Offers.com utilizes technology and strong partnerships to increase sales by 36%

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on the blog every few weeks. 



Offers.com is an Austin-based publisher that aggregates and promotes deals from all over the web. In 2011, as they considered their annual goals, Offers.com Vice President Howard Schaffer worked with Google Affiliate Network to grow top line revenue and better align with advertisers’ brand goals.



Using Google Affiliate Network link subscriptions, product search, and product feed subscriptions, Howard and the Offers.com team culled the right information to provide their audience with the most compelling deals. Their proven results earned the Offers.com team the trust and confidence of a growing group of advertisers, assisting a number of them with their search strategy.



By coupling Google Affiliate Network technology with building strong partnerships, advertiser sales through Offers.com increased 36% YoY in 2011.



Learn more by reading the full case study.



Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

New tools and policies for Publisher Networks in the Ad Exchange

As the size and quality of publisher networks have grown, so has their need to operate more efficiently and profitably. With this in mind, we’ve rolled out a series of updates for publisher networks in DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

First, we’ve revised our policies to allow publisher networks to use the Ad Exchange even if they own & operate few (or none) of the sites they represent. As always, every partner site has to meet the same high-standards of quality as every AdX publisher.

Second, we’ve built a set Network Partner Management tools that make it easy to add new partners, manage hundreds of domains, and monitor their performance.


For current clients, using these features requires no changes to your existing tags. In addition, reporting, payment and site management remains in your hands.

If you’d like to learn more about these new capabilities, please sign up for one of the webinars below, contact your Ad Exchange account representative, or tell us how to contact you and we’ll have someone reach out.

US Webinar
Tuesday, March 13 at 11am PST (1pm CST / 2pm EST)
Register HERE

EMEA Webinar
Tuesday, March 13 at 2pm GMT (3pm CET)
Register HERE

Posted by Drew Bradstock, Product Manager

App Engine 1.6.3 Released

Our second release of this year will have you leaping into action to start using the new features immediately. What could be more exciting than a feature to support A/B testing on your app? Or DKIM signing when you send email from your Google Apps domain? This release has plenty of exciting changes to keep you busy on your extra day this year.

1.6.3 Platform Changes:

• A new Experimental feature called Traffic Splitting lets you send a percentage of your traffic to different versions of your app. Traffic can be split based either on IP or on cookie.


• When an email is sent either from a user of a Google Apps domain from a request originating on that domain, or from an app administrator with an account on a Google Apps domain, a DKIM signature will be automatically applied to the email.

1.6.3 Admin Console Changes

• Billed applications can now specify the amount of storage used for logs and the duration of time these logs are stored (default is 90 days) as well as view the currently stored amount in the Admin Console. The first gigabyte of logs storage is free and additional storage will be charged at $0.24/G/month. These settings are now available, but additional storage will not be charged for at least 4 weeks, at that point any logs beyond the configured amount will be deleted.


• You can now manually shut down an instance in the Instances view of the Admin Console.


• The Logs Viewer for each request now provides a link to the instance that served that request (as long as the instance is still active).

These are just some of the highlights in 1.6.3. As usual, our release notes for Python® and Java® contain the full list of all the new features and bug fixes, so be sure to check out all the exciting things we’ve been working hard to release this past month.




Posted by the App Engine Team 

Dynamic Views: Update #3 - Gadgets!

Hi Bloggers.



Have you been contemplating a new design for your blog? Are you ready to spruce up your pages with a fresh, modern, and new look? Then you may want to check out Dynamic Views - which now include gadget support.



Dynamic Views are a set of templates that make it easy and fun to explore a blog. As you might expect, we’ve made the gadgets interactive too. Instead of appearing in a panel that consumes valuable real estate on your blog, gadgets now appear in a dock that slides in and out as you move your cursor over them.

Gadgets supported in Dynamic Views currently include: Blog Archive, Followers, Labels, Profile, Subscribe (a new gadget - automatically present if either Follow By Email or Subscription installed), and Link List. These gadgets make it easier for your readers to navigate your blog (archive, labels), and to follow it (followers and RSS).



If you are currently using a traditional template and change to Dynamic Views, supported gadgets will automatically appear on your blog. Gadgets can be added, removed, or customized from the Layouts tab the same as with any other template.



If you’re one of the millions of people who have adopted Dynamic Views since we launched them in September 2011, we encourage you to head on over to our Google+ page and tell us what you like about them!



Happy blogging.



Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Announcing the General Availability of the Python 2.7 Runtime for App Engine

A few months ago we announced an experimental version of the the Python® 2.7 runtime for App Engine. Since then we’ve been hard at work fixing bugs and adding optimizations. Today we’re happy to announce that this runtime has graduated from Experimental status and is a fully supported feature of App Engine. To get started, download the latest App Engine SDK for Python and check out the Getting Started Guide.

We think the Python 2.7 runtime for App Engine is a great step forward for our developers.  First, it allows applications to take advantage of concurrent requests, allowing you to build more performant and efficient applications. If your application wasn't fully utilizing the CPU, chances are that you'll be able to use concurrent requests to reduce the total number of instances and serve more with less.

We've also added some of the most highly requested libraries: PIL, NumPy, and lxml are all part of the Python 2.7 runtime. These three libraries alone have been requested nearly 2,000 times. Check out our updated list of supported libraries and let us know what libraries you would like us to add (be sure to add the tag ‘[Python Library]’ to the summary).

Whether you’re looking to migrate an existing application or build a new application, the Python 2.7 runtime is ready to go.

If you have any questions or comments send them to the App Engine group. We'd love to hear from you.

The Python 2.7 launch cake

Posted by Chris Ramsdale, PM Python 2.7 Runtime for App Engine

(Python and the Python logos are trademarks of the Python Software Foundation)

Android@Mobile World Congress: It’s all about the ecosystem.

Each and every day, we are humbled by the trajectory of Android and our partners.



With a year-on-year growth rate of more than 250%, 850,000 new Android devices are activated each day, jetting the total number of Android devices around the world past 300 million. These numbers are a testament to the break-neck speed of innovation that defines the Android ecosystem.



Last year at Mobile World Congress (MWC), we announced that there were more than 150,000 apps in Android Market. That number tripled to more than 450,000 apps today, with over one billion app downloads happening every month. Think about the astonishing number of songs Shazam’ed, places Qype’ed and foursquare mayorships! To celebrate the hard work and success of our developer community, we’ve built special “app pods” into our Android stand at MWC. Many of these featured apps demonstrate the latest Android innovations, such as Android Beam, which lets you share content like web pages, videos, directions, and apps—just by touching two Android phones back to back.

The Android Stand on the eve of Mobile World Congress 2012

If you walk around the Android stand, it’s also evident that our hardware partners are thriving. There are 100+ devices on display at the conveyor belt bar, which is just a small portion of the 800+ Android devices that have launched to date. And what better sign of innovation than the Bling Bot—powered by the >Android ADK—which can bedazzle your Galaxy Nexus backplate with perfect precision.



We’re just getting started at Mobile World Congress, so keep checking android.com/mwc and the +Android page on Google+ for updates.



Posted by Andy Rubin, SVP, Mobile and Digital Content

Faster, better order management

Since migrating to the Google stack last September, we’ve been working to improve the Google Affiliate Network interface by both adding new features and enhancing some existing ones.



As a part of that effort, we’ve just pushed out a brand new release of the Orders tab for both advertisers and publishers.



First, we've made the Orders tab fast. Very fast. Whether you’re looking up 10 orders or 10,000 orders, you'll see query results load in about the same amount of time.



Advertiser-facing changes:

We want to make it easier for you to handle bulk operations. So, we enabled inline order editing right from the Orders tab. No need to click through to another page -- you can simply edit the order inline. Once an order is updated, publisher and network fees are updated, too.

Also, it’s now easier to cancel orders in bulk. When you search for multiple orders, just select the orders you want to cancel and cancel them all at once.

Publisher-facing changes:

The key publisher feature we’ve added is the ability to directly edit the Member ID field for an order inline. If you're a publisher whose workflow involves verifying or editing the Member ID field, this process will now be much easier.

Finally, based on your feedback, we now display locked orders (e.g. those that have been paid out) in the tab, rather than just open orders. Keep in mind though that those locked orders can't be edited.




As always, we look forward to your feedback. Please use our forum for feedback and comments. Thanks!



Posted by:

Ali Pasha, Product Manager