Measuring a Mobile World: Introducing Mobile App Analytics

Mobile is changing the way that people communicate, work and play, and much of the growing adoption and innovation we're seeing in the industry is driven by mobile apps. There are already more than 600,000 mobile apps on Google Play alone, and we expect to see continued momentum throughout the industry. Mobile is also becoming front and center for marketers and businesses. As more of them understand the value of mobile apps, sophisticated measurement tools are becoming core to how marketers and app developers invest, analyze and market their apps. 

That’s why today we’re announcing a new set of reports in beta called Mobile App Analytics that help marketers and developers better measure their mobile apps. The reports are tailored for mobile app developers and marketers, speaking the language that matters to them. They are designed to measure the entire mobile customer journey - from discovery to download to engagement. This enables the creation of app experiences that are more useful and engaging through data-driven decisions at each stage of the app lifecycle:

1. Acquisition and user metrics such as downloads and new users


2. Engagement metrics such as retention, crashes and conversions


3. Outcome metrics such as app sales and in-app purchases

Layout of new Mobile App Analytics reports

Here’s an outline of the new Mobile App Analytics along with screen grabs of selected reports:

Acquisition and User Analysis Reports - discover your best sources of new users

New and active users - measure the number of new and active users who launch your app everyday and analyze your most valuable segments. 

Google Play traffic sources - understand which traffic sources are driving new users and in-app conversions through Google Play to fine-tune your marketing initiatives. 

App versions - keep track of the distribution of active users over the older and newer versions of your app so you know what to support.

Device overview - check out the top mobile devices and OS versions that your app runs on, and optimize the experience for each device.

Engagement Reports - see how users interact with your app

User behavior - assess how loyal your users are, how frequently they use the app, and the engagement level of each loyalty group.

Engagement flow - visually see the screens, actions and paths users take to move throughout your application in order to optimize usage.

App crashes - see trends in crashes and exceptions that will help you troubleshoot problems on certain devices and operating systems.

Outcome / Business Impact Reports - identify whether users are accomplishing your goals

Goal conversions - set up conversion events in your app, like spending 10 minutes in the app, or clicking on ads to gauge success.

In-App purchases - if you sell virtual or tangible goods in your app, you can measure the number of purchases and the revenue generated.

The new reports are part of a holistic experience tailored for mobile app measurement, including a new and lightweight SDK v2.0 that’s easier to implement and is opt-out ready, with a streamlined back-end infrastructure.

We’ve also revamped our sign-up process, so new users can choose whether they want to start measuring their website or their mobile app. This means you’ll be just 3 clicks away from setting up your app analytics account and downloading the SDK.

We will be opening the beta up to whitelisted users in waves, so if you’re interested in using Mobile App Analytics for your app, please complete this beta signup form and we’ll get you started soon. We anticipate the reports will be available to all Google Analytics users by the end of the summer.

Also, if you are at Google I/O be sure to attend the Google Analytics session “Measuring the End-to-End Value of Your App” (from 11:30AM - 12:30PM today, June 29) where our lead engineers will tell you more about Mobile App Analytics and some other exciting things we’re working on.

Posted By JiaJing Wang, Product Manager, Google Analytics Team

Keeping A Smart Banner Docked To The Bottom Of The Screen on iOS

Smart Banner advertisements, introduced in AdMob SDK v6.0, help developers utilize the full width of the iPhone and iPad screen for displaying ads. You still have to be smart about using Smart Banners! We are noticing that some of you are having a hard time resetting your ad’s origin when a re-orientation of the device occurs. More specifically, not resetting the ad’s origin correctly causes ads to disappear offscreen after orientation changes. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to keep a Smart Banner docked to the bottom of the screen on iOS.

The first thing to do is to initialize a Smart Banner at the bottom of the device’s screen. You can do this by giving the ad an origin corresponding to the screen bottom.

// Initialize the banner docked to the bottom of the screen.
// We start in a portrait orientation so use kGADAdSizeSmartBannerPortrait.
  CGPoint origin = CGPointMake(0.0,
                               self.view.frame.size.height -
                               CGSizeFromGADAdSize(
                                   kGADAdSizeSmartBannerPortrait).height);

  self.adBanner = [[[GADBannerView alloc]
                    initWithAdSize:kGADAdSizeSmartBannerPortrait
                            origin:origin] autorelease];

//Continue rest of initialization here

Every time an orientation change occurs, you have to reset the ad’s orientation so it continues to stay docked to the bottom. The best place to implement the above logic is in the willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation:duration: method since the view’s frame has been updated to the new orientation

Update the origin by utilizing the Smart Banner constant that is applicable to your current orientation. The only value that should change is your y-origin, since your x-origin should remain at 0.

-(void)willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInt
                                        duration:(NSTimeInterval)duration {
  // The updated y value for the origin.
  CGFloat yLocation;

  // Set a new frame to update the origin on orientation change. Remember to set
  // adSize first before you update the frame.
  if (UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(toInt)) {
    self.adBanner.adSize = kGADAdSizeSmartBannerLandscape;
    yLocation = self.view.frame.size.width -
                CGSizeFromGADAdSize(kGADAdSizeSmartBannerLandscape).height
  } else {
    self.adBanner.adSize = kGADAdSizeSmartBannerPortrait;
    yLocation = self.view.frame.size.height -
                CGSizeFromGADAdSize(kGADAdSizeSmartBannerPortrait).height);
  }

  CGRect frame = self.adBanner.frame;
  frame.origin = CGPointMake(0.0, yLocation);
  self.adBanner.frame = frame;
}

If you’re not using mediation, changing the adSize after your first request will cause another request to be made. Make sure that you set the frame after you modify the adSize. This ensures that the ad transition looks smooth across orientation changes.

Your Smart Banner ads are now even smarter. As the orientation of the device changes, your ads should stay docked to the bottom of the screen. If you have any questions about Smart Banners or about the AdMob SDK, feel free to post them in our forum or keep on the lookout for upcoming Hangout office hours.

 - Raj Parameswaran, AdMob Team

Google Maps API, now with even more style!

At Google I/O two years ago we launched Styled Maps in the Google Maps API, which allows you to customize the look of the map in your applications. Today we’re rolling out a number of enhancements to Styled Maps that offer more precise control over both the selection of map features to style, and the ways you can style them:

• You can now specify a precise color for features as an RGB value in addition to the existing adjustment filters for hue, saturation, lightness, and gamma.


• You can now style the outline stroke of features separately from the interior fill, and the label text separately from any icon.


• You can now adjust the width of line features such as roads and rivers, and also the width of feature outlines.

If you would like to try designing a map that would suit your site we recommend that you start with the updated Styled Maps Wizard. Once you are happy with your style you can apply it to your Maps API v3 application as detailed in the Styling section of the Maps API documentation.



Web sites like the Submarine Cable Map and the NY Times already use Styled Maps to simplify or soften a map in order to draw more attention to the data provided. Map of the Dead and The Global Transition to a New Economy restyle their maps to fit the house style or theme of their respective websites. There have also been a few maps that are just a little unusual, such as Fata Morgana.



If you need assistance in using Styled Maps for your site, or have any other Maps API related question, we recommend consulting our developer community and support channels. We look forward to seeing how you take advantage of these new Styled Maps features to make even more beautiful and engaging new Maps!



Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

Announcing v201206 of the DFP API

Today we’ve released the newest version of the DFP API, v201206, which adds a significant number of reporting improvements. The new release also fully supports OAuth 2.0 as the authentication mechanism of choice and we encourage you to switch to OAuth 2.0 from ClientLogin or OAuth 1.0a. A full list of improvements from today’s release can be found on our release notes page.

Reporting improvements



In a few of our recent hangouts, we received the feedback that while our reports were great for generating important performance metrics, the CSV files that you downloaded were not always easily machine readable. To make it easier for you to consume reports, we’ve created a new ExportFormat - CSV_DUMP. Below is a list of the features of this new format:

• Columns are now shown as Dimension.ENUM_VALUE or Column.ENUM_VALUE


• All money values are now displayed in micro format in the currency of the network


• All dates are now displayed as YYYY-MM-DD


• All date-times are now displayed as YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±hh:mm


• There is no "pretty printing" of values (i.e. commas) and there is no total row

You may also notice that the v201204 CSV export format has been replaced by CSV_EXCEL, which can be imported into Excel-like products.

As an important note to some of our developers, after upgrading to v201206, you will most likely need to update your code; many column names have changed to reflect a more accurate description of what metrics they are indeed pulling. For example, the column TOTAL_IMPRESSIONS has been changed to TOTAL_INVENTORY_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS because the v201204 column could only be used with dimensions like AD_UNIT_NAME on the inventory level, i.e. it could not be used with line items, orders, companies or creatives. Alternatively, TOTAL_LINE_ITEM_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS in v201206 should now be used with dimensions like LINE_ITEM_NAME and ORDER_NAME for instances where you need to include dynamic allocation impressions from AdSense or Ad Exchange line items. To determine how each column should be updated, visit the old column’s reference page and look for the phrase that begins with “Replaced with …”, e.g.



    Replaced with TOTAL_INVENTORY_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS beginning in v201206.

Lastly, we’ve improved formatting for inventory reports that don’t use top level ad unit views. Most importantly, the duplicate columns clicks and impressions issue for hierarchical views has been fixed and the flat view report will now match how the report is downloaded from the UI.



OAuth 2.0



If you are an eagle-eyed developer, you may have noticed that we recently added OAuth 2.0 information to our authentication page. OAuth 2.0 is now fully supported in the DFP API and we are progressively adding support in our client libraries; Java, Python, .Net , and Ruby currently have full support, while PHP will very soon. In fact, our DFP test playground already uses OAuth 2.0 with the Java library. Please stay tuned to the project sites or the forum for announcements regarding future support.



Our next hangout is July 18th and we’ll be taking your report questions or anything else you might have on your mind. As always, let us know if you have any questions on our forum.

 - Adam Rogal, DFP API Team

Google Compute Engine launches, expanding Google’s cloud offerings

Today at Google I/O we were pleased to announce a new service, Google Compute Engine, to provide general purpose virtual machines (VMs) as part of our expanding set of cloud services. Google App Engine has been at the heart of Google’s cloud offerings since our launch in 2008, and we’re excited to begin providing developers more flexible, generalized VMs to complement our fully-managed, autoscaling environment. App Engine has been growing rapidly since leaving preview, and we’re excited about the benefits that Google Compute Engine brings to developers who want to combine the advantages of App Engine’s easy-to-use, scalable, managed platform with the flexibility of VMs.

If you are interested in using VMs with your App Engine applications in the future, let us know by signing up here.


- Posted by Peter S Magnusson, Engineering Director, Google App Engine Team

Speeding up the ad experience: updating ad click referral

If you analyze your own traffic logs, or develop web analytics software, we have some news for you: we’re making a change to how some clicks coming from Google appear in your logs. We're writing this mostly as an industry FYI, because Google Analytics reports will not be affected by this change.



Up to now, referrers for clicks on ads for the term "flowers", for example, would be one of the following:



http://www.google.com/search?...&q=flowers&...

http://www.google.com/aclk?...&q=flowers&...



We’re adding a third possible referrer:



http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?...&q=flowers&...&ohost=www.google.com&...



This new referrer is on a different domain named ‘www.googleadservices.com’, and has a new path of ‘/pagead/aclk’. The query is still there as the GET parameter ‘q’ and the originating host for the click is there as the GET parameter ‘ohost’. For example, if the click came from google.ca, the new referrer format would be http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?...&q=flowers&...&ohost=www.google.ca&...



We’re making this change because we’re trying to improve the experience of clicking on an ad for our users. For historical reasons, Google currently uses two redirects on two different domains for many of the ads on our site. We are streamlining our infrastructure to remove one of these redirects, which brings users to ad landing pages faster, leading to a better user experience for our users and a better return on ad clicks for our advertisers.



The new referrer format ensures that advertisers will still get the relevant bits of information about a search that drove traffic to their site, but without the extra redirect.



In order to give everyone enough time to change any referrer log parsing software, we’ll be keeping the number of affected searches at a low percentage through July. In August, we’ll be increasing the number of affected queries to 100%. When we’re done, you should expect to see all three forms of the URLs.



Ali Mohammad, Ads Latency Team

Go offline with Google Maps for Android

[Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long blog]




Having an Internet connection has always been a key requirement for using Google Maps for Android... until now.



A few weeks ago we told you that offline Google Maps for Android was coming. Now, you can download the latest version of the app in Google Play, then select and save a region of a map from more than 150 countries (including India) for use offline. Whether travelling internationally, carrying a WiFi-only device, heading underground on the subway or restricting your mobile data usage, you can now save up to six large metro areas (e.g., Greater London, or New York City and surrounding area) and use Google Maps for Android to find your way.








Let’s say you find yourself traveling to London this summer. Before you head off on your trip, simply find the area that you’ll be visiting. Then select “Make available offline” from the menu and verify the area that you would like to save.



Below the map, you’ll see we estimate the file size for you, so you know how much space it will take on your device. Once you confirm your selection the map will immediately start downloading.

Save an area and go to My Places to see all your offline maps

If you have GPS enabled on the device, the blue dot will still work without a data connection so you know where you are, and if your device has a compass you can orient yourself without 3G or WiFi connectivity.



So whether you’re traveling internationally or underground, we hope offline maps will help you get around.



Today we’re also releasing a smoother and faster Compass Mode for Street View within Google Maps for Android. It’s the next best thing to being there, because your device becomes a window into a 360-degree, panoramic view of the outdoor or interior location through Business Photos. To experience the improved qualities of this feature you need a device with Google Maps for Android, Android 3.0 or higher and a gyroscope sensor plus version 1.8.1 of Street View on Google Maps.

To learn more about Google Maps for Android features, start here.



Posted by Jiabei Lei, Software Engineer Google Maps Mobile