We’ve released version 6.4.0 of the Google AdMob SDK for iOS developers. In addition to general maintenance updates, this version of the SDK completes the transition away from UDID, which began with version 6.2. Check out the release notes for a full list of updates. You can download the latest SDK from our downloads page. If you’ve got questions or concerns about using the new AdMob SDK, please post to the forum or check out our G+ page.
Today, we’re giving AdMob developers more control over the value of ad impressions served to their apps. The AdMob eCPM Floor beta allows developers to set a minimum CPM they’d like to receive for each ad. The beta is available to AdMob developers who are using AdMob Mediation.
How does this work? Advertisers bid to show their ads on apps in the AdMob network, and anauction is run for every impression to determine the winner. We predict what the ‘expected CPM’ (eCPM) of that ad impression will be. The developer sets a minimum eCPM and we will only serve ads to their app that meet or exceed that level. For example, if a floor of $1.25 is set, we’ll only show ads with an eCPM of $1.25 or more. When choosing a floor value it’s important for developers to look at their own reporting and determine a value that’s relevant to them.
Here are a few details to know when taking part in the beta:
Make sure the eCPMs that are set for other ad networks are accurate.
We don’t guarantee the final value of the eCPM, since we don’t know if a user will click on the ad.
Developers who use the beta have the option of setting just one network line item in their mediation stack which uses the eCPM floor. Or, they can have two network line items, one that uses the eCPM floor and one without, so they can continue to fill impressions at their current fill rate. Setting the eCPM floor at a very high value will likely lead to a decrease in the fill rate.
Find setup instructions in the AdMob Help Center here under the article titled ‘Allocate traffic by eCPM’.
Posted by: Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, Google
Incorporating social recommendations into display advertising will make ads more relevant for users and impactful for advertisers. Today the Google+ project is expanding to the Google Display Network.
The +1 button will start to roll out on AdSense for Mobile Content publishers for both text and image ads by early October.
The +1 button will appear on the left side of the ad and recommendations will appear for several seconds, then
fade out.
Advertisers interested in learning more about the +1 button can view today’s announcement or the AdWords help center for more details.
In the next several weeks, we will share the details of how developers can incorporate +1 ads into their mobile applications. Mobile web publishers who prefer not to show the +1 button can opt out starting today by signing in to your account at google.com/adsense.
We’re excited with the broad consumer engagement with the +1 button throughout the web. Find out more about the latest developments to the Google+ project here.
Posted by Neha Pattan, Software Engineer, Mobile Ads
Mobile advertising is seeing rapid growth and today’s campaigns are richer and more advanced than ever. However, a lack of industry standards has made it difficult to build and run rich media campaigns across different ad networks and mobile platforms at scale.
To address this challenge, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) brought together a broad group of industry participants and created the MRAID (Mobile Rich-Media Ads Interface Definitions) project. Google fully supports IAB’s effort to create mobile advertising standards and is actively engaged as a member of the MRAID working group.
Last week, IAB released the first public draft of MRAID v1.0 for comments and feedback. The document provides definitions to help standardize the interaction between mobile ads and mobile platform SDKs. We invite the industry to review this draft and look forward to finalizing this important mobile standard.
The effort to develop standards on mobile is reminiscent of a similar process on desktop years ago. On desktop, Flash emerged as a standard which enabled advertisers to create ads that would seamlessly run across different ad networks and websites.
Today, the mobile industry has rallied around HTML5 as the preferred language to create mobile ads, yet several challenges remain before this can be instituted. A wide variety of mobile SDKs have forced advertisers to develop platform or network-specific ads as opposed to a single ad that works across multiple networks and devices. Having to customize campaigns for each ad network increases cost and pain of ad creation and hinders the growth of the ecosystem. Imagine if a marketer’s TV ads worked on one channel and one type of television, but not others - that’s where we stand with some mobile ads today.
The first public draft of MRAID v1.0 is a significant step in the rapid evolution of mobile and mobile advertising. We thank the IAB for organizing the initiative and other working group members for passionately participating in this important project.
Here on the Google mobile ads team, we’re big fans of pushing the limits of what’s possible with our products. So when we were thinking about the best way to promote the Google Search app on iPhone, we wanted to see what we could do with the latest in AdMob rich media.
The answer, it turned out, was a whole lot. We worked closely with our marketing team and its agency, Grow Interactive, to create “Uncover Your World,” an interactive mobile experience that takes full advantage of AdMob’s rich media capabilities.
Here’s a preview:
(l-r): User clicks on an in-app animated HTML5 banner; They watch an in-line intro video; While exploring the ad, users can unlock secret games
And here’s a video where you can see how the ad actually works:
“Uncover Your World” invites you to explore a virtual cityscape and learn via a self-paced storyline how the Google Search app can “uncover” facts about the world around you with features like search with your voice and search with your phone’s camera. We highlighted this functionality by combining many of AdMob’s custom rich media features, including:
Animated HTML5 banners
Interactive HTML5 interstitials and expandables
Extensive video content
In-line video and audio, so the users stay within the ad while experiencing sight, sound and motion instead of being directed to the phone’s media player (e.g., Quicktime for iPhone)
Unlockable games where users tap, touch, and tilt to play
The preliminary results of the campaign have been impressive. On average, users spend over a minute and a half interacting with the ad, and of those, 50% go on directly from the ad to download the app.
As excited as we are about these results, we’re even more excited to see how “the pros” – our advertisers and their creative agencies – make use of the technologies behind the “Uncover Your World” campaign. As the campaign showed, the tools are all now there to build really innovative new mobile experiences that make use of the touchscreen, location, audio, video, interactivity, and more.
Designers... start your engines!
Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director, Mobile Ads
Update: You can also view the ad experience directly at http://www.uncoveryourworld.com on your iPhone browser.
Mobile capabilities launching today -- video coming this Summer Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Publisher blog Display advertising is becoming about much more than ads in web browsers. People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines and books, and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate. They’re turning to a plethora of new devices—smartphones, tablets, e-readers and even video game consoles to consume information and browse the web.
In order to help growing publishers capture new monetization opportunities from these emerging trends, we’re continuing to evolve DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to give publishers a complete solution that can deliver ads across all screens and formats—including display advertising on the desktop, video, mobile ad delivery and more.
Today, as part of this effort, we have fully integrated mobile ad trafficking, inventory management, forecasting, reporting and ad serving directly into the core platform you’re familiar with. Later this year, we will be integrating video capabilities into DFP Small Business so you can begin managing and selling your video ad inventory all from a single platform. If you’re a DFP Small Business publisher and are interested in early access to video functionality, please let us know here.
As part of today’s release, you’ll find mobile specific targeting options, creative types, and mobile-optimized ad tags built directly into the workflow you’re familiar with.
Mobile Targeting
In addition to helping publishers sell their mobile ad inventory directly to advertisers, the Google AdSense and AdMob networks are integrated into DFP Small Business to help you fill any mobile ad inventory you haven’t sold directly. These networks allow you to manage all of your mobile inventory, whether it is sold directly or indirectly, so you can fully monetize your mobile web content.
Over the next few weeks we will be enabling all DFP Small Business accounts with these exciting new mobile features. For publishers who require greater levels of customization and an advanced mobile feature set including support for feature phones and richer ad formats, we will be rolling out advanced mobile functionality into the premium version of DFP over the next few months. Contact us to learn more.
We’re committed to helping publishers streamline operations by offering a complete solution to manage, serve, and report across all sales channels, formats, and devices.
Posted by Marcel Gordon, Product Manager, DoubleClick
Cross-posted from the Google Conversion Blog This is the third post in a series on optimising mobile websites for conversions. The previous two posts covered Content Prioritisation and White Space. In Summary: Buttons rule on mobile devices. The rule of thumb means that big, well spaced buttons with clear calls to action will likely result in more conversions. Before looking at how buttons can make the mobile user experience better we must first understand the way mobile users navigate. Think about the way you hold your phone. More often than not it’s in just one hand and because your fingers are gripping the phone from behind, you are left only with your thumb for navigation of the screen. The thumb is far less precise than a mouse pointer.
As you can see from this image, fingers are behind the phone leaving the thumb to do all the work
The Mobile Rule of Thumb: If it cannot be done with the thumb, it cannot be done. The hyperlink is a poor user experience on a touchscreen mobile device because it is very hard to use with an imprecise instrument like the human thumb. If that’s not all, mobile devices are often used by people on the move, so hitting a small point on the screen is just getting harder and harder. The best way to alleviate these issues is to build your links into big buttons which allow for greater levels of inaccuracy. Here are are a few things to consider when building button links: Buttons Should be Big In a recent study of iPad users, Jakob Nielsen, the father of human computer interaction studies, recommends that buttons be at least 1cm x 1cm in diameter. That’s 28px assuming the standard web resolution of 72dpi. There’s a lot of debate around this area. Apple is recommending 44x44 at a minimum for buttons in apps. A very interesting introduction to designing for different screen sizes on Android can be found here. This is something you really need to test when building your site. Without a mouse or even a stylus, buttons need to be big. Put simply, you should build buttons for thumbs. And err towards large thumbs. There is also the issue of light. Many mobile screens perform poorly in daylight or bright light environments – big buttons make it easier to perform tasks while visibility is low. Buttons Should be Isolated How many times have you tried to click a button on a mobile device only to find that you have inadvertently clicked something else? It can be a really painful experience and is also a sure-fire way of making a user give up in frustration and go somewhere else. One way to avoid accidental clicks is to ensure that buttons have a little space between them. Call-to-action buttons especially should be isolated. Where possible, leave a little white space around buttons. Buttons Should be Reachable The placement of your buttons is also important. Just as we need to consider big thumbs for button size, we need to think about what is comfortable for thumbs when placing buttons. The standard navigation button is across the whole page on mobile sites so it isn’t really an issue but many mobile sites have call-to-action buttons which are shorter and sit on one side of the screen or the other. If possible, these buttons should be made longer and centred more. Not only does that make them larger but it’s easier for both left and right handed people to reach the buttons with their thumb. If you must choose a side of the screen, contrary to the right side placement often found on desktop, it is actually more comfortable for a right-handed thumb (the majority of users) to click a button on the left side of the screen.
Kiddicare found button placement on the left side of the screen was easier for users than the right
Smaller Buttons Should be Padded Padding refers to making clickable an area larger than the button itself. This can be especially useful for check boxes or buttons that need to be smaller so as not to draw attention away from the main call-to action. The trick is to make the area immediately around the button clickable as well. In the case of check boxes, it is important to leave sufficient space between boxes and then to make the text next to the box clickable too. Buttons Should Look Like Buttons This might seem like common sense but it is not unusual to find links on mobile sites which behave like buttons but do not look like them. Whether it is a link that looks the same as the text around it or a button that looks like a heading, the user needs some form of visual cue to help them understand where to click. Make buttons look three dimensional and they are more likely to invite clicks. It is also important that your site clearly indicates to a user which button they have clicked. Some sites do this really well, but others are a little patchy. Touching any part of a button should result in a visual signal for the user.
Why use buttons? Imagine the difficulty of picking the right link in the example above.
So does this mean we can never use hyperlinks? Of course you can. But you should use them minimally and don’t put lots of them into the same space. As a rule, try to have no more than one link per band of text. For example, In the point above about making buttons big enough, I have spread the points with links across multiple lines to make it easier for touchscreen users to tap them on the mobile version of this blog.
Of course when it comes to a mobile site which is trying to convert visitors into customers, try not to have much text. In summary, buttons on mobile sites should be:
Big
Isolated
Reachable
Padded
Obvious
Prioritised
Descriptive
Buttons that have been well thought out and follow the guidelines above should help increase conversions on your mobile website. Mobile Website Testing Tip: When you are building your mobile site, physically test it while you are in motion to best replicate the real-world user experience.
The next post will be looking at how to make conversions easier to complete on a mobile website. If you have feedback, please leave a comment.
(6/23/2011) The links in this post have been updated.
With an average of 1 million new smartphones entering the market each day, it is critically important for content publishers to ramp up their mobile efforts if they have not already. According to StatCounter, the share of U.S. web browser activity originating from mobile devices more than doubled since May last year to 8.24%. The good news is that some online publishers, such as Dictionary.com, started exploring mobile years ago to understand its potential and find new ways to engage their “on-the-go” user base.
In 2007, Dictionary.com launched a mobile optimized website to provide the increasing number of users accessing their online content from mobile devices with a better mobile user experience. Now Dictionary.com sees 9 million unique users on their mobile website and has over 30 million app downloads across Android, iPhone, Blackberry and iPad. According to Dictionary.com’s President, Shravan Goli, growth in mobile usage is outpacing online usage by 4x and mobile users spend 2-3x more time engaged with mobile content. In the interview below, we sat down with Shravan Goli to get his insights into growing a successful mobile business.
One of the key takeaways from Dictionary.com is the importance of adapting to the mobile context. Goli urges publishers to avoid just porting their online content to mobile and follow a few simple guidelines:
Create a great user experience: This sounds simple, but is a challenge for many mobile publishers. Optimize for both mobile web and leverage unique capabilities of smart phone platforms for apps. User feedback directly impacts your app ranking, so listen to your users and be flexible to adapt quickly.
Diversify your business model for apps: Free ad-supported apps provide extensive reach, but consider adding a paid ad-free version to give users choice.
Ad networks complement direct sales: Similar to their online business, Dictionary.com finds that ad networks such as Google’s AdMob make it easy to start monetizing both the mobile website and cross-platform apps from day one.
Plan for the iterative process: The development cycle on mobile is more complicated than online so build in feedback mechanisms, monitor them closely, and evolve your products rapidly to meet the changing needs of your users.
After seeing such strong results with the Dictionary.com property on mobile, the company is now expanding its mobile portfolio to include a Flashcards and Spanish app to accompany their online versions. Shravan comments, “on mobile, people are looking for content to fill the pockets of time in between activities. Dictionary.com is providing tools for people to educate themselves on the go, wherever they are.”
For more details on Dictionary.com’s success, download the 2-page case study with additional insights from Dictionary.com’s GM of Mobile, Lisa Sullivan-Cross.
Posted by Keri Kandel, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads
