Google Ads Developer Blog

Meet an AdSense API Engineer: Nick Johnson

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

A few weeks ago, we caught up with Ben Birt from our AdSense API Engineering team in London. Today, we'd like to introduce you to another member of the team -- Nick Johnson, a Software Engineer who joined Google in May 2011.

What’s your main contribution to API development?
I could tell you... but then I would have to use one of those flashy things from Men in Black on you. (We have those at Google). Then I’d probably have to use it on me. I’m essentially a general purpose code monkey at this point in time, but I have some very cool stuff coming into the pipeline soon.

Describe your average day at work
My average day starts with me grabbing a coffee and some cereal from the kitchen. Aside from our (seated) stand up team meeting, everything else changes on a daily basis. So long as I get to do some coding, I’m generally happy.

What do you like most about the AdSense Management API?
I think the Ad Clients list call is my favourite. It’s less typing, so that makes it pretty ideal for making test calls. In all seriousness though, I think the thing I like best is the potential. The ways in which you can use and combine your data are entirely in your hands now.

We have some pretty cool surprises coming from inside Google (but when is that not true?), but we also can’t wait to see what third party developers create.

Tell us one best practice about the API
Think about what you have, and what you need. Be smart with your calls and make the most of them. Try to multiplex and retrieve as much of the data you need in the least number of calls. You need to balance this with the responsiveness of your app though. Quite obviously more data will take more time.

Another important thing is that if you have any problems or feature suggestions, then by all means, please...
...tell Silvano and Sérgio :) (members of the AdSense API Developer Relations team)

Enough work stuff, let’s go personal. We’ve heard that you lived in Scotland for some years. Is it true that they deep fry everything up there?
I think we both know that science has proven any foodstuff can be improved by submerging it in a large quantity of hot fat. It’s like adding “in space” to the end of a plot description. I did live in the beautiful city of Edinburgh (s’up to my homies on the Morningsi-ide) for ten extremely pleasant years, before I moved down to the big smoke for a job with the big G.

No, it’s not true that the Scottish deep fry everything. It would be far more accurate to say they will deep fry anything. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it though. Deep fried Mars bars are very real, but I’m afraid I never tried them. I was worried I might like them.

Ok, let me ask you some geeky questions now. I’ve heard that you like functional programming...
Truly, your wit is sharp as a pillow.

Functional programming is something I’m slowly getting my head around, but the biggest barrier (for me, at least) is the attitude of the functional programming evangelists. It’s like talking to someone who thinks Emacs is better than Vim.

I mean, come on.

Since it’s obligatory in these sorts of interviews, why don’t you throw some film and book recommendations our way?
I’m at least as big a film nerd as I am a computer nerd (and I do the latter for a living!), so I could literally talk to you all day about that. If I’m completely honest, the film I saw in 2011 which I enjoyed the most was almost certainly Fast [and Furious] 5, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say it’s the best film I saw this year. I will always love The Matrix, Fight Club, Pitch Black and Amélie, and right now I’m really quite excited about Joss Whedon(!)’s The Avengers.

If I had to recommend one book it would probably be either The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (though that is really not a light read, in any sense of the word). Recently I read, and loved, “The Alloy of Law”, Brandon Sanderson’s follow up to his brilliant Mistborn trilogy, so I think I’ll also have to recommend those books.

Will you fix my computer?
No.

Fine. Will you code my favorite API?
I’m on it.

- Silvano Luciani, AdSense API Team

- Nick Johnson, AdSense API Team

AdMob and AdWhirl Refresh Rates - A Subtle but Important Difference

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The AdWhirl SDK provides a framework that allows developers to display banner ads from different ad networks in their iOS and Android applications. You simply tell AdWhirl what ad networks you want to use and the percentage of requests to allocate to each network, and AdWhirl handles the ad requests. But how do you choose an acceptable refresh rate, and what settings should you use for both AdWhirl and your individual ad networks?AdWhirl has its own refresh rate; when it comes time to refresh, AdWhirl removes the current network’s ad view, chooses a new ad network, and creates a new ad view for that network. So how is this different from the AdMob refresh rate? Well, the AdMob refresh rate determines when its own ad view will request a new ad.AdWhirl does not know about the specific ad networks’ refresh rates. Most networks expose the refresh rate on the client side; AdWhirl takes advantage of this by turning off refreshing for these networks. AdMob, however, only supports configuring the refresh rate on the server side. Therefore, AdWhirl must rely on you, the developer, to turn off the network refresh rate. Forgetting to do so may result in unexpected refreshes. This is best demonstrated with an example.Let’s say AdWhirl has selected the AdMob network for displaying an ad, and your AdMob refresh rate is 29 seconds while your AdWhirl refresh rate is 30 seconds. AdWhirl will load up an AdMob view, and then the AdMob view will request and show an ad. After 29 seconds, AdMob decides it's time to refresh, grabs a new ad on it's own, and displays a new ad. AdWhirl has no idea that AdMob just refreshed. One second later, AdWhirl decides it’s time to refresh (30 seconds have passed), and removes the AdMob view and picks a new ad network from which to show an ad.In the above example, AdMob displayed a new ad that was shown for only one second--it had virtually no chance of being clicked. This results in extra impressions that reduce your click through rate and confuse your customers. To avoid having AdMob refresh on its own, make sure to turn off automatic refreshing for the AdMob publisher ID you are mediating with!Please post to the forum for any questions regarding refresh rates. You’re also welcome to attend one of our office hours hangouts.

- Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team

Incorporating Google AdMob ads into a Table View in iOS

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Perfecting the look of your application is challenging, and incorporating ads into your application requires careful thinking. When using the AdMob SDK with Table Views in iOS, a typical challenge is that ads do not stay docked properly to a certain position on the screen. This blog post outlines a simple solution to this common problem.ChallengeConsider a simple application in which a UITableViewController is used to handle a list mechanism. If this is the main top level view in the application, getting the ad to remain docked to the bottom or top of the view while the content scrolls is problematic. This is usually because the ad has been placed inside the Table View.

SolutionOne way to dock the ad is to encompass the Table View into a container view (e.g. a UIView). This way, instead of inserting the ad into the Table View as a subview, it’s inserted into the encompassing container view (as a sibling of the Table View). Here is an example of the code snippet in the header file:@interface AdsOutOfTableView : UIViewController { @private UITableView *tableView_; //Other private variables here } @property(nonatomic,retain) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView; @end As shown in this example, the GADBannerView is initialized with a frame that has an origin at the bottom of the screen.Now when the ad is received, it should be added into the container view, and the size of the Table View should be modified accordingly. The height of the Table View's frame cannot be modified directly, but this can be done using an intermediate frame as shown below.-(void)resizeTable { CGRect tableFrame = tableView_.frame; tableFrame.size.height = tableFrame.size.height - bannerView_.frame.size.height; tableView_.frame = tableFrame; } Now, no matter how much the Table View is scrolled, the GADBannerView stays docked to the bottom of the screen.Alternatively, keeping the ad docked to the top of the Table View is very similar to the situation shown above. The only difference is that the GADBannerView must be created and drawn at the top of the screen. The resizeTable: method now also has to to shift itself down by the height of the ad: CGRect tableFrame = tableView_.frame; tableFrame.size.height = tableFrame.size.height - bannerView_.frame.size.height; tableFrame.origin.y = bannerView_.frame.size.height; tableView_.frame = tableFrame; With those minor tweaks, you will have ads set up correctly alongside your Table View! If you have any questions about this or any other SDK topics, feel free to post them in our forum.

- Raj Parameswaran, AdMob Team

Google App Engine for Java meet DFP API, Part 1: Hello World

Thursday, December 22, 2011

We are excited to start discussing how to use the DFP API from within the Google App Engine (Java) environment. This first blog post in the series focuses on setting up your environment and understanding how to use the API from App Engine. Future posts in this series will build upon the same project to create a sample application. Ultimately, you will be able to make DFP information more accessible within your organization, while also leveraging the ease of scale and deployability that comes with creating applications on Google App Engine.Setting up your environment

For simplicity sake we will focus on utilizing Eclipse and the Google App Engine Plugin available for Eclipse. Information about setting them up can be found here. If you prefer a different environment setup, you can always view the Getting Started Guide for App Engine for more information.

Create an App Engine project

You’ll need a place to do your coding so create an App Engine project in a similar manner to the screenshots below.

Note: If you would like to download all of the source code in this blog post to follow along you can do so as a tarball or you can browse the code base from our svn repository.Dependencies

The App Engine Java environment requires JAX-WS when dealing with SOAP interfaces like DFP API so you won’t be able to use the normal Java client library. You’ll need to download this client login auth file to help with authentication. Place this file in your project’s src directory. Next, you’ll need a jar and a wsdl file that we’ve compiled with JAX-WS; place them in the WEB-INF/lib and WEB-INF directory, respectively. See the files highlighted in their respective locations below.

Write some code

Now that you’re set up, it’s time to write some code that uses the DFP API. This first snippet of code performs some setup for your App Engine Servlet. /** * Perform initialization of servlet and cached resources used to * access DFP API. */ @Override public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException { super.init(config); // Generate an authToken. try { authToken = regenerateAuthToken(); } catch (Exception exception) { throw new ServletException("Could not generate an Auth Token.", exception); } } /** * Regenerate the client login auth token that the servlet uses. * * @throws Exception */ public synchronized String regenerateAuthToken() throws Exception { ClientLoginAuth clientLoginAuth = new ClientLoginAuth(EMAIL_ADDRESS, EMAIL_ADDRESS_PASSWORD); return clientLoginAuth.getAuthToken(); } This next snippet of code handles the actual web browser requests. @Override public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException { try { // Retrieve an object handle to our network service. NetworkService networkService = new NetworkService(); NetworkServiceInterface networkServiceInterface = networkService.getNetworkServiceInterfacePort(); // Prepare header object to make server call SoapRequestHeader requestHeader = new SoapRequestHeader(); requestHeader.setApplicationName("Hello World"); ClientLogin clientLogin = new ClientLogin(); clientLogin.setToken(authToken); requestHeader.setAuthentication(clientLogin); // Make protected call to the server. String rootAdUnitId = ""; Network currentNetwork = networkServiceInterface.getCurrentNetwork( requestHeader, null); // Extract data from object returned from server. rootAdUnitId = currentNetwork.getEffectiveRootAdUnitId(); resp.setContentType("text/plain"); resp.getWriter().println("Hello, world. Your root ad unit id is: " + rootAdUnitId); } catch (Exception e) { // Perform exception handling. e.printStackTrace(); throw new ServletException("Error occurred. Check logs for specific " " details about the error."); } } This particular code snippet retrieves the root ad unit for our network whenever someone accesses the application. You can view the full sample servlet code here.

Testing

To make sure your code works, let’s deploy the project locally. Right-click on your project and then choose “Run” and select the “Web Application” option from the submenu. This will deploy your code to a locally running App Engine server. The console will display the URL to access the application (usually http://localhost:8888/). Clicking on this link and then the subsequent servlet link should return a page similar to this.

Next Time

Next time, we’ll extend the project to do some background processing and start using some other services from the DFP API.

Troubleshooting

We really hope you didn’t have an issue, but if you did there is a troubleshooting README file included in the sample code.Let us know if you have any questions, and happy holidays!

- Paul Rashidi, DFP API Team

A look back at mobile in 2011

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Editor’s note: As many of you are planning your 2012 advertisement strategy, we’d like to share with you this post from Karim Temsamani. It’s a look back on 2011 and provides a great perspective on how mobile really took a step forward in the advertising ecosystem. -- Stan Grinberg, Ads Developer Relations Team

Mobile turned a corner this year. As smartphones and tablets became a part of our everyday lives, business owners’ conversations shifted from 'Why should I advertise on mobile or build a mobile website?' to 'How do I get started?’.

Five major industry trends emerged in 2011 that will carry us into 2012, and beyond.

1 - Everyone goes mobile
Smartphones and tablets proved that they weren’t just for the geekiest - er, ‘tech savviest’ - among us. These devices are increasingly becoming the norm and they continue to change how people connect with each other, and with businesses, everywhere. According to our research with IPSOS earlier this year:

79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, to finding more product info, to locating a retailer.
70% use their smartphones while in a store.
77% have contacted a business via mobile, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business.

It’s not just that more people are using smartphones and tablets (though the numbers are skyrocketing at an accelerating pace)—it’s that a huge, and fast-growing base of smartphone users, now expect to engage with businesses on mobile. The mainstream consumer got mobilized in 2011.

2 - Mobile search transforms shopping, forever
Analyzing mobile search trends helped the industry better understand how people were using their mobile devices in 2011. For starters, we learned a lot about the ‘timing’ of mobile and tablets. These devices enable us to be constantly connected to the internet, as mobile usage has proven to be complementary to the desktop. We got a clearer picture of how search is changing the ways we shop and connect with businesses. More people are looking for deals both en route to stores and within them on mobile - in the retail category, “Black Friday” related mobile queries were over 200% higher this year than in 2010. Users have also developed some mobile-specific shopping habits - for example, 44% of all searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms are projected to come from mobile devices this holiday season. For procrastinators, mobile has come to the rescue!

In October, we looked at some of the newest ways marketers can build their businesses via mobile search. But, this is only the beginning - whether people are trying to find or call a business, compare prices in a store, or visit a site or app directly from their phones, search and search ads will be the tools that shape a new shopping experience, enabling us connect with businesses, research and buy products on or offline, all via mobile.

3 - Progress with the mobile advertising pipes
As an industry, we came a long way in terms of improving the ‘pipes’ - the systems, products and technologies that advertisers use to build, serve, and measure mobile ads. It’s still early days, but the progress with standards like MRAID and the momentum behind HTML5, are helping to rally the mobile community and make it easier for marketers and customers to connect on the platform. Getting existing tools to ‘speak mobile’ has been another key to helping mobile advertising grow-up as quickly users and businesses want it to. Across search and display, the tools the industry is already familiar with are getting mobilized. There’s plenty of work still to do, but significant progress is being made - watch this space in 2012.

4 - Tablets join the mobile party
Tablets made quite a splash this year. Usage trends sharpened - we’re seeing that people people use these devices to shop, consume media, have fun, and they do so most frequently in the evenings. Tablets are a third screen to be reckoned with for marketers - we saw a 440% growth in traffic from tablets in November 2011 compared to December 2010 on the AdMob network. The business potential is tremendous: not only are users more inclined to shop and make purchases on tablets, but because campaigns can be more effective running across several screens instead of one, tablets offer an incremental opportunity for marketers. Our research with Nielsen showed that campaigns on several screens can be ‘Better Together’ - indeed, in cases like Adidas’, that proved to be true.

5 - Businesses start (actually) thinking mobile first
Smartphones and tablets aren’t small desktop computers - they’re new devices being used in entirely new ways. This year, businesses began to embrace this at scale and many saw good things happen when they built ad campaigns and websites specifically for mobile. Ticketsnow’s success with a mobile optimized site - increased site traffic, and more ticket sales - is just one example of the benefits of building for mobile. Initiatives like GoMo and platform-specific ad features will help businesses better connect with mobile customers in the coming months, and beyond.

It’s hard to believe, but as far as the industry has come in 2011, we’re still in the earliest chapters of mobile’s story. The ways people connect to businesses on their mobile devices and the tools they’re using to connect from them progressed by leaps and bounds this year and soon, we’ll see the mainstream shift that changes the way mobile connects people with brick-and-mortar storefronts as well. Mobile will be moving full speed ahead in 2012 so keep those sleeves rolled-up and those seatbelts fastened - we’ll see you then.

Posted by: Karim Temsamani, VP Mobile Ads

Animating Banner Ads in AdMob SDK for iOS

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Adding animations to banner ads can provide a nice touch to how the ad transitions onto the screen. This blog post will show you how to animate an AdMob banner on iOS.We will specifically focus on block-based animation methods which were introduced in iOS 4. If you’re using an older version of iOS, you can achieve the same effect using the beginAnimations:context: and commitAnimations: class methods in UIView.Sliding a banner up onto the screenThe key to animating banners is changing one of the animatable properties in UIView across a certain period of time. iOS will then choose how to animate the AdMob banner across this specified time using its internal logic along with any options that have been specified. Let’s look at how to animate a banner to slide up onto the application’s screen. First, the AdMob banner is initialized with a frame outside of the bounds of the screen (specifically underneath the bottom of the screen). Once the ad is received, it can be animated upwards through its height. Since the banner is sliding up and onto the screen, only the y-coordinate will change during animation. The code for initializing the banner is shown below.// Initialize the banner off of the screen self.adBanner = [[[GADBannerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0, self.view.frame.size.height, GAD_SIZE_320x50.width, GAD_SIZE_320x50.height)] autorelease]; The next step is to implement adViewDidReceiveAd: to set the final frame for the AdMob banner and tell iOS to animate across the two values using the animateWithDuration:animations: method. - (void)adViewDidReceiveAd:(GADBannerView *)adView { [UIView animateWithDuration:1.0 animations:^ { // Final frame of ad should be docked to bottom of screen adView.frame = CGRectMake(0.0, self.view.frame.size.height - adView.frame.size.height, adView.frame.size.width, adView.frame.size.height); }]; } It’s as easy as that! Now, instead of instantly appearing on the screen, the banner ad gracefully slides up in the application using animation.

Customized animationsYou can experiment with other animatable properties of UIView as well. For example, try sliding the banner onto the screen from left to right by changing the initial frame to the left of the screen instead of beneath it. If you want to get even more creative, try experimenting with the Core Animation classes. These classes give you powerful animation functionality and allow you to customize keyframe and timing functions. Pro tip: Be thoughtful about where and how you’re going to use animations. It’s easy to go overboard.If you have any questions about animations on iOS or about the AdMob SDK in general, feel free to post them in our forum. Have fun animating!

- Raj Parameswaran, AdMob Team

Discover DFP API v201111: More Power in Reporting

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

In this installment of the Discover DFP API v201111 series, we present new features we’ve added to reports in the API. In addition to merged ad server columns, which helps upgraded publishers reports on both DART and DFP ad servers, you can now use dimension attributes for greater control in reporting.

Dimension Attributes

Dimension attributes let you break down your report by additional fields associated with the dimension. For example, you can now add the trafficker, external ID, and order start date as dimension attributes associated to your order dimension in a delivery report. This is useful if you would like to see how each of your orders is doing and which trafficker was responsible for that order.

In the past, you would get this information by running a report for orders and then looking up the orders with Order Service to inspect the attributes. Now, it’s as simple as adding values to the dimensionAttributes field on your ReportQuery object and the corresponding fields will be integrated into the report. The following code snippet shows you how to create a report job with dimension attributes:

// Create report job.
ReportJob reportJob = new ReportJob();

// Create report query.
ReportQuery reportQuery = new ReportQuery();
reportQuery.setDateRangeType(DateRangeType.LAST_MONTH);
reportQuery.setDimensions(new Dimension[] {Dimension.ORDER});

// Set dimension attributes for order dimension.
reportQuery.setDimensionAttributes(new DimensionAttribute[] {
    DimensionAttribute.ORDER_TRAFFICKER,
    DimensionAttribute.ORDER_START_DATE_TIME,
    DimensionAttribute.ORDER_END_DATE_TIME});

// Set columns to report on.
reportQuery.setColumns(new Column[] {
    Column.AD_SERVER_IMPRESSIONS,
    Column.AD_SERVER_CLICKS});

reportJob.setReportQuery(reportQuery);

You can check out the full example in the RunDeliveryReportExample in the Java client library. Notice that you can only add dimension attributes for dimensions that you have in the report. For example, if you tried to add LINE_ITEM_EXTERNAL_ID, and you only have order (but not line item) as a dimension, you will get the following error:

ReportError.ATTRIBUTES_NOT_SUPPORTED_FOR_REQUEST

Be sure to check out our updated reporting examples in the client libraries and take a look at our documentation for a full mapping of supported dimension attributes and the fields they represent.

We are always looking for ways to improve the API and we’d love to get your feedback. Let us know what you’d like to see in the API or discussed in a blog post by posting on our forum. We’re also more than happy to chat during one of our office hours hangouts.

- Jeffrey Sham, DFP API Team

Ads Developer Blog

Meet an AdSense API Engineer: Nick Johnson

AdMob and AdWhirl Refresh Rates - A Subtle but Important Difference

Incorporating Google AdMob ads into a Table View in iOS

Google App Engine for Java meet DFP API, Part 1: Hello World

A look back at mobile in 2011

Animating Banner Ads in AdMob SDK for iOS

Discover DFP API v201111: More Power in Reporting

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