DoubleClick Search: DS features in June

DoubleClick Search: DS features in June: In June, we added the following feature in DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Automatically create inventory campaigns: As we described in an earlier blog post, DS can now automatically create and optimize campaigns covering deep inventory items. DS will automatically create ad groups, ads, and keywords based on the settings you provide. These campaigns will cover even the deepest catalogs with a few clicks.

We also made the following feature updates:

• ROI bid strategies now optimize on fresher data: Bid strategies with a target metric of CPA, ERS, or ROAS now use fresher conversion data to optimize bids. This improvement brings the power of instant conversions to bid strategies:
• The conversion data is now fresh within a matter of minutes.
• The fresher data allows us to fully consider conversion changes for each of the four times a day we change bids.

With these updates, we can now respond even more quickly and effectively to changes in bid strategy performance. The bids are a more up-to-date, accurate, and effective use of your budget.

• New operations for Formula columns: When creating an equation for a Formula column, there are three new available operations:
• Round(x): Rounds x to the nearest integer. For example: Round(1.4) = 1
• Floor(x): Returns the greatest integer less than x. For example: Floor(1.6) = 1
• Ceiling(x): Returns the smallest integer greater than x. For example: Ceiling(1.4) = 2.
  
  
• New Google Analytics columns: The following are now available as selectable columns. These percentage metrics make it easier for you to connect your Google Analytics metrics to visits:
• GA goal completions/visit
• GA goal value/visit
• GA revenue/visit
• GA transactions/visit

In addition, we made a number of updates to the overall speed and usability of DS. These updates also lay the groundwork for the exciting new features we’ll be launching in the coming months. Updates include (see a full list here):

• Can now name a scheduled edit, which will appear in the Name column on the Scheduled edits page.
  
  
• For scheduled edits and rules, we’ll no longer send an email notifying you that the edit/rule has started. You’ll be able to see the start time in the email we send when the edit/rule is complete.
  
  
• Reduced the load time of the campaign management pages in the UI, in particular for pages with a large amount of rows.
  
  
• Nested substitute functions are now supported in inventory management. Example: [SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(GTIN, "2", "B"), "1", "A")].

DoubleClick Search: More flexible reporting in DoubleClick Search with...

DoubleClick Search: More flexible reporting in DoubleClick Search with...: Have you ever wanted to quickly figure out which of your campaigns perform the best on mobile devices? How about which day of the week tends to give you the most efficient CPA? To answer these questions and many more, we are happy to announce DoubleClick Search reporting Dimensions -- a great way to get fast insights from your search performance data, and now live for all clients.

Dimensions allow you to view your performance data independent of the reporting hierarchies that exist across different search engines, enabling you to look at your metrics through a variety of different lenses.

Using dimensions, you can:

• Group your search performance data by day of the week, week, or month of the year
• Group your campaign data by various attributes -- such as campaign or ad group name or device type
• Compare performance across various engine types or match types.
  
  

Getting Started

Here’s how to get started with the new capabilities.

1. Sign in to DoubleClick Search and find the new Dimensions tab.

2. Select a Dimension to group your data by. Since AdWords enhanced campaigns now support cross-device campaigns, it’s often interesting to compare performance across the various device types.

3. We can see that in the case of this demo data, mobile has better performance and a much lower CPC, while tablet falls somewhere in between:

DoubleClick Search: Enhanced campaigns: Report by device type in Doubl...

DoubleClick Search: Enhanced campaigns: Report by device type in Doubl...: Back in February, we introduced our upgrade tools as a faster, easier way to transition you to AdWords enhanced campaigns. But in addition to powerful upgrade tools, you told us you’re also looking for better measurement, to surface deeper insights and make smarter decisions in a constantly connected world.

Today, we’re excited to announce reporting by device type in DoubleClick Search, available to all advertisers, which allows you to see how your campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords are performing by device type. With this new reporting feature, you can quickly compare how any aspect of your campaign is performing on desktop computers, mobile devices, and tablets.

You can use one of two flexible reporting features to see detailed metrics by device type: Dimensions or Segmentation. Using a dimension is best if you want to view device data for a single account, campaign or ad group, while segmentation provides device reporting across multiple accounts, campaigns or ad groups.

Our reporting by device solution allows you to:

• Report on historical data back to January 1, 2013, including both device segmented engine and conversion statistics.
• View segmented data at all scopes, from the advertiser level all the way down to individual keywords, to inform your decisions with more granular data.
• Support segmented data for formula columns that reference Floodlight and engine data.

In addition to performance stats across devices, DoubleClick Search allows you to measure your search marketing alongside other digital marketing channels and website analytics -- ensuring you get a holistic view of your online marketing performance.

Inside AdWords: Free Course On Creating Your First Online Campaign...

Inside AdWords: Free Course On Creating Your First Online Campaign...: Want to reach potential customers online, but not sure how? We’ve got good news. Starting July 22, the AdWords Guides to Success Team will be offering Marketing 101, our first-ever massive open online course (MOOC). Register now.

The free course is for businesses who haven’t yet started advertising online or are just learning how it works. Over the course of three weeks, the class will help you understand the basics of online advertising, how it can help your business, and prepare you to start an online advertising campaign with AdWords.

Course highlights include:

• Help thinking about your potential customers and business goals, and how to translate those goals to an online advertising campaign
• Examples of businesses that can use online advertising
• Interactive office hours with AdWords experts and opportunities to connect with other students

The course will also offer videos, quizzes, a worksheet, and links to additional resources and help. Here are the details:

• What: Marketing 101, a massive open online course
• Audience: New advertisers
• When: July 22 - August 9
• Requirements: Email address and a computer

Inside AdWords: Learn how to bid like a pro with new whitepaper an...

Inside AdWords: Learn how to bid like a pro with new whitepaper an...: People are constantly connected, switching seamlessly between devices to shop, communicate and stay entertained.Research shows that people now use as many as three devices combinations every day including desktop computers, laptops, phones, tablets, "phablets", web-enabled TVs, and more.

This always-on, multi-device world has dramatically changed user behavior and also presents exciting, new opportunities for online marketers. With AdWords enhanced campaigns, you can now present users with more relevant messages than ever by taking into account contextual information such as a user’s location, device, and the time of day.

Bid adjustments in enhanced campaigns are key to optimizing for these signals.  To help you master bid adjustments and drive better performance, we published a whitepaper, Bid Like a Pro: Strategies for Success in AdWords Enhanced Campaigns where you’ll find the following:

• Tips for prioritizing bid adjustments based on your business goals
• Best practices for setting bids by device, location, and time
• Suggestions for how to integrate more automation into your AdWords strategies
• Success stories highlighting advertisers’ improved results

You can download the the whitepaper here.

Tune into the webinar 7/11

To learn more about bidding and search strategies, join us on Thursday, 7/11 at 10am PDT for a webinar highlighting bid adjustment best practices and optimization techniques to get the most out of your search campaigns. Bhanu Narasimhan, Product Manager and Ting Zhang, Search Solutions Manager will be hosting.  Register here.

Inside AdWords: Google Catalogs in Lightbox -- a scalable way to ...

Inside AdWords: Google Catalogs in Lightbox -- a scalable way to ...: Google’s Lightbox ad format -- a part of the Engagement Ads family, which consists of interactive ad formats that let advertisers create and scale brand messages across the web, while only paying when a user engages with the ad -- has seen a great deal of momentum since its launch in March.

Today we are announcing a brand new capability within this format – Google Catalogs in Lightbox.

Brands invest heavily in creating beautiful stories in their printed catalogs, and we want to make it easy for our users to connect with relevant, digitized versions of these catalogs around the web. With Google Catalogs in Lightbox, users can easily flip through the digital catalogs, to see the latest product selections, check product prices, and visit product pages without ever leaving the original page they were browsing. Advertisers pay on a Cost-per-Engagement (CPE) basis -- meaning that they pay when a user chooses to read their catalog. And with access to metrics like page flips and product views, advertisers have more customer insight than ever before.

We have received positive feedback on this format from users, advertisers and publishers. Users have responded well to the beautiful, immersive catalog experience. Advertisers have found it easy to create online catalogs within hours, using their existing PDFs and Google Merchant Center feeds. And finally, our publisher partners that have run Lightbox formats have seen their CPMs as much as double.

One of our beta partners, Brand USA, an organization that promotes international tourism to the United States, used Google Catalogs in Lightbox to showcase an interactive US travel guide to Canadian tourists. They digitized their existing print tourism guide and achieved massive distribution of their catalog online, reaching a fifth of the Canadian population, and actively engaging 1 in 40 Canadians.

To get started, including help with digitizing your catalog, contact your account team today.

Posted by James Beser, Sr. Product Manager 

Inside AdWords: Introducing the Google Databoard: A new way to exp...

Inside AdWords: Introducing the Google Databoard: A new way to exp...: It’s important for businesses to stay up to date about the most recent research and insights related to their industry. Unfortunately -- with so many new studies and with data being updated so often -- it can difficult to keep up. To make life a bit easier, we created the Databoard for Research Insights, which allows people to explore and interact with some of Google’s recent research in a unique and immersive way.

The Databoard is our response to three big challenges facing the vast majority of research released today.

1. Ease of consumption: The databoard introduces a new way of sharing data, with all of the information presented in a simple and beautiful way. Users can explore an entire study or jump straight to the topics or datapoints that they care about. The Databoard is also optimized for all devices so you can comfortably explore the research on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
2. Shareability: Most people, when they find a compelling piece of data, want to share it! Whether its with a colleague, client, or a community on a blog or social network, compelling insights and data are meant to be shared. The databoard is designed for shareability, allowing users to share individual charts and insights or collections of data with anyone through email or social networks.
3. A cohesive story: Most research studies set out to answer a specific question, like how people use their smartphones in store, or how a specific type of consumer shops. This means that businesses need to look across multiple pieces of research to craft a comprehensive business or marketing strategy. To address this need, the Databoard allows users to curate a customized infographic out of the charts or data points you find important across multiple Google research studies. Creating an infographic is quick and easy, and you can share the finished product with your friends or colleagues.

Inside AdWords: New research shows that 88% of ad clicks from mobi...

Inside AdWords: New research shows that 88% of ad clicks from mobi...: This year, for the first time, the majority of people in the US (56%¹) own a smartphone.  In this constantly connected world, people use mobile search throughout the day to find information, shop, and stay connected.  Businesses, therefore, are making mobile a central part of their business and marketing strategy: from building better websites across screens to optimizing mobile ads.  When speaking with advertisers we often hear questions like “What would happen to my organic clicks if my mobile search ads were paused?” They want to know how much of a role their ads play in driving people to their website.

In 2011, we ran the “Search Ads Pause Studies,” and learned that an average of 89% of clicks on search ads are incremental - meaning that this traffic is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused, and therefore is missed.

This year, we carried out the same studies on mobile search and learned that 88% of site visitors driven by mobile search ads would not otherwise click on the business’s organic listing when ads are paused. From March 2012 - April 2013, we conducted Mobile Search Ads Pause studies on more than 300 US AdWords accounts from 12 key verticals. The research focused on search terms that had an organic listing on the first page and adjusted for factors like seasonality. Similar to our previous study of search ads across all devices, we found that an average of 88% of clicks generated by mobile ads were incremental. 

Results were consistently high across all verticals: 97% of mobile ads clicks are incremental for classified and local advertisers, 86% for retail advertisers, and 90% for technology brands, just to name a few.  Today consumers use mobile search to connect with businesses across a wide variety of industries and trust both organic and paid results to help accomplish their goals. The infographic below shows the percentages across all 12 verticals.

Click here to enlarge

Inside AdWords: Important changes to your Google Shopping product ...

Inside AdWords: Important changes to your Google Shopping product ...: As we previously announced, we began enforcement of the new unique product identifier feed specification as part of an ongoing effort to improve product data quality on Google Shopping. These new specifications help us serve better results to our users while creating more opportunities for merchants.

Enforcement of these new specifications has begun and will continue to ramp up over the coming weeks. By September, all violating offers will be rejected and will not be served through Product Listing Ads.

These new feed specifications will affect all accounts in the United States and non-exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Beginning September 16th, all previously exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom as well as all other targeted countries will be subject to these new requirements.

For more information, please review the unique product identifier requirements  and the latest product feed specifications to make the appropriate changes to your data. To help merchants with this transition, we’ll be hosting a Hangout on Air this Friday, July 19th (9am PT/12pm ET) to walk through the changes and answer any questions you may have about your feeds. You’ll be able to view the session video on the link above if you miss the live broadcast.

Posted by Angelika Rohrer, Program Manager, Google Shopping

Google Mobile Ads Blog: Introducing the Google Databoard: A new way to exp...

Google Mobile Ads Blog: Introducing the Google Databoard: A new way to exp...: Posted by Adam Grunewald, Mobile marketing manager

It’s important for businesses to stay up to date about the most recent research and insights related to their industry. Unfortunately -- with so many new studies and with data being updated so often -- it can difficult to keep up. To make life a bit easier, we created the Databoard for Research Insights, which allows people to explore and interact with some of Google’s recent research in a unique and immersive way. 

                                 

The Databoard is our response to three big challenges facing the vast majority of research released today.

1. Ease of consumption: The databoard introduces a new way of sharing data, with all of the information presented in a simple and beautiful way. Users can explore an entire study or jump straight to the topics or datapoints that they care about. The Databoard is also optimized for all devices so you can comfortably explore the research on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

2.  Shareability: Most people, when they find a compelling piece of data, want to share it! Whether its with a colleague, client, or a community on a blog or social network, compelling insights and data are meant to be shared. The databoard is designed for shareability, allowing users to share individual charts and insights or collections of data with anyone through email or social networks.

3. A cohesive story: Most research studies set out to answer a specific question, like how people use their smartphones in store, or how a specific type of consumer shops. This means that businesses need to look across multiple pieces of research to craft a comprehensive business or marketing strategy. To address this need, the Databoard allows users to curate a customized infographic out of the charts or data points you find important across multiple Google research studies. Creating an infographic is quick and easy, and you can share the finished product with your friends or colleagues.

Google Ads Developer Blog: Optimization Series - Implementing Best Practices

Google Ads Developer Blog: Optimization Series - Implementing Best Practices: In our previous blog posts, we discussed post-filtered bids and disapproved ads. In those posts we recommended integrating tools such as the Creative REST API, Snippet Status Reports, and Publisher Settings File into your bidder as best practices to improve the efficiency of your application.

Today, we'd like to share how to integrate these tools into your setup.

Why implement these tools into your bidder?

As a recap, here are our suggested best practices and why we feel they are beneficial for your bidder:

The Creative REST API is a proactive measure that provides methods for submitting a creative for verification, for checking the status of a creative that you have submitted, and for retrieving a list of all your active creatives before bidding on the creative ad. By using the Creative REST API to submit and manage your campaign creatives, you’re able to ensure that your bidder is better prepared to bid with an approved creative.

If you are unable to implement the Creative REST API, the Snippet Status Report can also help you review and determine the exact reason for which your ad was disapproved. The snippet-status-report-proto.txt file lists all the issues described in the section of the report. The snippet status report will also show ads that are approved or have not yet been checked by our verification system.

Publisher Settings File is a list of exclusions set by AdX publishers that will block bids from winning the auction for their inventory. Buyers should take note of and adhere to these publisher requirements. By leveraging the Publisher Settings File, your bidder can ensure it does not bid on an ad that will be filtered out of the AdX auction due to an exclusion. By only bidding on eligible impressions, you can avoid wasting bids.

How to incorporate these tools into your bidder?

Below is a sample visual representation of how you can integrate the Creative Rest API, Snippet Status Report and Publisher Settings File into your bidder’s logic to maximize the efficiency of your bidder:

1. Upload creatives from your ad repository/server using the Creative REST API.

2. Use the Snippet Status Reports or Creative REST API to periodically find the creative status (APPROVED, DISAPPROVED, NOT_CHECKED). Update the creative status in your ad repository/server. To avoid wasted bid opportunities, ensure that your bidder only returns BidResponses with APPROVED creatives. Creatives with DISAPPROVED or NOT_CHECKED status will not be eligible to compete in auction. Read more about post-filtered bids.

3. Use categorization data from the Snippet Status Reports or Creative REST API to help match creatives during targeting and avoid getting post-filtered. We use two types of categories, product and sensitive.

Product categories (ex. Banking, Real Estate, or Sports) will be identified by adetected_product_category.
Sensitive categories (ex. Dating, Politics, or Religion) will be identified by adetected_sensitive_category.

If a publisher has category exclusions, they will appear in BidRequests within the excluded_product_category and excluded_sensitive_category fields. Your bidder should honor these category exclusions by ensuring that it only returns BidResponses with creatives that are not categorized in an excluded_product_category or an excluded_sensitive_category.

4. Periodically pull the Publisher Settings Files to incorporate publisher exclusions into your targeting engine to minimize the chance of returning creatives that will be blocked by publishers. It might not be feasible to load all publisher data, but you may consider concentrating on the top N publishers on which your creatives run or publishers that you explicitly target. Publisher Settings Files contain valuable information such as excluded_attribute, excluded_product_category, excluded_sensitive_category and excluded_url. See the complete proto file.

Note: In order to reduce the size of the bid request, BidRequests do not contain excluded_url. Therefore, the only way your bidder will know what advertiser URLs the publisher is excluding is through the Publisher Settings Files. Your bidder should honor URL exclusions by ensuring that it only returns BidResponses with creatives that declare click_through_url’s that are not excluded by the publisher.

Google Ads Developer Blog: Hobbyist game developers turn passion into busines...

Google Ads Developer Blog: Hobbyist game developers turn passion into busines...: Kunal Verma and William Ferguson never imagined that coding for fun would one day become more than just a pastime. Both developers now independently run their own app businesses, Verma’s XigXag Interactive is a full-time job in India and Ferguson’s XandarMob is a side gig.

Verma’s apps have reached 1.5 million downloads on Google Play, his most popular ones, such as Kids Musical Toys Set, are catered to children. AdMob’s ad content control options are particularly useful for the demographic he serves. Verma’s apps are 100% free with a steady 99.09% fill rate. With AdMob, he makes 3x more income than he would at a regular IT job in India. 

Ferguson’s word scramble app, Lexathon, has been translated into 19 different languages and downloaded 430,000+ times by a loyal user base that spends an average of 10 minutes on the app per day. AdMob Mediation allows Ferguson to maximize his fill rate and leverage multiple ad networks to increase his total revenue. 

Google Ads Developer Blog: AdSense Management API v1.3 Released

Google Ads Developer Blog: AdSense Management API v1.3 Released: Version 1.3 of the AdSense Management API is now available and comes with new features to help you retrieve more publisher and reporting information.

Metadata for reporting dimensions and metrics
This is a highly requested feature that provides information on the list of available dimensions and metrics for the publishers, as well as their compatibility. This is useful to help developers avoid generating reports with invalid dimensions and metrics.

Alerts
You can now list the publisher’s current alerts, in their default language or in the one you specify.

Ad code
You can now programmatically fetch the code of an ad unit using getAdCode.

Google Ads Developer Blog: Announcing v201306 and the Sales Management Servic...

Google Ads Developer Blog: Announcing v201306 and the Sales Management Servic...: We are pleased to announce the release of v201306 of the DFP API - one of our largest launches yet. It introduces many new features for creative management, forecasting, reporting, and includes a beta release of the sales management services. A detailed list of these features and what’s changed can be found on our release notes page.

Sales Management API

With the launch of v201306 also comes the release of the Sales Management beta services. Sales Management is currently being piloted by a small group of partners and we plan to extend availability throughout the year. We'd like to offer beta access to developers who plan to leverage the API to build connections to other business tools and systems.

The sales services allow you to:

• Create and track proposals
• Manage a catalog of products
• Define and update rate cards
• Reconcile monthly reports

For more information, take a look at our use cases guide.

To request access to the Sales Management services, please complete this form and our team will be in touch with further instructions.

Reporting

As we detailed in our previous blog posts, improving the stability and feature set of the reports is a top priority. Some highlights of note for v201306:

• Columns, dimensions, and dimension attributes will now appear in reports in the order in which they were requested. This does not affect previous versions.

• If you have the feature enabled, you can now specify a timeZone to run the report in. Supported time zones for your network can be found using the Time_Zone table through thePublisherQueryLanguage service. Please contact your account manager for questions regarding enabling this feature.
• More than 50 columns, dimensions, and dimension attributes have been added to bring the API closer to parity with the UI. 

Creatives

To make managing non-standard creatives easier, beginning in v201306, the creative types FlashExpandableCreative, FlashPushdownCreative, FloatingFlashCreative, and TextAdCreative have been replaced with the type TemplateCreative. In addition, theTemplateCreative.destinationUrl field has been added for use with %u or %%DEST_URL%% macros. As more template types are added to DFP, our hope is that you’ll be able to take advantage of them with less code modification.

Google Ads Developer Blog: Reminder to upgrade to v3 of the IMA Flash SDK

Google Ads Developer Blog: Reminder to upgrade to v3 of the IMA Flash SDK: ust a friendly reminder that v2 of the IMA Flash SDK is deprecated. If your video player integration is still using v2, we encourage you to upgrade to v3 in order to take advantage of the following benefits:

• Ad Rules - allow you to control when ads display in your content, customize ad load by content category, video duration, or other targeting criteria and provide a Broadcast-style viewer experience with podding. In addition, you also have the ability to target ad placement within a pod, enable frequency-capping at the pod and content level and set up competitive exclusions.
• Optimized Pods - TV-style ad breaks consisting of multiple video ads which are algorithmically chosen to optimize for line item priority, pacing goals, and revenue (e.g., specify an ad pod duration and the ad server automatically selects ads of varying lengths that add up to your total duration).
• A more flexible, easily customized tag-based integration with AdExchange/AdSense (versus hard coding parameters in the AdsRequest class as was the case in v2). To make use of this more streamlined implementation, see the AdsRequest section of the upgrade instructions.
• Support for pod-, stream- or page-level competitive exclusions.

Google Ads Developer Blog: AdMob Plugin for Unity3D

Google Ads Developer Blog: AdMob Plugin for Unity3D: Unity is a game development framework that makes it very easy to develop games for mobile platforms. Today we're releasing a plugin to help developers show AdMob banner ads in Unity games developed for iOS and Android. This plugin is packaged as a Unity Package so integration with a Unity project should be very easy. The included README has a step-by-step walkthrough on getting started.

We remind developers to follow AdMob best practices when integrating ads into their games. In particular, we advise that you put ads on screens only where they won’t cause a dip in your app’s frame rate.

You can check out the AdMob Unity plugin on our samples page (Android | iOS). Please direct any questions or general feedback to our forum. You can also follow our Google+ page to stay up to date on all of Google's ads products.

 - Raj Parameswaran, AdMob Team