Play shows a landscape banner above your screenshots and uses it everywhere it promotes you. Most developers fill it with a stretched screenshot. Here is what it is for and how to make one that earns the space.
Required to publish. Play will not let the listing go live without one.
What a good one does
It makes one promise, in three or four words, with one supporting image. That is the whole brief. It is the headline of your listing, and it is competing in a scroll against other banners doing the same job.
The ones that fail do one of four things:
A stretched screenshot. The aspect ratio is wrong by a factor of four; it always looks squashed or arbitrarily cropped.
A logo on a flat colour. Says your name. Says nothing about what the app does.
Six features in six columns. Unreadable at the size it is actually shown.
The app name in the default font. The name is already directly underneath it, twice.
How to build one here
Add a Google Play feature artboard to your project. It is a preset, so the canvas is already exactly 1024 × 500.
Start from the bundled split layout, or from a blank canvas if you have a specific idea.
Pull in your palette and type from the screenshot set so the banner and the panels below it read as one listing.
Preview it in the Play Store view, at the size a browsing user sees, before exporting.
Make it match the screenshots
The most common near-miss is a perfectly decent banner that shares nothing with the screenshots underneath it — different palette, different type, different mood. The listing then reads as two pieces of work by two people.
Because the feature graphic is an artboard in the same document as your Play screenshots, it inherits the same colours and typography by default. That is the entire reason to build it in the same place rather than in a separate tool.
Questions
What size is a Google Play feature graphic?
Exactly 1024 × 500 pixels, PNG or 24-bit JPEG, no alpha channel. There is no flexibility on this one — unlike Play screenshots, which accept a range.
Is it required?
Yes. You cannot publish without one, and Play uses it any time it promotes your app — in collections, in search placements, and on the listing itself above your screenshots.
Can I just use a screenshot?
You can, and it will look like you did. A phone screenshot stretched to a 2:1 landscape banner is the single most common feature graphic, and it reads as an unfinished listing. It is a banner, so design a banner.
Where does text go?
Keep it central and keep it short. Play crops and overlays this image differently across surfaces, and a play button can be superimposed over the middle if you have a promo video. Anything near an edge is at risk.
Does the graphic affect installs?
It affects whether Play will feature you at all, which is the bigger prize. On the listing itself it sets expectations before anyone reaches your screenshots.