Announcing Audience Extension: a new way to create more premium inventory in DoubleClick for Publishers

Today at the London ATS Trading summit we announced the launch of Audience Extension, a new feature within DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) designed to generate more premium revenue for publishers by leveraging their audiences across the web.

Audience extension enables you to reach your audience across other publishers, bundle these impressions with your own inventory, and resell those packages to your direct advertisers at a premium. Audience extension inventory comes from the vast pool of brand safe inventory via publishers on DoubleClick Ad Exchange.  Audience Extension can be used without leaving DFP; flight dates, targeting and bid parameters are set directly within your core ad server.  

Audience extension is best suited to publishers with high value content channels within their owned and operated inventory that are consistently sold out, or who have defined audiences onsite that have a value to advertisers that transcends the context of their own site. It’s also used by publishers looking to reach a critical mass of users from a given geo-location.

Key Benefits

• A single place to manage, execute and optimize buying across owned & operated and external inventory


• Bid management capabilities integrated in the core ad server


• Integrated data management


• Cross-inventory performance reporting, analytics & insights


• Complexity hidden from sales team & ad operations

Posted by Sean Harvey, Business Product Manager

Announcing new pricing for Virtual IP based SSL

We are delighted to make Virtual IP (VIP) based SSL more widely available to developers by announcing a reduction in price. From the 25th of September, VIPs will be $39/month - down from the previous price of $99/month. For those applications already using VIP based SSL, the pricing change will be applied to your bill starting on the 25th. 


Google App Engine SSL for Custom Domains goes above and beyond the basics of SSL by offering globally distributed SSL endpoints and built-in load balancing. Like App Engine in general, there is no need for ongoing system administration and maintenance. For more details on how to setup SSL for Custom Domains for your applications, see the App Engine documentation.

- Posted by the Google App Engine Team

Google Analytics User Conference, October 3 - 4

GAUGE (Google Analytics Users’ Great Event) Boston is approaching quickly. For those who don’t yet know, GAUGE is a training conference led by Google Analytics Certified Partners, and will help sharpen your GA skills through learning practical knowledge from other users that you can put to use immediately. 

The two-day event includes:

• 21 hands-on sessions and workshops led by top Google Analytics experts, including Analytics Pros, ISITE Design, Cardinal Path and LunaMetrics


• Two keynote addresses: 




• ‘The Art of Storytelling’ by Jason L. Baptiste at Onswipe


• ‘Seeing the Forest AND the Trees: How NPR can see detailed behavior data at massive scale to drive unprecedented insight’ by Steven Mulder, NPR, and Alex Langshur, Cardinal Path




• Presentations from the Google Analytics team, including analytics advocate, Justin Cutroni


• Analytics Helpdesk where you can receive direct consultations

Use code GABLOGBO12 for a 10% registration discount. We also offer a 15% discount for members of the Digital Analytics Association and a 50% discount for Government, Non-Profit employees, and Full-Time students.

In addition to the User Conference and Training Day, our attendees are invited to the GAUGE Hacknight & Google Analytics Application Showcase on October 3rd from 5:30pm - 8:00pm.

This networking reception and application showcase gives developers of Google Analytics integrated products the chance to pitch their creation to a panel of industry leaders, Googlers, and the audience. Any individual or company that has developed a product, platform, application, or other tool that integrates with Google Analytics is invited to apply. 

Apply here to pitch your product. 

If you aren’t attending GAUGE but still want to attend the Hackathon, request an invitation here.

If you’re not able to attend GAUGE Boston, consider attending our San Francisco event in April 2013.

I hope to see you in Boston or at a future GAUGE event.

Posted by Caleb Whitmore, Founder & Chair: GAUGE Conference & Analytics Pros

Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger now in the UK!

Earlier this year, we launched Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger in the US and added new enhancements in June. The positive results and feedback we’ve received are very promising, and we’re excited to announce that this gadget is now available to Blogger users in the UK!



To refresh your memory, Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger is a gadget that makes it easy for Blogger users to insert an affiliate ad into a blog post and earn a commission when someone clicks the link and makes a purchase on the advertiser’s site.



Watch the video below for a quick refresher:








Here’s how to get started:

1. If you’re a Blogger user in the UK (or the US), go to the Earnings tab in Blogger and sign up for AdSense if you don’t already have an account.


2. Once you have an AdSense account, you may see the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger gadget when you write a new blog post.*


3. Write a new post and select a relevant affiliate ad from the 'Advertise Products' gadget.


4. Publish your post, and voilà! You may earn a commission when someone clicks your affiliate ad and makes a purchase.

Participating UK advertisers:

Advertisers including Bestbathrooms.com, Cheapsuites.co.uk, Crooked Tongues, Diamond Manufacturers, eFlorist, Hudsonreed.com, Perfume Click and The Snugg have already come on board, and more are joining every day.



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 contact us if you’re not already working with us.



Posted by:

Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager





*Note that this gadget will only be available to select UK and US Blogger users whose blogs match available ad categories, so you may not immediately see the gadget even if you have an AdSense account.



Your use of the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger program is governed by the Google Affiliate Ads For Blogger Online Program Terms and Conditions. Please review the Office of Fair Trading's Q&A that discusses a blogger's obligation to disclose financial benefits you may receive for endorsing products or services. As a reminder, under your Google Affiliate Ads For Blogger Online Program Terms and Conditions, You must comply with all applicable laws relating to the disclosure of financial benefits You receive for endorsing any products or services.  For example, when you include a Blogger Affiliate Ad on Your blog, you will clearly identify, in a manner prominently displayed with editorial content on your blog such that it would be unavoidable to the average user, that the Blogger Affiliate Ad is an advertisement.

Creative Sandbox Gallery. Now open for play.

At Google, we're amazed by how the ad industry is using the digital canvas to bring brands and ideas to life. Whether it’s enticing viewers with video, evoking a smile with a mobile phone, or reconfiguring the typical ‘test drive,’ when digital advertising works, it can not only be informative, but emotional and dazzling. That’s why we've created a space where everyone can see this great work, talk about it, and roll around in it like a big happy dog.





Today, we’re launching the Creative Sandbox gallery. It’s a crowdsourced collection of global campaigns that push the boundaries of creativity and technology from across digital platforms -- a place to flash your brilliance, spark new digital ideas, inspire and be inspired. We're asking the creators to share a little detail on how they made the magic happen and the tools they used to do it, exposing us all to new ideas and new ways to improve our own work.



As with any sandbox, looking and playing are required. Vote to push your favorite projects to the top. Tell other creators what you admire. And if you've done something amazing lately, send it in. We'd all love to see it.



Jump in. Explore. And play.



www.creativesandbox.com



Posted by Justin Joy, Agency Marketing Manager

The Benefits & Importance of Compatibility

We built Android to be an open source mobile platform freely available to anyone wishing to use it. In 2008, Android was released under the Apache open source license and we continue to develop and innovate the platform under the same open source license -- it is available to everyone at: http://source.android.com. This openness allows device manufacturers to customize Android and enable new user experiences, driving innovation and consumer choice.



As the lead developer and shepherd of the open platform, we realize that we have a responsibility to app developers -- those who invested in the platform by adopting it and building applications specifically for Android. These developers each contribute to making the platform better -- because when developers support a platform with their applications, the platform becomes better and more attractive to consumers. As more developers build great apps for Android, more consumers are likely to buy Android devices because of the availability of great software content (app titles like Fruit Ninja or Google Maps). As more delighted consumers adopt Android phones and tablets, it creates a larger audience for app developers to sell more apps. The result is a strategy that is good for developers (they sell more apps), good for device manufacturers (they sell more devices) and good for consumers (they get more features and innovation).



In biological terms, this is sometimes referred to as an ecosystem. In economic terms, this is known as a virtuous cycle -- a set of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop. Each iteration of the cycle positively reinforces the previous one. These cycles will continue in the direction of their momentum until an external factor intervenes and breaks the cycle.



When we first contemplated Android and formed the Open Handset Alliance, we wanted to create an open virtuous cycle where all members of the ecosystem would benefit. We thought hard about what types of external factors could intervene to weaken the ecosystem as a whole. One important external factor we knew could do this was incompatibilities between implementations of Android. Let me explain:



Imagine a hypothetical situation where the platform on each phone sold was just a little bit different. Different enough where Google Maps would run normally on one phone but run terribly slow on another. Let's say, for sake of example, that Android implemented an API that put the phone to sleep for a fraction of a second to conserve battery life when nothing was moving on the screen. The API prototype for such a function might look like SystemClock.sleep(millis) where the parameter "millis" is the number of milliseconds to put the device to sleep for.



If one phone manufacturer implemented SystemClock.sleep() incorrectly, and interpreted the parameter as Seconds instead of Milliseconds, the phone would be put to sleep a thousand times longer than intended! This manufacturer’s phone would have a terrible time running Google Maps. If apps don’t run well across devices due to incompatibilities, consumers would leave the ecosystem, followed by developers. The end of the virtuous cycle.



We have never believed in a “one size fits all” strategy, so we found a way to enable differentiation for device manufactures while protecting developers and consumers from incompatibilities by offering a free "compatibility test suite" (CTS). CTS is a set of software tools that tests and exercises the platform to make sure that (for example) SystemClock.sleep(millis) actually puts the device to sleep for only milliseconds. Like Android, the test suite is freely available to everyone under the Apache open source license: http://source.android.com/compatibility/cts-intro.html 



While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform -- not a bunch of incompatible versions. We’re grateful to the over 85 Open Handset Alliance members who have helped us build the Android ecosystem and continue to drive innovation at an incredible pace. Thanks to their support the Android ecosystem now has over 500 million Android-compatible devices and counting!



Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content

The Benefits & Importance of Compatibility

We built Android to be an open source mobile platform freely available to anyone wishing to use it. In 2008, Android was released under the Apache open source license and we continue to develop and innovate the platform under the same open source license -- it is available to everyone at: http://source.android.com. This openness allows device manufacturers to customize Android and enable new user experiences, driving innovation and consumer choice.



As the lead developer and shepherd of the open platform, we realize that we have a responsibility to app developers -- those who invested in the platform by adopting it and building applications specifically for Android. These developers each contribute to making the platform better -- because when developers support a platform with their applications, the platform becomes better and more attractive to consumers. As more developers build great apps for Android, more consumers are likely to buy Android devices because of the availability of great software content (app titles like Fruit Ninja or Google Maps). As more delighted consumers adopt Android phones and tablets, it creates a larger audience for app developers to sell more apps. The result is a strategy that is good for developers (they sell more apps), good for device manufacturers (they sell more devices) and good for consumers (they get more features and innovation).



In biological terms, this is sometimes referred to as an ecosystem. In economic terms, this is known as a virtuous cycle -- a set of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop. Each iteration of the cycle positively reinforces the previous one. These cycles will continue in the direction of their momentum until an external factor intervenes and breaks the cycle.



When we first contemplated Android and formed the Open Handset Alliance, we wanted to create an open virtuous cycle where all members of the ecosystem would benefit. We thought hard about what types of external factors could intervene to weaken the ecosystem as a whole. One important external factor we knew could do this was incompatibilities between implementations of Android. Let me explain:



Imagine a hypothetical situation where the platform on each phone sold was just a little bit different. Different enough where Google Maps would run normally on one phone but run terribly slow on another. Let's say, for sake of example, that Android implemented an API that put the phone to sleep for a fraction of a second to conserve battery life when nothing was moving on the screen. The API prototype for such a function might look like SystemClock.sleep(millis) where the parameter "millis" is the number of milliseconds to put the device to sleep for.



If one phone manufacturer implemented SystemClock.sleep() incorrectly, and interpreted the parameter as Seconds instead of Milliseconds, the phone would be put to sleep a thousand times longer than intended! This manufacturer’s phone would have a terrible time running Google Maps. If apps don’t run well across devices due to incompatibilities, consumers would leave the ecosystem, followed by developers. The end of the virtuous cycle.



We have never believed in a “one size fits all” strategy, so we found a way to enable differentiation for device manufactures while protecting developers and consumers from incompatibilities by offering a free "compatibility test suite" (CTS). CTS is a set of software tools that tests and exercises the platform to make sure that (for example) SystemClock.sleep(millis) actually puts the device to sleep for only milliseconds. Like Android, the test suite is freely available to everyone under the Apache open source license: http://source.android.com/compatibility/cts-intro.html 



While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform -- not a bunch of incompatible versions. We’re grateful to the over 85 Open Handset Alliance members who have helped us build the Android ecosystem and continue to drive innovation at an incredible pace. Thanks to their support the Android ecosystem now has over 500 million Android-compatible devices and counting!



Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content