In this post, we explain how Google’s display advertising business works when advertisers and publishers choose to use our buy-side and sell-side services. Separately, we also looked at how top news publishers monetize their content using Google Ad Manager.

Over the years, we’ve continued to invest in our advertising technology to deliver products that help publishers and advertisers sell and buy display ads online. The products we’ve built have helped the digital advertising market grow and keep the internet open and free to everyone. 

Across the ad tech industry, thousands of companies work together to show digital ads across the web. Here’s a look at how display advertising works and how ads flow from buyers to sellers every day.

Recently, some have estimated that as much as half of the revenue from display advertising is kept by the advertising technology providers themselves. We can't speak for the many other companies in this space, but that is not the case for Google. 

Even when ads flow through both our buy-side and sell-side services, publishers receive most of the revenue. In fact in 2019, when marketers used Google Ads or Display & Video 360 to buy display ads on Google Ad Manager, publishers kept over 69 percent of the revenue generated. And when publishers use our Ad Manager platform to sell ads directly to advertisers, they keep even more of the revenue.  

A large portion of the revenue we keep from our display advertising products goes to defray the costs of running a complex and evolving business, including building and maintaining state-of-the-art data centers, investing in cutting-edge computer science research to identify the most useful and relevant ads, and enabling innovations that increase publisher revenue, maximize advertiser return on investment, and keep the web free and open for everyone.  

To help illustrate how our ad tech solutions work, below are two of the most common ways advertisers buy ads using our services.

Display advertising purchased with Google Ads 

Every day, millions of advertisers, including many small to emerging businesses, use our Google Ads product to buy search ads, ads that appear on YouTube, and display ads that appear on non-Google websites and apps. Advertisers that choose this platform do so because it makes the process of buying digital advertising easy and effective. 

When advertisers use Google Ads to buy display ads, the vast majority only pay Google when a user takes an action after seeing their ad, such as clicking on the ad, filling out a form or making a purchase. Though Google only charges these advertisers when a user takes an action, we always pay publishers for their ad space sold via Ad Manager. To enable this dynamic, our technology evaluates every impression and converts the advertisers’ business objectives to cost-per-mille (CPM) bids in advertising auctions to buy publisher ad inventory. By taking on the risk of showing ads to users—regardless of whether the user takes the action the advertiser wants—Google Ads helps buyers and sellers more efficiently pay and earn in ways that best suit their businesses. 

In 2019, publishers using Ad Manager kept over 69 percent of the total amount advertisers paid when using Google Ads to buy their display inventory. Because Google Ads does not charge advertisers for most impressions, it does not have a fixed per-impression fee. Instead, Google’s share of revenue varies over time based on various factors, including the advertisers’ specified objectives, the types of display ads they choose to run and how users respond to them. 

Display advertising purchased with Display & Video 360

Google also works with large brands and their agencies to help them execute complex display advertising strategies and campaigns. These advertisers often use our Display & Video 360 enterprise software to reach consumers around the world.

Most advertisers that choose this platform buy digital ads in many different formats, on many different properties—well beyond the publisher websites and apps that use Ad Manager. Using Display & Video 360, these advertisers can buy ads on more than 80 publisher or sell-side platforms including AT&T, Comcast, Index Exchange, OpenX, Rubicon Project, MoPub and others. Our standard rate for advertisers using Display & Video 360 to purchase display ads is 15 percent.

Many publishers choose to use multiple sell-side platforms to sell their programmatic inventory to advertisers. When an advertiser uses Display & Video 360 to buy inventory from a publisher that uses Ad Manager, publishers keep over 69 percent of the total amount advertisers paid.

We invest in our systems to support the open web

Although we don’t know what other companies charge, we’ve shared our pricing to provide clarity into how our display business works. By helping businesses large and small reach customers, we can help publishers fund their content online and contribute to sustaining the ad-supported web for people around the world.

*Figures presented in this post reflect the fees retained by Google and the revenue shares Google pays to publishers, and do not include fees that may be paid to other platforms and services. Amounts are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

In this post, we explain how Google’s display advertising business works when advertisers and publishers choose to use our buy-side and sell-side services. Separately, we also looked at how top news publishers monetize their content using Google Ad Manager.

Over the years, we’ve continued to invest in our advertising technology to deliver products that help publishers and advertisers sell and buy display ads online. The products we’ve built have helped the digital advertising market grow and keep the internet open and free to everyone. 

Across the ad tech industry, thousands of companies work together to show digital ads across the web. Here’s a look at how display advertising works and how ads flow from buyers to sellers every day.

Recently, some have estimated that as much as half of the revenue from display advertising is kept by the advertising technology providers themselves. We can't speak for the many other companies in this space, but that is not the case for Google. 

Even when ads flow through both our buy-side and sell-side services, publishers receive most of the revenue. In fact in 2019, when marketers used Google Ads or Display & Video 360 to buy display ads on Google Ad Manager, publishers kept over 69 percent of the revenue generated. And when publishers use our Ad Manager platform to sell ads directly to advertisers, they keep even more of the revenue.  

A large portion of the revenue we keep from our display advertising products goes to defray the costs of running a complex and evolving business, including building and maintaining state-of-the-art data centers, investing in cutting-edge computer science research to identify the most useful and relevant ads, and enabling innovations that increase publisher revenue, maximize advertiser return on investment, and keep the web free and open for everyone.  

To help illustrate how our ad tech solutions work, below are two of the most common ways advertisers buy ads using our services.

Display advertising purchased with Google Ads 

Every day, millions of advertisers, including many small to emerging businesses, use our Google Ads product to buy search ads, ads that appear on YouTube, and display ads that appear on non-Google websites and apps. Advertisers that choose this platform do so because it makes the process of buying digital advertising easy and effective. 

When advertisers use Google Ads to buy display ads, the vast majority only pay Google when a user takes an action after seeing their ad, such as clicking on the ad, filling out a form or making a purchase. Though Google only charges these advertisers when a user takes an action, we always pay publishers for their ad space sold via Ad Manager. To enable this dynamic, our technology evaluates every impression and converts the advertisers’ business objectives to cost-per-mille (CPM) bids in advertising auctions to buy publisher ad inventory. By taking on the risk of showing ads to users—regardless of whether the user takes the action the advertiser wants—Google Ads helps buyers and sellers more efficiently pay and earn in ways that best suit their businesses. 

In 2019, publishers using Ad Manager kept over 69 percent of the total amount advertisers paid when using Google Ads to buy their display inventory. Because Google Ads does not charge advertisers for most impressions, it does not have a fixed per-impression fee. Instead, Google’s share of revenue varies over time based on various factors, including the advertisers’ specified objectives, the types of display ads they choose to run and how users respond to them. 

Display advertising purchased with Display & Video 360

Google also works with large brands and their agencies to help them execute complex display advertising strategies and campaigns. These advertisers often use our Display & Video 360 enterprise software to reach consumers around the world.

Most advertisers that choose this platform buy digital ads in many different formats, on many different properties—well beyond the publisher websites and apps that use Ad Manager. Using Display & Video 360, these advertisers can buy ads on more than 80 publisher or sell-side platforms including AT&T, Comcast, Index Exchange, OpenX, Rubicon Project, MoPub and others. Our standard rate for advertisers using Display & Video 360 to purchase display ads is 15 percent.

Many publishers choose to use multiple sell-side platforms to sell their programmatic inventory to advertisers. When an advertiser uses Display & Video 360 to buy inventory from a publisher that uses Ad Manager, publishers keep over 69 percent of the total amount advertisers paid.

We invest in our systems to support the open web

Although we don’t know what other companies charge, we’ve shared our pricing to provide clarity into how our display business works. By helping businesses large and small reach customers, we can help publishers fund their content online and contribute to sustaining the ad-supported web for people around the world.

*Figures presented in this post reflect the fees retained by Google and the revenue shares Google pays to publishers, and do not include fees that may be paid to other platforms and services. Amounts are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

In this post, we analyze how top news publishers monetize their content using Google Ad Manager, and how much revenue they retain. In a separate article, we explain how Google’s display advertising business works when advertisers and publishers choose to use our buy-side and sell-side services.

Thousands of news publishers around the world use Google Ad Manager to run digital advertising on their websites and apps. News companies tell us they choose our ad management platform for its performance, controls and ability to integrate with hundreds of third party advertising technologies to help them earn the most revenue for the ad space they sell. 

We work hard to ensure our platform helps publishers succeed, so people around the world have access to high-quality news and information online. To illustrate how news publishers use our platform to monetize, we recently looked at the 100 news publishers globally with the highest programmatic revenue generated in Ad Manager. We then ran an analysis focused on the average fees retained by Ad Manager across those publishers’ digital advertising businesses.

While the business model of each news organization is unique, this data provides clarity into the different ways major news publishers monetize their content when they use Ad Manager, and how much Google retains from the services we provide. A large portion of the revenue we keep funds the costs of running this business. Our ongoing investments in this space include development and maintenance of data centers around the world as well as advancements in machine learning and product innovations that increase publisher revenue and contribute to the open and free internet.

In analyzing the revenue data of those top 100 news organizations, we found that on average, news publishers keep over 95 percent of the digital advertising revenue they generate when they use Ad Manager to show ads on their websites. This analysis reflects the average fees retained by Ad Manager, and does not include fees that may be paid to other platforms and services.

Click on the image below to view the full size graphic.

News publishers use Ad Manager to facilitate direct sales and deals with other platforms

Publishers run their digital advertising businesses with Ad Manager in two primary ways: directly managed sales (including direct sales to advertisers and deals with other ad tech platforms) and programmatic sales with Ad Manager. 

The majority of news publishers’ digital advertising revenue comes from ad sales managed by their own teams. This includes publishers’ direct sales to advertisers and agencies. For example, news publishers sell ad space directly to advertisers, who want specific placements on their sites, like the top of the homepage. Publisher sales teams also negotiate deals with other ad tech platforms like ad exchanges, ad networks and header bidding providers.

When news publishers sell inventory via direct sales or other ad tech platforms, they can use our ad serving technology in Ad Manager to deliver the ad on their website. As the publisher does the majority of the work when an ad is shown from one of these sources, we charge a minimal ad serving fee for the service we provide. When ads are sold this way, news publishers keep over 99 percent of the revenue.

News publishers also sell programmatically with Ad Manager

The other way Ad Manager helps news publishers is by enabling programmatic ad sales. Programmatic ad sales allow publishers to sell more ad space than ever before, to millions of advertisers, many of which they would not have access to without this technology. 

When news publishers sell ad space programmatically with Ad Manager, they have access to robust tools that allow them to manage the ads that appear on their site. For example, publishers can input the minimum price of their ad space, control the brands that can advertise, and indicate the types of ads they want to show, among other preferences. Ad Manager then finds the highest paying advertiser that meets the publisher’s requirements. When an ad is shown programmatically through Ad Manager, news publishers keep over 80 percent of the revenue.

We invest in Ad Manager to support our news partners

We built Google Ad Manager to help publishers monetize their content and grow revenue. Over the years, we’ve continued to invest in innovations that improve our technology, so news companies can earn more from digital advertising and create sustainable businesses. Alongside our product enhancements, our dedicated news team partners with publishers of all sizes to uncover new ways to adapt and grow their business with advertising. This helps keep the best of the internet open and free for all of us.

In this post, we analyze how top news publishers monetize their content using Google Ad Manager, and how much revenue they retain. In a separate article, we explain how Google’s display advertising business works when advertisers and publishers choose to use our buy-side and sell-side services.

Thousands of news publishers around the world use Google Ad Manager to run digital advertising on their websites and apps. News companies tell us they choose our ad management platform for its performance, controls and ability to integrate with hundreds of third party advertising technologies to help them earn the most revenue for the ad space they sell. 

We work hard to ensure our platform helps publishers succeed, so people around the world have access to high-quality news and information online. To illustrate how news publishers use our platform to monetize, we recently looked at the 100 news publishers globally with the highest programmatic revenue generated in Ad Manager. We then ran an analysis focused on the average fees retained by Ad Manager across those publishers’ digital advertising businesses.

While the business model of each news organization is unique, this data provides clarity into the different ways major news publishers monetize their content when they use Ad Manager, and how much Google retains from the services we provide. A large portion of the revenue we keep funds the costs of running this business. Our ongoing investments in this space include development and maintenance of data centers around the world as well as advancements in machine learning and product innovations that increase publisher revenue and contribute to the open and free internet.

In analyzing the revenue data of those top 100 news organizations, we found that on average, news publishers keep over 95 percent of the digital advertising revenue they generate when they use Ad Manager to show ads on their websites. This analysis reflects the average fees retained by Ad Manager, and does not include fees that may be paid to other platforms and services.

Click on the image below to view the full size graphic.

News publishers use Ad Manager to facilitate direct sales and deals with other platforms

Publishers run their digital advertising businesses with Ad Manager in two primary ways: directly managed sales (including direct sales to advertisers and deals with other ad tech platforms) and programmatic sales with Ad Manager. 

The majority of news publishers’ digital advertising revenue comes from ad sales managed by their own teams. This includes publishers’ direct sales to advertisers and agencies. For example, news publishers sell ad space directly to advertisers, who want specific placements on their sites, like the top of the homepage. Publisher sales teams also negotiate deals with other ad tech platforms like ad exchanges, ad networks and header bidding providers.

When news publishers sell inventory via direct sales or other ad tech platforms, they can use our ad serving technology in Ad Manager to deliver the ad on their website. As the publisher does the majority of the work when an ad is shown from one of these sources, we charge a minimal ad serving fee for the service we provide. When ads are sold this way, news publishers keep over 99 percent of the revenue.

News publishers also sell programmatically with Ad Manager

The other way Ad Manager helps news publishers is by enabling programmatic ad sales. Programmatic ad sales allow publishers to sell more ad space than ever before, to millions of advertisers, many of which they would not have access to without this technology. 

When news publishers sell ad space programmatically with Ad Manager, they have access to robust tools that allow them to manage the ads that appear on their site. For example, publishers can input the minimum price of their ad space, control the brands that can advertise, and indicate the types of ads they want to show, among other preferences. Ad Manager then finds the highest paying advertiser that meets the publisher’s requirements. When an ad is shown programmatically through Ad Manager, news publishers keep over 80 percent of the revenue.

We invest in Ad Manager to support our news partners

We built Google Ad Manager to help publishers monetize their content and grow revenue. Over the years, we’ve continued to invest in innovations that improve our technology, so news companies can earn more from digital advertising and create sustainable businesses. Alongside our product enhancements, our dedicated news team partners with publishers of all sizes to uncover new ways to adapt and grow their business with advertising. This helps keep the best of the internet open and free for all of us.

More people are streaming TV content than ever before—often through connected TV devices like streaming sticks and boxes, smart TVs, and gaming consoles. In fact, over the past year Google Ad Manager has seen a nearly 3x increase in the number of connected TV ad requests.¹ This fast pace of growth, as users shift from traditional TV to digital over-the-top (OTT) streaming, creates an opportunity for partners to grow connected TV revenue, but has also resulted in challenges in scaling connected TV ads across the ecosystem. The lack of connected TV standards and programmatic signals is making it difficult for the ecosystem to verify, reach, and measure connected TV inventory, and even worse, is leading to an increased threat of fraudulent activity.

With Ad Manager, we’re focused on enabling our partners to deliver a good viewing experience while preserving the safety, trust, and relevancy of the ads on our systems. For connected TV, it's no different and we're continuing to take a standards-driven approach as the ecosystem develops. Today we're sharing a set of new Ad Manager features that help partners scale connected TV revenue safely and effectively by leveraging industry standards and programmatic signals. 

Verify and increase the value of your connected TV inventory

To help programmers and distributors monetize connected TV ads at scale while respecting our Ad Manager video publisher policies, we’re introducing new features that help verify their inventory is authentically represented. Our new Programmatic Access Library (PAL), currently in beta, is an easy-to-implement lightweight SDK alternative for partners who are unable to integrate with our Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK due to technical limitations or complex video setups. While the IMA SDK remains our recommended default monetization solution with all safeguards and access to demand in place, PAL offers partners with more technical setups the ability to securely pass programmatic signals, enable inventory verifications against fraud, and streamline workflows that don’t require content to be manually tagged. This ensures that all partners—regardless of their technical setup or how they choose to work with us—can programmatically monetize connected TV inventory on our platform. 

We’re also integrating additional connected TV app identification capabilities into Ad Manager that ensure each ad request is coming from a connected TV app's content owner or authorized seller. While we work with the IAB Tech Lab to scale the adoption of the app-ads.txt standard for connected TV, this beta feature offers extra verifications for partners and devices that haven’t yet integrated with the standard. It increases device categorization and ensures signals like app name, app/bundle ID, and Identifier for Advertising (IFA) values are passed to Authorized Buyers, including Google Ads and Display & Video 360, and Open Bidders so that connected TV inventory is authentically represented across all demand channels.  

Grow advertiser demand for connected TV inventory

To make it easier for our partners to unlock advertiser demand, we’re launching features to enable viewability measurement and frequency capping on connected TV inventory. With inferred viewability measurement for connected TV, viewability is assigned to connected TV inventory so that it’s eligible for advertising campaigns that may have viewability goals. As an interim solution until an industry standard is available, this can enable advertisers to discover and run ads on desirable connected TV content and help partners grow more revenue. 

We’re building on Ad Manager’s existing integration with the IAB Tech Lab’s IFA standard by adding support for Session ID. This allows partners to implement a temporary IAB Tech Lab-compliant connected TV advertising identifier if the device doesn’t currently support an IFA value for advertising. Session ID helps partners adhere to advertisers’ frequency cap settings and measure campaign reach, which also minimizes the number of repetitive ads users see on connected TVs and results in a better viewing experience. By satisfying these common advertiser requirements, Session ID can help increase advertiser demand for our partners’ connected TV inventory. 

Increase user trust and transparency in your connected TV inventory

Ad Manager’s connected TV solutions also help partners provide more transparency and control to viewers, which can increase trust in their connected TV content and inventory. As a part of this, we’re launching ‘Why this Ad’ settings for ads on connected TVs which provides viewers with more information on why an ad is being shown to them on connected TV content. This provides more transparency to viewers about the ads they see and even gives them the option to mute certain ads, which results in a better viewing experience that will keep them coming back to your content.  

These new Ad Manager features help our partners scale their connected TV monetization using industry standards and programmatic signals, increase advertisers’ ability to discover and reach new audiences on premium connected TV inventory, and provide more transparency to users. As viewership on connected TV continues to gain momentum, we’ll be working with the industry to increase adoption of standards like app-ads.txt and building for a safer and more sustainable connected TV future for everyone.

¹ Google Ad Manager Internal Data, Global, 2H '18 vs. 2H '19

More people are streaming TV content than ever before—often through connected TV devices like streaming sticks and boxes, smart TVs, and gaming consoles. In fact, over the past year Google Ad Manager has seen a nearly 3x increase in the number of connected TV ad requests.¹ This fast pace of growth, as users shift from traditional TV to digital over-the-top (OTT) streaming, creates an opportunity for partners to grow connected TV revenue, but has also resulted in challenges in scaling connected TV ads across the ecosystem. The lack of connected TV standards and programmatic signals is making it difficult for the ecosystem to verify, reach, and measure connected TV inventory, and even worse, is leading to an increased threat of fraudulent activity.

With Ad Manager, we’re focused on enabling our partners to deliver a good viewing experience while preserving the safety, trust, and relevancy of the ads on our systems. For connected TV, it's no different and we're continuing to take a standards-driven approach as the ecosystem develops. Today we're sharing a set of new Ad Manager features that help partners scale connected TV revenue safely and effectively by leveraging industry standards and programmatic signals. 

Verify and increase the value of your connected TV inventory

To help programmers and distributors monetize connected TV ads at scale while respecting our Ad Manager video publisher policies, we’re introducing new features that help verify their inventory is authentically represented. Our new Programmatic Access Library (PAL), currently in beta, is an easy-to-implement lightweight SDK alternative for partners who are unable to integrate with our Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK due to technical limitations or complex video setups. While the IMA SDK remains our recommended default monetization solution with all safeguards and access to demand in place, PAL offers partners with more technical setups the ability to securely pass programmatic signals, enable inventory verifications against fraud, and streamline workflows that don’t require content to be manually tagged. This ensures that all partners—regardless of their technical setup or how they choose to work with us—can programmatically monetize connected TV inventory on our platform. 

We’re also integrating additional connected TV app identification capabilities into Ad Manager that ensure each ad request is coming from a connected TV app's content owner or authorized seller. While we work with the IAB Tech Lab to scale the adoption of the app-ads.txt standard for connected TV, this beta feature offers extra verifications for partners and devices that haven’t yet integrated with the standard. It increases device categorization and ensures signals like app name, app/bundle ID, and Identifier for Advertising (IFA) values are passed to Authorized Buyers, including Google Ads and Display & Video 360, and Open Bidders so that connected TV inventory is authentically represented across all demand channels.  

Grow advertiser demand for connected TV inventory

To make it easier for our partners to unlock advertiser demand, we’re launching features to enable viewability measurement and frequency capping on connected TV inventory. With inferred viewability measurement for connected TV, viewability is assigned to connected TV inventory so that it’s eligible for advertising campaigns that may have viewability goals. As an interim solution until an industry standard is available, this can enable advertisers to discover and run ads on desirable connected TV content and help partners grow more revenue. 

We’re building on Ad Manager’s existing integration with the IAB Tech Lab’s IFA standard by adding support for Session ID. This allows partners to implement a temporary IAB Tech Lab-compliant connected TV advertising identifier if the device doesn’t currently support an IFA value for advertising. Session ID helps partners adhere to advertisers’ frequency cap settings and measure campaign reach, which also minimizes the number of repetitive ads users see on connected TVs and results in a better viewing experience. By satisfying these common advertiser requirements, Session ID can help increase advertiser demand for our partners’ connected TV inventory. 

Increase user trust and transparency in your connected TV inventory

Ad Manager’s connected TV solutions also help partners provide more transparency and control to viewers, which can increase trust in their connected TV content and inventory. As a part of this, we’re launching ‘Why this Ad’ settings for ads on connected TVs which provides viewers with more information on why an ad is being shown to them on connected TV content. This provides more transparency to viewers about the ads they see and even gives them the option to mute certain ads, which results in a better viewing experience that will keep them coming back to your content.  

These new Ad Manager features help our partners scale their connected TV monetization using industry standards and programmatic signals, increase advertisers’ ability to discover and reach new audiences on premium connected TV inventory, and provide more transparency to users. As viewership on connected TV continues to gain momentum, we’ll be working with the industry to increase adoption of standards like app-ads.txt and building for a safer and more sustainable connected TV future for everyone.

¹ Google Ad Manager Internal Data, Global, 2H '18 vs. 2H '19

More people are streaming TV content than ever before—often through connected TV devices like streaming sticks and boxes, smart TVs, and gaming consoles. In fact, over the past year Google Ad Manager has seen a nearly 3x increase in the number of connected TV ad requests.¹ This fast pace of growth, as users shift from traditional TV to digital over-the-top (OTT) streaming, creates an opportunity for partners to grow connected TV revenue, but has also resulted in challenges in scaling connected TV ads across the ecosystem. The lack of connected TV standards and programmatic signals is making it difficult for the ecosystem to verify, reach, and measure connected TV inventory, and even worse, is leading to an increased threat of fraudulent activity.

With Ad Manager, we’re focused on enabling our partners to deliver a good viewing experience while preserving the safety, trust, and relevancy of the ads on our systems. For connected TV, it's no different and we're continuing to take a standards-driven approach as the ecosystem develops. Today we're sharing a set of new Ad Manager features that help partners scale connected TV revenue safely and effectively by leveraging industry standards and programmatic signals. 

Verify and increase the value of your connected TV inventory

To help programmers and distributors monetize connected TV ads at scale while respecting our Ad Manager video publisher policies, we’re introducing new features that help verify their inventory is authentically represented. Our new Programmatic Access Library (PAL), currently in beta, is an easy-to-implement lightweight SDK alternative for partners who are unable to integrate with our Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK due to technical limitations or complex video setups. While the IMA SDK remains our recommended default monetization solution with all safeguards and access to demand in place, PAL offers partners with more technical setups the ability to securely pass programmatic signals, enable inventory verifications against fraud, and streamline workflows that don’t require content to be manually tagged. This ensures that all partners—regardless of their technical setup or how they choose to work with us—can programmatically monetize connected TV inventory on our platform. 

We’re also integrating additional connected TV app identification capabilities into Ad Manager that ensure each ad request is coming from a connected TV app's content owner or authorized seller. While we work with the IAB Tech Lab to scale the adoption of the app-ads.txt standard for connected TV, this beta feature offers extra verifications for partners and devices that haven’t yet integrated with the standard. It increases device categorization and ensures signals like app name, app/bundle ID, and Identifier for Advertising (IFA) values are passed to Authorized Buyers, including Google Ads and Display & Video 360, and Open Bidders so that connected TV inventory is authentically represented across all demand channels.  

Grow advertiser demand for connected TV inventory

To make it easier for our partners to unlock advertiser demand, we’re launching features to enable viewability measurement and frequency capping on connected TV inventory. With inferred viewability measurement for connected TV, viewability is assigned to connected TV inventory so that it’s eligible for advertising campaigns that may have viewability goals. As an interim solution until an industry standard is available, this can enable advertisers to discover and run ads on desirable connected TV content and help partners grow more revenue. 

We’re building on Ad Manager’s existing integration with the IAB Tech Lab’s IFA standard by adding support for Session ID. This allows partners to implement a temporary IAB Tech Lab-compliant connected TV advertising identifier if the device doesn’t currently support an IFA value for advertising. Session ID helps partners adhere to advertisers’ frequency cap settings and measure campaign reach, which also minimizes the number of repetitive ads users see on connected TVs and results in a better viewing experience. By satisfying these common advertiser requirements, Session ID can help increase advertiser demand for our partners’ connected TV inventory. 

Increase user trust and transparency in your connected TV inventory

Ad Manager’s connected TV solutions also help partners provide more transparency and control to viewers, which can increase trust in their connected TV content and inventory. As a part of this, we’re launching ‘Why this Ad’ settings for ads on connected TVs which provides viewers with more information on why an ad is being shown to them on connected TV content. This provides more transparency to viewers about the ads they see and even gives them the option to mute certain ads, which results in a better viewing experience that will keep them coming back to your content.  

These new Ad Manager features help our partners scale their connected TV monetization using industry standards and programmatic signals, increase advertisers’ ability to discover and reach new audiences on premium connected TV inventory, and provide more transparency to users. As viewership on connected TV continues to gain momentum, we’ll be working with the industry to increase adoption of standards like app-ads.txt and building for a safer and more sustainable connected TV future for everyone.

¹ Google Ad Manager Internal Data, Global, 2H '18 vs. 2H '19

This is the fifth and final post in a series exploring several of Ad Manager’s key features and how they help our publisher partners maximize their ad revenue. To learn more, read posts one, two, three and four. 

Today, data from a publisher’s advertising activities can extend beyond revenue to inform nearly every aspect of their business. From helping steer content strategy, to delivering better user experiences, to driving subscriptions, ad data can be incredibly useful, but only if you have the tools to gather and analyze the relevant insights.

Google Ad Manager was built to power our partners’ entire digital advertising businesses, including the ability to discover, visualize, and activate data-driven opportunities. For the majority of our partners, the platform has everything they need to manage and optimize their ads business. And for our largest and most data-centric partners, Ad Manager features seamless integrations with Google Analytics, Cloud, and more to support sophisticated data initiatives and segmentations. 

Powerful data solutions built into Ad Manager

With Ad Manager, we’ve made it easy for partners to centralize and analyze their ads data. The platform comes equipped with several tools that are designed to help deliver insights and grow revenue. Here are a few of the most important data capabilities built into the platform. 

Forecasting

Ad Manager’s forecasting tool helps you estimate and plan for how much inventory you’ll likely have available in the future, so you can make more impactful decisions about how to package and sell it. 

When checking available inventory, Ad Manager analyzes the line item you’re forecasting against competing booked line items. The platform reviews the last 24 months or more of historical traffic volume data as a basis to build and predict future traffic volumes. 

The platform is constantly making improvements to the forecasting algorithm and machine learning models to account for things like seasonal trends, new programming, etc. Additionally, partners can manually fine-tune forecasts by adding data into the forecasting engine to account for trends that Ad Manager is not able to predict. 

Opportunities and Experiments

Within Ad Manager, Google’s machine learning algorithms are constantly working to optimize revenue across every impression, regardless of sales channel, ad format, or device. 

When you view the Opportunities and Experiments section within your Ad Manager dashboard, you’ll see suggested optimization opportunities tailored to your business and the projected revenue impact they will drive. From there you can choose to put those optimizations to work or set up an experiment to test them with a few clicks. Alternatively you can decide not to implement the recommendation if you prefer.

Home dashboard and insights

For quick performance snapshots, you can use the Home dashboard to view your Ad Manager and ad exchange performance over time. The dashboard can show you critical metrics such as revenue, impressions, viewability, ad speed, among others. Home dashboards aren’t intended to replace reports from the reporting tool, but to supplement them by surfacing new opportunities and providing insights into which strategies have been the most effective.

Ad Manager insights offer more context around your performance data. Analytics include things like anomaly detection, which determines when KPI's fall outside of their expected range, and top movers, which display the clusters of your inventory that are contributing to precipitous change in your revenue.

Reporting

The reporting tool within Google Ad Manager provides easy, granular access to all of the account data you need to create actionable insights and successfully manage your ads business. You can configure a range of dimensions and metrics to customize your reports, generate reports from predefined system templates, and easily schedule and share report results.

Advanced capabilities to help activate your data 

Ad Manager seamlessly integrates with several Google products to help partners who are looking to uncover deeper insights from their properties or aggregate disparate data sets to create new audience segments. Here are a few different ways you can use other Google products to manage and uplevel your Ad Manager data strategy. 

Google Analytics 360

Linking your Ad Manager 360 account to Analytics 360 provides a streamlined method to create and reach custom audience segments.

Google Cloud BigQuery Data Transfer Service

The BigQuery Data Transfer Service allows partners to easily schedule and manage the transfer of their Ad Manager 360 data into BigQuery. Once there, partners can run custom SQL queries to deepen their understanding of their monetization businesses, and apply those insights to their ads strategy. 

Google Data Studio

Connect your Ad Manager 360 account to Data Studio to visualize your data. The most popular Ad Manager report dimensions and metrics are available by default in Data Studio. Your reports can be securely shared with others in your organization or publicly.

Data analysis and insights are key to setting your business up for success, and we’ve worked to make them easily accessible in a unified platform. Together, these tools, features, and integrations play an important role in helping to grow your ad revenue.

To learn more about how Ad Manager can help you manage, protect, and grow your advertising business, visit our new feature brief archive in the resources section of our website. We hope you’ve found these posts helpful, and can review past posts here.

This post is the fourth in a series exploring several of Ad Manager’s key features and how they help our publisher partners maximize their ad revenue. To learn more, read posts one, two, and three.

Ten years ago, it was difficult for most to imagine how quickly ad formats would change, or how the rise of mobile and proliferation of video would create so many moments for people to engage with content. I talk to partners every day about how they can’t just keep up with these changes, but must make the most of them to grow their revenue. Key to this is delivering the right ad, in the right format, at the right moment. 

From in-app rewarded video to connected TV ads, Google Ad Manger was built to power the full scope of your digital advertising business. Instead of having to pull together standalone solutions for different types of ads, our publisher partners can select from a full suite of premium formats on Ad Manager to serve ads that add value and help boost revenue. We’ve also made it possible to integrate and manage inventory and formats from third party ad serving platforms, should you choose to use them. 

Here’s an overview of some of the formats you can use and serve through Ad Manager.

Video ads delivered seamlessly, inside and outside of the player

The data is in, both audiences and advertisers love digital video. To help you make the most of video’s growth, we’ve been steadily investing in new ad formats, delivery improvements, and platform integrations on devices like connected TVs and smart devices. 

Here are a few features and formats that work to ensure you can extract the most value from your content with video ads.

Dynamic Ad Insertion delivers personalized in-stream video experiences at scale
Dynamic Ad Insertion brings the quality of TV ads to any digital device, including internet enabled televisions. It helps you earn more revenue for your video inventory by delivering a seamless and personalized viewer experience. 

Because it’s built directly into Ad Manager, Dynamic Ad Insertion helps you take advantage of advanced monetization software and machine learning to maximize your revenue across devices, for live and on-demand content. It reliably supports millions of concurrent viewers with advanced pre-fetching of ads, sophisticated failure mitigation systems, and Google infrastructure and serving capacity. Our partners have used it during the World Cup, the Winter Olympics, the NFL Playoffs, and more.

In-article and in-feed video formats
Historically most video ad opportunities have been limited to players and in-stream content. But that’s changing, and fast. We’ve introduced five programmatic video formats on Ad Manager that can be served to people outside of the player. Partners using the platform can easily serve video ads within all of their content feeds and articles programmatically by opting into video ad experiences in protections.

Both the in-feed and in-article versions of these video ads seamlessly fit a user's scrolling behavior on both web and apps. They’re muted by default to ensure they don’t disrupt the user, and they only play when 50 percent or more of the ad is in view, ensuring higher viewability rates. If users choose to engage with an ad, they can tap to unmute the video

Rewarded ads create a better ad experience

Ads that users can choose to view in exchange for an in-app reward—such as watching a video ad to get an extra life in a game—are called rewarded ads. These ad experiences can keep users more engaged, offer a better overall app experience, and can deliver more revenue for your business. 

In a recent Google study, 50 percent of users reported that they would be less satisfied with their app experience if rewarded ads were removed. With Ad Manager, you can set up and choose from a range of ad formats and sizes, from video to interactive ads, as well as different rewards.

Native ads match the design of your site

Native ads are highly effective because they’re formatted to match the look and feel of the sites and apps they appear on. According to a 2017 Google study, users found native ads less distracting than banners because they present a more cohesive experience overall. 

In contrast to conventional banners, Native ads are built with components—pieces of creative that the advertiser provides, like headlines and images. Ad Manager makes it easy for publishers to take these components and style them to create ads that are unique to their site or app. From news feeds to shopping sites, you can customize and optimize your native ads with Ad Manager to determine which formats look the best and earn the most.

Our team continues to innovate with solutions like these, so you can cater to consumers’ changing preferences and take advantage of evolving formats to grow ad revenue.

To learn more about how Ad Manager can help you manage, protect, and grow your advertising business, visit our new feature brief archive in the resources section of our website. And we’ve got one more post in store for this series, Use insights to make better business decisions.