Tag Archives: Firebase

Google I/O: New Ways to Put Users at the Center of Your Apps and Payments

I/O is a magical time at Google. Every year, thousands of developers gather in Google's backyard to share new product ideas and learn about our latest innovations in computing.

We're meeting at an exciting time for the developer community. It's a time when consumers have more choices than ever before—like where to shop, what to watch, which games to play and how to communicate with friends and family. Your product needs to stand out. You need tools to help your business grow. And you need to make sure your users are happy.

We think we can help.

This afternoon, my team and I will share 3 new innovations for developers to make it easy for users to pay for your services, build profitable businesses and grow your user base. Check out our live stream here or at the end of this post.
Enabling users to pay with Google

Starting today, our suite of payment solutions will be expanding. The Google Payment API enables merchants and developers to turbocharge checkout conversion by offering your users an easy way to pay with credit and debit cards saved to their Google Account. Users will have multiple Google payment options at their fingertips, like a credit or a debit card previously saved via Android Pay, a payment card used to transact on the Play Store or a form of payment stored via Chrome. And they'll be able to use these saved payment options in third-party apps and mobile sites, as well as on Google Assistant when they are on-the-go.
Paying with Google for Panera Bread on Google Assistant

For users, this means faster checkout. Now they'll never miss a deal because they're stuck on a bus and don't want to pull out their credit card in front of strangers. They'll no longer experience the pain of stumbling on a sale that ends at midnight when they're tucked in bed with their credit card out of reach. Users can save time and headache by using credit and debit cards they've already saved to their Google Account whenever they see the option to pay with Google on supported apps or sites.

For developers, this API is a significant innovation that can enable faster checkout, drive more conversions, increase sales and reduce abandoned carts—all with a simple integration. Learn more about our Google Payment API here.
Earn more from your apps with the brand new AdMob
People turn to their mobile devices throughout the day to shop, communicate and stay entertained. For developers, in-app purchases are one way to monetize. Ads are another way.
AdMob was built to support the app ecosystem. With over 1 million apps across iOS and Android, AdMob has paid over $3.5 billion dollars in ads revenue to developers. But there's more we can do to help you succeed.

Today, we're introducing a completely redesigned AdMob. Rebuilt from the ground up, AdMob is now simpler to use and delivers richer insights about your users' in-app experiences.

Simpler to use: We've applied Material Design to all aspects of the AdMob look and feel to deliver an easy-to-use and intuitive experience across the entire platform—on mobile and desktop. You'll get more done in less time. Below you can see how easy it is to pick an app that you're monitoring, check out its key metrics and then quickly take action to fine-tune its performance.

Redesigned AdMob experience

Deeper insights: We've also integrated Google Analytics for Firebase into the core of the redesigned AdMob so you have quick access to the metrics that matter most for your business. Once you linkyour AdMob and Firebase accounts, you'll have access to detailed ad revenue data and user insights like time spent in the app and in-app purchases—all in one place.

Google Analytics for Firebase dashboard in AdMob
Know your user, find your user with Universal App Campaigns
Earning money from your app is one piece of the puzzle. You also need to think about how to grow your user base.

Google's app innovations have delivered over 5 billion installs from ads and we are now helping developers drive over 3 billion in-app events per quarter—like users adding something to their cart or reaching level 3 of a game. Developers have gravitated toward Universal App Campaigns (UAC) as the "one stop shop" campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes app installs across Google's largest properties: Google Play, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Display Network. UAC uses Google's machine learning technology to evaluate numerous signals in real time, refining each ad to help you reach your most engaged users. We're continuing to double down on UAC, with all new innovations being built into UAC to make app promotion even more effective.
Engage users in key moments of discovery with new UAC placements in Google Play 
Android reaches more than 2 billion active devices every month, with Google Play available in 190+ countries around the world. It's the place users come to discover new apps and games. Beyond searching for apps to try, users are increasingly browsing the Play store and finding recommendations for new apps. 
To help those users discover more of your apps, we are introducing new ad placements on the home and app listing pages in the Google Play Store. These new placements, available exclusively through UAC, help you reach users in "discovery mode" as they swipe, tap and scroll in search of their next favorite app. 
New ad placements reach users browsing in Google Play

Discover more of your best users with new bidding options in UAC 
Some users are more valuable to your business than others, like the players who level-up in your game or the loyal travelers who book several flights a month. That's why we're expanding Smart Bidding strategies in UAC to help you acquire more of these high-value users. Using Smart Bidding, you can tailor bids for your unique business goals - target cost per acquisition (tCPA) or target return on ad spend (tROAS). UAC delivers the right users based on your objectives: installs, events and, coming soon, value. This update starts rolling out to iOS and Android developers and advertisers in the coming months. 
Introducing App Attribution Partners, a new measurement program 
Many developers rely on third-party measurement providers to measure the impact of ads and gain valuable insights about how users engage with your app. To help you take action on these insights in a faster and more seamless way, we are introducing App Attribution Partners, a new program designed to integrate data from 7 global companies right into AdWords.

Welcome to adjust, Adways, AppsFlyer, Apsalar, CyberZ, Kochava and TUNE... we're thrilled to have them onboard!

AdWords' integration with these partners ensures that you have consistent, reliable and more granular data where you review app metrics. Now you can take action with confidence and stay on top of your business performance.
As consumers live more of their lives online, it's increasingly important for developers to build user-centric experiences in everything that you do—from the apps you design, to the experiences you deliver, to the ways you help people transact. We know it's not always easy, so Google is here to help.

We look forward to continuing on this journey with you.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Source: Inside AdMob


Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

Today, at Google I/O 2017, we are pleased to announce that we are taking our first steps towards open sourcing our client libraries. By making our SDKs open, we’re aiming to show our commitment to greater transparency and to building a stronger developer community. To help further that goal, we’ll be using GitHub as a core part of our own toolchain to enable all of you to contribute as well. As you find issues in our code, from inconsistent style to bugs, you can file issues through the standard GitHub issue tracker. You can also find our project in the Google Open Source directory. We’re really looking forward to your pull requests!

What’s open?

We’re starting by open sourcing several products in our iOS, JavaScript, Java, Node.js and Python SDKs. We'll be looking at open sourcing our Android SDK as well. The SDKs are being licensed under Apache 2.0, the same flexible license as existing Firebase open source projects like FirebaseUI.

Let's take a look at each repo:

Firebase iOS SDK 4.0

https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk

With the launch of the Firebase iOS 4.0 SDKs we have made several improvements to the developer experience, such as more idiomatic API names for our Swift users. By open sourcing our iOS SDKs we hope to provide an additional avenue for you to give us feedback on such features. For this first release we are open sourcing our Realtime Database, Auth, Cloud Storage and Cloud Messaging (FCM) SDKs, but going forward we intend to release more.

Because we aren't yet able to open source some of the Firebase components, the full product build process isn't available. While you can use this repo to build a FirebaseDev pod, our libraries distributed through CocoaPods will continue to be static frameworks for the time being. We are continually looking for ways to improve the developer experience for developers, however you integrate.

Our GitHub README provides more details on how you build, test and contribute to our iOS SDKs.

Firebase JavaScript SDK 4.0

https://github.com/firebase/firebase-js-sdk

We are excited to announce that we are open sourcing our Realtime Database, Cloud Storage and Cloud Messaging (FCM) SDKs for JavaScript. We’ll have a couple of improvements hot on the heels of this initial release, including open sourcing Firebase Authentication. We are also in the process of releasing the source maps for our components, which we expect would really improve the debuggability of your app.

Our GitHub repo includes instructions on how you can build, test and contribute.

Firebase Admin SDKs

Node.js: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-admin-node
Java: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-admin-java
Python: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-admin-python

We are happy to announce that all three of our Admin SDKs for accessing Firebase on privileged environments are now fully open source, including our recently-launched Python SDK. While we continue to explore supporting more languages, we encourage you to use our source as inspiration to enable Firebase for your environment (and if you do, we'd love to hear about it!)

We're really excited to see what you do with the updated SDKs - as always reach out to us with feedback or questions in the Firebase-Talk Google Group, on Stack Overflow, via the Firebase Support team, and now on GitHub for SDK issues and pull requests! And to read about the other improvements to Firebase that launched at Google I/O, head over to the Firebase blog.

By Salman Qadri, Firebase Product Manager

Focusing our Google Play games services efforts

Posted By James Smith, Product Manager, Google Play

In order to help developers make great games and build their businesses, we offer Google Play Games Services (GPGS). GPGS provides powerful tools to build, analyze and retain your audience and optimize your game. After listening to developer feedback and examining usage, we have decided to remove some of the features so we can focus on making our offering more useful.

In December, we announced the end of support for the creation of new iOS accounts given the low usage of GPGS on iOS. Additionally, our latest Native SDK release (2.3) will no longer support integration with iOS and going forward we will not be supporting or updating the iOS SDK.

We've also examined the features that GPGS offers. While developers use engagement and reporting tools extensively, there is lower usage for Gifts, Requests, and Quests. We therefore plan to stop supporting Gifts, Requests, and Quests. In order to help developers that do use these features plan for their removal, we will leave them open for 12 months, deactivating them by 31st March 2018. We'll be continuing support for other features such as Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer.

Play games services remains an important part of the tools we provide developers, and we're working hard on future GPGS updates. We continue to be strongly committed to providing high quality services for Games, including new tools such as official Firebase support for Unity and C++ developers, and integration with Firebase Analytics. These changes allow us to focus our efforts on the services developers value most to build high quality, engaging games.

How useful did you find this blogpost? 


Optimizing App Monetization with Google AdMob

All views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author, and not that of Google. This guest post is from Sreeraman Thiagarajan, a Google Developers Expert in the app marketing and monetization space and a published author on the Economic Times. Sreeraman is featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his experience to help AdMob developers grow their earnings. If you’re new to AdMob, be sure to sign up here.

In the introductory post we saw how AdMob lets app developers take control of monetizing their apps - here’s the second part on optimization and measuring.

Optimizing revenue and volume: A counter question I often get goes like this “But other networks offer better eCPM (more dollar for every one thousand impressions served), why must I choose AdMob?” Answer for this lies in understanding two metrics and the two respective fundamentals behind each of these metrics.

The first metric is ‘fill rate’ which means how many relevant ads can the ad network fulfill as requested by your app? A simple demand-supply equation is the fundamental behind this metric, because there are a lot of advertisers on Google, nearly 1million plus advertisers who want to show their ads (demand) to a potential audience who could be using your app (supply). This equation generates a very high amount of ‘ad requests’ of 200 billion per month, globally. With AdMob on your app, you can join the supply side.

The second metric of eCPM is how much money per thousand impression your app can earn? eCPM differs from network to network, however a simple multiplication of eCPM with fill rate answers this question. If network A offers $1 at a fill rate of 85% then you get 85 cents revenue per thousand ad request (aka RPM). Now if network B offers twice as much at $2 but with a lower fill rate of 30% then you only get 60 cents of RPM. That’s a 25% loss on potential earnings.

Choosing the type of ads to show: There a few standard types of ads, namely Banners, Interstitials, Rewarded, and Native. There’s no fixed formula for which type of banner to use, but one principle developers must strongly adhere to is to ‘preserve user experience’ by integrating ads as unobtrusively and as natively as possible.

Game developers have an advantage in using rewarded ads, this a form of interstitial ad units that enables you to reward users with in-app items such as an extra life, a level jump, a feature unlock, etc., for watching video ads.

Native ads is a boon for publishers and content based apps. It is a component based ad format that matches the look and feel of the app where the ad is being displayed. This makes the ads look like they  are  a part of the app and reduces obtrusiveness. A simple example of this is a promoted tweet on Twitter or a promoted post on Facebook. It is essentially a tweet or post like any other, but an identified sponsor has paid to promote it.

Banners and interstitials are pretty standard formats. Apps can choose to display banners at fixed positions on screen like the top or bottom. The full-screen ads are called interstitials, these are displayed at natural transition points in the user journey such as between two levels in a game, between two news articles, etc.

Stop guessing and start testing: App developers often suffer from the curse of knowledge, that is, they assume their users know and use the app the way it was meant to be. But more often than not, this is not true and building the app’s advertising strategy on gut feel is bad for business. Optimal monetization happens when users’ journey from acquisition to retention is deeply understood. Thanks to the integration of Google Firebase with AdMob, app developers can use Firebase’s free & unlimited analytics solution for deploying intelligent ad monetization strategies.

Importing Firebase SDK into apps requires no complicated coding. Once integrated, developers can get details like sessions, demographics of users, revenue from in-app purchases, etc., from Firebase Analytics. Besides this, AdMob’s own reports will give you a ringside view on how revenue is generated.

To optimize monetization, it is imperative developers inculcate a habit of continuous testing and tweaking their product strategy based on data and hard insights.

In conclusion, ads are above fifty percent of total revenue generated by apps. According to data point by App Annie and IDC, in-app ads are projected to grow at 3.2X in next two years1. As stated by Gartner, this year, over 268 billion apps are expected to be downloaded worldwide2; apps have no boundary and you never know audience from which country maybe your biggest fans.

Successful app monetization happens when there’s a mind-set of growth. Grow your audience base, preserve user experience, integrate AdMob, and ad revenue will start taking care of itself. Thus giving developers bandwidth to build more products or enhance existing features.

Google has made a lot of resources available on AdMob and if you are a developer with apps that has over 100,000 downloads you can request a free consultation. Both the resources are free of cost. Godspeed and love to see India rise up in charts for generating app revenue.

1 - https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.appannie.com/reports/App-Annie-IDC-Mobile-App-Advertising-Monetization-Trends-2013-2018-EN.pdf 
2 - http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2654115 

Source: Inside AdMob


Welcoming Fabric to Google

Originally posted on the Firebase Blog

Posted by Francis Ma, Firebase Product Manager

Almost eight months ago, we launchedthe expansion of Firebase to help developers build high-quality apps, grow their user base, and earn more money across iOS, Android and the Web. We've already seen great adoption of the platform, which brings together the best of Google's core businesses from Cloud to mobile advertising.

Our ultimate goal with Firebase is to free developers from so much of the complexity associated with modern software development, giving them back more time and energy to focus on innovation.

As we work towards that goal, we've continued to improve Firebase, working closely with our user community. We recently introducedmajor enhancements to many core features, including Firebase Analytics, Test Lab and Cloud Messaging, as well as added support for game developers with a C++ SDK and Unity plug-in.


We're deeply committed to Firebase and are doubling down on our investment to solve developer challenges.
Fabric and Firebase Joining Forces

Today, we're excited to announce that we've signed an agreement to acquire Fabric to continue the great work that Twitter put into the platform. Fabric will join Google's Developer Product Group, working with the Firebase team. Our missions align closely: help developers build better apps and grow their business.

As a popular, trusted tool over many years, we expect that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase and will augment the work that we have already done in this area. While Fabric was built on the foundation of Crashlytics, the Fabric team leveraged its success to launch a broad set of important tools, including Answers and Fastlane. We'll share further details in the coming weeks after we close the deal, as we work closely together with the Fabric team to determine the most efficient ways to further combine our strengths. During the transition period, Digits, the SMS authentication services, will be maintained by Twitter.


The integration of Fabric is part of our larger, long-term effort of delivering a comprehensive suite of features for iOS, Android and mobile Web app development.

This is a great moment for the industry and a unique opportunity to bring the best of Firebase with the best of Fabric. We're committed to making mobile app development seamless, so that developers can focus more of their time on building creative experiences.

Some Tips for Boosting your App’s Quality in 2017

Originally posted on the Firebase blog by Doug Stevenson /Developer Advocate
I've got to come clean with everyone: I'm making no new year's resolutions for 2017. Nor did I make any in 2016. In fact, I don't think I've ever made one! It's not so much that I take a dim view of new year's resolutions. I simply suspect that I would likely break them by the end of the week, and feel bad about it!

One thing I've found helpful in the past is to see the new year as a pivoting point to try new things, and also improve the work I'm already doing. For me (and I hope for you too!), 2017 will be a fresh year for boosting app quality.

The phrase "app quality" can take a bunch of different meanings, based on what you value in the software you create and use. As a developer, traditionally, this means fixing bugs that cause problems for your users. It could also be a reflection of the amount of delight your users take in your app. All of this gets wrapped up into the one primary metric that we have to gauge the quality of a mobile app, which is your app's rating on the store where it's published. I'm sure every one of you who has an app on a storefront has paid much attention to the app's rating at some point!

Firebase provides some tools you can use to boost your app's quality, and if you're not already using them, maybe a fresh look at those tools would be helpful this year?

Firebase Crash Reporting


The easiest tool to get started with is Firebase Crash Reporting. It takes little to no lines of code to integrate it into your iOS and Android app, and once you do, the Firebase console will start showing crashes that are happening to your users. This gives you a "hit list" of problems to fix.
One thing I find ironic about being involved with the Crash Reporting team is how we view the influx of total crashes received as we monitor our system. Like any good developer product, we strive to grow adoption, which means we celebrate graphs that go "up and to the right". So, in a strange sense, we like to see more crashes, because that means more developers are using our stuff! But for all of you developers out there, more crashes is obviously a *bad* thing, and you want to make those numbers go down! So, please, don't be like us - make your crash report graphs go down and to the right in 2017!

Firebase Test Lab for Android


Even better than fixing problems for your users is fixing those problems before they even reach your users. For your Android apps, you can use Firebase Test Lab to help ensure that your apps work great for your users among a growing variety of actual devices that we manage. Traditionally, it's been kind of a pain to acquire and manage a good selection of devices for testing. However, with Test Lab, you simply upload your APK and tests, and it will install and run them to our devices. After the tests complete, we'll provide all the screenshots, videos, and logs of everything that happened for you to examine in the Firebase console.

With Firebase Test Lab for Android now available with generous daily quotas at no charge for projects on the free Spark tier, 2017 is a great time to get started with that. And, if you haven't set up your Android app builds in a continuous integration environment, you could set that up, then configure it to run your tests automatically on Test Lab.

If you're the kind of person who likes writing tests for your code (which is, admittedly, not very many of us!), it's natural to get those tests running on Test Lab. But, for those of us who aren't maintaining a test suite with our codebase, we can still use Test Lab's automated Robo test to get automated test coverage right away, with no additional lines of code required. That's not quite that same as having a comprehensive suite of tests, so maybe 2017 would be a good time to learn more about architecting "testable" apps, and how those practices can raise the bar of quality for your app. I'm planning on writing more about this later this year, so stay tuned to the Firebase Blog for more!

Firebase Remote Config


At its core, Firebase Remote Config is a tool that lets you configure your app using parameters that you set up in the Firebase console. It can be used to help manage the quality of your app, and there's a couple neat tricks you can do with it. Maybe this new year brings new opportunities to give them a try!

First of all, you can use Remote Config to carefully roll out a new feature to your users. It works like this:
  1. Code your new feature and restrict its access to the user by a Remote Config boolean parameter. If the value is 'false', your users don't see the feature. Make 'false' the default value in the app.
  2. Configure that parameter in the Firebase console to also be initially 'false' for everyone.
  3. Publish your app to the store.
  4. When it's time to start rolling out the new feature to a small segment of users, configure the parameter to be 'true' for, say, five percent of your user base.
  5. Stay alert for new crashes in Firebase Crash Reporting, as well as feedback from your users.
  6. If there is a problem with the new feature, immediately roll back the new feature by setting the parameter to 'false' in the console for everyone.
  7. Or, if things are looking good, increase the percentage over time until you reach 100% of your users.


This is much safer than publishing your new feature to everyone with a single app update, because now you have the option to immediately disable a serious problem, and without having to build and publish a whole new version of your app. And, if you can act quickly, most of your users will never encounter the problem to begin with. This works well with the email alerts you get from Firebase Crash Reporting when a new crash is observed.

Another feature of Remote Config is the ability to experiment with some aspect of your app in order to find out what works better for the users of your app, then measure the results in Firebase Analytics. I don't know about you, but I'm typically pretty bad at guessing what people actually prefer, and sometimes I'm surprised at how people might actually *use* an app! Don't guess - instead, do an experiment and know /for certain/ what delights your users more! It stands to reason that apps finely tuned like this can get better ratings and make more money.

Firebase Realtime Database


It makes sense that if you make it easier for you user to perform tasks in your app, they will enjoy using it more, and they will come back more frequently. One thing I have always disliked is having to check for new information by refreshing, or navigating back and forward again. Apps that are always fresh and up to date, without requiring me to take action, are more pleasant to use.

You can achieve this for your app by making effective use of Firebase Realtime Databaseto deliver relevant data directly to your users at the moment it changes in the database. Realtime Database is reactive by nature, because the client API is designed for you set up listeners at data locations that get triggered in the event of a change. This is far more convenient than having to poll an API endpoint repeatedly to check for changes, and also much more respectful of the user's mobile data and battery life. Users associate this feeling of delight with apps of high quality.

What does 2017 have in store for your app?


I hope you'll join me this year in putting more effort into making our users even more delighted. If you're with me, feel free to tweet me at @CodingDoug and tell me what you're up to in 2017!

Firebase App Indexing for Personal Content

Originally posted on Firebase blog Posted by Fabian Schlup, Software Engineer

In September, we launched a new way to search for content in apps on Android phones. With this update, users were able to find personal content like messages, notes, music and more across apps like OpenTable, Ticketmaster, Evernote, Glide, Asana, Gmail, and Google Keep from a single search box. Today, we're inviting all Android developers to enable this functionality for their apps.

Starting with version 10.0, the Firebase App Indexing API on Android lets apps add their content to Google's on-device index in the background, and update it in real-time as users make changes in the app. We've designed the API with three principles in mind:

  • making it simple to integrate
  • keeping all personal data on the device
  • giving the developer full control over what goes into the index and when

There are several predefined data types that make it easy to represent common things such as messages, notes, and songs, or you can add custom types to represent additional items. Plus, logging user actions like a user listening to a specific song provides an important signal to help rank user content across the Google app. 

Indexable note = Indexables.noteDigitalDocumentBuilder()
    .setUrl("http://example.net/users/42/lists/23")
    .setName("Shopping list")
    .setText("steak, pasta, wine")
    .setImage("http://example.net/images/shopping.jpg")
    .build();
FirebaseAppIndex.getInstance().update(note);
Example of adding or updating a user's shopping list in the on-device index.

Integrating with Firebase App Indexing helps increase user engagement with your app, as users can get back to their personal content in an instant with Google Search. Because that data is indexed directly on the device, this even works when offline.

To get started, check out our implementation guideand codelab.

Introducing the Firebase Demo Project

"All genuine learning comes from experience" - John Dewey
Earlier this year we introduced Firebase: a unified app platform for Android, iOS and mobile web development. It includes tools to help you develop faster, improve app quality, acquire and engage users, and monetize apps. There are many resources available to learn Firebase, from documentation, guides and free training courses (Android and iOS) we created, to advice from the Firebase community. However, there is nothing quite like learning through practical experience. To address this we’ve launched a fully functional Firebase Demo Project, available to everyone from today (get access here).

The Demo Project includes data from Flood It! (Android and iOS), a real puzzle game in which you have to flood the whole game board with one color in less than the allowed steps. Therefore, the data in the Firebase demo project is typical of what you might see for a gaming app with in-app purchases. It includes the following kinds of information:
  • Analytics: Attribution data, key events, cohorts and funnel reporting. This includes data about first opens (think of these like installs), in-app purchases, and more.
  • Remote Config: The parameters that control the app experience as well as the conditions which define which users receive which parameter values.
  • Test Lab: The automated test results from running the app on numerous device/OS combinations for quality assurance purposes.
  • Crash: Details on various crashes which have occurred in the app, including callstacks and device information.
  • Notifications: The notification campaigns that were sent to users to re-engage them. This includes data about the number of messages sent, opened and the number of conversions attributed to each campaign.

Firebase Demo Project: Analytics Dashboard
"Since the launch of Firebase we have been excited to continually build hands-on experience with its many features. Especially with the freely included and unlimited analytics solution for mobile apps, Firebase Analytics. The Firebase Demo Project has helped our team do just that and similar to what we've done with the Google Analytics Demo Account, we've incorporated the Firebase Demo Project within our training programs. This plays a critical part in helping our clients maximise their familiarity with Firebase." - Ben Gott, Analytics Director, Periscopix
Self-Learning

The Demo Project is useful for exploring Firebase features and reports. Here are a few things you can do with it:

  • View all standard Analytics reports populated with real data from the Flood It! app
  • Dissect Analytics reports by applying a variety of filters
  • See which ad campaigns are driving the most valuable users to the app
  • Track crashes and their impact on end users, and understand the steps that led to them
  • See the full notifications funnel for notifications sent from the Firebase Console
  • View Remote Config parameters to see how values are varied based on targeting parameters, especially feature flags and percent targeting for staging and Analytics audience targeting for customization
  • See test results from testing the app on real physical and virtual devices in the Firebase Test Lab

Education Programs
If you’re an educator trying to teach others to use Firebase then we encourage you to use the Demo Project within your course. For example, you can create practical exercises that students can complete using the Demo Project.

Access the Demo Project
You can get access to the Demo Project and learn more about it, from this help article. If you need some help, or have ideas to make the Demo Project more useful, please share it with the Google Analytics Community. We hope the Demo Project gives you a practical way to try new features and learn about Firebase.

Happy analyzing!
Posted by Deepak Aujla & Steve Ganem, Google Analytics team

How Using Firebase Can Help You Earn More

Are you a developer building the next great app? Do you wish you could better analyze your app and its users, so you can monetize without compromising the overall user experience? If so, you’re at the right place!

Not only can these questions be addressed simultaneously, but there is already a solution in place: Firebase. Firebase can help you build your app, understand and grow your user base, and link with AdMob to help you better monetize.

Developing your app

Firebase can provide a Realtime Database, Authentication, Cloud Messaging, Storage, Hosting and Crash Reporting to aid you in developing your app. Forget about infrastructure - you can focus on building your masterpiece and leave the operations to Firebase.

Analyze your audience

At the heart of Firebase is a 100% free analytics solution built specifically mobile apps. With unlimited reporting on up to 500 distinct events, you can set up multiple measurements to know exactly what your users are doing in your app, how they’re engaging with your app, and what they love most about your app. With this data, you can focus your efforts to drill down and sustain the best features of your app, while at the same time improve newly surfaced areas of needs.

Grow your audience

After you’ve launched your app, Firebase can help you grow and re-engage users with powerful growth features. Using Firebase Notifications console you can re-engage users, run marketing campaigns, and target messages to Audiences in Firebase Analytics. Dynamic Links can survive the app install process and take users to relevant content whether they're a brand-new user or a longtime customer. There is also the Firebase Invites feature, an out-of-the-box solution for app referrals and sharing, which lets your existing users easily share your app, or their favorite in-app content, via email or SMS. Finally, Firebase can also track your AdWords app installs and report lifetime value to the Firebase Analytics dashboard and Firebase Audiences can also be used in AdWords to re-engage specific groups of users. For example In-app events can be defined as conversions in AdWords, to automatically optimize your ads, including universal app campaigns.

Monetize your product

With AdMob by Google, Firebase can also help you monetize your app by linking your Firebase Analytics with monetization. By combining these two products, you gain deep insights into usage data, which you can then use to optimize your user experience and monetize your app. Do your users have trouble progressing past certain levels? Help them progress with Rewarded Video. Are certain users spending all day endlessly scrolling through your content? Help them discover other cool apps with Native Express. Do a few users spend heavily on your IAPs and you want to keep their experience ad free? Segment them with Firebase, and exclude them from the ad experience.

Want to learn more? 

Check out the above video, where Andrew Brogden, Mobile Ads Developer Relations and David East, Developer Advocate, walk you through what benefits there are to using AdMob and Firebase together, and how to get your Android and iOS projects set up with both SDKs.

Ready to start exploring the true power of Firebase and AdMob? Sign up for a Firebase account and an AdMob account and link the two accounts.

Stay tuned for our next blog on Firebase in the coming weeks, where we will deep dive even further on user behavior analytics (of which you now have deep insights thanks to Firebase) and how this can help you increase those 5-star reviews!

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Alex Fan, Business Development Executive, Mobile Partnerships.

Source: Inside AdMob


Test on Android 7.1 Developer Preview in Firebase Test Lab

By Ahmed Mounir Gad, Product Manager, Firebase Test Lab

To deliver the best user experience right out of the gate, Firebase Test Lab for Android allows you to test your apps and ensure their compatibility with multiple device configurations, across OS versions, screen orientations, and locales. With a single click, you can run your tests on hundreds of device configurations in Google Cloud and receive your results quickly.

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on Firebase Test Lab virtual devices. In addition to testing the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on your physical Android Device with the Android Beta program, or on your local Android Emulator, you can use the Firebase Test Lab to scale your app testing to hundreds of Android virtual devices.

You can also use Firebase Test Lab to perform your own testing. If you don’t have any test scripts, Robo test is ideal for doing your basic compatibility testing on the new platform. It crawls your app in an attempt to find crashes. You can also use the Espresso Test Recorder in Android Studio to record your own instrumentation tests without writing any code.

From now until the end of December (12/31/2016), Firebase Test Lab will be offered at no charge on the Firebase Blaze plan for all virtual devices, to help you ensure the compatibility of your app with the Android 7.1 Developer Preview release, as well as with other Android releases.

Prepare your app for API level 25, then go to the Firebase Test Lab console to run your first test.

Happy testing!

Robo tests uncovering a crash on Android 7.1 Developer Preview for the Flood-It! app.