Budget pacing insights arrive in DoubleClick Search

Our team has been focused on bringing you more tools for better measurement and actionable insights, right in the interface. Until now, marketers have been using labels in DoubleClick Search (DS) to easily organize and report on keyword performance by placing keywords into custom categories, regardless of which campaigns they live in.

Now in our latest release, we’ve added another layer of reporting flexibility with Budget Pacing Reports. These reports allow you to track performance against a budget in the DS UI. By visualizing week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends, Budget Pacing Reports allow you to quickly identify campaigns that are under-spending or underperforming.





Tracking spend against a budget goal is a common need for many users. These reports save time for agencies that need to look at such data on a regular basis. Budget Pacing Reports provide:

• A rich language for entering KPI expectations with your budget target. Define your KPI goals, set expectations and constraints, and see if your campaigns are on track to deliver on them. For example:  I want CPA of $40.00 and I tolerate +-10% error.


• Data visualization for quick projections and insights. Given your entered specifications and expectations, easily visualize different date ranges to see trends and projections of intended outcomes to help you make the best decisions.


• A holistic view across campaigns. See how each campaign is contributing toward budget and KPI.

To learn more about Budget Pacing Reports, see our Help Center, or reach out to your Technical Account Manager for tips and best practices. You can also watch our training video below:








Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Get social, mobile, and 40+ new data points with the Google Analytics API

Google Analytics Core Reporting APIs enable a powerful and flexible way to analyze, report on, and ultimately optimize such things as web and mobile experiences, conversions, and sales.



Today we’re adding over 40 new metrics and dimensions that can be queried through the Core Reporting API. This enables developers to create reports that are similar to what is available in the Google Analytics web interface for important areas such as social and mobile. See a full list of additions on the Core Reporting API changelog.

Here’s a rundown of what’s new and a few helpful questions the data can answer.



Social Data

Now you can get data for both on-site interactions with social buttons as well as off-site social data from social data hub partner networks.

• Which content receives the most comments on social networks?


• What are the conversion rates for visits from social networks?


• For social buttons embedded in my property, which ones get used most often and for which content?

Mobile Devices

For mobile visits to your site, get all the good stuff like like brand, model, and input type.

• What are the top 10 mobile devices used to visit my website?

Geo

We added a new dimension to indicate the Designated Market Area (DMA) where traffic came from.

• What are the Top 10 Campaigns for the San Francisco Bay Area DMA?

Page Path Rollups

Create your own drill down reports with these new dimensions that allow you to roll-up metrics to hierarchical levels of your property.

• What does the performance of my website look like across different sections?

App & Exception Tracking

If you’re using the Google Analytics SDK for iOS/Android v2 beta, you can now retrieve App View and Exception metrics.

• On a daily basis, how many views did my mobile app get?


• On a daily basis, how many exceptions occurred in my mobile app, and how many exceptions were fatal? 

User Timings

New ways to report on all things related to user timing data.

• What were the time measurements for all user defined timings?

Related Resources:

• Dimensions & Metrics Reference for a list of all available metrics & dimensions. 


• Google Analytics Query Explorer to help you build queries and try out the Core Reporting API.


• Core Reporting API changelog for a list of the 40+ new dimensions & metrics.

Posted by Pete Frisella and Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API team

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