Console.
Featured products
Featured products give you more direct control over promotion. Rather than letting Google Play choose which products to surface, you explicitly configure which products to highlight on Google Play surfaces. You can set start and end dates for promotions, associate them with specific offers or events, target specific audiences and countries, and limit them to licensed testers during development.
Featured products are useful for time-limited promotions, seasonal campaigns, or highlighting new premium content. They give you granular control over what gets promoted, to whom, and for how long.
Cart abandonment reminders
Cart abandonment reminders address a different part of the purchase funnel. When a user begins a purchase flow but does not complete it, Google Play can send a notification reminding them to finish the transaction. This is a common e-commerce pattern adapted for the app store context.
For cart abandonment reminders, you do not configure individual products. Instead, Google Play automatically tracks abandoned purchase attempts and sends reminders for users who started but did not finish a transaction. You can opt out of this feature entirely using a form in the Google Play Console if you prefer not to have reminders sent for your products. Currently, the opt-out is managed separately for one-time products and subscriptions.
What’s changing: A unified, ML-driven approach
Google is replacing these three separate tools with a single Merchandising and optimization page in the Google Play Console. Instead of managing purchase flow recommendations, featured products, and cart abandonment reminders independently, you will configure everything from one place.
The fundamental shift is from manual configuration to algorithmic optimization. Here is how the new approach works:
- You select eligible SKUs: On the new page, you choose which of your products are eligible for out-of-app promotion.
- Google’s ML decides the rest: Google Play’s machine learning models determine the optimal surfaces, timing, and audiences for displaying your selected products.
- Broader reach, less manual control: The ML system can place your products across all out-of-app purchase flows that Google Play supports, potentially reaching more users than manually configured promotions would.
This means you lose some of the granular control that the featured products provided. You will no longer be able to set audience targeting, country targeting, or associate promotions with specific offers and events at the merchandising level. If you need country-level restrictions, you must configure them at the SKU level instead.
The trade-off is straightforward. You give up manual configuration in exchange for Google’s ML optimizing placement across a broader set of surfaces. For most developers, this should result in better performance because the ML models can test and iterate on placement strategies far faster than any manual configuration can.
For developers who have never configured any of these features, the new page is an opportunity. Previously, managing three separate configuration surfaces was enough friction to discourage many developers from engaging with out-of-app merchandising at all. A single page with a simpler interface lowers the barrier to entry. If you have products that could benefit from being promoted on Google Play surfaces, the new Merchandising and optimization page makes it easier to opt in.
The timeline: What happens and when
The migration follows a phased approach with a clear cutoff date. Here is what happens at each stage:
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Before March 16 | Last chance to modify existing purchase flow recommendations and featured products configurations. Last chance to use the cart abandonment reminder opt out form for one time products. |
| March 16 | Existing purchase flow recommendations and featured products pages become frozen. The cart abandonment reminder opt out form is disabled for one time products. No further changes can be made on these pages. |
| After March 16 | Existing selections remain active according to the migration rules described below. Your configurations continue to function but cannot be modified. |
| New page launches | Google Play automatically migrates your existing selections to the new Merchandizing and optimization page. You can then modify your selections on the new page. The old pages for purchase flow recommendations and featured products are deprecated. The cart abandonment reminders opt out form for one time products is also deprecated. |
The key takeaway is that March 16 is the hard deadline for any changes to your current setup. If you need to adjust your merchandising configurations, do it before that date.
Special considerations for featured products
Featured products have the most complex migration path because they support the most configuration options. Here is what happens to each aspect of your featured products configurations:
| Configuration aspect | What happens after March 16 |
|---|---|
| No end date set | The featured product remains in place and continues to be merchandized. No action needed. |
| End date after March 16 | You have two options before March 16: make the product available indefinitely by removing the end date, or delete it if you do not want it merchandized past March 16. |
| Offers and events | Offers and events associated with featured products will no longer be supported. If you rely on these associations, plan accordingly before the cutoff. |
| Audience and country targeting | Audience and country targeting associated with existing featured products will not be supported. If you need to restrict country selection, you must configure that at the SKU level. |
| Licensed testers | Products that only target licensed testers will no longer be available for merchandizing. If you have products in a testing only configuration, they will be excluded from out of app promotion. |
| Performance reporting | Performance reporting and associated metrics remain visible on the featured products page until it is deprecated when the new Merchandizing and optimization page launches. |
The most impactful change for developers who actively use featured products is the loss of audience and country targeting. If your merchandising strategy depends on showing different products to different regions, you need to rethink that approach. Moving country restrictions to the SKU level is the only remaining option.
Special considerations for purchase recommendations
Purchase recommendations have a simpler migration path because they offer fewer configuration options than featured products:
- Active SKUs remain active: Any SKUs you have configured for purchase flow recommendations will continue to be eligible for out-of-app purchases after March 16.
- Country targeting removed: Country targeting associated with your purchase recommendations will no longer be supported. Like featured products, you must handle country restrictions at the SKU level if needed.
- Licensed testers excluded: Products that only target licensed testers will no longer be available for merchandising.
- Performance reporting visible: Performance reporting and associated metrics remain on the purchase recommendations page until they are deprecated when the new page launches.
For most developers using purchase recommendations, the migration is straightforward. Your products continue to be recommended. You just lose the ability to fine-tune which countries see those recommendations.
Special considerations for cart abandonment reminders
Cart abandonment reminders have the simplest migration considerations, but there is one important detail to understand:
- One-time products only in initial launch: The new Merchandising and optimization page will initially only include one-time products for cart abandonment functionality. Subscriptions are not part of the initial launch scope.
- Subscription blocklist unchanged: If you have an existing blocklist for subscription cart abandonment reminders, it remains in place and is not affected by this migration.
- Opt out mechanics: You can opt out of cart abandonment reminders for one-time products using the existing form until March 16. After that, you will need to wait until the Merchandising and optimization page launches to opt out. If you have already opted out, your opt-out remains in effect. If you want to stay opted in, no action is required.
What you should do before March 16
Here is a concrete checklist of actions to take before the cutoff:
- Audit your featured products: Open the featured products page in Google Play Console and review all active configurations. Identify any that have end dates after March 16 and decide whether to make them indefinite or delete them.
- Remove reliance on offers and events: If any of your featured products are associated with specific offers or events, note that these associations will stop being supported. Plan alternative promotion strategies for those products.
- Move country restrictions to the SKU level: If you currently use country targeting on featured products or purchase recommendations, reconfigure those restrictions at the SKU level before March 16. This ensures your geographic targeting strategy survives the migration.
- Review licensed tester configurations: If you have products configured only for licensed testers, understand that they will be excluded from merchandising. If you want these products to be promoted to real users, update the targeting before the cutoff.
- Decide on cart abandonment opt out: If you want to opt out of cart abandonment reminders for one-time products, submit the opt-out form before March 16. After that date, you will need to wait for the new page to launch.
- Save performance data: Export or screenshot any performance metrics from the featured products and purchase recommendations pages that you want to retain for historical analysis. These metrics will remain visible until the pages are deprecated, but it is good practice to save them now.
- Communicate with your team: Make sure anyone on your team who manages Google Play Console configurations is aware of the March 16 deadline and the changes that are coming.
How out-of-app purchases connect to your billing stack
A common question when discussing out-of-app merchandising is how these purchases actually flow through your billing infrastructure. The good news is that out-of-app purchases initiated from Google Play surfaces go through the same Play Billing Library flow as any in-app purchase.
When a user taps on a recommended product, a featured product, or a cart abandonment reminder on a Google Play surface, the resulting purchase is processed through the standard Google Play Billing infrastructure. Your app receives the purchase through the same PurchasesUpdatedListener or queryPurchasesAsync calls that handle in-app purchases. The purchase token, product ID, and acknowledgment requirements are all identical. If your backend processes Real Time Developer Notifications (RTDN), you will receive the same notification types for out-of-app purchases as you do for in-app ones.
This means if you are using RevenueCat to manage your billing infrastructure, out-of-app purchases are processed automatically. RevenueCat’s SDK and backend handle purchase verification, entitlement granting, and acknowledgment for these transactions just like they do for purchases initiated within your app. There is no special SDK integration or code change needed to support purchases originating from out-of-app surfaces.
RevenueCat Charts can also track revenue from out-of-app surfaces alongside your in-app revenue. Since all purchases flow through the same billing pipeline, your existing analytics and reporting infrastructure captures these transactions without additional configuration. This is particularly useful after the migration, when you want to monitor whether the ML-driven approach is producing more or fewer out-of-app conversions compared to your previous manual configurations.
The important point is that the Merchandising and optimization page is a Console-side change. It affects how Google Play promotes your products to users, not how those purchases are processed once they happen. Your billing code, RevenueCat integration, and backend systems continue to work exactly as they do today.
Conclusion
In this article, you’ve explored Google Play’s upcoming consolidation of three separate merchandising features, purchase flow recommendations, featured products, and cart abandonment reminders, into a single ML-driven Merchandising and optimization page. The March 16 cutoff is the deadline for modifying any existing configurations, and understanding the migration rules for each feature ensures your products continue to be promoted effectively.
The shift from manual merchandising configuration to ML-driven optimization reflects a broader trend in how app stores manage product discovery. For most developers, the reduced manual control is offset by the potential for broader, algorithmically optimized reach across Google Play surfaces. The key is to prepare before the deadline by auditing your existing configurations, moving country restrictions to the SKU level, and making deliberate decisions about featured product end dates.
Whether you manage your billing with the Play Billing Library directly or use RevenueCat, the merchandising changes happen entirely on the Console side. Your billing code, purchase processing, and entitlement logic remain unchanged. Focus your effort on the Console configurations before March 16, and let Google’s ML handle the optimization from there.