Inside AdMob: February 2015

#MeetAdMob at MWC and GDC Next Week

February 25, 2015

At Mobile World Congress, we’ll be at the Google booth with our colleagues from the Cloud Platform and Adwords teams, other great services that can help you build and grow your app. There’ll also be several exciting Google talks including a keynote from Senior Vice President, for Android, Chrome & Apps, Sundar Pichai, and a panel discussion with Senior Director for YouTube, Stephen Nuttall.
At the Game Developers Conference, we’ll be at the Google booth with Project Tango, Niantic Project, Cardboard, Analytics, AdWords and Cloud Platform. There will be tons of interactive demos and on-site consultations that you won’t want to miss.
We’ll also be hosting a session at GDC called Smart Strategies to Acquire, Monetize and Retain Gamers. This talk will be by Director of Product Management for Mobile Ads, Jonathan Alferness, and Google’s Lead Product Manager for Google Analytics and Mobile Apps, Russell Ketchum. See all the details about our Google Developer Day here and check out all the other Google talks on the GDC scheduler.
If you can’t attend either event this year, we’ll be live tweeting and sharing on Google+ and Twitter, so stay in the loop with what’s happening with #MeetAdMob. Also, you can still check out our morning talks from GDC on our livestream at g.co/dev/gdc-livestream.
Posted by the Google AdMob Team

We'll see you at GDC 2015!

February 24, 2015

Developer Day Our Developer Day will take place in Room 2006 of the West Hall of Moscone Center on Monday, March 2. We're keeping the content action-oriented with a few presentations and lightning talks, followed by a full afternoon of hands on hacking with Google engineers. Here’s a look at the schedule:
Opening Keynote || 10AM: We’ll kick off the day by sharing to make your games more successful with Google. You’ll hear about new platforms, new tools to make development easier, and ways to measure your mobile games and monetize them.
Running A Successful Games Business with Google || 10:30AM: Next we’ll hear from Bob Meese, the Global Head of Games Business Development from Google Play, who’ll offer some key pointers on how to make sure you're best taking advantage of unique tools on Google Play to grow your business effectively.
Lightning Talks || 11:15AM: Ready to absorb all the opportunities Google has to offer your game business? These quick, 5-minute talks will cover everything from FlatBuffers to Google Cast to data interpolation. To keep us on track, a gong may be involved.
Code Labs || 1:30PM: After lunch, we’ll turn the room into a classroom setting where you can participate in a number of self-guided code labs focused on leveraging Analytics, Google Play game services, Firebase and VR with Cardboard. These Code Labs are completely self-paced and will be available throughout the afternoon. If you want admission to the code labs earlier, sign up for Priority Access here!
Also, be sure to check out the Google booth on the Expo floor to get hands on experiences with Project Tango, Niantic Labs and Cardboard starting on Wednesday, March 4. Teams from AdWords, Analytics, Cloud Platform, Firebase and AdMob will also be available to answer any of your product questions.
For more information on our presence at GDC, including a full list of our talks and speaker details, please visit g.co/dev/gdc2015. Please note that these events are part of the official Game Developer's Conference, so you will need a pass to attend. If you can't attend GDC in person, you can still check out our morning talks on our livestream at g.co/dev/gdc-livestream. We’ll also be live tweeting and sharing on Google+, so stay in the loop with what’s happening with #MeetAdMob.
Posted by the Google AdMob Team.

Lowdown: How to Optimize Mediation for your App Part 2

February 21, 2015

Lowdown is a weekly series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team. Optimizing your mediation setup will help you get the highest CPMs from the ad placements in your app. Last week, I covered how to use dynamic, real time competition (the Live CPM feature) to increase your chances of higher CPMs. If you haven’t done so, make sure to read through that article for a clear explanation of what mediation is and how to enable Live CPM. This week I’ll go over two more strategies that will further enhance your competitive setup.
Regularly Update Your CPM Assignments
Make sure to update the CPM you assign for each of the ad networks in your mediation stack once every 10-14 days. Advertising network CPMs fluctuate over time. You want to be certain that the CPM you assigned for each network isn’t inaccurately high, causing you to settle for lower CPMs. Also, plan for your 10-14 day cycles to land on the first of every month, when advertiser’s usually reset their budgets.
Segment Your Assigned CPM Values
To further intensify competition, segment your assigned CPM values based on geography. Impressions from different geographic locations can differ in value. Many developers will calculate a unique value for their most profitable regions and do a separate calculation for their Rest of World (ROW) inventory.
To better understand how to segment by geography and increase the accuracy of your competitive setup, let’s use a real world app example. Imagine you’ve developed an app that’s very popular in Japan and in the US. When analyzing your mediation stack, it might be interesting to segment Japan and the US from the rest of the world and calculate the average CPM for each bucket. After doing so, you realized that one of your 3rd party advertising networks delivers $2 CPMs on average, but US and Japanese CPMs average $2.50 while the Rest of World CPM is $1.50. Instead of using the world average of $2.00, where AdMob would only need to beat $2.00 to serve a US and Japan impression, AdMob must now beat $2.50 to serve. Segmentation by geography brought precision to your competition, yielding potentially higher earnings.
For more detailed instruction on mediation in AdMob, be sure to visit our Help Center. In the next edition of Lowdown, we’ll be looking at how you can begin to calculate the value of each user using Google Analytics. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Adam Wolf
AdMob Account Strategist

Introducing AdMob App Spotlight Video Series

February 18, 2015

Want to make smarter choices to improve your app’s user experience and grow your business? Learn from successful app developers by taking a look at the decisions they’ve made in their apps in our new App Spotlight Video Series. This series offers in-depth walkthroughs of great apps, highlighting practical tips and tricks. Our first video features PicsArt, a photo sharing app that’s recently reported over 200M downloads. Stay tuned for more App Spotlight videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel and following us on Google+.

Lowdown: How to Optimize Mediation for your App Part 1

February 14, 2015

Lowdown is a weekly series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team.Live CPMMediation
AdMob is a robust mobile ads platform that includes mediation–allowing you to serve ad impressions from multiple 3rd party networks, your own house ads, and Google’s advertising inventory. With basic mediation, you’re required to rank all of the ad networks you use, assigning a predicted CPM for each one. When it’s time to serve an ad, the mediation platform will first make a request to the network you’ve ranked as number 1. If that network doesn’t serve an ad, it will make a request to your second-ranked network. It will continue down your list until an ad is served. Although helpful, this setup is unsophisticated. It doesn’t matter if network 2 or 3 is able to pay you a higher CPM, you’ve already committed yourself to the fixed ranking, and there’s a better way to increase revenue.

Mediation with Live CPM

In contrast, when the Live CPM feature is enabled, you increase your chances of higher CPMs with real time, dynamic competition. When it’s time to serve an ad in your app, Google’s advertising demand will provide its most valuable CPM, and compare this to the CPM you’ve assigned for your first-ranked network. Whichever network has a higher CPM will get the impression.

case studyHelp CenterGoogle+

Smarter monetization strategies - powered by AdMob’s new reporting tools

February 11, 2015

Performance Reports

By applying dimensions, you can sort or change the types of data shown. Dimensions determine the columns displayed in your report. You can add dimensions to two different performance reports: the AdMob Network report and Admob Mediation report. Below are some example dimensions:

AdMob Network report dimensions:

Date: View performance by date.
App: View performance by app.
Targeting type: View performance by targeting type.

AdMob Mediation report dimensions:

Date: View performance by date.
Ad source: View performance by ad source, which measures mediation traffic.
Allocation: View performance by allocation within ad slots.

By applying filters, you can hide specific data from your reports. Filters help you find the information you want within the larger report. Below are some example filters:

Ad unit
Country
Ad source

For instance, if you want to compare your new Android app’s banner and interstitial ads in Japan, simply select ‘Ad Unit’ as a Dimension, then add an ‘App’ Filter set as one of your Android apps, and a ‘Country’ Filter set as Japan. The graph and data will refresh immediately to represent this new segment!

Check out this new feature today and start refining your monetization strategy now. Refer to Performance Reports help center article for more details, and stay connected on all things AdMob following our Google+ page.

Posted by Sean Meng

AdMob Marketing

8 Things You Didn’t Know About AdMob

February 4, 2015

1. AdMob is more than a banner only network.
AdMob taps into Google’s massive advertising inventory, which includes a variety of formats and also enables us to offer really high fill rates. Competitive CPMs combined with really high fill rates is a strong recipe for long term earning potential.
2. Implementing AdMob won’t slow down your Android app.
AdMob’s SDK is integrated into Google Play services–if you’re in the Play Store, you’ve already integrated the AdMob SDK. Further, there are several simple ways to decrease Google Play services’ impact on APK size.
3. There’s a clever way to make sure interstitial ads load instantly for users.
We allow, and highly recommend, preloading of interstitial ads right when a user logs in. It’s an interstitials best practice. If implemented right, there isn’t latency at all.
4. Google Analytics is integrated into AdMob and works for more than websites.
Google Mobile App Analytics has been entirely re-imagined for mobile development. We measure what matters most at all key stages: from first discovery and download to in-app purchases. Best yet, Google Analytics is now fully available in AdMob.
5. AdMob works across all major platforms.
AdMob works for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Great examples of succesful cross-platform AdMob users include Dictionary.com and photo sharing app, Picsart.
6. You can update CPMs automatically with AdMob.
AdMob’s Network Optimization feature allows you to automatically update CPMs, helping you easily maximize revenue. This feature continually retrieves the freshest CPMs from each ad network based on historical performance and dynamically reorders them in your mediation stack. This ensures that the ad network with the highest CPM is served.
7. You can mediate on AdMob.
AdMob is a comprehensive mediation platform, supporting mediation of dozens of the top networks in the world.
8. House ad campaigns are free.
You can run as many house ads as you’d like for free. You can read more here about how Japanese game developer, Colopl, has been very successful using interstitial house ads to promote in-app purchases.
Go here to learn more about all that AdMob can do to help you grow your business and stay connected on all things AdMob following our Google+ page.

Posted by the Google AdMob Team

Inside AdMob

#MeetAdMob at MWC and GDC Next Week

We'll see you at GDC 2015!

Lowdown: How to Optimize Mediation for your App Part 2

Introducing AdMob App Spotlight Video Series

Lowdown: How to Optimize Mediation for your App Part 1

Smarter monetization strategies - powered by AdMob’s new reporting tools

8 Things You Didn’t Know About AdMob

Translate

Labels

Archive

Feed

Useful links

Company-wide

Products

Developers