Category Archives: Google Ads Developer Blog

The blog for information about the AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and AdMob APIs and SDKs.

More features now available in the AdWords API

Following the release of AdWords API v201506, we've added a few additional features that are available immediately:
  • Android App ‘first open’ conversion tracking. Recently available in AdWords, this new conversion tracking solution measures when a user first opens an app after clicking on an ad and completing an Android app install. Check out the new FIRST_OPEN conversion type in the AppConversion tracker that also supports Postback URLs for Android.
  • A new report specific to final URLs: FINAL_URL_REPORT. The report replaces the deprecated DESTINATION_URL_REPORT and provides statistics aggregated at the final URL level.
We also launched account hiding support recently—see this announcement if you missed it. If you have any questions, feel free to reach us on the forum or via the Ads Developers Plus Page.
 - , on behalf of AdWords API Team.

Handling App Transport Security in iOS 9

The rollout of iOS 9 is expected to come this Fall and will introduce a new privacy feature called App Transport Security (ATS) to enforce best practices in secure connections between an app and its back end. This change may need your action if you are developing with the Google Mobile Ads SDK and building an app against the iOS 9 SDK.

We recommend using HTTPS exclusively if you’re developing a new app. If you’re working on an existing app, we suggest using HTTPS as much as possible and creating a plan to migrate the rest of your app toward ATS compliance.

All iOS 9 devices running apps built with Xcode 7 that don’t disable ATS will be affected by this change. The following log message appears when a non-ATS compliant app attempts to serve an ad via HTTP on iOS 9:

“App Transport Security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure. Temporary exceptions can be configured via your app’s Info.plist file.”

While Google remains committed to industry-wide adoption of HTTPS, there isn’t always full compliance on third party ad networks and custom creative code served via our systems. To ensure ads continue to serve on iOS9 devices for developers transitioning to HTTPS, the recommended short term fix is to add an exception that allows HTTP requests to succeed and non-secure content to load successfully.

Publishers can add an exception to their Info.plist to allow any insecure connection:


<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
</dict>

If you have any questions regarding these changes, feel free to contact us through our forum.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Announcing v201508 of the DFP API

It’s finally here, the release everyone some of you have been waiting for: v201508. I know you’re excited and probably want to go download an updated version of the client library right away, but give me a second to tell you why you should be excited.

We’ve improved the reconciliation services in the DFP Sales Manager API, making for easier updates and reporting. There’s a bunch of changes to trafficking creatives giving you more control and visibility over your creative library. We’re also cleaning house on reporting, making the columns and dimension attributes you know and love that much easier to use.

(see full release notes here).

DFP Core

DFP trafficking objects received a few facelifts in this version.
  • We removed IDs from CreativePlaceholders (don’t worry, they weren’t being used anywhere).
  • On the creatives front, we switched Flash creatives over to use CreativeAssets, which should make duplicating and reusing flash creatives much easier. And we added CreativePolicyViolations to each creative so you can know exactly why a creative or line item was paused.
  • We’ve updated line item creative associations by adding a DeleteLineItemCreativeAssociations action to match UI functionality. It should be noted that deleting them is a permanent action and not simply a change in status. Deleted LICAs will no longer be accessible in the UI or API.

Sales Manager

If it’s been your dream to reconcile your delivery and billing data at the line item level, you should probably sit down for this, because featured in this release is the addition of the ReconciliationLineItemReportService which brings parity to the reconciliation process in the UI.

Additionally, we’re adding a few replacement DimensionAttributes to our ReportService - PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_LAST_RECONCILIATION_DATE_TIME, PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_RECONCILIATION_STATUS, and their LINE_ITEM_* equivalents to use for when you start reconciling line items. See the related blog post on the removal of the RECONCILIATION_RECONCILIATION_STATUS and RECONCILIATION_LAST_DATE_TIME columns found here.

Reporting

We’ve removed all DimensionFilters, as stated earlier this year (ones that have significant usage are replaced with PQL filters), added two new dimensions for ORDER_DELIVERY_STATUS as well as AGGREGATED_DEMAND_CHANNEL, and renamed the Nielsen metrics from NIELSEN_OCR_* to NIELSEN_*.

As a reminder, with each new release comes a new deprecation. If you're using v201408 or earlier, it's time to look into upgrading. If you have any questions about upgrading, let us know on the developer forum.

 - , DFP API Team

Integrating with DFP as a third party

Does your company want to provide third-party services for DFP but is unsure how to get started? If so, you're in luck! We've just published a new guide on how to integrate with DFP as a third party. The guide covers the major topics that new integrators commonly run into:

  • How to get started.
  • How to test your DFP integration.
  • How to properly set up authentication to access a client's network.
  • How to keep up to date with API versions.
  • Where to get support.

All this information can be yours just by visiting our guide.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line on the DFP API forums or the Ads Developer Google+ page.  - , DFP API Team

New Swift samples for the Google Mobile Ads SDK

In response to the growing popularity of Swift development, we’ve added Swift samples for the Google Mobile Ads SDK to our GitHub repo. To make it easier for developers to get started using Swift, we’ve also added Swift code snippets to our Get Started and Interstitial guides.

If you have any questions about using Swift with the Google Mobile Ads SDK, you can reach us on our forum. Remember that you can also find us on Google+, where we post updates on all of our Google Ads developer products.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

IMA HTML5 SDK custom playback changes

On September 16th, 2015, the IMA HTML5 SDK will change how it handles custom playback. In order to provide a more seamless ad experience, custom playback on Android 4.0+ devices will be disabled.

As per a previous change, the SDK only selects custom playback when necessary. Since Android 4.0+ devices support standard rendering, it is no longer necessary to use custom playback on these devices.

What must I do to prepare for this change?

  1. Double check to make sure you’re always passing in your content video element as the custom playback element. Custom playback will still be used in pre-4.0 Android environments.
  2. On mobile, be sure you’re calling AdDisplayContainer.initialize() as a result of a user action. This method is not necessary in custom playback, but it must be called to play ads using standard rendering. Otherwise your ad video will not play. We recommend you always call this method on mobile, so your implementation will be ready for any future devices that support standard rendering.
  3. If your code requires a reference to the <video> element playing the ad, then this change might break your implementation. Instead, check the return value of AdsManager.isCustomPlaybackUsed(). If the value is true, the content video reference will be the same as the ad video reference.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Announcing new releases of the Google Mobile Ads SDK: v7.8 for Android and v7.4.1 for iOS

Today we’re announcing two new versions of the Google Mobile Ads SDK: version 7.8 for Android, and version 7.4.1 for iOS. Those of you using Android Studio can download Google Repository (Rev. 20) to get the latest Gradle artifacts. Eclipse developers will find it listed as Google Play services (Rev. 26) in the Android SDK manager. Publishers with iOS apps can get the latest SDK for that platform by updating their CocoaPods Podfile to pull version 7.4.1 or by downloading it manually. These releases contain a number of stability and performance improvements, as well as some new features — including beta support for MRAID v2.0 on iOS and Android!

MRAID v2.0 Beta

MRAID v2.0 offers a number of new methods that advertisers can use to improve their creatives. Ads using the new standard can store photos, resize themselves on the fly, query screen dimensions, and make calendar events using calls like this:


mraid.createCalendarEvent({
    description: “A big sale at our store!”,
    location: ‘123 Savings Street’,
    start: ‘2015-9-01T09:00-05:00’, 
    end: ‘2012-12-22T10:00-05:00’
});

The new standard creates some great opportunities for increased engagement, so for more info about MRAID, see our iOS MRAID guide, our Android MRAID guide, or the IAB’s specifications document.

Checking ad loading status on Android

In the new Android release, we’ve added an isLoading method to the AdLoader, AdView, and InterstitialAd classes so publishers can check whether an ad request is in progress. If you’re using an AdLoader to fetch a native ad, for example, you can use a call like this to see if the request has completed:


if (!myAdLoader.isLoading()) {
    /* The AdLoader isn’t busy making a request. */
    myAdLoader.loadAd(new AdRequest.Builder().build());;
}

iOS global settings

This SDK release introduces the GADMobileAds class, which provides global settings for controlling certain information collected by the SDK. In-app purchase reporting and crash reporting are enabled by default. However, if you’d like, you can disable these settings in most instances by using the disableAutomatedInAppPurchaseReporting and disableSDKCrashReporting methods. See the global settings guide for more information.

For a full list of Mobile Ads SDK changes, check out our release notes. For technical questions, post them on our forum.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Hiding AdWords accounts now possible via the AdWords API

Starting with v201506 of the AdWords API, you can: With these new features, you can hide old or inactive accounts to reduce clutter in your managed account's dashboard, as well as detect and exclude hidden accounts using the AdWords API.

As with the AdWords user interface, you can only hide or unhide AdWords accounts. Any attempt to hide a manager account will result in a ManagedCustomerServiceError.CANNOT_HIDE_OR_UNHIDE_MANAGER_ACCOUNTS error.

Don't worry -- hiding an account doesn’t affect serving:
  • You can always unhide an account by setting the isHidden attribute of its ManagedCustomerLink back to false.
  • You can retrieve all of your accounts by setting ExcludeHiddenAccounts to false in your selector, or by not specifying a predicate on ExcludeHiddenAccounts.
  • Ads in hidden accounts will continue to serve.
More manager account resources Still have questions? Feel free to visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Make sure your Ads API client library runtime environment is up-to-date!

What's changing?

We’ve updated the runtime requirements of some of our client libraries. Make sure to update your setup to keep your application compatible and secure.

Which libraries are affected?

.NET

As announced in 2014, the .NET client library requires a minimum of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 or Mono version 3.2.8.

Java

As announced in 2014, the Java client library now requires Java 1.6 or higher.

Perl

  • With the release of version 4.0.0 of the AdWords API Perl client library, the minimum version supported is Perl version 5.14.
  • AdWords API Perl client library version 3.5.0 supports Perl 5.8 and will continue to be supported until September with critical bug fixes only.
We updated the minimum required Perl version to 5.14 because the Perl community no longer officially supports the older versions of the language, and our client library relies on CPAN modules that no longer exist for older versions of Perl. With the installation of client library version 4.0.0, please make sure you use Perl 5.14 or newer on your system.

PHP

As announced in 2014, the PHP client library now requires PHP 5.3 or higher.

Python

Depending on whether you’re using Python 2 or 3, the Python client library has differing minimum requirements:
  • Python 2: Requires Python 2.7.9 or higher because this is the earliest version supporting SSL certificate validation.
  • Python 3: Requires Python 3.4 or higher for compatibility with the oauth2client dependency.
Ruby

The Ruby client library has dropped support for Ruby versions 1.8, 1.9, and 2.0, and we will no longer be fixing bugs specifically for those versions.

If you have any question or concerns, visit us on the forums (AdWords API, DoubleClick for Publishers API, DoubleClick Ad Exchange Buyer API), our Google+ page, or a library-specific issue tracker.

Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Sunset of the v201405 DFP API

On Monday, August 31, 2015, in accordance with the deprecation schedule, v201405 of the DFP API will be sunset. At that time, any requests made to v201405 will return errors.

If you're still using v201405, now's the time to upgrade to the latest release and take advantage of fresh new features like DeliveryForecasts. To do so, check the release notes to identify any breaking changes, grab the latest version of your client library and update your code.

Some changes to look out for:

This is not an exhaustive list, so as always, don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.

 - , DFP API Team