Google Ads Developer Blog

Introducing a new AdMob: Improved tools to help app developers build their business

2013-05-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

We’re committed to helping app developers with discovery, distribution and monetization on all platforms so they can continue doing what they do best: creating awesome apps. Last year, we integrated our AdMob inventory into the AdWords system, giving mobile app developers access to many more new advertisers. And we’ve continued to invest in tools to help app developers succeed.

Today at I/O, we’re announcing that we’ve rebuilt AdMob, incorporating the best technology from our other ad platforms, like AdSense. It’s a particularly great tool to help small mobile app developers grow their business.

Starting today, we’ll begin rolling out the new AdMob to our developers. We expect it to be available for all of our developers globally in the coming months. If you’re an AdMob developer, you’ll see a notice in your account asking you to upgrade to the new AdMob.

With the new AdMob, some of the features available are:

Smarter app promotion: Conversion Optimizer helps many AdWords advertisers increase conversions while decreasing cost per acquisition. We’re now bringing Conversion Optimizer to app developers using AdMob to promote their apps, so they can get the best possible number of installs for their budget. Choose a target cost per acquisition for each download, and Conversion Optimizer will show ads when they are most likely to lead to an install.
Robust ad filters: Ensuring that your app is showing quality, relevant ads is important for app developers. Now, developers will have more control over which ads appear in their apps, by blocking sensitive categories, so they can increase relevancy and protect their brand.
Maximized earnings: If developers want to show ads in their apps from more than one ad network, they can use AdMob Mediation with a new, simplified setup.
Local payments: We’re introducing local currency payments, so developers don’t need to spend time calculating currency conversions and organizing money transfers.
Intelligent reports: The new reporting interface enables app developers to slice the data in many ways with multi-dimensional reports that help them identify opportunities to grow. They can break down their reports over time by app or ad unit, platform, country, bid type, and more.

If a developer is just starting out, AdMob can connect them to more than a million advertisers globally, providing a consistent source of advertising revenue which can grow as their downloads take off.

We want AdMob to open up opportunities for many more app developers worldwide to help them build successful businesses. Join us at Google I/O at 11:15 AM PST today or watch a livestream of our talk: Build a Great App Business with AdMob, and see new demos.

Posted by Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, AdMob

Announcing the recorded talks for the AdWords API Workshops 2013

2013-05-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

We’re pleased to announce that the recorded talks for the AdWords API Workshops are now available. The talks are from the workshop in New York, but we had the same agenda for all other locations. The major topics include

Enhanced Campaigns and New Extensions Support
New & Improved MCC Services
OAuth2 authentication
New Bidding & Budgeting
Account Performance Tracking & Optimization (and introducing a new tool - Kratu)

We have made available all presentation slides used in the workshop. We hope this is useful for those who attended other locations or didn’t attend the event in person.

- Takeshi Hagikura, AdWords API Team

We’re going live from Google I/O

2013-05-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: repost from Developers Blog, --Stan Grinberg

At Google I/O 2013, we will share the future of our platforms with you. Developers from all over the world are the key innovators of powerful, breakthrough technologies, and that’s why we challenged ourselves to make the Google I/O experience available to every developer, everywhere.

Watch Google I/O live
From the comfort of your own home, office, secret lair, or anywhere you have a reliable Internet connection, you can stream Google I/O May 15-16 live. Brought to you by Google Developers Live (GDL), the Google I/O homepage will become the GDL at I/O live streaming hub starting on May 15th at 9:00 AM PT (16:00 UTC). From this page, you can:

Stream 4 channels of technical content on your computer, tablet, or phone. You’ll feel like you’re right there in the keynote and session rooms, listening to product announcements straight from the source. Live streaming will run on developers.google.com/io from 9 AM PT (16:00 UTC) to 7 PM PT (2:00 UTC) on May 15 and 16.
Watch exclusive interviews with the Googlers behind the latest product announcements. This year, GDL will be on site, broadcasting one-on-one product deep dives, executive interviews, and Sandbox walkthroughs from the GDL stage.
Get the latest news in real-time. We’ll be posting official announcements during I/O. You’ll be able to see the feed on the Google I/O homepage, in the I/O mobile app (coming soon), and on +Google Developers.
Never miss a session. All Google I/O technical sessions will be recorded and posted toGDL and the Google Developers YouTube channel. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for archived session updates.

Live blog the keynote
Grab our live blogging gadget to add the keynote live stream to your own site or blog. Customize the gadget with your site or blog name, live blog alongside real-time Google announcements, and share a dynamic Google I/O experience with your readers. Have questions? For more info, check out our live blogging gadget FAQ.

Get together locally
Experience Google I/O with your local developer community by hosting or attending an I/O Extended event. If you’re hosting, register here and learn how to hold a totally epic event with our handy Organizer Guide. Otherwise, with over 400 sites in 90+ countries, chances are good that there is an I/O Extended event near you. Find an event now!

And before I/O, tune in to Google Developers Live programming to connect with Google engineers, prep for this year’s event, and browse our archived content. For official conference updates, add +Google Developers to your Circles, follow #io13 for big announcements, join the Google I/O community, and keep an eye on the Google I/O site.

--Mike Winton, Director of Developer Relations

Visual representations of the IMA SDK / Video Player integration are now available

2013-05-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

We recently created two visual representations, the Basic SDK Interaction Diagram and the SDK-Player Interaction Diagram, that illustrate the actions that occur once your video player is fully integrated with the v3 IMA SDK. These diagrams outline both:

the high level interactions that take place among the IMA SDK, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), AdSense for Video (AFV), Ad Exchange (AdX) and any third party ad servers
the more detailed communications that take place between the IMA SDK and your video player

The diagrams are meant to assist you when integrating your video player with the v3 IMA SDK. They can help to visualize the interactions that are taking place when video content and ads are being played (as well as the sequence in which these actions are occurring). Both diagrams are available within the left-hand navigation of the IMA SDK documentation under Resources and are linked to directly from within the IMA HTML5 SDK and IMA Flash SDK Working with Ads pages.

Feel free to contact us on the forum if you have any questions about these new learning tools and if you found them useful (or use the Feedback on this document link on the page). You can also reach out to us on our Google+ page.

- Joe Roepcke, IMA SDK Team

Localized documentation for IMA SDK v3 is now available

2013-05-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce that updated localized editions of the IMA SDK v3 documentation are now available for the following languages:

Spanish
Japanese
Korean
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)

To view the localized edition of the latest documentation, be sure to select the desired language from the menu in the footer of any page.

Let us know on the forum if you have any questions about our localized content (or use the “Feedback on this document” link in the upper right-hand corner of any page). You can also reach out to us on Google+ page.

- Joe Roepcke, IMA SDK Team

AdMob eCPM Floor Beta: Best Practices

2013-05-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

We recently announced the ability to set an eCPM floor when making requests to the AdMob network. This post will show you how to set up this new feature to get the maximum benefit from the AdMob network.

First of all, we highly recommend that you create a new AdMob publisher ID on admob.com for each Mediation Placement you want to configure with AdMob eCPM floor. By creating a unique publisher ID, you’ll get fine grained reporting on how eCPM floor is performing on each of your placements.

Next, select Add Ad Network on your mediation placement, and add the AdMob eCPM Floor Beta network. In the Ad Network Configuration Settings, point this network to your newly created eCPM floor publisher ID.

Note: If you didn’t previously have a mediation placement, you’ll need to create a mediation placement on mediation.admob.com, and use the mediation placement ID in your application in place of your AdMob publisher ID.

Finally, you need to update your allocation to give the AdMob eCPM Floor Beta network an eCPM value. A suitable value for the eCPM floor is a value higher than the highest eCPM you’re getting from other networks.

In the sample below, Ad Network A is getting $0.37 eCPM. By setting AdMob eCPM Floor Beta slightly higher at $0.40, AdMob Mediation will first try to fetch an ad worth $0.40 eCPM from the AdMob Network. If it can’t fill that request, Mediation will try Ad network A, followed by Ad network B. If neither of those networks can fill the request, Mediation will come back to the AdMob network to fetch an ad without the eCPM floor restriction.

This new configuration will increase your ad revenue for requests fulfilled by AdMob eCPM Floor Beta, while still maintaining the same revenue from the rest of your requests where AdMob cannot fill the eCPM Floor request. You can also track your eCPM Floor performance by viewing sites and apps reporting for your newly created eCPM floor publisher ID.

If you have any questions about eCPM Floor or AdMob in general, please direct them to our forum. You can also follow us on our Google+ page to get updates on all Google ads developer products.

- Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team

Ad group mobile bid adjustments are now available within AdWords API

2013-05-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

To provide more control and precision over bids in enhanced campaigns, we’ve now made ad group level mobile bid adjustments available in the AdWords API, as previously announced.

While the majority of advertisers will still see the most value in using the existing campaign level bid adjustments, this new feature will be useful for those who wish to set different mobile bid adjustments within an enhanced campaign. The functionality is accessible via the new AdGroupBidModifierService for all currently available AdWords API versions. It is not required to migrate to a different version of the API to use this new service. Please refer to this guide covering technical aspects of the release.

The new feature is only available for enhanced campaigns, so if you haven’t upgraded yet, now would be a good time. As a reminder, we will begin automatically upgrading all AdWords campaigns to enhanced campaigns starting on July 22, 2013.

If you have any questions regarding this new feature or enhanced campaigns, feel free to ask us on the forum, during office hours or via the Plus page.

- Danial Klimkin, Ads Developer Relations Team.

Announcing v1.20 of the DFA API

2013-04-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

We’re pleased to announce the availability of version v1.20 of the DFA API. This latest release exposes many new properties on the objects in our API. These new fields are useful for customers interested in generating match tables. A full listing of these additions can be found in our release notes page.

Version v1.20 can be thought of as an optional release. Since v1.20 is an optional release, it and v1.19 will both remain usable once your account is upgraded to use DDMM. If you don’t require access to the new fields exposed in this version, you do not need to update your application at this time. Please remember that v1.18 has been sunsetted.

Questions or comments about this release, performing updates, or anything else related to using our API are always welcome on our forum.

- Joseph DiLallo, the DFA API Team

Google AdMob SDK v6.4.1 Released for Android and iOS

2013-04-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

We have just released version 6.4.1 of the Google AdMob SDK for both Android and iOS. The Android release includes:

The ability to resize a DfpAdView using dfpAdView.resize(AdSize)
A fix for the ANR errors seen in v6.3

The iOS release fixes a crash that occurs if the Advertising Identifier is nil.

You can get the latest SDKs from our downloads page. Find us on the forum if have questions about the new Google AdMob SDKs. You can also check out our Google+ page for ads-related updates.

- Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team

AdMob SDK for iOS v6.4.0

2013-04-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

Today we’re releasing version 6.4.0 of the Google AdMob SDK for iOS developers. In addition to the maintenance and bug fixes listed below, this version of the SDK completes the transition away from UDID, which began with version 6.2, in compliance with relevant Apple policies.

There are a number of maintenance updates and bug fixes including:

No longer accesses the UDID
Fix for GADInterstitial crash that occurs when app is running in the background
Fix for GADMRAIDInterceptor threading crash
Renaming symbols to prevent duplicate symbol errors
Support for receiving test ads when using AdMob through mediation
Test ads are only available on devices running iOS 6 and above

Check out the release notes for a full list of updates. You can download the latest SDK from our downloads page. If you’ve got questions or concerns about using the new AdMob SDK, please post to the forum or check out our G+ page.

- Raj Parameswaran, AdMob Team

Polygon targets are sunset - A reminder

2013-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Polygon Criterion, (also referred to as custom shapes, multi-point or polygon targets) was deprecated in 2011. They are now sunset in AdWords as we had previously announced. Until recently, developers were able to retrieve and individually delete any old polygon targets, using Adwords API.

As of now, all the polygon targets in Adwords campaigns have been deleted. You can continue to retrieve any accumulated stats of previous polygon targets using Geo Performance Report.

Please use other location targeting features available in Adwords for your campaigns.
As always, please feel free to ask any questions regarding AdWords API on our forum for AdWords API. You can also follow the Google Ads Developer page for all Ads-related updates.

- Takeshi Hagikura, AdWords API Team

Clarification on running sell through reports in the DFP API

2013-04-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

In the recent DFP v201302 release, we announced that the ability to run sell through reports (STRs) is now available via the API. This has led to a bit of confusion as some developers who are able to run STRs through the web UI received a ReportError.COLUMN_VIEW_NOT_ALLOWED message when using these new dimensions through the API. We would like to clarify how you’ll be able to access STRs.

We are in the process of updating STRs for networks that have them enabled. The current version of STRs isn’t accessible via the API. Once updated, you will be able to run STRs through the API right away as the columns already exist in the report service. Please speak with your account manager about when your network will be updated.

- Vincent Tsao, DFP API Team

Announcing v1.2 of the Ad Exchange Buyer Rest API

2013-03-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

We’re pleased to announce that version 1.2 of the Ad Exchange Buyer REST API is now available. This release provides one of the most requested features— detailed creative disapproval reasons. Additionally, it also provides a new field for creatives that can be used to identify the agency providing the creative and a new field for direct deals that can be used to determine whether a deal originated from a private auction. You may view a more specific listing of the changes implemented in v1.2 in our release notes.

Detailed Creative Disapproval Reasons

The Creatives resource now has an improved disapprovalReasons field. Previously, this field provided a list of strings that described the reason for disapproval in a broad context that may have been somewhat ambiguous. Each element of disapprovalReasons now provides two additional fields— reason and details. One can use disapprovalReasons.reason in order to access a categorized reason for disapproval, or use disapprovalReasons.details to retrieve a list of strings describing the disapproval reason in detail.

Identify Where Your Ads Came From

Publishers now have greater control over their inventory— e.g. with the new inventory management system, they may set rules that could offer special pricing or limit access to a specific set of creative agencies. With the new agencyId field, you can identify the creative agency that produced the ad with one of the IDs listed in agencies.txt, and consequently gain access to publisher inventory that utilizes these features.

Determine Your Eligibility for Private Auction Deals

We’ve given publishers the ability to create private auction deals, which you can read more about in our help center. You can now determine whether you have a fixed price deal or private auction deal by checking the private_exchange_min_cpm field— if it is set instead of the fixed_cpm field, you have a private auction deal. When you bid on ad slots from the publisher offering this deal, you are expected to offer at least the amount provided by this field.

You can read more about the new features in the Buyer REST v1.2 documentation. As always, we welcome you to join us on our forum to discuss and ask questions about these changes. To keep informed on all of our ads-related technologies, follow our Google Ads Developers Google+ page.

- Mark Saniscalchi, Ad Exchange Buyer Team

Introducing the AdMob eCPM Floor Beta

2013-03-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

Today, we’re giving AdMob developers more control over the value of ad impressions served to their apps. The AdMob eCPM Floor beta allows developers to set a minimum CPM they’d like to receive for each ad. The beta is available to AdMob developers who are using AdMob Mediation.

How does this work? Advertisers bid to show their ads on apps in the AdMob network, and an auction is run for every impression to determine the winner. We predict what the ‘expected CPM’ (eCPM) of that ad impression will be. The developer sets a minimum eCPM and we will only serve ads to their app that meet or exceed that level. For example, if a floor of $1.25 is set, we’ll only show ads with an eCPM of $1.25 or more. When choosing a floor value it’s important for developers to look at their own reporting and determine a value that’s relevant to them.

Here are a few details to know when taking part in the beta:

Make sure the eCPMs that are set for other ad networks are accurate.
We don’t guarantee the final value of the eCPM, since we don’t know if a user will click on the ad.

Developers who use the beta have the option of setting just one network line item in their mediation stack which uses the eCPM floor. Or, they can have two network line items, one that uses the eCPM floor and one without, so they can continue to fill impressions at their current fill rate. Setting the eCPM floor at a very high value will likely lead to a decrease in the fill rate.

Find setup instructions in the AdMob Help Center here under the article titled ‘Allocate traffic by eCPM’.

Posted by: Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, Google

Changes to Content Bidding

2013-03-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

We’re changing the way that bidding works for the display network, by removing implicit ordering and introducing something more simplistic. You can migrate your AdGroups now or allow them to be automatically migrated for you. But before we can explain the new system, let’s take a look at what we’ve got now.

Historically, bidding on the display network has relied on implicit priority orders to determine how to use the criteria added to an AdGroup.

In the current system, criteria-level bid overrides an AdGroup default bid. But since the display network supports up to 6 dimensions of targeting, we often need to pick one of many possible bids to use for a given impression. To do so, we use the following order:

Placement (most specific)
Age
Gender
Topic
Interests and remarketing list
Display Network (AdGroup-level)
Keyword
Default AdGroup Bid (least specific)

to choose which value to use. If a matching placement has a bid, we use that. If not, we look for a matching Age bid, etc. If we get to User Lists/Interests and still have not found a bid override, we look for an AdGroup-level “Display Network Bid”. If that also doesn’t exist, then we take a Keyword bid if there is one. Finally, if we still haven’t found a bid to use, we use the default AdGroup bid.

For further information, see how bids are used on the display network.

Explicit Content Bid Dimension
We will be replacing the implicit order with a single display bid override dimension per AdGroup. Ads serving on the display network will honor bids from that dimension and ignore any bids that may exist on other dimensions. We will use this same override dimension for URL overrides - serving will honor urls from the display override dimension, and ignore urls from any other dimension.

In the new implementation, you will be able to explicitly specify which bid dimension will be used per AdGroup. You can set this by using the new object: BiddingStrategyConfiguration, and the new attribute on the AdGroup object: contentBidCriterionType, both are modified through the AdGroupService. For more information on the new implemenation, please see this guide on Bidding.

Migration
With the introduction of AdWords API version v201302 you’ll be able to manually migrate your AdGroups to take effect as you have been used to with the existing implementation. If you chose not to set these on existing AdGroups, however, for the duration of the migration period, things will continue with the existing order. After the migration period, we will automatically select the most appropriate dimension for each of your AdGroups.

To manually migrate your AdGroups, or to configure new AdGroups, you need to set the contentBidCriterionTypeGroup to the desired CriterionTypeGroup. You can then add new Bids using the BiddingStrategyConfiguration, that can then be selected at a later time.

Please note, by setting the contentBidCriterionType, the AdGroup will be marked as migrated.

Once the manual migration period has ended, those AdGroups that have not been migrated will be automatically migrated to the new structure. The automatic migration will select the contentBidCriterionTypeGroup, for un-migrated AdGroups, based on the existing method of prioritization. All automatically migrated AdGroups can continue to be edited through the API.

Once the automatic migration is complete, the old system of bidding will be retired and all AdGroups will honour the new bid dimension system. Also, once an AdGroup has a contentBidCriterionType, all subsequent changes to the effective bid dimension should be done through the same field.

Reports
With these changes, comes a new report, the PLACEMENT_PERFORMANCE_REPORT which will contain all the information about manual placements. We strongly recommend using this report for queries regarding placement performance, moving forward.

There will also be changes to the AUTOMATIC_PLACEMENTS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT and URL_PERFORMANCE_REPORT to better match the AdWords website.

- Paul Matthews, AdWords API Team

4 days left to migrate out of AdWords API v201206

2013-03-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

On March 25, 2013, we will be sunsetting version v201206 of the AdWords API.

Calls made using this version will not longer work after March 25th. It is therefore critical that you migrate to a newer version for your applications to run without interruption.

We encourage you to use the following resources for a successful migration:

Review the v201302 release notes.
Make sure you’ve made the essential changes laid out in the v201209 and v201302 migration guides.
Review the resources in the AdWords API client libraries.
Attend the office hours sessions, to get face-to-face Q & A sessions.
Make sure your contact information is up to date in your My Client Center account.
Post questions on the forum.
Subscribe to our Google Plus page for news and announcements.

- David Torres, AdWords API Team

Device column available in Click Performance Report

2013-03-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

We recently exposed the Device column in the Click Performance Report. The Device column can have TABLET, HIGH_END_MOBILE or DESKTOP as its valid values. This is a segmentation column, so requesting it will prevent zero impression rows from being returned. If you have migrated to Enhanced Campaigns, then this column can be useful in finding out how your ads performed on various platforms, and adjusting your mobile bid modifier accordingly.

If you face any issues with the above changes or have any questions about this feature, you can ask us on our developer forum, or at the upcoming GDL Office Hours with the Developer Relations team.

- Anash P. Oommen, AdWords API Team

DFA API v1.18 Sunset Date Pushed Back

2013-03-19T09:01:00.003-07:00

The sunset of DFA API version v1.18 has been pushed back to April 16th, 2013. This version of the API has been deprecated since November, 2012 and was previously scheduled to be retired on February 28th, 2013.

If you’re still using v1.18, please be sure to update your applications before April 16th. Our release notes will help you identify differences in v1.19, the most important one being the necessity to use HTTPS connections. We are available on our forum to help you with any questions you have.

- Joseph DiLallo, the DFA API Team

Deprecation of the old Java library for AdWords and DFP APIs

2013-03-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

As previously announced, the new Java client library for the AdWords and DFP APIs is now available. As of the v201302 release of the AdWords and DFP APIs, the old Java client libraries have been deprecated.

With the deprecation:

Support for new API releases will be added until the end of 2013.
New feature requests won’t be accepted.

We strongly encourage you to migrate to the new Java library, which has better coverage of important features such as OAuth 2.0 and Maven.

You can check out the migration guide that describes procedures for migration along with best practices. Also, we’ll discuss some of the advantages you will benefit from by migrating to the new Java library in upcoming blog posts. If you’d like to discuss the migration with us, you can come to our scheduled office hours for AdWords API and DFP API.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions regarding the client libraries on our forum for AdWords API and DFP API. You can also follow the Google Ads Developer page for all Ads-related updates.

- Takeshi Hagikura, AdWords API Team

Customizing Your AdMob Mediation Ad Requests

2013-03-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

Ad networks take into account a variety of signals when targeting ads to your users. Generally speaking, the more information you provide to an ad network, the more accurately that network can target its ads, and the better those ads perform.

Many parameters, such as age, gender, and location, are commonly used by most ad networks. AdMob Mediation supports passing those parameters directly in the AdRequest; these parameters will be passed to the networks you’re mediating:

AdRequest adRequest = new AdRequest();
adRequest.addTestDevice(AdRequest.TEST_EMULATOR);
adRequest.setBirthday(new Date(2000, 1, 1));
adRequest.setGender(AdRequest.Gender.MALE);
adRequest.setLocation(location);

AdMob Mediation also supports passing specialized parameters to specific networks. Any custom parameters used by a specific ad network can be passed to an instance of that network adapter’s NetworkExtras object, which is then set on the AdRequest. Here is how you can customize the background and text colors for AdMob text ads, and set education level and number of children for a hypothetical Example ad network:

AdMobAdapterExtras adMobExtras = new AdMobAdapterExtras();
adMobExtras.addExtra("color_bg", "00FFFF");
adMobExtras.addExtra("color_text", "FF0000");
adRequest.setNetworkExtras(adMobExtras);

ExampleAdapterExtras exampleExtras = new ExampleAdapterExtras();
exampleExtras.setEducation(Education.BACHELORS);
exampleExtras.setNumberOfChildren(2);
adRequest.setNetworkExtras(exampleExtras);

AdMob Mediation will pass an adapter only the NetworkExtras object specific to that network. So in this case, the AdMob adapter will be provided with the AdMobAdapterExtras object, and the Example adapter will be provided with the ExampleAdapterExtras object. You can find the class name for each ad network’s NetworkExtras object in their respective adapter jar file.

Custom Events

You can also use CustomEventExtras to pass special parameters to any custom events that your app implements. Keep in mind that you can call AdRequest.setNetworkExtras() with only one instance of CustomEventExtras for all custom events that you implement. To make sure your custom event doesn’t access parameters meant for other custom events, we recommend you create a HashMap for each custom event, and pass in any necessary key-value pairs related to that custom event in that map.

CustomEventExtras customEventExtras = new CustomEventExtras();
HashMap customExtras1 = new HashMap();
customExtras1.put("key1", "value1");
customExtras1.put("key2", "value2");
customEventExtras.addExtra("customEvent1", customExtras1);
HashMap customExtras2 = new HashMap();
customExtras1.put("key1", "othervalue1");
customExtras1.put("key2", "othervalue2");
customEventExtras.addExtra("customEvent2", customExtras2);

Your custom event implementation just needs to check CustomEventExtras for the HashMap at whatever key that was designated for it - in this case customEvent1. You’ll use these parameters to construct your custom event.

HashMap extras =
    (HashMap) customEventExtras.getExtra("customEvent1");

Load the Ad

Once you’re done setting all targeting options, make sure to call loadAd with that request.

// This snippet assumes you have an AdView object named "adView".
adView.loadAd(adRequest);

If you have any questions or comments about AdMob, mediation, custom events, or targeting, we can field them in the forum. Also follow us on our Google+ page for ads-related updates.

- Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team

Working with App promotion ads

2013-03-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

AdWords API has released a new template ad specifically meant for mobile app developers who want to run ads promoting mobile and tablet apps. This ad format, known as “click-to-download” ad or app promotion ads, makes it easier for people to download your mobile app, from Google Play Store or iTunes. Version v201302 of the AdWords API adds support for this new ad format. To use this format, you first need to upgrade your campaign to enhanced campaigns.

App promotion ads will only show on the device from which the app can be installed. This means that ads for Android apps will only show on Android devices, and not on iOS devices. Ads for apps available only for tablets won’t show on mobile devices. This ensures that your application is promoted only to the right device platforms.

App promotion ads can be created as a template ad, using template ID 353. You need to create template element fields for headline, description1, description2, appId and appStore; other element fields are optional. Check out the full list of template fields and a complete Java code example.

You can find your Android package name by looking up the app in Google Play. The package name can be determined from the URL, which is of the form https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=<package_name>. For iOS, you’ll find the App ID within the app’s URL, which appears in the following format: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/example-app-name/id#########. Appstore field can be 1 (iTunes), or 2 (Google Play Store).

If you face any issues with the above changes or have any questions about this feature, you can ask us on our developer forum, or at the upcoming GDL Office Hours with the Developer Relations team.
- Anash P. Oommen, AdWords API Team

Phasing out NGRAM_GROUP in AdWords API’s TargetingIdeaService

2013-03-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

TargetingIdeaService currently has an NGRAM_GROUP AttributeType that gives you back the longest matching substring of the given keywords that appear more than n times (n is defined by AdWords System).

We’ve phased out the NGRAM_GROUP AttributeType starting from v201302 release. If you need to calculate NGRAM, you can do that using steps below.

1. Tokenize keyword ideas.
First, normalize the list of keyword ideas into a list of tokens and remove the low quality tokens (identical, consecutive or single character tokens). (e.g. Given keyword ideas of ["foo foo bar a baz", "foo bar"] become [["foo", "bar", "baz"], ["foo", "bar"]])

2. Generate all the possible n-gram candidates.
Then, generate all possible n-gram candidates from the list of separated tokens. (e.g. From the tokens [["foo", "bar", "baz"], [“baz foo”]], the n-gram candidates are [“foo bar baz”, “foo bar”, “bar baz”, “baz foo”])

3. Apply the n-gram groups to the unassigned keyword ideas.
For each keyword idea, we assign the longest n-gram candidate that appears at least n-times across all the keyword ideas. (e.g. Suppose n-gram candidate [“foo bar baz”, “foo bar”, “bar baz”, “baz foo”], keyword ideas ["foo bar baz", "foo bar”] and n is 2. candidate "foo bar" will be assigned to keyword ideas "foo bar baz" and "foo bar". The candidate “foo bar” appears 2 times in the keyword ideas.)

With those steps, you will get the longest matching substring that appear more than n times.

The complete code example is available here.

As always, please feel free to ask any questions regarding the client libraries or the AdWords API on our forum or during scheduled office hours. You can also follow the Google Ads Developer page for all Ads-related updates.

- Takeshi Hagikura, AdWords API Team

Reports, Negative keywords and more in AdWords scripts

2013-03-12T12:23:00.001-07:00

AdWords scripts is a powerful tool to manage your account with simple JavaScript. Based on your feedback, we’re happy to announce a host of new features.

We’re introducing several powerful new features:

AdWords reports using AWQL gives you the ability to look at your account performance with high granularity. This provides access to a large array of stats and fields as well as allow a script to exceed normal entity read limits.
Negative keywords at the campaign and ad group levels allows you to better manage keyword exclusions.
IDs on most AdWords entities allow you to easily tie report performance to actionable changes by selecting just the objects you care about.
New information about the execution environment and current account, such as whether or not the script is being previewed, account currency and more.
We've raised our limits: you can now work with 250k entities per script.

These new tools increase the power and versatility of AdWords scripts to make it a premier tool for managing AdWords accounts.

You can find more information about these features in our documentation. Join us on our forum for discussion and to have your questions answered.

- Kevin Winter, AdWords Scripts Team

Building for the Future: an update on DFP and the end of DART

2013-03-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: re posting from DoubleClick Publisher Blog. --Stan Grinberg

In 2010, in order to help publishers maximize the value of every impression, we introduced the new version of DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

In the years since, we’ve continued to invest in this platform, including new features that we heard were most important to our publisher partners - like the ability to manage desktop, mobile and video on a single ad server, and tools that help publishers better optimize campaign performance and save time. Today, thousands of publishers, such as The Weather Company, Gawker Media, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and YouTube, are all leveraging DFP. And over two-thirds of our overall publisher ad impressions run through this new platform, up from one-third last year.

As far as we’ve come, we are just getting started with innovation to help publishers build for the future. To preview just a few of our 2013 plans, we’ll be helping publishers grow with new data-driven revenue models by enabling Audience Extension from directly within DFP. We’re increasing their ability to tap into the accelerating brand opportunity with new ways to measure such as Active View reporting for viewable impressions. We’re investing to make it easier for publishers to manage advertising across devices with tools like the Google Publisher Tag, which automatically selects the appropriate ad for the screen size (aka “responsive design”). And we’ll also be making it faster to access online content: since the new DFP is roughly twice as fast at serving as DART, when we’re done upgrading we’ll be saving Internet users 63 years a day in waiting for ads to serve.

This year our team is shifting all of our effort and investment to DFP to deliver even greater innovations for our partners. With this in mind, we’ll be ending support for our DART for Publishers legacy ad serving platform on September 1, 2013. To ensure continuity of ad serving, support and training, publishers who haven't upgraded to DFP by that date will be automatically scheduled for an upgrade date between September 1 and December 31, 2013 when ad serving on the DART for Publishers legacy platform will cease. Note that publishers using the DFP Small Business platform do not need to take any action and are already supported on the new DFP.

We strongly advise all publishers to complete their upgrades to DFP before September 1 to make sure you are able to use the new DFP to its full potential during the busy 2013 holiday season. Please contact your account manager as soon as possible if you don’t have an upgrade date scheduled. And if you’re not sure who to contact, you can always reach out to our customer support team.

We know our partners are looking for tools that can grow and adapt to the needs of their business not just today, but also for tomorrow, the next year and ten years from now. That’s why we’re fully committed to the new DFP. We’re ready to accelerate our pace of innovation on our platform, and we look forward to helping publishers as they break new ground in digital.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management

AdSense APIs Chart Tools updated to AdSense Management API v1.2

2013-03-07T08:20:00.001-08:00

Last year we featured a series of posts called Chart Tools week to connect the AdSense Management API to Google Chart Tools. The resulting code samples have been updated to version 1.2 of the API.

There are four episodes that can be used as a great exercise to familiarize yourself with the AdSense Management API and Google Chart Tools:

Monday: Apparently, your CEO wants more than a spreadsheet. This exercise connects the necessary parts to create a line chart that securely fetches data from your AdSense account. [code, result]
Tuesday: Your boss loved the idea but he wants a column bar chart with shadows and 3D graphics. This is no longer 1989 so you rely on the tasteful aesthetics of Google Chart Tools to show multiple metrics in a single bar chart. [code, result]
Wednesday: To complete the dashboard, we add a table and geo chart that will show our performance per country. [code, table, geo chart]
Thursday: This last exercise lets you explore controls and dashboards which are advanced features of Google Chart Tools. A slider filters results by one of the metrics. [code, result]

If you have any questions about these samples or the AdSense APIs in general, visit the AdSense API Forum. You can also follow our Google Ads Developers Google+ page for ad-related updates.

- Jose Alcérreca, AdSense API Team