Tag Archives: Native Ads

Introducing AdSense Native ads

Today we’re introducing the new AdSense Native ads -- a suite of ad formats designed to match the look and feel of your site, providing a great user experience for your visitors. AdSense Native ads come in three categories: In-feed, In-article, and Matched content*. They can all be used at once or individually and are designed for:

  • A great user experience: they fit naturally on your site and use high quality advertiser elements, such as high resolution images, longer titles and descriptions, to provide a more attractive experience for your visitors. 
  • A great look and feel across different screen sizes: the ads are built to look great on mobile, desktop, and tablet. 
  • Ease of use: easy-to-use editing tools help you make the ads look great on your site.

Native In-feed opens up new revenue opportunity in your feeds
Available to all publishers, In-feed ads slot neatly inside your feeds, e.g. a list of articles or products on your site. These ads are highly customizable to match the look and feel of your feed content and offer new places to show ads.

Native In-article offers a better advertising experience
Available to all publishers, In-article ads are optimized by Google to help you put great-looking ads between the paragraphs of your pages. In-article ads use high-quality advertising elements and offer a great reading experience to your visitors.

Matched Content* drives more users to your content 
Available to publishers that meet the eligibility criteria, Matched content is a content recommendation tool that helps you promote your content to visitors and potentially increase revenue, page views, and time spent on site. Publishers that are eligible for the “Allow ads” feature can also show relevant ads within their Matched content units, creating an additional revenue opportunity in this placement.

Getting started with AdSense Native ads 
AdSense Native ads can be placed together, or separately, to customize your website’s ad experience. Use In-feed ads inside your feed (e.g. a list of articles, or products), In-article ads between the paragraphs of your pages, and Matched content ads directly below your articles.  When deciding your native strategy, keep the content best practices in mind.

To get started with AdSense Native ads:

  • Sign in to your AdSense account
  • In the left navigation panel, click My ads
  • Click +New ad unit
  • Select your ad category: In-article, In-feed or Matched content

We'd love to hear what you think about these ad formats in the comments section below this post.

Posted by: Violetta Kalathaki - AdSense Product Manager

*This format has already been available to eligible publishers, and is now part of AdSense Native ads.

Source: Inside AdSense


Cheetah Mobile Improves User Ad Experience While Increasing App Performance with AdMob’s Native Video Ads

Seven years ago, Cheetah Mobile began as a small company of ten employees that built software for PCs. Today, they are a leading developer with over one thousand employees. Their popular apps Clean Master and Battery Doctor have been downloaded by millions around the world and Clean Master itself has over 600 million MAU worldwide.

The Problem

With an ever growing user base, Cheetah Mobile needed to find creative ways to help them reach their global user base while monetizing their apps with innovative new ad formats. They needed to be able to use diversified high-quality ads to improve their revenue while also preserving the user-focused experience of their apps.

The Solution

Cheetah Mobile work with Google, using AdMob to find new ways to improve the performance of their apps. Cheetah expanded on their use of native display ads by introducing the newly launched native video format. By doing this, Cheetah was able to diversify the ad mix and increasing user engagement by tapping into the branding power of video. Opting in to video ads alongside display ads resulted in higher overall performance.

The Results

By implementing these simple changes and taking advantage of Google newest native ad format, Cheetah Mobile saw a lift in eCPM’s of +34% and were able to increase their revenue by +31%. By placing video ads optimally within the flow of the app - on the results page after the intended user action was complete - Cheetah was able to maintain a highly engaging, but non-intrusive ad experience. Customizing the video ads to match the look and feel of their apps further ensured that introducing new ads did not disrupt the user experience.

“Native ads are the leading format in utility apps, and video ads are the next big thing in mobile advertising. AdMob provided the perfect solution for both: native video ads. The performance we have seen from AdMob is very encouraging and has already resulted in a revenue boost.“ -- Chen Yong , SVP of Cheetah Mobile.

To check out our other success stories, visit us at at the AdMob website. Remember to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Jessica O'Brien, Mobile Product Specialist

Source: Inside AdMob


Duolingo keeps education free with AdMob native ads

Duolingo is an online education platform that helps millions of people around the world learn languages and also one of the most popular educational apps globally. It was selected by Apple as iPhone App of the Year in 2013, and by Google as Best of the Best for Android in 2013 and 2014.

The Problem

Building, supporting, and expanding on a platform used by that many people can be expensive and complex. Thus, Duolingo faced a profound challenge — how could they monetize a free, beloved product without undermining their mission or hurting the trust of their users.

The Solution

Duolingo saw ads as a way to build a sustainable business while still placing product value as the most important feature. When implemented properly ads can have a transformational effect on a business's ability to grow. However, if implemented poorly they can be intrusive, poorly designed, erode trust and result in a bad user experience.

So to ensure the best user experience, Duolingo chose to use AdMob native ads — a format that allows fully customized ads to be placed in ways that don’t disrupt their student’s learning flow. Below you can see what the app looked like prior to the update and then after Duolingo integrated AdMob’s native ads solution.

The Results

Duolingo had tested different ad formats, image sizes, designs, and messaging with the goal of increasing click through rate (CTR) without hurting user retention. Through these tests, they found that using large images, calling attention to the visuals of the native ad, and fully styling ads to match Duolingo’s distinctive visual brand delivered the most striking results. For example, Duolingo saw a 101% improvement in ad CTRs and an RPM increase with a single change by switching from small images to larger ones and emphasizing the call-to-action buttons within the ad unit.

Remember to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Dmitry Mazilo, AdMob Business Development Lead

Source: Inside AdMob


The inside scoop on native advertising: What is it, why does it matter and do you need it?

The final part of the #SuccessStack looks at the hot topic of native advertising. You’ll learn what it is, why it’s on every advertiser’s radar and whether it’s right for your site.


What is native advertising?

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), native ads are paid ads that have the goal of being “so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.”

Native ads allow you to have an ad styled to fit within the page and it’s surrounding content, unlike traditional display banners. They are designed to match the look, feel, and function of your site.


Why does native advertising matter?

Since most people access the Internet from a mobile phone, it’s important to prioritize a mobile first user experience. This shift in thinking requires a change in the way we approach our ads too.

You’re likely already putting a lot of effort into shaping your site to meet the high expectations of a clean and mobile-optimized user experience. It’s just as  important to experiment with how you deliver ads to meet those user expectations and retain users’ interest in your site. Native ads can open up new earning opportunities on your site where traditional ad formats weren’t appropriate before. Ad formats, like banner ads, are effective but sometimes limited by size and placements. Native Ads can be customized to fit seamlessly within your content’s look and feel. 


Do you need it?

According to new BI Intelligence estimates based on historical data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), PwC, and IHS; US native display ad revenue will make up 74% of total US display ad revenue in 2021, up from a 56% share in 2016.1

Supporting and offering this ad format will provide you with access to a huge portion of the market for advertiser budgets. Additionally, as mobile consumers increasingly drive the publishing industry, native advertising is a key strategy for  connecting with that audience and  delivering a profitable mobile experience.


Finding inspiration

If you’re looking for a reason to get started on native ads, then take a look at some of our success stories. 
  • Unidad Editorial is a leading multimedia group in Spain with 20 million daily users. See how they achieved a 4X increase in mobile CTR and and 6X increase in desktop CTR using native ads.
  • The New York Times also saw a huge boost in viewability and ad engagement metrics using native ads. Read their story here.
  • Leading publishers Aller Media (Scandinavia) and Grupo Expansión (Mexico) both saw serious uplifts in their viewability metrics using native advertising units.

When implementing native ads, consider the following:
  • Prioritize your audience: Consider your users’ expectations of your site and how they’ll respond to the type of ads you choose. Native ads meet users’ expectations by seamlessly fitting within your site’s user experience. 
  • Test first to optimize for user experience and ad revenue: It’s important to consider how to create the best user experience while maximizing your ad revenue. Strike a balance between content and ads by testing new native ad units and formats to measure their impact on revenue and user engagement.

Next steps

Ready to get started? With 54% of global marketing leaders already using native advertising, native ads are the solution to help grow your ad earnings.2

Our team of experts can offer a personalized consultation to help you offer native ads to your advertisers and grow your publishing business. Book a slot time to speak with one of our experts.




Posted By: Jay Castro, from the AdSense team

1 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-native-ad-report-forecasts-2016-5?IR=T
2 “Current vs. Planned Use of Select Digital Ad Formats Among Marketing Leaders Worldwide, Jan 2016”, eMarketer, 2016. 

Source: Inside AdSense


AdMob is “leveling up” your business with new app monetization innovations

Yesterday, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we announced important updates to AdMob that could help you unlock new business with rewarded video formats and free, unlimited and real-time analytics reporting. These features will help you monetize your games more effectively by helping you keep your players engaged with more immersive ads and by giving you a faster understanding of how they are interacting with your game.


Over the last year, developers embraced AdMob’s platform to mediate rewarded video ads to nine leading rewarded networks, including TapJoy which we announced yesterday. And we’re not stopping there. AdMob developers around the world now have access to Google’s own video advertising demand from Google AdWords, significantly increasing the breadth and scale of rewarded demand available. That means AdMob now offers a single platform solution including mediation, demand, and reservations. And for those publishers currently using either IronSource or Mopub, adaptors are now available to add Google demand.

Our native ads have also seen tremendous growth over the last year as a way for developers to deliver rich, immersive ad experiences. For developers building their games in Unity, a popular gaming engine, we will shortly be releasing a plugin that supports native ads and native ad mediation on both iOS and Android. This will expand AdMob’s platform and network support for Unity developers beyond banner, interstitial, and rewarded ads available today.

We are also investing in better measurement tools for developers by bringing the power of Firebase Analytics to more game developers with a generally available C++ SDK and an SDK for Unity.

C++ and Unity developers can access Firebase Analytics stream view for real-time player insights
Here’s what developers have to say about rewarded ads in AdMob:
"Implementing AdMob rewarded ads helped us not just monetize non-spending users but increase overall revenue of the game, including IAP revenue. Also, AdMob mediation made it easy to compare our ad performance across ad networks." - Somin Oh, Ad Monetization Manager @ JoyCity
If you haven’t tried AdMob rewarded ads yet, here’s how you can get started. We’re hosting a series of Hangouts on Air around rewarded demand and mediation. During these session we will share best practices to implement and optimize the format and highlight key areas that AdMob rewarded can help you be successful in, including:

  • Access the scale of Google’s video demand: With AdWords’ global presence and advertiser base, AdMob publishers will benefit from geographically diverse demand.
  • Diversified demand with rewarded mediation: Help ensure that there’s always an ad available to show, and that the ad shown is the most valuable to you.
  • User-friendly ad formats: Clear guidance to users at all touch points, including opt-out option for full user control over ad experience.
  • Great User Experiences: AdMob provides highly engaged ads such as landscape and portrait video formats in rewarded ads where there is no incentivization of the download giving a clear value exchange for the user.
  • Popular Game Engine Support: New integrations with Cocos2d-x and Unity game engines allow you to seamlessly support rewarded ads in your games. 

It’s been a privilege to meet so many of you at GDC and learn about the amazing games that you’re all building. We are committed to continuing on this journey with you to build a smart monetization platform for you to grow long-term gaming businesses.

Make sure to stay connected on all things AdMob, follow our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

The AdMob Team

Source: Inside AdMob


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


Mobile Ads Garage: Episode 12: Native Express in a UITableView

Episode twelve of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.

With their customizable presentations and ability to be precached, Native Express ads fit right in with list-based user interfaces:

In this deep dive episode of the Mobile Ads Garage, you'll learn how to integrate Native Express ads into an iOS app that uses a UITableViewController for its primary UI. Along the way you'll get a detailed set of step and see screencasts of an implementation in Xcode. The episode also covers a handy technique for tapping into the ad lifecycle to load native express ads sequentially, from the top of the list to the bottom.

If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.

We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.

Remember to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Source: Inside AdMob


Mobile Ads Garage: Episode 11 – Native Express in a RecyclerView

Episode 11 of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and Doubleclick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.

In a break with tradition, this video is a deep technical dive on one subject: Native Ads Express in an Android RecyclerView. You'll learn how to modify an existing RecyclerView implementation to include Native Express ads, all the way from updating the adapter to loading the ads. In addition, you'll get a clever trick that makes sure your ads are always sized to match the UI, so they fit right in with your content.

If you haven't used Native Ads Express before, you can see them in action in Episode 7. Andrew and Gary cover all the basics: loading ads, placing them in layouts and storyboards, and using CSS to style the ads to match your app.

If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.

We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.

Remember to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Source: Inside AdMob


[New eBook] Download The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads

Posted by Vishal Kumar, Senior Product Manager, AdMob

Originally posted to the Inside AdMob blog

Recently we launched a new eBook called "The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads", the latest in our No-Nonsense series. This guide is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of native ads and share practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads in your app.

Over the last several years, app users have raised their expectations for a high quality app UX. To meet these expectations, ad formats have evolved accordingly. The most fitting new format that meets these higher expectations is native ads – ads that match the look and feel of the surrounding app content. And as spending on native ads is expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018, this presents a huge opportunity for publishers to enhance their user experience and tap into new revenues.

In the eBook, you’ll learn:

  • Guiding design principles that will help you better implement native ads 
  • Practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads with lots of examples 
  • Tips on how to set up a proper A/B test to begin testing native ads 
  • How AdMob can help you implement native ads

Download your copy here:

[New eBook] Download The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads

Today we’re launching a new eBook called "The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads", the latest in our No-Nonsense series. This guide is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of native ads and share practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads in your app.

Over the last several years, app users have raised their expectations for a high quality app UX. To meet these expectations, ad formats have evolved accordingly. The most fitting new format that meets these higher expectations is native ads – ads that match the look and feel of the surrounding app content. And as spending on native ads is expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018, this presents a huge opportunity for publishers to enhance their user experience and tap into new revenues.

In the eBook, you’ll learn:

  • Guiding design principles that will help you better implement native ads 
  • Practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads with lots of examples 
  • Tips on how to set up a proper A/B test to begin testing native ads 
  • How AdMob can help you implement native ads

Download your copy here:

Vishal Kumar, Senior Product Manager, AdMob

Source: Inside AdMob