Tag Archives: AdSense

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

Hindi content is key to growing an audience in India

Late last year we announced Hindi as the first Indic language supported by AdSense. Which means that you can earn money by displaying Google AdSense ads on Hindi webpages.


But why does Hindi matter? If you have a large user base in India; or you’re looking to grow in this strategic emerging market; catering your content to Hindi speakers is key. Check out this infographic to learn more:




Keen to start creating? Here are our top five tips for publishing Hindi content online:


1. Create Hindi content that's unique and provides value to your users.
Check out Google Trends in Search and YouTube to see what’s popular in India right now. You can also see a selection of high quality Hindi content from fellow publishers at hindiweb.com.


2. Get a professional translation, or have a native speaker review your content.
If you plan to translate your site for Hindi speakers, ensure you provide good quality translations. Avoid auto-translation as it risks a low quality user experience. Read the Webmaster Quality Guidelines to learn more.


3. Be multi-screen and fast-loading.
Delight users with a mobile-friendly site that works well even on low-bandwidth connections. Explore these multi-screen guidelines to get your site ready.


4. Use Devanagari script.
Access up to 40 free, beautiful fonts for publishing your Hindi content and benefit from better indexing of your site. Select Devanagari script at Google Fonts to add fonts to your collection.


5. Monetize with Google AdSense.
You can use your existing Google AdSense account and create a new ad unit to get started. If you’re new to AdSense, sign up now.


We look forward to seeing the content you create in Hindi.

Posted by Amelia Walkley, Marketing Communications Specialist, Google AdSense

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

[Infographic] Hindi content is key to growing an audience in India

Late last year we announced Hindi as the first Indic language supported by AdSense. It means you can earn money by displaying Google AdSense ads on Hindi webpages.

But why does Hindi matter? If you have a large user base in India; or you’re looking to grow in this strategic emerging market; catering your content to Hindi speakers is key. Check out this infographic to learn more:
Keen to start creating? Here are our top five tips for publishing Hindi content online:

1. Create Hindi content that is unique and provides value to your users.
Check out Google Trends in Search and YouTube to see what’s popular in India right now. You can also see a selection of high quality Hindi content from fellow publishers at hindiweb.com.

2. Get a professional translation, or have a native speaker review content.
If you plan to translate your site for Hindi speakers, ensure you provide good quality translations. Avoid auto-translation as it risks a low quality user experience. Read the Webmaster Quality Guidelines to learn more.

3. Be multi-screen and fast-loading.
Delight users with a mobile-friendly site that works well even on low-bandwidth connections. Explore these multi-screen guidelines to get your site ready.

4. Use Devanagari script. 
Access up to 40 free, beautiful fonts for publishing your Hindi content and benefit from better indexing of your site. Select Devanagari script at Google Fonts to add fonts to your collection.

5. Monetize with Google AdSense.
You can use your existing Google AdSense account and create a new ad unit to get started. If you’re new to AdSense, sign up now. 

We look forward to seeing the content you create in Hindi.





Posted by Amelia Walkley
Marketing Communications Specialist

Source: Inside AdSense


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

Manual ad break playback in the IMA SDKs

We recently launched manual ad break playback across our iOS, Android, HTML5, and Flash SDKs. For more info on what this means and how to use it, read on!

What is manual ad break playback?

Under a standard IMA SDK implementation, when an ad rules or VMAP response is returned, the SDK will automatically play each ad break at its cue point. With manual ad break playback, the SDK will instead fire an event when it’s time to play an ad break, and let you decide if or when you’d like to play it.

What are the implications of this change?

If you’re happy with your current ad rules or VMAP performance, this change doesn’t require you to do anything - your implementation will continue to work just as it does now. If you’d like more fine-tuned control over ad break playback timing, then we recommend using this feature.

What are the benefits of this change?

We see two major areas in which this change will help publishers. The first is when a user starts a stream somewhere in the middle of the content instead of at the beginning. (The most common scenario is that the user watched part of the video previously, left the app or page, and returned to continue watching the rest of the video). With a standard implementation, the user will be greeted by (in some cases) a pre-roll, followed by the most recent mid-roll that they watched previously, then the content. By using manual ad break playback you can prevent the pre- or mid-roll (or both) from playing so that the user can go straight to the content, and then resume mid-rolls when the user sees their first mid-roll break for the new session.

The second major use case is misaligned ad breaks. If you’re playing long form content with mid-rolls, and your video fades in and out for mid-roll breaks, you want to make sure that your ad breaks properly align with those fades. In some cases, publishers have told us that the ad break scheduling changes slightly between pieces of content, causing the ad to cut off content for some streams. With this new system, if you know exactly when an ad break should play, you can listen for the AD_BREAK_READY event and delay the ad break playback until the exact time your stream is ready for it.

How do I implement this new feature?

We have guides for each of the SDKs on implementing this new feature:

As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Increasing advertiser competition on your site with the new richer text ads

To help you make more money for your image-only ad units, we previously launched the magazine ad format. Today, we’re happy to introduce richer text ads, a new ad format that automatically creates image ads from text ads. The new richer text ads compete both for your text and display, and display-only ad units and could increase your earnings even more.

This new ad format, inspired by material design, adheres closely to the advertiser’s brand by using their logos and brand colors. This enables brand advertisers who are particularly sensitive to how their text advertisements are displayed to spend more on the Google Display Network, thereby increasing competition for the ad units on your site.


If you currently have text and display or display-only ads on your site, richer text ads will automatically be set up for your site. If you’d prefer not to show richer text ads, you can disable them through the Enhanced display ads option in the Allow & block ads tab in your account.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on our new richer text ad format! Share your feedback in the comments section below this post.



Posted by Daniel Kaemmerer
AdSense Product Manager

Source: Inside AdSense


New features in AdWords Scripts

We have made the following changes to AdWords scripts.

Full screen mode for Scripts IDE

You can now toggle fullscreen mode for the Scripts IDE by clicking the Expand icon on the top right corner of the editor toolbar.


Clear methods for Upgraded URLs

We have added new methods to clear various fields in Upgraded URLs: Clear methods for sitelink descriptions

You can now use the clearDescription1() and clearDescription2() methods to clear the corresponding description fields in the Sitelink, AdGroupSitelink and CampaignSitelink classes.

Sunset support for updating destination URL

As previously announced, support for updating destination URL has been sunset completely. If any of your scripts use this field, make sure you upgrade your scripts to use the upgraded URL fields. We have also added clearDestinationUrl() to the Keyword class and clearLinkUrl() to various ad extension classes. These methods may be used to clear the destination URL field when you upgrade your URLs.

See our sunset tracker page for more details.

If you have any questions about this feature or AdWords scripts in general, you can post them on our developer forum.

Anash P. Oommen, AdWords Scripts Team

Announcing v2.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API

Today we are releasing v2.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. Highlights of this release include:
  • User requested enhancements: You asked and we listened! Based on your feedback, new fields--such as computed click-through URL for ad creative assignments--have been added.
  • Placement search improvements: You can now search for placements and placement groups by start and end date.
  • Ins tag support: When the new ins tag is enabled for your account, requests for iframe and javascript tags will return an updated tag format. We've introduced 4 new legacy tag values you can use to access the older versions of these tags, to ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded format. You can begin requesting these legacy tag values today, even if your account hasn't upgraded yet.
Retiring older API versions

Along with this release, we're introducing a new deprecation schedule and announcing the deprecation of all versions prior to v2.1. Moving forward, we will generally only support 3 versions of the API and sunset the oldest version 4 months after a new release. In order to help developers adjust to this new schedule, we're providing an extended migration period for users of these newly deprecated versions:

API Version
Deprecation Date
Sunset Date
v1
3 Aug 2015
29 Feb 2016
v1.1
3 Aug 2015
29 Feb 2016
v1.2
3 Aug 2015
29 Feb 2016
v1.3
3 Aug 2015
29 Feb 2016
v2.0
3 Aug 2015
29 Feb 2016

These versions will remain active and supported until the sunset date, and we encourage you to use this time to update your applications.

Learn more

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the Release Notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

 - , DCM API Team