Audience Explorer unlocks first-party data insights

If you’re hoping to attract new advertisers and earn the most value from your first-party data, it’s critical to explain what makes your audiences special. But it often takes technical skills or data expertise to develop insights that add order and meaning to your data. 

To help simplify this process and increase the value of publishers’ first-party data, in the coming weeks we’ll be launching Audience Explorer for partners using Google Ad Manager's Audience Solutions — a suite of premium features that enable publishers to ingest, build, activate and now analyze first-party audience segments within the platform. 

Audience Explorer was built to help publishers better understand and activate their first-party audience data. Without needing advanced tools or technical capabilities, publishers will be able to analyze their audience segments, develop enhanced narratives about their data and optimize their monetization strategies for both reservation and Programmatic Direct deals.

Easing access to audience insights

Audience Explorer delivers new dashboards and improved workflows that help publishers who are investing in first-party data strategies more easily understand their audiences. To ensure the new capabilities met the needs of publishers, we worked with over a dozen global partners to help develop and test the new solution. 

“Macy's Media Network uses a data-driven approach to connect our shoppers with brands through a wide range of digital advertising services. Ad Manager's Audience Explorer tool helps us manage and scale our first party audiences to effectively plan and deliver targeted media for our advertising partners.”

- Melanie Zimmermann, Vice President, Macy’s Media Network, Macy’s 

“Partnering with Ad Manager on the development of Audience Explorer has been important for our first-party data initiatives. With more than 100 million monthly active users across our 1,200+ communities, the new dashboard will help us better understand our audiences and package our inventory in new, compelling ways for our advertiser clients.”

- David Domitrovic, Director, Data Strategy & Analytics, VerticalScope

Integrating the feedback we received, Audience Explorer allows publishers to visualize and interpret their first-party data in a variety of different ways. Partners can now explore the composition and behavior of a single audience segment, compare two segments side by side, or even overlap segments to better understand the similarities or differences in membership. Here are a few different ways publishers can benefit from Audience Explorer.

Scorecard table

When an Ad Manager user navigates to Audience Solutions in the platform, they’ll now be able to click on the title of an audience segment to open the new Audience Explorer dashboard. At the top of the dashboard, users will see the segment’s Scorecard. The Scorecard provides a quick snapshot of an audience segment over a specified period of time. High-level metrics in the Scorecard, like total unique identifiers or total ad impressions, can help publishers quickly understand which segments offer enough scale for the deals they're working on.

Scorecard table at the top of the Audience Explorer dashboard

See top level insights on your first-party audience segments

Audience Explorer tab

The Audience Explorer tab in the dashboard features a collection of visual Insights Cards that provide new ways to think about, market and improve the performance of first-party audience segments. These interactive cards help publishers visualize things like what time of day different audiences are most active and which ad units are seen most often. For additional flexibility, the cards can also be toggled to visualize data by either the number of unique audience identifiers or the total number of ad impressions from users in a segment.

Audience Explorer dashboard that uses Insights cards to visualize data from first-party audience segments

Use the Audience Explorer tab to learn more about a first-party segment

Segment comparison tool 

The comparison tool in the Audience Explorer dashboard enables publishers to compare two first-party segments side by side in a single Insight Card. This visualization helps publishers understand which audiences may fit an advertisers needs more closely, or how two different segments could be best used together in a single campaign.

Audience Explorer dashboard that features Insights Cards visualizing the data from two first-party audience segments side by side

Compare and contrast two first-party audience segments side by side

Segment overlap tab 

The segment overlap tool helps publishers understand how distinct each audience segment is. With this tool, partners will be able to explore metrics like the number of unique cookies, cookie overlap, unique impressions and impression overlap. By understanding what percentage of members belong to multiple audience segments, publishers will have a clearer understanding of unique reach when packaging multiple segments together for their advertiser clients.

Audience segment table that evaluates two or more first-party audience segments by showing bar graphs indicating what percentage of the list’s data points are unique versus others

Overlap multiple first-party audience segments to explore compositions

Investing in first-party solutions

Audience Explorer builds on our first-party data announcements from earlier this year, and reinforces our commitment to develop new identity and data solutions for our partners. We strongly encourage publishers to invest or continue their investments in privacy-secure, first-party audience signals for their advertiser clients as well. 


Looking to get started with first-party audience data in Ad Manager? Sign up to join our upcoming webinar, Using Publisher Provided Identifiers to activate first party audiences, on August 11, 2021. In this session you’ll learn how to build and ingest first-party audiences in Ad Manager, how you can use Audience Explorer to learn more about these audiences and how you can market inventory and execute campaigns using your first-party data.

Pharaoh’s Conclave levels up opportunity in gaming

It’s far from just fun and (video) games:  esports is a rapidly-growing $1.5 billion industry.In 2020 alone, there was a 70% increase in the number of eSports viewers in the U.S., and it’s expected to total 474 million viewers by the end of this year.There are a range of lucrative careers in the competitive video gaming industry:  professional player, announcer, coach, tournament organizer and game developer and designer, just to name a few. But not everyone is exposed to these opportunities. 


As a lifelong gaming enthusiast and an educator with a PhD in computer science, I was concerned that Black and Brown school-aged kids and older youth weren’t being drawn to work in technology in general and esports in particular. While Black and Latinx youth in the U.S. spend more time per day on both mobile and console games than white youth, they make up less than 6% of the professional video game industry as adults. So my husband, Erich, and I founded Pharaoh's Conclave (PCX), a platform, league and apprenticeship program that creates pathways for meaningful careers and wealth generation for Black and Brown youth.  

Pharaoh’s Conclave cofounders Jakita O. Thomas, Ph.D. (left) and Erich P. Thomas (right) stand next to each other, looking at camera.

Jakita O. Thomas, Ph.D. (left) and Erich P. Thomas (right), cofounders of Pharaoh’s Conclave

Pharaoh's Conclave is on a mission to prepare the next generation of the esports workforce — and open opportunities to marginalized communities — by providing K-12 and collegiate youth with access to industry tools, training and professional mentors. By connecting PCX youth with mentors who understand firsthand the way these students move through the world, we’re able to foster organic relationships that create impact and opportunities in the industry. More than 50 PCX program graduates have gone on to full-time careers in esports, transitioning from mentee to mentor. You make real change by starting at the grade level and giving youth the steps to achievement, all with the critical support of the community behind them. 

Working with kids is similar to raising kids: it takes a village. We understood that PCX couldn’t change the face of esports alone — and we also knew that tech is grappling with the same diversity problems as the gaming industry. Less than ​​1%of total venture capital funding in the United States went to Black founders in 2020. Receiving a $100,000 non-dilutive cash award from the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund not only empowered us to create economic opportunities for Black and Brown youth, but also fueled wealth generation in our community. Collectively, in just six months the first group of the Black Founders Fund recipients raised an additional $38 million in outside capital.

The investment from Google paved the way for additional wins, including a grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, several new partnerships, and requests from multiple county and state entities across the Southeast to provide programming for K-12  and college students. The support empowered us to generate revenues from Level Up Academy (our online learning platform) and hire a professional software design team.  We’ve also established a formal apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department  of Labor the first of its kind for gaming. 

When you solve problems for the most marginalized people, you actually solve problems for everyone. When you fund Black founders, you elevate the entire community.  We will push the industry forward by working together — and by saving competition for the games themselves, instead of for access to the gaming industry. 

New support for Southeast Asia’s COVID-19 response

In many parts of Southeast Asia and beyond, the impact of COVID-19 remains severe. More than 18 months after the virus first began spreading, high caseloads and new variants are putting pressure on health systems. It’s a difficult time for people across the region, and heartbreaking for those who’ve lost loved ones.  


Vaccines offer a path to stability and recovery, and Google is working closely with governments, health authorities and nonprofits as inoculation programs roll out. But there’s also an urgent need for the equipment that health workers depend on as they battle the pandemic and care for patients on the front lines. 


Today, through our philanthropic arm, Google.org, we’re announcing a new, $2.5 million grant to help UNICEF and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) — as well as partners on the ground — scale up the COVID-19 response in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Pakistan.This will provide critical, life-saving support to the people who need it most.


In addition to funding this immediate medical response, Google.org will provide a further $5 million in ad grants so local government agencies and organizations like UNICEF can run public information campaigns — ensuring important health messages reach the widest possible audience.   


The new Google.org funds are part of Google’s broader contribution to the response to COVID across Asia-Pacific, including in Southeast Asia. In partnership with health authorities, we’re sharing the latest health information and supporting news sources people can trust. We’re also contributing in every way we can to Southeast Asia’s economic recovery, from providing small business owners and workers with digital skills training to fostering the next generation of startup founders. Through a separate Google.org grant, we’re helping ASEAN, the Asia Foundation and local nonprofits close digital divides in marginalized communities. 


And we continue to be humbled and inspired by the generosity of Googlers. Our global employee giving campaign — matched by Google.org and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — has helped fully vaccinate more than 1 million people globally. Here in Southeast Asia, Googlers have donated $80,000 and counting for local nonprofits’ COVID response efforts in Indonesia and Vietnam.  


We’re sending our best wishes for safety and wellbeing to everyone affected by the pandemic throughout the region. Looking ahead, we’ll keep standing with the communities we serve — and working with our partners to shape a sustainable recovery for the long term. 


Expanding our cloud infrastructure to support Australia’s digital future

Even pre-pandemic, the adoption of cloud services was on the rise as organisations looked to drive digital transformation for business resilience and innovation. The impact of COVID-19 has only served to accelerate this momentum. As we continue to support the digital future of businesses, we are launching our second Australian Cloud region in Melbourne, Victoria. 

In 2017 we launched our first Cloud region in Sydney and, since then, we have continued to invest and expand across Australia in an effort to support the digital future of businesses. According to AlphaBeta, Google Cloud delivers almost AU$3.2 billion in annual gross benefits to business and consumers in Australia, including AU$686 million to our customers and AU$698 million to our partners.

The Melbourne Cloud region represents one part of our continued expansion in cloud infrastructure to support Australia’s digital future, and is a strong reflection of our commitment to enabling our Cloud customers and partners to continue growing, innovating, and driving digital transformation forward in the region.

Of the launch, Victorian Minister for Government Services Danny Pearson said, “We welcome Google’s investment in local cloud infrastructure that will support the growing cloud requirements of Victorian businesses.”


Our investment in local cloud infrastructure

Melbourne joins the existing 26 Google Cloud regions connected via our high-performance global network, helping customers benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and leverage the cleanest cloud in the industry. Through our second Cloud region in Australia, customers will benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, all while maintaining data sovereignty in-country.

Designed for high availability, the region opens with three availability zones to protect against service disruptions; we're the first hyperscaler to provide this capability in Melbourne today. It offers a portfolio of key products, including Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner and BigQuery.

We also continue to invest in expanding connectivity across the Australia and New Zealand region by working with partners to establish subsea cables, including INDIGO and JGA South, and points of presence in major cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Auckland. We also work with interconnect partners to extend the reach of our secure network.


Helping customers in the era of the transformation cloud

Navigating the past year has been challenging for Australian organisations as they grapple with changing customer demands and greater economic uncertainty. Technology has played a critical role in managing these changes, and we’ve been fortunate to partner with and serve people, companies and government institutions to help them adapt, including Australia Post, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and Optus. Hear more about what they have to say here. 


A shared responsibility for quality journalism

Today we are publishing a paper that draws from our decades-long experience working with news publishers and journalists. It offers some ideas for constructive paths forward to foster the sustainability of the quality journalism that informs and strengthens communities, and elevates the essential stories in our lives. This paper includes possible areas for public policy support, such as incentive structures, innovation programs and projects to share best practices. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas, we are publishing it to contribute to the wider discussion.

Supporting journalism has always been important to Google. As a company whose mission focuses on access to information, and whose success depends in large part on having a diverse open ecosystem of quality information, we are committed to helping find a path to a sustainable future for journalism. It's why 20 years ago, we built Google News to help connect people to stories that impact their daily lives. We launched the Google News Initiative to support news publishers in their transition to a digital world; we do this through tools, technology and significant financial support for both existing newsrooms and new, diverse online news outlets and projects. More recently, we launched Google News Showcase, through which we pay publishers to create and curate quality content for a new online news experience. 

Quality journalism enables communities to learn and share essential information, establish shared, accurate understandings of key public developments, and hold elected officials and institutions to account. And in this information age it has never been more essential for democratic discourse and social well-being. But digitization has challenged the underlying commercial model. That said, ensuring a sustainable, vibrant future for quality journalism needs to be done thoughtfully, and as a collective endeavor. 

Sensible public policy can be a key component to addressing these challenges; such policy will work best if it is informed by a robust dialogue among a diverse range of stakeholders including publishers, journalists, policymakers, civil society and the private sector. We must identify the underlying challenges and consider novel solutions. 

In the paper we are publishing today, we discuss three foundational proposals that we believe could help inform public policy approaches to supporting the future of quality journalism:

  1. Convening cross-sector experts to identify focus areas and collaborate on shared solutions;
  2. Investing in newsroom innovation and experimentation to identify and support sustainable business models; and 
  3. Providing support for legacy institutions as they go through the digital transformation. 

There are no easy solutions to the complex set of challenges facing the news industry today, which is why we have been working for years to support legacy newsrooms and new entrants focused on providing local news and quality journalism.  The challenge is urgent – and across society we must work together to create sustainable solutions to these issues.

The experiences and lessons we describe in this paper would not have been possible without the valuable input we’ve received from the news partners we have worked with and learned from over the years. While there may be no simple solution, we are eager to listen, learn more and help drive innovation to support a successful public policy approach that results in a vibrant journalism ecosystem.

Google Ads API v6 sunset reminder

Google Ads API v6 will sunset on September 8, 2021. After this date, all v6 API requests will begin to fail. Please migrate to a newer version prior to September 8, 2021 to ensure your API access is unaffected.

We've prepared various resources to help you with the migration: If you have questions while you’re upgrading, please reach out to us on the forum or at [email protected].
 - , Google Ads API Team

Investing in Cloud Connectivity to Serve Kiwi Businesses

If there’s one thing we know for sure, COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of digital transformation in companies across New Zealand, and the Cloud has played a critical role in helping organisations build for the future.

Today we’re pleased to share that we’re investing in our cloud infrastructure to provide best-in-class connectivity to Google Cloud customers in New Zealand and Australia. 

First, we’re bringing a Dedicated Cloud Interconnect to Auckland this month. This will provide direct physical connections between an organisation’s on-premises network and Google's global network, thereby making it easier for customers to access a range of Google Cloud products and services.

Secondly, we’re launching our Melbourne Cloud region today, our second within ANZ since we launched our Sydney region in 2017. Designed for high availability, the region opens with three zones which enables us to deliver two geographically separated cloud regions to our Kiwi customers to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery while maintaining the reliability of their data. 

Collectively, these investments will deliver geographically distributed and secure infrastructure to customers across New Zealand, enabling them to take advantage of the cleanest cloud in the industry.

Trade Me talked about their decision to migrate from their on-premise data centers to run on Google Cloud. Paolo Ragone, Chief Technology Officer said, “We moved to Google Cloud to improve the stability and resilience of our infrastructure and become more cloud-native as part of a digital transformation program that keeps the customer at the heart of our business. We welcome Google Cloud’s investment in ANZ and what they present to improve Trade Me’s agility and performance.”

 

As organisations continue to look to cloud services to drive the digital transformation of their businesses. Google Cloud is here to help businesses become smarter with data, deploy faster, connect more easily with people and customers throughout the globe, and protect everything that matters to their businesses. Our investments in connectivity and cloud infrastructure are a catalyst for this change, and we look forward to seeing how customers and partners grow, innovate, and drive digital transformation forward in the region.


Post content Posted by Matthew Zwolenski, Director of Cloud Customer Engineering, Australia & New Zealand.

Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Stable

Posted by Amanda Alexander, Product Manager, Android

Live Edit of Literals: edit strings and see it reflected immediately in Preview

We are excited to announce that Android Studio Arctic Fox is now available to download in the stable release channel. This latest release brings to life Jetpack Compose 1.0, Android's new toolkit for building native UI. The release also focuses on devices, including Wear OS, and helps with developer productivity, with features like a new Background Task Manager. We used your feedback to create this suite of new Android Studio features that will help empower the developer community to create high quality, modern apps across devices faster!

Note: As we announced last year, we adjusted our version numbering of Android Studio to match the year and version of the IntelliJ IDEA that Android Studio is based on, plus our own patch number. We will be using code names (in alphabetical order); the first is Arctic Fox and the next is Bumblebee (currently in canary).Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) updates Android Studio to version 2020.3 of the IntelliJ platform which adds a slew of new features including debugger interactive hints, VCS updates, and several new code editor enhancements to speed up your workflow. Learn more.

To support rapid design of modern UI, we added additional features for Jetpack Compose. Compose Preview lets you create previews of multiple components of your Compose UI to instantly see the impact of your changes across dimensions (such as themes, screen and font sizes, and more). The Deploy Preview to device feature enables deploying snippets of your Compose code directly to a device or emulator so you can quickly test small parts of your code. If you want to dive deeper into your Layouts, we added Compose support to the Layout Inspector to help you understand how your layouts are rendered. Additionally, we added Live Editing of literals so you can instantly see your Compose code changes in previews and when running your app on an emulator or physical device without the need for compilation.

For increased device support, we built a new Wear OS pairing assistant to simplify the pairing of Wear OS emulators with physical or virtual phones. To use the newest Wear OS version, you can now access the developer preview of the Wear OS 3 system image. When you run the Wear OS emulator, you will also find added support for the Heart Rate Sensor API. For apps targeting Google TV, we added the newest Google TV Remote Control features and updated the Google TV system images to reflect the latest UI design. Additionally, we have completed the development and testing workflow for the Automotive OS by enabling the emulator to use car sensor data to simulate driving use cases. For apps targeting tablets, we have updated all templates to support landscape out of the box. Whether you are developing for small or large screen devices, we have included new features to help you keep innovating and building amazing apps.

Lastly, in an effort to boost developer productivity, we have added features to help you work more efficiently. For example, we added lint checks for Android 12 to provide guidance on building apps for the next version of Android. To help you test your code, we added an Accessibility Scanner for Layout Editor so you can more easily identify accessibility issues in your layouts and the new Test Matrix lets you view test results in real time across multiple devices in parallel. Additionally, we added preview support for Apple Silicon (arm64) hardware and extended the emulator controls for wider coverage in testing. Lastly, for debugging, the new Background Task Inspector helps you to analyze your app's background workers.

There are many enhancements to Android Studio Arctic Fox. To see the full list of changes, view the Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Beta release blog and release notes. You can take a look below at some highlights of the changes.

What's new in Android Studio Arctic Fox

Design

Use the @Preview annotation to generate previews of Compose code and visualize the different configurations of multiple components (e.g. devices or themes). Compose Preview can make it simpler for you to construct a mental mapping of the composables in your code.

Compose preview

Compose Preview

Layout Inspector for Compose

For both apps written fully in Compose and apps with some Compose alongside Views, Layout Inspector makes it possible to get more details on your layouts and troubleshoot. For example, you will be able to see the parameters and modifiers passed to each composable. There is an option to turn on Live Updates to stream data from your device as you develop your app.

Compose Layout Inspector

Compose Layout Inspector

Live Edit of literals

You can now ​​quickly edit literals (strings, numbers, booleans, etc.) inline and see the immediate results on the change on screen (previews, emulator, or physical device), without having to compile.

Live Edit of Literals: edit strings and see it reflected immediately in Preview

Live Edit of Literals: edit strings and see it reflected immediately in Preview

Devices

Wear OS Pairing

The new Wear OS Pairing assistant will help walk you through the pairing process to make pairing Wear OS emulators with virtual or physical phone simple. Note that this feature assists with pairing with Wear OS 2 companion; support for Wear OS 3 will be coming soon. Learn more.

Wear OS emulator pairing assistant dialog

Wear OS emulator pairing assistant dialog

Phone + Watch emulators paired successful state

Phone + Watch emulators paired successful state

Developer Productivity

Background Task Inspector

You can use the new Background Task Inspector to visualize, monitor, and debug your app's background workers when using WorkManager library 2.5.0 or higher on a device running API level 26 and higher. You can access it by selecting View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar. Learn more.

background task inspector

To recap, Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Stable includes these new enhancements & features:

Design

  • Compose Preview
  • Compose Layout Inspector
  • Deploy Preview to Device
  • Live Edit of literals

Devices

  • Wear OS Pairing
  • Heart Rate Sensor
  • New Wear OS system images
  • Google TV Remote Control
  • Google TV system Images
  • Automotive OS Sensor Replay
  • Templates support for Tablets

Developer Productivity

  • IntelliJ 2020.3.1
  • Android 12 lint checks
  • Non-transitive R classes Refactoring
  • Apple Silicon Support Preview
  • Android Emulator Extended Controls
  • Background Task Inspector
  • Accessibility Scanner in Layout Editor
  • Test matrix
  • Memory Profiler new recording UI
  • AGP Upgrade Assistant Improvements
  • C++ editor: Set execution point in debugger

Check out the Android Studio release notes, Android Gradle plugin release notes, and the Android Emulator release notes for more details.

Getting Started

Download

You can download the latest version of Android Studio Arctic Fox from the download page and download the Apple Silicon preview build here. If you are using a previous release of Android Studio, you can simply update to the latest version of Android Studio. If you want to maintain a stable version of Android Studio, you can run the stable release version and canary release versions of Android Studio Arctic Fox at the same time. Learn more.

We appreciate any feedback on things you like, and issues or features you would like to see. If you find a bug or issue, feel free to file an issue. Follow us -- the Android Studio development team ‐ on Twitter and on Medium.

Try the new Google Ads scripts experience

Today we’re launching the beta version of the new Google Ads scripts experience. Existing scripts won’t be affected, but if you're interested in trying some new features and performance improvements, you can opt in on an individual script basis. To do so, open your script and switch on the new scripts experience (Beta) toggle above the code:

The code works on the same interface you've been using all along, so your existing scripts will be compatible with minimal changes.

Some highlight features include:
  • Support for ES6, including let, classes, for..of loops, and more.
  • Improved throughput, meaning you can process more entities in the same amount of time. We've also removed the entity limits on processing, although time limits remain in place.
  • More control over setting up and maintaining bidding strategies.
The beta doesn’t currently support manager account scripts or bulk uploads, but watch out for those features in a future update.

See our developers site for full information on the new experience, including migration information, performance improvements, and updated best practices.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding the new experience, please leave a post on our forum so that we can help.
- Mike Cloonan, Google Ads Scripts Team