Tag Archives: App Advertising

Introducing the redesigned AdMob with new tools that make it even easier to earn

It has been a busy time here in Mountain View as more than 7,000 developers joined us at Shoreline Amphitheater for this year’s Google I/O. We made a number of big product announcements but I can’t help being most excited about one in particular — the newly redesigned AdMob!

Many of you rely on in-app ads for revenue — in fact, over 1 million apps now use AdMob to earn across iOS and Android. And to date, we’ve paid out over $3.5 billion dollars to developers like you. But we knew we could be doing even more to help you be successful. So we rebuilt the AdMob platform from the ground up to help you build a profitable business faster and to stay profitable as you scale.

Simple to use with a brand new user interface

Your time is valuable and we want you to spend it growing your business, not navigating our screens. With the new AdMob, everything from navigation to dashboards has been organized around your apps. The tools and features you need most are right at your fingertips. We’ve also applied Material Design across the entire AdMob platform to make your experience intuitive and productive at every step.

When you log in to the new experience, you’ll see a streamlined interface that surfaces key growth trends and gives you a quick snapshot of how your apps are performing. Whether you have one app or fifty, the new app picker will help you rapidly navigate through the new AdMob experience. In addition, we’ve added a simplified dashboard with a complete breakdown of your revenue. From here you can see how ads are impacting critical metrics like lifetime value, engagement, and retention for each app.
With the new AdMob, it’s easier to find your way to what you need

Richer insights with a deep integration with Firebase

We know that you have many different options when it comes to making money for your app business. Whether you decide to use in-app purchases, subscriptions, ads, or commerce, we know how valuable a holistic view can be for making decisions and monitoring how even slight monetization changes can impact user experience. Historically compiling all of this data has required multiple tools and has been time consuming at best and impossible for most. So we’re putting comprehensive analytics at your fingertips through an integration with Google Analytics for Firebase.

With this integration you can see new reporting across all of your revenue sources and dig deeper in Firebase to see how both lifetime value and user behavior are affected.

To get started, link your AdMob and Firebase accounts and update to the latest version of the SDKs. Once linked, you'll have access to detailed ad revenue data and user insights like time spent in the app and in-app purchases—all in one place. Your Firebase account can now access your ad signals and AdMob can access your app usage signals for deeper level insights. With instant access to detailed ad revenue data plus consumer insights like session duration and ad exposure you no longer have to deal with endless spreadsheets or make wild guesses.
Power a smarter monetization strategy with the right data, all in one place.

With a more complete view of lifetime value, you now have the data you need to create a monetization strategy with complete confidence. Marcin Krakowiak, co-founder of Byss Mobile, is already a fan: “Creating a sustainable monetization strategy has been the core focus of our team as we continue diversifying our portfolio of apps. Having meaningful, accurately connected data sources is key to developing that strategy. This new integration between Firebase and AdMob does just that. We are finally able to analyze lifetime value of both in-app purchases and ads to test and create a more profitable monetization strategy.”


Advanced controls to help you scale with Mediation Groups

If you already use AdMob, you know that mediation is a great way to monetize across multiple ad networks. Well, mediation just got even better with the addition of mediation groups.

Historically, you needed to configure mediation for every ad slot and geography. Developers using mediation often found this process extremely time consuming. We’ve introduced mediation groups in AdMob, to make all of this easier. Just set up mediation once and then assign that group to different ad units and countries across all of your apps in a single step. You can also make calls to outbound networks up to three times in a mediation chain, helping you to maximize revenue.
Set up and activate a new mediation group with just a few clicks.

We hope you’ll take advantage of mediation groups and everything else the redesigned AdMob platform has to offer — because it’s been built with you in mind! We’re here to support your success as an app developer, and we’re really excited to see how you use these new tools to grow your business. Become a part of the millions of apps using AdMob by putting our new monetization tools to work.

Visit the Help Center or contact your Google account team to see when you’ll have access to these great features.

Posted by: Duke Dukellis, Group Product Manager, AdMob











Source: Inside AdMob


Optimizing App Monetization with Google AdMob

All views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author, and not that of Google. This guest post is from Sreeraman Thiagarajan, a Google Developers Expert in the app marketing and monetization space and a published author on the Economic Times. Sreeraman is featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his experience to help AdMob developers grow their earnings. If you’re new to AdMob, be sure to sign up here.

In the introductory post we saw how AdMob lets app developers take control of monetizing their apps - here’s the second part on optimization and measuring.

Optimizing revenue and volume: A counter question I often get goes like this “But other networks offer better eCPM (more dollar for every one thousand impressions served), why must I choose AdMob?” Answer for this lies in understanding two metrics and the two respective fundamentals behind each of these metrics.

The first metric is ‘fill rate’ which means how many relevant ads can the ad network fulfill as requested by your app? A simple demand-supply equation is the fundamental behind this metric, because there are a lot of advertisers on Google, nearly 1million plus advertisers who want to show their ads (demand) to a potential audience who could be using your app (supply). This equation generates a very high amount of ‘ad requests’ of 200 billion per month, globally. With AdMob on your app, you can join the supply side.

The second metric of eCPM is how much money per thousand impression your app can earn? eCPM differs from network to network, however a simple multiplication of eCPM with fill rate answers this question. If network A offers $1 at a fill rate of 85% then you get 85 cents revenue per thousand ad request (aka RPM). Now if network B offers twice as much at $2 but with a lower fill rate of 30% then you only get 60 cents of RPM. That’s a 25% loss on potential earnings.

Choosing the type of ads to show: There a few standard types of ads, namely Banners, Interstitials, Rewarded, and Native. There’s no fixed formula for which type of banner to use, but one principle developers must strongly adhere to is to ‘preserve user experience’ by integrating ads as unobtrusively and as natively as possible.

Game developers have an advantage in using rewarded ads, this a form of interstitial ad units that enables you to reward users with in-app items such as an extra life, a level jump, a feature unlock, etc., for watching video ads.

Native ads is a boon for publishers and content based apps. It is a component based ad format that matches the look and feel of the app where the ad is being displayed. This makes the ads look like they  are  a part of the app and reduces obtrusiveness. A simple example of this is a promoted tweet on Twitter or a promoted post on Facebook. It is essentially a tweet or post like any other, but an identified sponsor has paid to promote it.

Banners and interstitials are pretty standard formats. Apps can choose to display banners at fixed positions on screen like the top or bottom. The full-screen ads are called interstitials, these are displayed at natural transition points in the user journey such as between two levels in a game, between two news articles, etc.

Stop guessing and start testing: App developers often suffer from the curse of knowledge, that is, they assume their users know and use the app the way it was meant to be. But more often than not, this is not true and building the app’s advertising strategy on gut feel is bad for business. Optimal monetization happens when users’ journey from acquisition to retention is deeply understood. Thanks to the integration of Google Firebase with AdMob, app developers can use Firebase’s free & unlimited analytics solution for deploying intelligent ad monetization strategies.

Importing Firebase SDK into apps requires no complicated coding. Once integrated, developers can get details like sessions, demographics of users, revenue from in-app purchases, etc., from Firebase Analytics. Besides this, AdMob’s own reports will give you a ringside view on how revenue is generated.

To optimize monetization, it is imperative developers inculcate a habit of continuous testing and tweaking their product strategy based on data and hard insights.

In conclusion, ads are above fifty percent of total revenue generated by apps. According to data point by App Annie and IDC, in-app ads are projected to grow at 3.2X in next two years1. As stated by Gartner, this year, over 268 billion apps are expected to be downloaded worldwide2; apps have no boundary and you never know audience from which country maybe your biggest fans.

Successful app monetization happens when there’s a mind-set of growth. Grow your audience base, preserve user experience, integrate AdMob, and ad revenue will start taking care of itself. Thus giving developers bandwidth to build more products or enhance existing features.

Google has made a lot of resources available on AdMob and if you are a developer with apps that has over 100,000 downloads you can request a free consultation. Both the resources are free of cost. Godspeed and love to see India rise up in charts for generating app revenue.

1 - https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.appannie.com/reports/App-Annie-IDC-Mobile-App-Advertising-Monetization-Trends-2013-2018-EN.pdf 
2 - http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2654115 

Source: Inside AdMob


Understanding App Monetization with Google AdMob

All views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author, and not Google. This guest post is from Sreeraman Thiagarajan, a Google Developers Expert in the app marketing and monetization space and a published author on the Economic Times. Sreeraman is featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his experience to help AdMob developers grow their earnings. If you’re new to AdMob, be sure to sign up here.

There’s never been a better time to be an app developer in India. According to reports referenced in the Economic Times, app downloads on Google Play from India grew from 3.5 billion downloads in 2015 to 6.2 billion downloads in 20161. Based on this report, India now holds the top spot in the world for apps downloaded on Google Play, even outranking the US and Brazil.

As noted in a recent article by Quartz India, nearly 90% of India’s over 220 million smartphone users have Android smartphones, so the ~6 billion app download figures comes as no surprise2. However, from a revenue perspective, Times of India reported that India is  far behind and does not feature as one of the top ten markets3. (According to Android Authority Japan, U.S, and South Korea rank highest4).

World over, an article in MarketWire states that iOS and Android app publishers earned over 89 billion dollars in 2016 as revenue from their app, which includes paid apps, in-app purchases (IAP), and of course ad revenue5.
Indian app developers are in need of proven app monetization techniques. When exploring revenue generation opportunities by deploying Google’s in-app advertising suite, AdMob is a great starting point.

Here’s how:

Don’t be shy or scared of using in-app ads. In my interaction with many startups and app developers, there’s a disturbing insight I’ve discovered. Many developers think using in-app ads are a clichéd way of generating revenue, and that they must come up with a unique and novel way of making money. Nope, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. Ad supported businesses have been thriving for decades . Besides being a source of income for a publisher, advertising subsidizes the price of a product for consumers. For example, if not for ads in a local newspaper, we may have to pay 10x or more than its current selling price. The concept of freemium apps may never have picked up as well.

Many of the largest and most recognizable apps use advertising to support their business model. Rather than reinventing their revenue models, they constantly innovate to maximize the ad revenue. From major sporting events to longstanding publishing houses to new age tech-based content providers, every one of them smartly leverages the power of monetizing the massive eyeballs they receive by showing ads, without disrupting the user experience.

An app or game is no different than our above examples. These apps and games can generate money through ads if they can garner users at scale and engage them frequently (converting them into DAU’s or daily active users). Google’s AdMob can help developers immensely in building an ad-supported app and in diversifying revenue streams beyond paid subscriptions or in-app upgrades and purchases.

Picking the right in-app ad platform:There are many options to chose from when picking an ad monetization platform. In fact, there are over 50 ad networks that app developers can choose from, or they can even build their own ad serving mechanism within the app to show ‘house ads’ - the ability to cross promote other apps or services of yours. Or one can also sell ad inventory (such as a masthead, a branded product placed within an app, or branded power-ups in games, etc.) through direct sales teams. However, building one’s own ad suite or depending largely on direct ads is not scalable, and warrants too much time and effort of developers and ad sales team alike to make this work profitably. This is where AdMob makes its biggest contribution in making life easy for both iOS and Android developers.

AdMob has a built-in mechanism that lets developers show ‘house ads’ to cross promote their portfolio of other apps for free. AdMob can also power your direct deals, which lets you run your own directly-negotiated ad deals with advertisers.

Another exciting feature of AdMob is ‘mediation’. Mediation is a technology which helps apps to maximize the number of ads shown in an app, and thus helps increase revenue. Through AdMob mediation, one can integrate nearly 40 different mobile ads networks and even engage in SDK-less mediation for a select set of networks. With mediation, apps can enjoy the benefit of dynamic bidding and direct integration with other ad networks, which allows automatic CPM updates. This eliminates time and effort taken to manually adjust bidding floors. In terms of in-app monetization, AdMob is one handy tool that has all you need to survive - and thrive.

Watch out for the part 2 in this series where we’ll discuss optimizing and measuring app monetization. Google has made a lot of resources available on AdMob here and if you are a developer with apps that has over 100,000 downloads you can request a free consultation here.

1 - http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/india-is-top-market-for-google-play-store/56638573
2 - https://qz.com/886985/india-logged-the-most-android-app-downloads-and-usage-in-2016/
3 - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/companies/india-number-one-in-google-play-app-downloads-usage/articleshow/56680067.cms
4 - http://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-performance-q2-2015-google-and-apple-gain-big-from-new-emerging-markets-626622/
5 - http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/app-annie-reports-publishers-made-over-89-billion-as-downloads-reached-90-billion-2016-2188696.htm

Source: Inside AdMob


App Monetization Insights: What’s an Ad Network and How Can It Help My App Business?

For this week’s “App Monetization Insights” post, we’d like to share an excerpt from AdMob’s newest eBook, The No-nonsense Guide to In-app Ads (download it here). This guide is designed to provide a practical introduction to in-app advertising for developers exploring ads for the first time. The excerpt we’re sharing today covers how an ad network works and how it can help your app business. Enjoy!

Ad networks do the hard work of bringing together the parties that participate in online advertising, making it simpler for everyone involved to succeed. They build relationships with businesses looking to advertise and apps looking to make money by selling ads. Through an ad network, advertisers can get access to lots of different inventory in apps at scale. And, they also help app developers find advertisers quickly. You can spend less time marketing your advertising space and more time focused on creating the best app for your users.

Take a look at this simplified illustration showing how an ad network works:


And voila! Your app generated revenue from ads. All of this happens very quickly, usually in less than a second.

It’s important to remember that not all ad networks are the same. Some networks focus on price and getting an ad in front of as many people as possible. Others care more about the quality of their advertisers. Some include extra features to help you with other parts of your business. Others keep their SDK as lightweight and easy to implement as possible. There are a lot of options and a lot of factors to consider.

How do you choose the right ad network for your app? In the next chapter, we’ll explore this question in depth.

If you enjoyed this chapter, be sure to download the entire guide here. For more tips on app monetization, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Joe Salisbury, Product Specialist, AdMob

Source: Inside AdMob


[New eBook] Download The No-Nonsense Guide to In-App Ads

A clear trend is emerging in the world of smartphones – people want free apps. According to a study by Juniper Research, barely 1% of apps are now paid for at the point of download.1

While demand for free apps continues to increase, app developers are answering a very important question, “what’s the best way to publish my app for free while sustainably funding my business?”

In-app ads are a reliable solution that is set to grow 3.2X between 2014-18. 2

Many of the world’s most popular apps rely heavily on in-app advertising to earn income. Apps like PicsArts and Trivia Crack each have hundreds of millions of downloads and use advertising as a revenue source. In-app ads are evolving and there are many options for developers to utilize which provide great experiences for users.

So, how do you get started with ads?

To answer this, we’re launching a new ebook called “The No-Nonsense Guide to In-App Ads”, the latest in our No-nonsense series. This guide is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of in-app advertising for those new to the opportunity. We’ll walk you through how digital ads can be included into your app strategy and what’s the best way for you to get started.

In the eBook, you’ll learn:
  • Foundational advertising concepts like eCPM, Fill Rate, Demand, and Inventory.
  • A simple overview of how businesses make money from advertising. 
  • How Pay Per Click advertising works.
  • A basic explanation of ad networks and how they can help you monetize your app.
  • How to choose the right ad network for your app.
Download a free copy here.


For more tips on app monetization, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Joe Salisbury, Product Specialist, AdMob

1 - Juniper, April 2015 and Juniper website, The App Landscape Today, Feb 2015

Source: Inside AdMob


Introducing new interactive ads to drive app installs

Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog.

We’re launching two new immersive ad formats to help advertisers drive app installs. As an AdMob developer you may start to see these new formats appear in your apps. If you opt into ‘Image’ as an ‘ad type’ in your account, you’ll be eligible to show the Interactive Interstitial format, and if you opt into ‘Text,’ your app can begin to serve the Trial Run format. At this time, Interactive Interstitials show on Android and iOS apps, and Trial Run Ads show on Android apps only.


Developers are constantly looking for new ways to bring users to their apps. But because people’s attention on mobile is becoming shorter and more intent-rich, finding engaged users of your app is an ongoing challenge — both before and after an install. In fact, we found that one in four installed apps is never even used. We’ve focused our efforts on offering developers advertising tools that engage users and showcase an app at its best. We recently redesigned one of our in-app ad formats, and are building on our desire to create beautiful app ad experiences. That’s why today we’re introducing two new rich, immersive ad formats to our growing suite of creative app install solutions.

Play a game within an ad with Trial Run Ads
Trial Run Ads are an app ad format that lets a user play a game for up to 60 seconds by streaming content from the app before downloading. The immersive demo increases the likelihood that an install is coming from someone who enjoys playing the game. Users get a taste of the game before going through the download process,  and the app developer attracts better qualified users who’ve chosen the game based on their experiences in the app.

Trial Run Ads provide:
  • Ultra-immersive and delightful ads designed for games
  • The opportunity for gamers to trial before download 
  • More relevant ad clicks, app downloads, and pre-qualified app users
Cookie Jam's Trial Run Ad
Get ultra-creative with customized mobile ads
We’re also launching a beta for Interactive Interstitial ads, which are HTML5 ads that offer a completely customized user experience tailored to each advertiser's app. They give advertisers creative freedom to use HTML5 instead of standard templates and pull in data dynamically. Diversity potential is high with this format and it's not limited to just gaming apps. Interactive Interstitials offer a truly custom experience that can include your app’s value proposition and the functionalities you want to highlight, all painted in your personal branding strategy. This is particularly valuable for advertisers who are looking for higher user engagement in installers.

Interactive Interstitials provide:
  • A beautiful and flexible canvas for the advertiser to become truly creative
  • Unique testing and optimization capabilities
  • The opportunity to bring a piece of the app experience to the user before download
  • Unique brand building possibilities
Marketers are already taking advantage of these engaging ads to drive app installs. Zalora built a an ad that allowed users to swipe to discover an exclusive offer.
Zalora's Interactive Interstitial allows users to use a finger to
swipe a screen to discover a special promotion.
Customization can be as big or small as you want — from adjusting standard templates to developing a fully custom creative. Marketers can also use their live app content to create compelling, real time ad formats. With more control over layout and interaction, you can A/B test creatives and try various CTAs to increase conversions. Rather than just telling a user about your app, you can offer them an experience unique to your app that inspires them to want to spend time with your app.

Advertisers can use Interactive Interstitials to showcase their latest product offerings through galleries, highlight elements of their personal branding, and to more powerfully demonstrate the value of their app before someone installs.
Zalora showcases a gallery of products that users can
swipe through in its Interactive Interstitial ad.
We understand that experiences on mobile need to be made for mobile, and an ad is no different. We’re continually exploring new and better ways to build out interactive formats for the small screen.

Trial Run Ads and Interactive Interstitials are currently in beta and available to a limited set of advertisers. Reach out to your account manager if you are interested in joining the betas.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Director of Product, 
Display and Pasha Nahass, Product Manager, Display

Source: Inside AdMob


Charge your game monetization with a winning combination of in-app purchases and ads

Predictions estimate that by 2017, 94.5% of app downloads will be free [1]. As a developer, you are probably juggling creating great content for your game and finding ways to monetize it. It’s important to develop a robust monetization model that takes into consideration the spending preferences of all users. That’s why today we are unveiling a new white paper with insights and ideas on building effective monetization models: A Winning Combination - How using in-app purchases and ads together can maximize mobile game revenue.

Today, in-app ads and freemium (free download with IAPs*) fuel the growth of mobile app revenue, growing at 71% and 72% respectively from 2013 to 2014 [2]. Through an analysis of over 10,000 top Android apps, we found that for games, using IAP and ads together can potentially generate 117% more revenue than just IAPs alone.

However, a hybrid approach is more than simply bundling ads and IAPs together; it’s about targeting the right users at the right time with the right monetization opportunity. The goal of our white paper is to help you accomplish that easily and effectively.

In this white paper, you will learn the following:

  • What an effective hybrid monetization model looks like and the benefits it can deliver;
  • The principles and frameworks for building an effective hybrid monetization strategy;
  • Best practices from developers around the world.

You can download the white paper here. Find out what AdMob’s IAP solution can do to help you build a strong hybrid monetization model.


We’d love to hear what you think of the white paper. Please share with us on Twitter and Google+ what other tips you have in building a strong hybrid monetization strategy.

Sean Meng
AdMob Product Marketing

* In-app purchases
[2] - IDC/App Annie: Mobile App Advertising and Monetization Trends 2013-2018


    Source: Inside AdMob


    Beautiful New Designs for Full-Screen In-App Ads

    Nearly 60% of smartphone users expect their favorite apps to look visually appealing. We’ve always believed that in-app ads can enhance an app’s overall experience by being well designed. So today we’re announcing a completely new look for our interstitial in-app ad formats - also known as full-screen ads - that run on apps in the AdMob network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

    Inspired by Material Design, the new app install interstitial comes with a beautiful cover photo, a round install button, and matching color schemes. Technology called “color extraction” makes the ads more consistent with the brand's look and feel -- we extract a dominant color either from the cover photo or app icon and apply it to the footer and install button. We found that having a greater variety of designs and colors can improve conversion rate.

    Other features include the app’s rating, and a screenshot gallery which appears when a user taps ‘More images’, so users can learn more about the app without leaving the ad.
    New Version of Full-Screen In-App Ads
    The previous design of our app install ads on the left, and our new version on the right.
    Different Examples of Color Matching for Full-Screen In-App Ads
    Different examples of color matching.             
    Our app install formats have driven more than a billion downloads across Android and iOS. You can use these new designs automatically when you run a mobile app install campaign on the AdMob network in AdWords. That’s right, no extra work required!

    Next, our new text-based ads are easier to read, and contain a larger headline and a round call-to-action button that clicks through to a website.
    prev_wayfair.png               new_wayfair.png


    On the left, the previous text ad interstitial design, and the new version on the right. 

    As with other ad format innovations, our ads UI team test multiple designs - ten in this case over the course of a year - to find final versions that increase clicks and conversions for advertisers, and a positive experience for users. Both app install and text ad formats appear within the app and can be closed easily, so users can return to what they were doing with a single tap.

    As we announced at Google I/O this year, the volume of interstitial impressions has more than doubled across AdMob since last July, so now’s a great time to get your business in front of more app users.

    If you’re a developer looking to learn more about earning with in-app interstitial ads in your app, visit AdMob now. These new designs will also be available to developers monetizing their apps with DoubleClick Ad Exchange.















    Posted by Pasha Nahass, Product Manager

    ____________________________
    1) Mobile App Marketing Insights: How Consumers Really Find and Use Your Apps, Google & Ipsos Media CT, May 2015

    Source: Inside AdMob