Tag Archives: Ads

YouTube creators are boosting the UK’s brands and economy

‘Creativity’, ‘diversity’ and ‘the economy’ are becoming increasingly associated with one another. The findings from two landmark studies, launching today at YouTube Festival, demonstrate that they are strongly symbiotic.

We have always known that creators are at the core of YouTube’s success and the latestYouTube Impact report by Oxford Economics on the state of the creator economy, highlights the wider, significant economic impact of YouTube’s creative ecosystem in the UK. A second piece of research, Mirrors and Windows, conducted with MTM, explores identity and media choice in the UK and the role and responsibility of brands in improving authentic representation.

This year I celebrated my 15th year at Google and there are some key themes that have progressed significantly during my time here. The main is the growth in sheer reach – new audiences continue to come to us with 96% of online adults in the UK visiting YouTube at least once a month. As a platform that attracts nearly the whole of the UK to our creative content, it should be no surprise that Oxford Economics found that YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed over £1.4billion to the UK’s GDP, with 80% of creative entrepreneurs agreeing that YouTube provides an opportunity to create content and earn money that they wouldn’t get from traditional media.

I hear from creators every day about how our open platform has lowered the barrier to entry for creatives from every corner of the UK, and of every background and demographic. Munya Chawawa, who hosted YouTube Festival, is testament to how YouTube has the power to launch life-changing careers and ensure audiences can find content that reflects the diversity of the UK today. The research reinforced these anecdotes, with 79% of Mirrors & Windows respondents saying that they believe YouTube represents a wide range of voices, people and perspectives, a sentiment that was shared by those who identify as LGBTQ+ and those identifying as Asian, Black, Mixed or multiple, or other ethnic groups. Across the UK, from Scotland to Yorkshire to the South West, users also agree that YouTube has the content that people in the UK love.

Image showing Munya Chawawa at the MOBO Awards, 2021

Munya Chawawa at the MOBO Awards, 2021

While we’ve gained a better understanding of the tremendous benefits that YouTube’s creative ecosystem provides to our economy, society, brands and culture, the agencies and advertisers MTM spoke to indicated that they sometimes still have apprehensions about their ability to speak about the issue of diverse representation without misstepping and facing scrutiny. Saying that, as YouTube continues to introduce new ways to support diverse creatives, it is becoming a powerful vehicle for brands on the road to more inclusive campaigns.

When fashion and beauty destination ASOS, were planning to tell young people that their brand is for people of all sizes, races and celebrates self expression, YouTube was there to connect them with a unique opportunity to amplify this message. ASOS’ partnership with MOBO – a global brand dedicated to celebrating and championing Black culture and music – was a good example of how authentic and inclusive marketing equals reach and brand results, with ASOS’ pre-roll ads reaching almost three million people watching the Awards and associated music content on YouTube alone. The partnership, which also included ASOS sponsoring the Awards’ Best Newcomer category, not only demonstrated YouTube’s ability as a driver of cultural moments, but also its ability to bring brands closer to diverse audiences, deliver strong brand metrics, and support the creative development and distribution of representative content.

While we’ve known this for a while, the insights released today demonstrate that there’s an urgent need for cultural fluency – where brands show not just a familiarity with different cultures but an ability to communicate effectively in different contexts and be able to change and adapt as much as our platform and its audiences are.

I am so excited to continue to work with brands to help them thrive on this open and constantly evolving platform, where engaging with creative talent, ideas and audiences means direct investment in the UK economy, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in the creative industry.

Helping you easily identify information sources in Search

People come to Google to find information from a wide range of sources and formats, from big brands to individual creators, across text, images and video. As we’ve introduced features and design elements to help you explore information in new ways, we’ve also continued to bring greater context to the search results page, helping you make sense of the information you see. Today, we’re making a few new updates to the search page that build on this work, providing even more information about the sites that you see so you can feel confident about the websites you visit.

We’re adding site names to search results on mobile, so you can easily identify the website that’s associated with each result at a glance. We’re also updating the size and shape of the favicon (a website’s logo or icon) that appears in Search, to make it easier to see on the page. We’ll extend these changes to Search ads to increase clarity and advertiser transparency at a glance.

A scrolling GIF of mobile search results featuring site names and favicons on search results and ads, including the word Sponsored.

Part of helping you make sense of the information you see is ensuring that ads are clearly labeled, which is why our label will now be featured on its own line in the top-left corner of Search ads. We also want the label to be prominent and clear across different types of paid content. That’s why when ads show on mobile search results, they will now be labeled with the word “Sponsored” in bold black text. This new label and its prominent position continues to meet our high standards for being distinguishable from search results and builds on our existing efforts to make information about paid content clear.

This search page update is starting to gradually roll out on mobile and we’ll soon begin testing a similar experience on desktop, helping people more easily find what they’re looking for, no matter where they’re searching.

Matt Brittin at DMEXCO on enhancing the ad-supported web

The following is adapted from a speech given by Matt Brittin, President, Google EMEA, at DMEXCOin Cologne.

Across the world, we’re seeing increased uncertainty. We’re living through a pandemic, seeing rising prices, a global energy crisis, increasing climate disasters and a horrific war in Ukraine. Access to quality information has never been more important — to help people search for answers, find ways to save money, make more sustainable choices and stay safe and informed.

But the web as we know it is at risk. People are more concerned than ever about their privacy online. Regulators across the world are demanding a more private internet — with some critics calling for a ban on personalised ads completely.

The future of the web depends on earning people’s trust — building responsible, private advertising to secure a sustainable internet that is safer for people, stronger for businesses and successful for publishers.

A grown-up attitude to responsibility

For generations, ads have funded our favourite content: from newspapers, magazines and entertainment to the web. Today 66% of the world is online. The ad-supported internet model has become a remarkable resource for humanity: putting an explosion of tools, information and content at our fingertips.

But nearly 40 years after its creation, the internet needs a grown-up attitude to responsibility.

As people manage more of their lives online, their concerns over how personal data is gathered, used and shared have increased. People want great online experiences — delivered with the privacy they deserve, by brands they can trust.

For advertisers, that presents a clear responsibility - but also an opportunity. And the good news is this: privacy safe ads are effective ads.

This year, we asked 20,000 Europeans about the consequences of good and bad privacy experiences. Our findings show that users view bad privacy experiences as almost as damaging as a theft of their data. It’s enough to make many of them switch to another brand entirely. And, because the impact of a negative privacy experience outweighs that of a positive one, it’s very difficult to recover from.

Instead, brands need to get it right the first time. People prefer to buy from brands that give them more control over their privacy — almost three quarters said they would prefer to buy from brands that are honest about what data they collect and why.

In times of uncertainty, companies may be tempted to put privacy on the backburner - but that would be a mistake. In tough times you need to invest for the future. Privacy is that investment.

A sustainable, private future for people, publishers and businesses

Making these changes won’t just lead to successful advertising — but a sustainable web.

Digital advertising needs to be safer for people. They need to feel protected online and able to trust what they view. It needs to be successful for publishers — funding quality journalism while giving us access to authoritative and diverse perspectives. And, it needs to be stronger for business — allowing businesses of all sizes the opportunity to grow and build a global customer base.

Across Europe, we’re investing in that vision. We’re one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of journalism, committing billions of dollars every year; we’re delivering authoritative information and creating privacy-first technology.

At our Google Safety Engineering Center in Munich, hundreds of engineers are creating tools and technology that combine two German traditions: exemplary engineering and rigorous privacy standards.

The privacy-first technology they’re creating is minimising the amount of data used, simplifying data downloads and deletion, and helping root out hijacked passwords — building on our shared values and breaking new ground in the global industry.

Today, as part of our commitment to that transition, we’re announcing two new tools.

The first is the Google Ads Privacy Hub, launching today with the rollout starting here in Germany. It will show you the latest on product innovations and how best-in-class marketers are doing it — helping you take the first steps on this journey, whatever your company size.

The second tool we’re launching focuses on users. Last year, 300 million people visited Ad Settings — choosing to make the ads they see more specific to them. So we’ll soon launch the new My Ad Center globally — expanding our existing Ad Settings to give people a single place where they can control the ads they see across Google Search, Discover and YouTube — seeing more of what they like, and less of what they don’t. Because the best ads are helpful, relevant and safe — benefiting the user, and responsible businesses too.

Image showing Matt Brittin on a conference stage in front of a screen.

Matt Brittin speaking at DMEXCO conference

Building the web that people want and deserve

Moving to a world without third-party cookies means rethinking the tech on which much of the web advertising system is built and building new, privacy-first solutions.

We’re doing that through the Privacy Sandbox: sharing and testing new technologies with the industry, while staying on course to deprecate third party cookies by the end of 2024, in line with our commitments to the UK Competition Authority, which we are applying globally.

There are those that say that efforts like the Privacy Sandbox aren’t enough. Some say that we should ban personalised advertising altogether — that “contextual” advertising can fill the gap. But that won’t pay for the web everyone wants.

It has been estimated that if personalised advertising were to suddenly go away, as much as $32 to $39 billion would shift away from those who rely on open web technology — including publishers, at a time where authoritative information has never been more important.

There are others that say that all services should simply be paid for. But that turns the web into a luxury good — shutting billions out. It’s why Netflix, a pioneer of the modern subscription model, and others like Disney Plus and HBO, are introducing ads for users who want — or need — to pay less. Now, the advertising industry is a big tent. There is plenty of room for newcomers.

But recent events underscore how flawed these arguments really are - and unpopular to boot. Research by IAB Europe shows that 75% of Europeans would choose today’s experience of the internet over one without targeted ads, where they would need to pay for access to websites, content and apps.

So there should be no question as to whether the ads-supported internet model is important: only what kind of advertising industry we want to see. We want an advertising industry that makes room for businesses large and small; that supports value for publishers, media and journalism, and that protects people’s privacy from tracking.

A now or never moment

But it’s not just enough to want that future. We have to actually choose it. For online advertising, and the future of the internet, this is a now or never moment: without people’s trust, the future of the ad-supported web is at stake.

The next two years are critical. The industry must embrace the journey and invest in privacy. It has to build stronger relationships with customers, create better ad campaigns and navigate the uncertainty. If we do nothing, the web as we know it will be under threat.

Together, we can build an ad-supported web fit for the future — giving us better content, richer perspectives and further protection online.

Matt Brittin at DMEXCO on enhancing the ad-supported web

The following is adapted from a speech given by Matt Brittin, President, Google EMEA, at DMEXCOin Cologne.

Across the world, we’re seeing increased uncertainty. We’re living through a pandemic, seeing rising prices, a global energy crisis, increasing climate disasters and a horrific war in Ukraine. Access to quality information has never been more important — to help people search for answers, find ways to save money, make more sustainable choices and stay safe and informed.

But the web as we know it is at risk. People are more concerned than ever about their privacy online. Regulators across the world are demanding a more private internet — with some critics calling for a ban on personalised ads completely.

The future of the web depends on earning people’s trust — building responsible, private advertising to secure a sustainable internet that is safer for people, stronger for businesses and successful for publishers.

A grown-up attitude to responsibility

For generations, ads have funded our favourite content: from newspapers, magazines and entertainment to the web. Today 66% of the world is online. The ad-supported internet model has become a remarkable resource for humanity: putting an explosion of tools, information and content at our fingertips.

But nearly 40 years after its creation, the internet needs a grown-up attitude to responsibility.

As people manage more of their lives online, their concerns over how personal data is gathered, used and shared have increased. People want great online experiences — delivered with the privacy they deserve, by brands they can trust.

For advertisers, that presents a clear responsibility - but also an opportunity. And the good news is this: privacy safe ads are effective ads.

This year, we asked 20,000 Europeans about the consequences of good and bad privacy experiences. Our findings show that users view bad privacy experiences as almost as damaging as a theft of their data. It’s enough to make many of them switch to another brand entirely. And, because the impact of a negative privacy experience outweighs that of a positive one, it’s very difficult to recover from.

Instead, brands need to get it right the first time. People prefer to buy from brands that give them more control over their privacy — almost three quarters said they would prefer to buy from brands that are honest about what data they collect and why.

In times of uncertainty, companies may be tempted to put privacy on the backburner - but that would be a mistake. In tough times you need to invest for the future. Privacy is that investment.

A sustainable, private future for people, publishers and businesses

Making these changes won’t just lead to successful advertising — but a sustainable web.

Digital advertising needs to be safer for people. They need to feel protected online and able to trust what they view. It needs to be successful for publishers — funding quality journalism while giving us access to authoritative and diverse perspectives. And, it needs to be stronger for business — allowing businesses of all sizes the opportunity to grow and build a global customer base.

Across Europe, we’re investing in that vision. We’re one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of journalism, committing billions of dollars every year; we’re delivering authoritative information and creating privacy-first technology.

At our Google Safety Engineering Center in Munich, hundreds of engineers are creating tools and technology that combine two German traditions: exemplary engineering and rigorous privacy standards.

The privacy-first technology they’re creating is minimising the amount of data used, simplifying data downloads and deletion, and helping root out hijacked passwords — building on our shared values and breaking new ground in the global industry.

Today, as part of our commitment to that transition, we’re announcing two new tools.

The first is the Google Ads Privacy Hub, launching today with the rollout starting here in Germany. It will show you the latest on product innovations and how best-in-class marketers are doing it — helping you take the first steps on this journey, whatever your company size.

The second tool we’re launching focuses on users. Last year, 300 million people visited Ad Settings — choosing to make the ads they see more specific to them. So we’ll soon launch the new My Ad Center globally — expanding our existing Ad Settings to give people a single place where they can control the ads they see across Google Search, Discover and YouTube — seeing more of what they like, and less of what they don’t. Because the best ads are helpful, relevant and safe — benefiting the user, and responsible businesses too.

Image showing Matt Brittin on a conference stage in front of a screen.

Matt Brittin speaking at DMEXCO conference

Building the web that people want and deserve

Moving to a world without third-party cookies means rethinking the tech on which much of the web advertising system is built and building new, privacy-first solutions.

We’re doing that through the Privacy Sandbox: sharing and testing new technologies with the industry, while staying on course to deprecate third party cookies by the end of 2024, in line with our commitments to the UK Competition Authority, which we are applying globally.

There are those that say that efforts like the Privacy Sandbox aren’t enough. Some say that we should ban personalised advertising altogether — that “contextual” advertising can fill the gap. But that won’t pay for the web everyone wants.

It has been estimated that if personalised advertising were to suddenly go away, as much as $32 to $39 billion would shift away from those who rely on open web technology — including publishers, at a time where authoritative information has never been more important.

There are others that say that all services should simply be paid for. But that turns the web into a luxury good — shutting billions out. It’s why Netflix, a pioneer of the modern subscription model, and others like Disney Plus and HBO, are introducing ads for users who want — or need — to pay less. Now, the advertising industry is a big tent. There is plenty of room for newcomers.

But recent events underscore how flawed these arguments really are - and unpopular to boot. Research by IAB Europe shows that 75% of Europeans would choose today’s experience of the internet over one without targeted ads, where they would need to pay for access to websites, content and apps.

So there should be no question as to whether the ads-supported internet model is important: only what kind of advertising industry we want to see. We want an advertising industry that makes room for businesses large and small; that supports value for publishers, media and journalism, and that protects people’s privacy from tracking.

A now or never moment

But it’s not just enough to want that future. We have to actually choose it. For online advertising, and the future of the internet, this is a now or never moment: without people’s trust, the future of the ad-supported web is at stake.

The next two years are critical. The industry must embrace the journey and invest in privacy. It has to build stronger relationships with customers, create better ad campaigns and navigate the uncertainty. If we do nothing, the web as we know it will be under threat.

Together, we can build an ad-supported web fit for the future — giving us better content, richer perspectives and further protection online.

Robust Online Allocation with Dual Mirror Descent

Posted by Santiago Balseiro, Staff Research Scientist, Google Research, and Associate Professor at Columbia University, and Vahab Mirrokni, Distinguished Scientist, Google Research

The emergence of digital technologies has transformed decision making across commercial sectors such as airlines, online retailing, and internet advertising. Today, real-time decisions need to be repeatedly made in highly uncertain and rapidly changing environments. Moreover, organizations usually have limited resources, which need to be efficiently allocated across decisions. Such problems are referred to as online allocation problems with resource constraints, and applications abound. Some examples include:

  • Bidding with Budget Constraints: Advertisers increasingly purchase ad slots using auction-based marketplaces such as search engines and ad exchanges. A typical advertiser can participate in a large number of auctions in a given month. Because the supply in these marketplaces is uncertain, advertisers set budgets to control their total spend. Therefore, advertisers need to determine how to optimally place bids while limiting total spend and maximizing conversions.
  • Dynamic Ad Allocation: Publishers can monetize their websites by signing deals with advertisers guaranteeing a number of impressions or by auctioning off slots in the open market. To make this choice, publishers need to trade off, in real-time, the short-term revenue from selling slots in the open market and the long-term benefits of delivering good quality spots to reservation ads.
  • Airline Revenue Management: Planes have a limited number of seats that need to be filled up as much as possible before a flight’s departure. But demand for flights changes over time and airlines would like to sell airline tickets to the customers who are willing to pay the most. Thus, airlines have increasingly adopted sophisticated automated systems to manage the pricing and availability of airline tickets.
  • Personalized Retailing with Limited Inventories: Online retailers can use real-time data to personalize their offerings to customers who visit their store. Because product inventory is limited and cannot be easily replenished, retailers need to dynamically decide which products to offer and at what price to maximize their revenue while satisfying their inventory constraints.

The common feature of these problems is the presence of resource constraints (budgets, contractual obligations, seats, or inventory, respectively in the examples above) and the need to make dynamic decisions in environments with uncertainty. Resource constraints are challenging because they link decisions across time — e.g., in the bidding problem, bidding too high early can leave advertisers with no budget, and thus missed opportunities later. Conversely, bidding too conservatively can result in a low number of conversions or clicks.

Two central resource allocation problems faced by advertisers and publishers in internet advertising markets.

In this post, we discuss state-of-the-art algorithms that can help maximize goals in dynamic, resource-constrained environments. In particular, we have recently developed a new class of algorithms for online allocation problems, called dual mirror descent, that are simple, robust, and flexible. Our papers have appeared in Operations Research, ICML’20, and ICML’21, and we have ongoing work to continue progress in this space. Compared to existing approaches, dual mirror descent is faster as it does not require solving auxiliary optimization problems, is more flexible because it can handle many applications across different sectors with minimal modifications, and is more robust as it enjoys remarkable performance under different environments.

Online Allocation Problems
In an online allocation problem, a decision maker has a limited amount of total resources (B) and receives a certain number of requests over time (T). At any point in time (t), the decision maker receives a reward function (ft) and resource consumption function (bt), and takes an action (xt). The reward and resource consumption functions change over time and the objective is to maximize the total reward within the resource constraints. If all the requests were known in advance, then an optimal allocation could be obtained by solving an offline optimization problem for how to maximize the reward function over time within the resource constraints1.

The optimal offline allocation cannot be implemented in practice because it requires knowing future requests. However, this is still useful for framing the goal of online allocation problems: to design an algorithm whose performance is as close to optimal as possible without knowing future requests.

Achieving the Best of Many Worlds with Dual Mirror Descent
A simple, yet powerful idea to handle resource constraints is introducing “prices” for the resources, which enables accounting for the opportunity cost of consuming resources when making decisions. For example, selling a seat on a plane today means it can’t be sold tomorrow. These prices are useful as an internal accounting system of the algorithm. They serve the purpose of coordinating decisions at different moments in time and allow decomposing a complex problem with resource constraints into simpler subproblems: one per time period with no resource constraints. For example, in a bidding problem, the prices capture an advertiser’s opportunity cost of consuming one unit of budget and allow the advertiser to handle each auction as an independent bidding problem.

This reframes the online allocation problem as a problem of pricing resources to enable optimal decision making. The key innovation of our algorithm is using machine learning to predict optimal prices in an online fashion: we choose prices dynamically using mirror descent, a popular optimization algorithm for training machine learning predictive models. Because prices for resources are referred to as "dual variables" in the field of optimization, we call the resulting algorithm dual mirror descent.

The algorithm works sequentially by assuming uniform resource consumption over time is optimal and updating the dual variables after each action. It starts at a moment in time (t) by taking an action (xt) that maximizes the reward minus the opportunity cost of consuming resources (shown in the top gray box below). The action (e.g., how much to bid or which ad to show) is implemented if there are enough resources available. Then, the algorithm computes the error in the resource consumption (gt), which is the difference between uniform consumption over time and the actual resource consumption (below in the third gray box). A new dual variable for the next time period is computed using mirror descent based on the error, which then informs the next action. Mirror descent seeks to make the error as close as possible to zero, improving the accuracy of its estimate of the dual variable, so that resources are consumed uniformly over time. While the assumption of uniform resource consumption may be surprising, it helps avoid missing good opportunities and often aligns with commercial goals so is effective. Mirror descent also allows a variety of update rules; more details are in the paper.

An overview of the dual mirror descent algorithm.

By design, dual mirror descent has a self-correcting feature that prevents depleting resources too early or waiting too long to consume resources and missing good opportunities. When a request consumes more or less resources than the target, the corresponding dual variable is increased or decreased. When resources are then priced higher or lower, future actions are chosen to consume resources more conservatively or aggressively.

This algorithm is easy to implement, fast, and enjoys remarkable performance under different environments. These are some salient features of our algorithm:

  • Existing methods require periodically solving large auxiliary optimization problems using past data. In contrast, this algorithm does not need to solve any auxiliary optimization problem and has a very simple rule to update the dual variables, which, in many cases, can be run in linear time complexity. Thus, it is appealing for many real-time applications that require fast decisions.
  • There are minimal requirements on the structure of the problem. Such flexibility allows dual mirror descent to handle many applications across different sectors with minimal modifications. Moreover, our algorithms are flexible since they accommodate different objectives, constraints, or regularizers. By incorporating regularizers, decision makers can include important objectives beyond economic efficiency, such as fairness.
  • Existing algorithms for online allocation problems are tailored for either adversarial or stochastic input data. Algorithms for adversarial inputs are robust as they make almost no assumptions on the structure of the data but, in turn, obtain performance guarantees that are too pessimistic in practice. On the other hand, algorithms for stochastic inputs enjoy better performance guarantees by exploiting statistical patterns in the data but can perform poorly when the model is misspecified. Dual mirror descent, however, attains performance close to optimal in both stochastic and adversarial input models while being oblivious to the structure of the input model. Compared to existing work on simultaneous approximation algorithms, our method is more general, applies to a wide range of problems, and requires no forecasts. Below is a comparison of our algorithm to other state-of-the-art methods. Results are based on synthetic data for an ad allocation problem.
Performance of dual mirror descent, a training based method, and an adversarial method relative to the optimal offline solution. Lower values indicate performance closer to the optimal offline allocation. Results are generated using synthetic experiments based on public data for an ad allocation problem.

Conclusion
In this post we introduced dual mirror descent, an algorithm for online allocation problems that is simple, robust, and flexible. It is particularly notable that after a long line of work in online allocation algorithms, dual mirror descent provides a way to analyze a wider range of algorithms with superior robustness priorities compared to previous techniques. Dual mirror descent has a wide range of applications across several commercial sectors and has been used over time at Google to help advertisers capture more value through better algorithmic decision making. We are also exploring further work related to mirror descent and its connections to PI controllers.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our co-authors Haihao Lu and Balu Sivan, and Kshipra Bhawalkar for their exceptional support and contributions. We would also like to thank our collaborators in the ad quality team and market algorithm research.

1Formalized in the equation below: ↩

Source: Google AI Blog


Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview 3: Support for conversion measurement, custom audiences, and ad selection

Posted by Fred Chung, Android Developer Relations

Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview 3 

The Privacy Sandbox on Android aims to develop new solutions that preserve user privacy and enable effective, personalized advertising experiences for apps. Since our first developer preview, we've shared progress updates and continue to engage the industry on everything from the Developer Preview timeline, to Topics taxonomy, to SDK version management. We appreciate your feedback!

Today, we’re releasing Developer Preview 3, which includes APIs and developer resources for conversion measurement and remarketing use cases. In addition to the preview of SDK Runtime and Topics APIs released earlier, you can for the first time begin testing and evaluating impact on all key APIs for Privacy Sandbox on Android.


Event-Level and Aggregate Attribution Reporting APIs

These APIs allow developers to measure when an ad click or view event leads to a conversion, such as the download of a new game. They support key use cases for attribution across apps and the web, and improve user privacy by removing reliance on cross-party user identifiers.

This release includes a developer guide and sample apps to help you understand client- and server-side set up and interactions for key parts of the attribution reporting workflow, including:

  • Registering attribution source and trigger events.
  • Receiving event reports and unencrypted aggregatable reports.

    • (Note that aggregatable report encryption is not yet implemented. See the release notes for details.)

To help facilitate testing, the release also supports ADB commands to override reporting time windows. Refer to the API reference to learn more about the Android client APIs.


Custom Audience and Ad Selection APIs

Part of FLEDGE for Android, these APIs provide the building blocks to serve customized ads to users based on previous app engagement, without third-party data sharing. You’ll be able to:

  • Manage Custom Audience membership and observe how its parameter values may affect auction outcomes
  • Fetch JavaScript auction code from remote endpoints
  • Configure and initiate on-device ad auctions
  • Handle impression reporting

To learn more, refer to the Custom Audience and Ad Selection API reference pages, as well as the release notes.


Other key features

If you’re just starting to explore the Developer Preview, please also review the supported features described in the SDK Runtime and Topics API developer guides.

If you need a refresher on key technologies for the Privacy Sandbox on Android, we recommend watching this overview video and reviewing the design proposals.

Get started with the Developer Preview

Today’s Developer Preview release provides the resources you need to begin early testing of features and share feedback. To get started developing, see instructions to set up the SDK and system images on the emulator or supported Pixel devices.

For more information on the Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview, visit the developer site and sign up for our newsletter to receive regular updates.

Expanding our efforts to combat financial fraud in ads

Combating financial fraud in advertising is a top priority. And to do our part in this cross-industry effort, we’re constantly developing new tools and policies that help better protect the people who use our products and our advertising partners from bad actors.

Today we’re updating Google’s financial products and services policy to expand our verification program for financial services advertisers to new countries and markets. This measure creates a new layer of security against fraudsters and will help further safeguard our network from financial scams.

We first launched this program in the UK in September 2021, where financial services advertisers are already required to demonstrate that they’re authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the limited exemptions described on the UK Financial Services verification page. Since we launched this policy in the UK, we’ve seen a pronounced decline in reports of ads promoting financial scams. The success of this program in the UK demonstrates that this is a meaningful and impactful solution to safeguarding people online and gives us the confidence to expand verification to additional countries.

We’ll be rolling out this policy in phases, beginning with Australia, Singapore and Taiwan. As part of the verification process, financial services advertisers in these markets will need to demonstrate that they are authorized by their relevant financial services regulator, and have completed Google’s advertiser verification program in order to begin promoting their products and services. Advertisers will be able to apply for verification at the end of June, and the policy will go into effect on August 30, 2022. Advertisers that have not completed the new verification process by this date will no longer be allowed to promote financial services.

We work tirelessly to make sure the ads we serve are safe and trustworthy, and we know that partnering and collaborating with government regulators is critical to our success. That’s why we’re closely coordinating with regulators in these three markets to make sure this program is effective at scale. In the coming months, we plan to further expand these verification requirements to advertisers in additional countries and regions.

This policy is just the latest step in our longstanding effort to tackle online fraud. We have robust policies in place to prohibit bad actors from deceiving people through tactics such as phishing, using clickbait, or providing misleading information about a product, service or business. We also have strict rules about how advertisers can market financial products such as loans and debt services. Our teams continue to vigorously enforce these policies and combat scammers, using both machine learning and human reviewers to block bad ads. In 2021 alone, we blocked or removed more than 58.9 million ads for violating our financial services policies. And in 2020, we launched our advertiser verification program that will require Google advertisers to verify and disclose information about their businesses, such as where they operate and what they’re selling or promoting. This transparency feature is now live in more than 180 countries and helps people learn more about the company and services behind a specific ad.

We remain committed to this effort and will continue to collaborate with industry and government organizations to lead on necessary changes that help fight evolving tactics from bad actors.

Building the future of marketing together

Technology is powering more business growth around the world than ever before. And new consumer behaviors are redefining the role technology plays in everyday life. We see this in the surge of video watch time, the rise of browsing behavior on Search and the growth in online shopping. There is opportunity in all of this.

With the right tools, you can meet your customers where they are today while building resilience for tomorrow — and Google is here to be your partner. Your insights and feedback are helping shape every investment we’re making across Google Ads.

Throughout Google Marketing Live, you’ll see the many ways we’re working to help you unlock growth for your business and navigate today’s rapidly shifting advertising landscape. Join us at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to hear about Google’s latest product innovations across Ads and Commerce. Here’s a preview of some of those announcements.

Reimagining the future of marketing across Search and YouTube

Consumers are turning to Google Search and YouTube more than ever for help with purchase decisions. In fact, we see over one billion shopping journeys happen across Google every day.[5bfc42]

When it comes to shopping on Google Search, we’ve made the experience more natural and intuitive. Categories like apparel have seen tremendous success as consumers explore information in more visual and browsable ways. Later this year, advertisers will be eligible to show new, highly visual Shopping ads to U.S. customers. These will be clearly labeled as ads and will be eligible to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page.

Reimagining Shopping ads in new, visually engaging search results (U.S.-only search results)

However, nothing can quite replace seeing a product in person or bringing it home to try out. Augmented reality (AR) on cameras gets us close, and shoppers are ready for it. More than 90% of Americans currently use, or would consider using, AR for shopping.[3396f7]Soon, merchants will be able to have 3D models of their products appear directly on Google Search, allowing shoppers to easily see them in their spaces.

Augmented reality in Search provides a fully immersive shopping experience

In the coming months, you’ll also be able to promote your loyalty benefits to potential customers in the U.S. when they’re shopping across Google. Loyalty programs represent a meaningful relationship between you and your customers, and soon you’ll be able to easily integrate them with Google Ads.

A mobile phone screen showing the search query “hair blow dryer brush.” One of the results shows a tag that says “Get free shipping and earn points.”

Showcase your loyalty benefits across Google to consumers in the U.S.

Using Performance Max campaigns — along with a product feed — you’ll be able to drive more online loyalty sign-ups across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

Starting today, your Video action campaigns and App campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts now averages over 30 billion daily views — four times as many as a year ago — and we want to help you reach people immersed in this short-form content.[4cc29a]Later this year, you’ll also be able to connect your product feed to your campaigns and make your video ads on YouTube Shorts more shoppable. We've been experimenting with ads in YouTube Shorts since last year, and we’re now gradually rolling that out to all advertisers around the world. This is an exciting milestone for advertisers, and a key step on our road to developing a long-term YouTube Shorts monetization solution for our creators, which we'll share more about soon.

Product feeds on Video action campaigns will roll out to YouTube Shorts later this year

Delivering better results with automation and insights

The best way to unlock growth for your business is combining your data and marketing expertise with Google’s machine learning. This means building automated products that meet your objectives and are simple to use.

Performance Max campaigns are a powerful tool for helping you meet consumers where they are across Google channels. In fact, advertisers that use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.[ee87c8][3b5bb4]Today, we’re announcing six upcoming additions:

1. More tools for experimentation, like A/B tests to see how Performance Max is driving incremental conversions.
2. Expanded campaign management support in Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app.
3. Support for store sales goals to optimize for in-store sales, in addition to store visits and local actions.
4. Maximize impact with burst campaigns for a set time period to help meet in-store goals during seasonal events.
5. New insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction insights so you know what’s driving performance.
6. Optimization score and recommendations so you can see how to improve your campaign.

Rothy’s, a sustainable brand known for its iconic shoes and accessories, turned to Performance Max to connect with customers across channels. As a result, they increased conversions by 60% and grew revenue by 59%.

Case study video where Rothy’s discusses their experience with Performance Max
10:25

Insights page uses machine learning to identify new pockets of consumer demand and provide personalized trend data. Only Google can surface these types of insights, based on the billions of searches we see every day and the millions of signals we analyze for every ad auction. Today, we’re introducing three new reports that will roll out over the coming months:

1. Attribution insights show how your ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube — to drive conversions.
2. Budget insights find new opportunities for budget optimization and show how your spend is pacing against your budget goals.
3. Audience insights for first-party data show how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving campaign performance.

  • Screenshot of the attribution insights report with a bar graph titled “multi-touch conversion paths”

    Attribution insights show how your ads work together to deliver results

  • Screenshot of the budget insights report that highlights insights for a campaign

    Budget insights show how your budgets are pacing and identify optimization opportunities

  • Screenshot of audience insights report that highlights top performing audience segments

    Audience insights show which customer lists are driving performance

Building resilience in a shifting landscape

At Google we’re driven by a shared goal: to be the most helpful company in the world. But we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. That's why we’re launching innovations like My Ad Center later this year to keep users in control of their privacy and online experience. People will be able to pick the types of ads they want to see more or less of, and control how their data informs ads they see across YouTube, Search and Discover.

Control your ads experience in My Ad Center

And these solutions can and should still work for advertisers. We can both advance privacy and continue supporting the ecosystem.

Join us at Google Marketing Live

What an extraordinary time to be in this industry — my team and I are humbled to be on this journey with you. It’s a big moment for all of us, and I know that we can meet it by working together.

Join us today at Google Marketing Live at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to learn more about these and other ads innovations and commerce announcements. We hope to see you there!

The first developer preview of Privacy Sandbox on Android

Posted by Fred Chung, Android Developer Relations

Blue graphic with privacy icons such as an eye, a lock, and cursor 

We recently announced the Privacy Sandbox on Android to enable new advertising solutions that improve user privacy, and provide developers and businesses with the tools to succeed on mobile. Since the announcement, we've heard from developers across the ecosystem on our initial design proposals. Your feedback is critical to ensure we build solutions that work for everyone, so please continue to share it through the Android developer site.

Today, we're releasing the first developer preview for the Privacy Sandbox on Android, which provides an early look at the SDK Runtime and Topics API. You'll be able to do preliminary testing of these new technologies and evaluate how you might adopt them for your solutions. This is a preview, so some features may not be implemented just yet, and functionality is subject to change. See the release notes for more details on what's included in the release.


What’s in the Developer Preview?

The Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview provides additional platform APIs and services on top of the Android 13 Developer Beta release, including an SDK, system images, emulator, and developer documentation. Specifically, you'll have access to the following:

  • Android SDK and 64-bit Android Emulator system images that include the Privacy Sandbox APIs. See the setup guide.
  • Device system images for Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a (5G), Pixel 5, Pixel 4, and Pixel 4a. This preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we're making it available by manual download only.
  • Developer guides for the SDK Runtime and Topics API.
  • Sample code that demonstrates the implementation of runtime-enabled SDKs and usage of the Topics API, available on GitHub.
  • Privacy Sandbox API reference.

Things you can try

When your development environment is set up, consider taking the following actions:

  • Familiarize yourselves with the technical proposals on the SDK Runtime, Topics, Attribution Reporting, and FLEDGE on Android.
  • Topics API: Invoke the API and retrieve test values, representing a user's coarse-grained interests. See the documentation for detail.
  • SDK Runtime: Build and install a runtime-enabled SDK on a test device or emulator. Create a test app to load the SDK in the runtime and request the SDK to remotely render a WebView-based ad in the app. See the documentation for detail.
  • Review and run the sample apps.
  • For details on capabilities and known limitations in this Developer Preview release, check out the release notes.

Over the coming months, we'll be releasing updates to the Developer Preview including early looks at the Attribution Reporting and FLEDGE APIs. For more information, please visit the Privacy Sandbox developer site. You can also share your feedback or questions, review progress updates so far, and sign up to receive email updates.

Happy testing!

Register for Google Marketing Live: May 24, 2022

"Register now" button with copy that says "Tuesday, May 24 at 9:00 a.m. PT"

It’s almost time for Google Marketing Live, our annual event showcasing the latest product innovations to help your business thrive. This year’s virtual event will take place on Tuesday, May 24 — starting with a keynote from 9:00 - 10:30 a.m. PT that will be livestreamed across the globe.

After the keynote, you’ll be able to join a variety of on-demand breakout sessions designed to help you meet your business goals. Here’s a sample of what’s in store:

  • Supercharge your full funnel video strategy on YouTube
  • Be ready for the future of commerce
  • Achieve better business results today with measurement that prioritizes privacy

And here’s a sneak peek into our speaker lineup:

Headshots of Philipp Schindler, SVP, Chief Business Officer, Google; Jerry Dischler, VP/GM, Ads, Google; Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM, Ads Buying Platforms, Measurement & Ads on Google Properties; Andraéa LaVant, Founder & President, LaVant Consulting; Bill Ready, President, Commerce, Payments & NBU, Google; Tina Edmundson, Global Brand & Marketing Officer, Marriott International

Register now to reserve your (virtual) front-row seat. And keep up with the conversation on social media at #GML2022. See you on May 24th!