Tag Archives: Google Ad Manager

Advancing transparency for buyers and publishers

Our advertising partners often ask me, “how can I better understand where my dollars are being spent?” This question isn’t new. But as buying and selling digital ads has become more complex, tracking where the money goes has become more difficult. On average 15% of advertiser spend is unattributable, according to some industry estimates.

One of my biggest concerns about this trend is its impact on marketer confidence in digital advertising. How can we all provide greater visibility into the investments of agencies and advertisers to properly inform future media spend? While we can’t speak for the many other companies in this space, our platforms do not take hidden fees. Working with others in the industry, we’re committed to investing in solutions that bring greater trust to programmatic buying and advance a more transparent ecosystem.

Introducing Confirming Gross Revenue

Today we’re announcing Confirming Gross Revenue, a new solution that gives buyers and publishers a privacy-safe way to verify that no hidden fees are taken from digital advertising transactions when using Google Ad Manager.

The publisher can use the new Revenue Verification Report to see the aggregate gross revenue received from a specific buyer. Then the buyer and the publisher can verify the media cost from the buyer’s reporting matches the gross revenue the publisher received. If the numbers match, the buyer can confirm that their full media spend reached the publisher and no hidden fees were taken.

Illustration shows process for buyers and publishers to verify no hidden fees with Confirming Gross Revenue

As we build out this feature, Display & Video 360 is onboard as an early tester. And, as a new solution, we’re in communication and collaboration with other demand-side platforms, sell-side platforms, publishers and agencies, who will test this feature and provide feedback to improve it. As we onboard more partners, we have started to gather some of this feedback.

"OMG prides ourselves in being industry leading advocates for full supply chain transparency. We believe this feature will be a great first step toward confirming that there are no hidden fees in programmatic buying, and having a seat at the table gives us the best opportunity to affect positive change for advertisers."

- Philip Pollock, Chief Operating Officer, Omnicom Media Group Australia

"Transparency and trust go hand in hand and giving us additional access and insight into media costs is a step in the right direction. We look forward to being early adopters of the solution and partnering with Google to provide feedback on how to make improvements.”

- Eric Hochberger, CEO, Mediavine

"Greater transparency in the digital advertising supply chain through solutions like Confirming Gross Revenue is sorely needed. That’s why we’ve made it a priority to invest in creating industry standards like ads.txt, sellers.json, DemandChain Object and buyers.json to help everyone raise the bar on trust in programmatic buying. We look forward to working with Google on this privacy-forward solution and potentially incorporating these concepts into IAB Tech Lab’s standards portfolio."

- Anthony Katsur, CEO IAB Tech Lab

Transparency without compromising privacy

As we continue to invest in solutions to bring more transparency into media buying, we’re also protecting people’s privacy and the contractual confidentiality of our partners. Transparency and privacy do not need to be at odds, which is why Confirming Gross Revenue only uses the data needed to confirm no hidden fees have been taken. To reduce the risk of user identification, the feature relies on aggregate gross revenue amounts, rather than combining granular log-level data.

Implementing industry standards

This solution builds on years of work to increase transparency to programmatic advertising, including steps we’ve taken to simplify our platforms and explain our own fee structure. In recent years, we've also participated in industry transparency standards across our buyside and sellside businesses, like ads.txt / app-ads.txt, sellers.json and SupplyChain Object. For example, we recently brought SupplyChain Object data into Ads Data Hub to help marketers using Display & Video 360 see the steps their impressions took before arriving on a publisher’s site.

Together, these initiatives give partners greater visibility into digital advertising. This can help inform buying decisions, improve bid transparency and strengthen fraud detection. Still, we recognize that there is more work to do.

A continued commitment

Confirming Gross Revenue is one part of our efforts to address concerns over lack of transparency that we have heard from publishers, agencies, advertisers and regulators. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to work with the industry on shaping this new solution and, more broadly, initiatives to instill more confidence in online advertising. Bringing greater transparency to advertisers, agencies and publishers is core to our approach. We welcome participation from others who want to work together to advance an ad-supported internet that works for everyone.

A guide to common Ad Manager policy questions

Ad Manager program policies help ensure we preserve a healthy digital ecosystem for the benefit of all users, advertisers and publishers. But we know we can do more to help Ad Manager partners better understand our policies. So, to answer some common questions, we’re sharing a new infographic with important information on:

  • The role of advertising policies for Google’s advertising platforms
  • Most frequently faced policy violations
  • Resolving policy issues and navigating through the Ad Manager Policy Center

Check it out below, and don't forget to download or bookmark the infographic below.

Infographic showing the most common policy questions for Google Ad Manager
Infographic showing the most common policy questions for Google Ad Manager
Infographic showing the most common policy questions for Google Ad Manager
Infographic showing the most common policy questions for Google Ad Manager

Celebrate publisher stories on our new website

Video shows a montage of publishers featured on the website discussing the businesses they have created and impact they have had.
10:25

Publishers create the blogs, news, games, tools and videos we all enjoy. But we don’t always get to see the work that goes into building the content on the internet we know and love today. In 2021, the commercial internet helped generate 17 million jobs for Americans — and we’re celebrating just a few of those who were a part of that success.

After sitting down with these publishers, we’ve learned how they use digital ad revenue to grow their businesses, create free and accessible content, impact their communities and most of all, how their passion for their work fuels them to keep serving their audiences.

Check out their stories on Google for Publishers and hear from small and large publishers — in their own words.

Celebrate publisher stories on our new website

Video shows a montage of publishers featured on the website discussing the businesses they have created and impact they have had.
10:25

Publishers create the blogs, news, games, tools and videos we all enjoy. But we don’t always get to see the work that goes into building the content on the internet we know and love today. In 2021, the commercial internet helped generate 17 million jobs for Americans — and we’re celebrating just a few of those who were a part of that success.

After sitting down with these publishers, we’ve learned how they use digital ad revenue to grow their businesses, create free and accessible content, impact their communities and most of all, how their passion for their work fuels them to keep serving their audiences.

Check out their stories on Google for Publishers and hear from small and large publishers — in their own words.

Celebrate publisher stories on our new website

Video shows a montage of publishers featured on the website discussing the businesses they have created and impact they have had.
10:25

Publishers create the blogs, news, games, tools and videos we all enjoy. But we don’t always get to see the work that goes into building the content on the internet we know and love today. In 2021, the commercial internet helped generate 17 million jobs for Americans — and we’re celebrating just a few of those who were a part of that success.

After sitting down with these publishers, we’ve learned how they use digital ad revenue to grow their businesses, create free and accessible content, impact their communities and most of all, how their passion for their work fuels them to keep serving their audiences.

Check out their stories on Google for Publishers and hear from small and large publishers — in their own words.

Earn more from your video streams through automation

What if managing your video streaming business didn’t have to be so complex? What if your team didn’t have to dig through data across devices, apps, live streams and video on-demand to find insights?

We’ve built new solutions in Ad Manager to simplify these processes and save publishers time — helping you automatically uncover new opportunities, manage all your video streams with flexibility and ultimately grow your video revenue.

Automatically uncover new insights

Ad Manager already provides video-specific tools and time-based metrics to help you understand the true potential of every commercial break. But making sense of your video reporting data and finding insights for your business can be a challenging, manual task.

Our new Programmatic Video Health Tools save time by highlighting opportunities you may have missed, right when you log into your account. These granular insights can help you determine why some inventory performs better than others at auction.

A dashboard labeled “Programmatic video signals” with a multi-colored line graph and different advertising metrics.

The programmatic video signals card automatically generates a snapshot of how your video inventory is performing. It shows signals that are important to advertisers, such as viewability, app or web domain name and audience information — plus their impact on revenue. These three dimensions make it easier for advertisers to value your inventory and can help you grow your revenue by identifying where these metrics can improve. Globally, publishers with high programmatic inventory signal coverage see an average 25% revenue uplift compared to inventory with low programmatic inventory signal coverage.[be2de3]

A dashboard labeled “VAST errors” with a multi-colored line graph and different advertising metrics.

We’ve heard from publishers that error reporting for lost ad requests (that can directly impact revenue) requires a lot of manual tasks across multiple video-specific reports. With the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) errors insights card, Ad Manager uses automation to quickly show you the number of errors on your inventory and which line items are causing the errors, so you don’t have to spend time running a custom report.

A dashboard labeled “VAST errors” with a multi-colored line graph and the “line item view” filter selected.

You can even sort the list of line items to find errors with the highest impact on revenue. By surfacing these actionable error insights early, the VAST error insights card can help you increase revenue by fixing misconfigured settings or broken creatives.

Lastly, because we know every publisher has unique business needs, we’ll release a Video Performance Alerts solution to beta to help you automate insights based on specific requirements. With Video Performance Alerts, you’ll be able to create customized email alerts for your choice of campaign metrics and dimensions. For example, you can create an alert for when total impressions across a line item drops below an expected daily threshold. So instead of constantly logging in to check on campaign performance, you’ll get notified automatically.

Identify and fix problems faster with new reporting tools

Quickly finding a problem will help you resolve it sooner and earn more revenue. This is especially important during traffic spikes from large audiences tuning into new episodes or live events. So we created real-time video reporting to help you quickly get the information you need.

With real-time video reporting, we’ve improved historical ad serving data availability by 10x, shortening the time to access performance data to under two minutes — so you can get ad unit or line item level data to find and fix errors before the next commercial break. Keep an eye out for new solutions over the coming quarters to help you identify and solve issues in real time.

A web page titled “Delivery tools” with the subtitle “Inspect ad delivery on a YouTube video.” Underneath are steps to troubleshoot, and to the right is an illustration of a laptop displaying the YouTube logo.

For publishers serving ads to their content on YouTube with Ad Manager, we’ve launched a new troubleshooting tool to open beta. With the YouTube ads delivery tool, you can test ad delivery on YouTube inventory. It lets you see data like ad requests, key-values and details for the winning line items to help you validate and fix issues. To make sure everything is behaving and delivering as expected, you can even test line items and simulate requests.

Supporting your video streaming growth

We hope these new automated solutions and faster reporting tools give you the time and space to focus on growing your business. Look out for more updates this year to help you improve troubleshooting, test your set up and find more insights.

Improved header bidding support in Google Ad Manager

Publishers have a wide range of options to monetize their content online. That's why we’ve built flexibility and a variety of features into Google Ad Manager, giving publishers choice in how they sell ads on their properties. One way many of them choose to sell their inventory is through header bidding, which runs an auction among multiple ad exchanges on a user’s device before calling the publisher’s ad server. Today, about 90% of large publishers use header bidding,[539f3f]with many using a mix of header bidding and server-side solutions like Open Bidding to maximize revenue.

While Ad Manager has always enabled publishers to use header bidding, today we’re introducing new features to improve header bidding support. These updates make it easier for publishers to manage the process and provide new insights on ad performance.

An easier setup process

The current process to set up header bidding can be resource-heavy and time consuming, requiring publishers to set up and manage hundreds to thousands of line items and ad creatives. To simplify this, we’ve developed a new way for publishers to set up header bidding through yield groups.[083ff2]In just a few steps, publishers can make their ad space available to header bidders — similar to how they can specify what ad space they want to sell with Ad Exchange or Open Bidding. The header bidding demand is then included in the unified auction.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working with publishers to test this optional feature and incorporate their feedback into the development process. Over the next couple of weeks, we will open this beta to more publishers and move to open beta this summer.

“The new workflow has made our process of setting up header bidders significantly simpler, allowing our team to focus on more strategic work.”

Evan Pfeffer, VP Programmatic Solutions, Bustle Digital Group

“Using Ad Manager’s yield groups for header bidding solves for the complex setup and maintenance issues when using an independent auction like Prebid. It’s a strong feature and should be considered by any publisher who is intimidated by the technical aspects of header bidding."

Steve Mummey, SVP Digital Ad Revenue & Technology, AccuWeather

"It's been great to partner with Google to test its improved support for header bidding in Ad Manager. Google Ad Manager and Prebid are both important to our business. This enhanced communication between them is an exciting development, and we anticipate this feature will simplify set up work for our ad operations team.”

Patrick McCann, SVP Research, CafeMedia

"We are excited to see Google making strides towards simplifying the header bidding workflow; it's an important step for our industry and one that gives publishers the power of choice. We look forward to working with the team to ensure our publisher partners are able to take advantage of this solution, save time and resources and ultimately drive higher yield."

Mike McNeeley, SVP Product, Index Exchange

Improved reporting for all demand sources

We’ve been working on additional reporting features to give publishers greater insights on header bidding performance. A few months ago, we introduced a new type of Data Transfer file, which shows publishers the amount buyers would have needed to bid in order to win the auction.[083ff2]This allows publishers to share data related to outcomes from Ad Manager auctions with all buyers they work with, including their header bidding partners.

We’re also developing a new reporting feature to provide greater performance insights to publishers who continue to use line items to set up header bidding. Over the next few weeks, we’ll release demand subchannel reporting. With this new feature, Ad Manager will automatically detect which line items are being used for header bidding — allowing publishers to more easily compare header bidding performance alongside their other demand sources.

Greater choice and control for publishers

We strive to give our partners flexibility and choice to best support their business goals. That’s why Ad Manager has always given publishers the option to integrate with the advertising technologies they choose, and we continue to focus on evolving our platform to meet our partners’ needs.

As part of an overall resolution of the French Competition Authority’s (FCA) investigation, we’ve been working with regulators and publishers to develop these features, making it easier to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies. While we still believe header bidding presents drawbacks such as latency and a poor user experience, among others, we remain committed to providing publishers with choice through product interoperability.

We look forward to continuing to test and build on these features with publishers over the coming months, and sharing progress along the way.

Exploring first-party data in our Publisher Privacy Q&A

5 Minutes or Less | Publisher Privacy Q&A Episode 3
10:25

In the third episode of our Publisher Privacy Q&A series, we’re talking about first-party data and its important role in the privacy-centric future of digital advertising.

Questions covered in episode 3:

  1. What is first-party data?
  2. How does first-party data differ from third-party data?
  3. Why is first-party data important?
  4. How can publishers use their first-party data to grow advertising revenue?

Stay tuned for the fourth Publisher Privacy Q&A episode coming in March. In the meantime, check out episodes 1 and 2 of this series.

Your 2022 guide to Google Ad Manager

While 2021 was far from a return to normal, publishers found ways to adapt, innovate and thrive in a rapidly changing environment. To help you keep your business on track in 2022, we're recapping some of last year's biggest tips and resources from Google Ad Manager.

Prepare for a privacy-first future

Use automation to do more with less

Invest in advanced TV video streaming

Build a retail media business

Learn from other publishers

4 ways to set your app business up for success in 2022

2021 has been a big year for app developers — global consumer spend has reached new heights; expectations around digital security continue to shift; and mobile platforms and regulators are introducing changes to better protect user privacy. These will likely continue to be major themes in 2022, so we’re sharing some monetization strategies to help you drive business growth in a fast-evolving landscape.

Diversify your demand sources to deliver more value

As the industry pivots to real-time bidding, strong demand sources can help you make the most of your unique inventory. Access to a diverse range of buyers in particular can deliver strong effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPMs) for your inventory.

Google AdMob supports many demand sources to help you earn more across real-time bidding and waterfall mediation. The AdMob network includes demand from Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and more than 200 demand-side platforms (DSPs). Soon, we’ll introduce software development kit (SDK) integrations with buyers like Snap to further enhance performance — with more to come in 2022. For direct-sold inventory support, you may want to consider Google Ad Manager.

After mobile game developer Me2Zen saw strong performance from the AdMob network, they decided to move to the AdMob platform. The team adopted both bidding and waterfall mediation and saw a 15% increase in their average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU).

Simplify operations to free up resources

An effective suite of tools to manage operational tasks can save time and help you focus on growth. For example, a robust A/B testing strategy can help you decide what levers to pull to optimize performance with confidence. With AdMob, you can set up an A/B test with a few clicks and get actionable insights to earn more.

Onboarding and testing can be another manual and time-consuming task for developers. With tools like ad inspector, you can test adapter setups, demand sources and more with the shake of your hand — which accelerates the testing process and adds a bit of fun.

Animation of a hand shaking a mobile device to demonstrate how the ad inspector tool works.

RisingWings, a fast-growing casual game company, cut operational costs by 50% and saw ARPDAU increase by 8.7% after switching to AdMob. The team took an integrated approach with in-app ads for all their hybrid games, and built a reliable revenue stream without affecting user retention.

Use data and insights to drive growth

The right insights can uncover new opportunities beyond monetization. A broad understanding of user lifetime value (LTV) can help you refine your user acquisition strategy. And insights on how ads influence user retention can help you optimize total revenue while maintaining a good user experience. With resources like the ads activity report and cohort report available on AdMob, you’ll get a clear picture of ads performance and user LTV. You can then use these insights to find more high-value users through solutions like target return on ad spend (tROAS) for ads revenue.

During the transition to a hybrid model, game developer IGG combined LTV data from AdMob with internal ROI analysis to identify new growth opportunities in their top markets. These insights helped the team double their user base by increasing spend on regional App campaigns.

Apply strong brand safety controls to maintain user trust

As people’s expectations around digital privacy continue to rise, it’s critical to build trust through engaging and brand-appropriate ads. While a meaningful ad experience can complement your app and increase trust, a bad experience can lead to an uninstall or, even worse, a loss of trust in your brand.

To ensure brand safety, your platform should have a high bar for the quality of advertiser demand and provide controls to help you deliver an optimal ad experience. With AdMob, you can block ads from certain categories or specific competitors, or use the Ad review center to review ads flowing through the AdMob network and manually block them if needed. We’ll expand these same ad quality controls to third-party buyers participating in bidding in 2022.

We’ve learned so much in an industry that’s changing faster than ever. As we head into 2022, we look forward to continuing to partner together to shape the future of app monetization.