Tune in to I/O Live at 9:30 a.m. PDT on June 27

Editor's note: We'd like to share this announcement from Mike Winton, who founded and leads Google's global Developer Relations organization. --Stan Grinberg, Ads Developer Relations



Google I/O, our annual developer conference, begins in just two days, and this year, we’re bringing you more than 130 technical sessions, 20 code labs and 155 Sandbox partners. If you’re not here in San Francisco, you can still sign up for one of our 350+ I/O Extended events around the world or tune in to I/O Live to watch the livestream from wherever you are. This year’s conference kicks off on June 27 with the first day’s keynote at 9:30 a.m. and the second day’s keynote on June 28 at 10:00 a.m. PDT, so tune in early at developers.google.com/io to avoid missing the action!



Bookmark developers.google.com/io to watch I/O Live from your desktop, or download the Google I/O mobile app to access the live stream from your phone or tablet. For the truly entrepreneurial, check our liveblogging gadget, which lets you add your commentary and the live video feed from the Google I/O keynotes to your blog.



More than 40 sessions on Android, Chrome, Google+ and your favorite APIs will be streamed live with captions, and all remaining session videos will be recorded and available shortly after the conference on Google Developers Live and the conference website. Between sessions, we’ll bring you behind-the-scenes footage featuring interviews with Googlers and attendees, tours of the Sandbox and more. The stream will also continue through our After Hours party (June 27 starting at 7:00 p.m. PDT), where we've teamed up with top entertainers, inventors, artists, educators and visionaries from all over the world for an amazing evening.



Mike Winton, Director of Developer Relations

New enhancements to Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

Back in April, we introduced Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, a gadget that enables Blogger users to easily monetize their blogs through Google Affiliate Network and helps advertisers scale relationships with content blogs. We’ve received positive feedback about this gadget from participating advertisers and Blogger users, and wanted to let you know about a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made:

• Additional advertisers: This program is now available to more advertisers. In order to participate, advertisers must provide a Merchant Center feed and consent through an email agreement.
  
  


• Additional categories of blogs: All Blogger users located in the US with an AdSense account can now sign up for Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger. Participating advertisers can see performance at the category and blog level via the ‘Reports’ tab in the Google Affiliate Network interface.

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

If you’re an advertiser interested in participating in Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, please reach out to your Google Affiliate Network account team or submit an inquiry if you’re not already working with us. If you’re a publisher, learn more about posting affiliate ads to your blog.


Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager

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

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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