New enhancements to Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

Back in April, we introduced Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, a gadget that can help you earn money by adding an ad for a relevant product to a blog post and earning a commission when someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase. We’ve received positive feedback from Blogger users and the advertisers who have made their products available through the gadget, and wanted to let you know about a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made to this gadget:

• Increased availability: When this gadget first launched, you may not have been able to see the gadget even though you have an AdSense account. We’ve changed this so that all Blogger users located in the U.S. with an AdSense account have the ability to see that gadget in their post editor and can sign up to use Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger. If you tried to find the “Advertise Products” gadget and didn’t see it before, try again!

• More advertisers and products: The types of advertisers and products available when the gadget became available were in categories such as Department Stores, Sport and Fitness, Office Supplies, Home & Garden, and Apparel & Accessories. We’ve now added 40 more advertisers and expanded our offering to include products in the Health & Beauty, Jewelry, Flowers Edibles & Gifts, Education, and other categories.

Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger is easy to use, and is a great solution for those users interested in choosing the products and brands they want to promote in their blog posts.



Here are two examples of a Blogger user finding a relevant affiliate ad: 

Get started today.

Announcing the June 20 DS release!

The latest DoubleClick Search (DS) release includes the following new features:

• Change history: Provides you with details on changes made to your account, including user changes, inbound sync updates, and automated changes from the DS bid strategy system. Auditing search campaigns is a crucial business need for many advertisers. This feature makes auditing easier with the ability to sort on changes by user for a specified date range. Look for a more detailed blog post on Change history in the coming days. Learn more.


• Bid strategy change history: Within Change History, you can gain insights into bid strategy changes with a summary of the bid rationale. Brought to you by the bid strategy team, this feature will let you know what target the change was intended to hit, how often bids are evaluated and, for target position strategies, details on why a change was made. You also receive guidance on how to improve bid strategy performance by discovering where settings like maximum keyword bid inhibit the bid changes. Learn more.

• Filter by specific table rows: You can now choose the specific rows you want to see in a UI reporting table. Just select the check boxes next to the rows and click the Filter to selected button above the table. This allows you to easily chart any campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.


• Reporting stats for labels: Labels are a great way to manage and report on keywords outside the traditional campaign structure. With this new feature, you can now see stats for these labels. Click the Labels tab in the left nav as you normally would to see a list of your labels, and you’ll now see reporting stats. You can also download label reports to make it easier to share with others. Learn more.

We also made an improvement to the way we bid on low-traffic keywords. For low-traffic keywords with no impression potential, we’ve reduced unnecessary bid increases. We now predict the correlation between bids and impressions. As a result, we differentiate keywords that don’t have impressions due to:

• Low bids


• No search traffic

For the keywords in the "no search traffic" group, we’re much less likely to increase bids in a futile attempt to get more impressions. This is beneficial because:

• Now there is a much smaller chance of reaching the max bid on low-traffic keywords, which reduces the risk of high CPCs if an impression and click do occur for these keywords.


• The bids of low-traffic keywords will be more stable, which will also result in better position control.

Note that this change applies to position bid strategies only.

Read the Help Center release notes for more information on these features, and on issues fixed in this release. And keep an eye on the blog for news of the upcoming full release of deferred uploads. This feature will allow you to delay the start of processing an upload until a specified date and time.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

OS X Mountain Lion

Space

Lower pricing and simplified limits with the Google Maps API

Since launching the Google Maps API seven years ago, we’ve been awed by the many ways developers have used the service to build great mapping apps. As you may know, last year we introduced limits on the number of free maps that developers could show daily through the Google Maps API. Since then, we’ve been listening carefully to feedback, and today we’re happy to announce that we’re lowering API usage fees and simplifying limits for both Styled and regular maps. Here are the details:

• Changes to pricing. While the Maps API remains free for the vast majority of sites, some developers were worried about the potential costs. In response, we have lowered the online price from US $4 per 1,000 map loads to 50¢ per 1,000 map loads.




• Simplified limits. We’re eliminating the previous distinction between Styled Maps and regular unstyled maps. The same usage limits and pricing now apply to applications using Styled Maps and the default Google Maps style.

We’re beginning to monitor Maps API usage starting today, and, based on current usage, fees will only apply to the top 0.35% of sites regularly exceeding the published limits of 25,000 map loads every day for 90 consecutive days. We aren’t automating the application of these limits, so if your site consistently uses more than the free maps allowance we’ll contact you to discuss your options. Please rest assured that your map will not stop working due to a sudden surge in popularity.



Based on questions we’ve heard during regular conversations with developers, we’d also like to remind you of the following facts.

• To monitor whether your site might be affected by the Maps API usage limits, use a Google APIs Console key with your applications. Daily usage reports will then be generated in the console.




• If you are a high-trafficked site, please consider Google Maps API for Business, our enterprise offering with technical support, a service level agreement, and additional benefits.




• Non-profit organisations aren’t affected by the Maps API usage limits and can also apply for a free Maps API for Business license through the Google Earth Outreach grants program.




• You can generate revenue from your Maps API application using AdSense for Maps, which enables you to display relevant ads on or alongside your map.

We hope the changes we’re announcing today will help you continue to deliver the most innovative maps experience to your users. If you have any questions or concerns please post to the Google Maps API forums or contact the Google Maps API for Business Sales team using this form. We look forward to helping you build great Maps applications for many years to come.



Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

Google@ Cannes: Project Re: Brief Premiere, the Google+ "Winners Circle" and More

Last week, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the global advertising community gathered to celebrate and honor the most inspiring creative work from around the world. We are committed to working with our agency partners to enable and inspire this continued creative magic. Below are a few initiatives and projects that we discussed last week, designed to do just that: 

• Project Re: Brief, the film: Earlier this year, we kicked off Project Re: Brief, our new experiment to re-imagine the future of advertising by taking some cues from its storied past. We’ve brought four of the most loved campaigns of the ‘60s and ‘70s -- Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop,” Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it,” Avis’ “We try harder,” and Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” -- back to life, this time built from the ground up for the digital age, with the partnership of the the advertising legends that originated them. But we think the ads themselves are only part of the story. Behind the scenes of our “Project,” we saw an amazing journey unfold as traditional, classically trained advertising creatives came together with technologists for the first time to collectively push the bounds of what online advertising can be. This journey is captured in “Project Re: Brief: A Film About Re-Imagining Advertising,” which we premiered at Cannes, and made widely available today on YouTube.
  


• The Google+ Winners Circle: In the same spirit of helping share inspiration from some of the world’s best advertising creatives, we're also creating the Google+ “Winners Circle.” This will be a new circle of 50 of the industry’s most honored creatives so that everyone in the industry can meet the people behind the amazing work we’re here to celebrate and see what makes them tick.
  


• Agency Edge, our refreshed training platform for agencies: One of the top requests we get from our agency partners is for more tips and training to help get the most out of the web’s myriad of marketing tools. We initially addressed this several years ago with the launch of AgencyLand, an educational platform designed specifically for our agency partners. But in the years since, the agency landscape, the range of tools available and in fact, the entire ecosystem, have shifted dramatically. So to meet the new and quickly evolving needs of today’s agencies, we unveiled Agency Edge, a place where agencies can get on-demand training, collateral and benchmark data to better serve their clients. 

Cannes is one of my favorite events of the year, precisely because of the amazing mix of innovation and creativity on display. We think, though, that even more dazzling projects lay just over the horizon. Through initiatives like these, we hope to help bring them into view. 




Posted by Torrence Boone, Managing Director, Agency Business Development

Show a Custom Image When No AdMob Ad Is Available: Part 2

We previously discussed how to show a custom image using the Google AdMob SDK when an ad request can’t be filled. In the second and final part of this series, we’ll explain how to resume showing AdMob ads if, for example, internet connectivity is restored.

In part 1, we demonstrated how to hide the ad and display a custom image when the first ad request fails. However, the AdMob SDK doesn't make another ad request until it successfully receives an ad, so you must schedule your own refresh. Here’s how to do it:

private final Handler refreshHandler = new Handler();
private final Runnable refreshRunnable = new RefreshRunnable();
private boolean firstAdReceived = false;

@Override
public void onFailedToReceiveAd(Ad ad, ErrorCode code) {
  if (!firstAdReceived) {
    // Keep code from part 1.
    ...
    // Schedule an ad refresh.
    refreshHandler.removeCallbacks(refreshRunnable);
    refreshHandler.postDelayed(
        refreshRunnable, REFRESH_RATE_IN_SECONDS * 1000);
  }
}

private class RefreshRunnable implements Runnable {
  @Override
  public void run() {
    // Load an ad with an ad request.
    adView.loadAd(new AdRequest());
  }
}

A Handler is used to schedule an ad refresh at your desired refresh rate. Before making the postDelayed call, the handler removes any pending posts that may be queued.

With these changes, your application will request an AdMob ad at a regular interval. Once a request is successful, the existing code in onReceiveAd swaps out your custom image with an AdMob ad, and AdMob starts refreshing automatically.

If the user either leaves your app or clicks on your custom ad, you want to pause your refresh handler when your app is not visible to the user. This is an Android best practice that will help preserve battery life. You can override Android’s onStop and onStart callbacks to stop and start ad refreshes, as shown below:

@Override
public void onStop() {
  super.onStop();
  // Remove any pending ad refreshes.
  refreshHandler.removeCallbacks(refreshRunnable);
}

@Override
public void onStart() {
  super.onStart();
  if (!firstAdReceived) {
    // Request a new ad immediately.
    refreshHandler.post(refreshRunnable);
  }
}

This code prevents your app from making ad requests when the user exits your app but immediately requests an ad when the user returns to your app.

That’s it! You’ve successfully integrated a placeholder image into your application to stand in when an ad request can’t be filled. Check out the full example if you have trouble setting up the code.

As always, let us know on the forum if you have any questions about the Google AdMob SDK, or join us during office hours.

 - Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team