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Tag: Google Ads

  • Google Ads Error Impacting Video Pages in Google Ads Frontend

    Google Ads Error Impacting Video Pages in Google Ads Frontend

    Google Ads is experiencing a major issue, one that is impacting access to Video pages in the Google Ads Frontend.

    First spotted by Search Engine Land, the issue has been acknowledged by Google and is impacting “a majority of users.” The issue happens when users try to access the Video pages, leading to an error message and red banner. The company says there is no work around, although it is working on a fix.

    We’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a majority of users. We will provide an update by May 19, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.

  • Google Ads Was Down Tuesday Evening

    Google Ads Was Down Tuesday Evening

    Google Ads was down Tuesday evening, impacting a large number of users.

    Users started experiencing issues with Google Ads Tuesday evening. The company acknowledged an issue impacting its users.

    We’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a significant subset of users.

    Just under three hours later, the company said the problems was fixed.

    The problem with Google Ads has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but may not have access to the most recent data.

  • Google Ads Beta May Add Keywords Automatically, Result In Overspending

    Google Ads Beta May Add Keywords Automatically, Result In Overspending

    A new Google Ads beta may result in overspending, as a result of keywords being added without users’ knowledge.

    The issue was first discovered by Lior Krolewicz, with Yael Consulting.

    Last week I saw one of my client’s budget was overspending. Digging into the offending campaign, I found keywords that I never saw before. There was no record of these keywords even being added (in the change history) but here they were, overspending by 50% of my target budget.

    After lengthy back-and-forth with Google, Krolewicz was pointed to the agency’s Auto Applied Recommendations Control Center, a new feature in beta. Krolewicz’s client had “Maximum Impact” selected. To make matters worse, Google does not show any changes it has made in the standard Google Ads interface.

    In the FAQ section, Google attributes this to the feature still being in beta.

    Why don’t I see any information about auto applied recommendations in my Google Ads account?

    This feature is in the beta testing stage, and your Google Ads account has been selected to participate. To find more information and manage this feature, sign in to the auto applied recommendations control center.

    Google Ads users should check their account to make sure they are are not being overcharged as a result of this beta feature.

  • Google Donating $800 Million to Small Businesses Amid Crisis

    Google Donating $800 Million to Small Businesses Amid Crisis

    With the fate of many small businesses on the line, Google is donating some $800 million to assist small businesses during the economic crisis.

    As the global health crisis worsens, companies around the world are closing shop or drastically changing how they conduct business. Many are facing uncertain futures, leading governments and companies to take measures to assist. Google is one of the latest to step up, pledging some $800 million to the effort.

    In a blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company will be donating “$250 million in ad grants to help the World Health Organization (WHO) and more than 100 government agencies globally provide critical information.” This should help combat the spread of misinformation that is plaguing social media.

    In addition, the company is also setting aside “a $200 million investment fund that will support NGOs and financial institutions around the world to help provide small businesses with access to capital. As one example, we’re working with the Opportunity Finance Network in the U.S. to help fill gaps in financing for people and communities underserved by mainstream financial institutions. This is in addition to the $15 million in cash grants Google.org is already providing to nonprofits to help bridge these gaps for SMBs.”

    Google is also providing “$340 million in Google Ads credits available to all SMBs with active accounts over the past year. Credit notifications will appear in their Google Ads accounts and can be used at any point until the end of 2020 across our advertising platforms.” The company is also providing $20 million in Google Cloud credits that researchers can use to access Google’s computing resources.

    Overall, this is a significant effort on the part of Google to stimulate small businesses and help them weather the storm. By making Google Ad credits available, it should provide a relatively risk-free way for small businesses to keep advertising, despite the economic challenges.

  • France Fines Google $166 Million Over Search Ads

    France Fines Google $166 Million Over Search Ads

    TechCrunch is reporting that France has levied a $166 million fine against Google over abusing its online advertising dominance.

    France’s competition watchdog, Autorité de la concurrence, announced the fine last week following an investigation dating back several years. The fine is based on advertising rules that were “opaque and difficult to understand” and that Google was applying in “an unfair and random manner.”

    The case was brought to the competition authority’s attention over four years ago when Google closed the Google Ads account of a company called Gibmedia without any notice. Google told TechCrunch GibMedia’s account had been closed to protect consumers, as it was “running ads for websites that deceived people into paying for services on unclear billing terms.”

    Autorité de la concurrence pointed out, however, that Google is not applying that rationale uniformly and currently has other sites selling similar services.

    Google has vowed to fight the decision. In the meantime, in order to comply with the Autorité de la concurrence’s ruling, Google must clarify its rules and procedures, set up a warning system to alert advertisers and help them avoid account suspensions and “organize mandatory annual training for Google Ads support staff.”

  • You Don’t Have to Buy Google Ads to Create a Big Company

    You Don’t Have to Buy Google Ads to Create a Big Company

    Self-made marketing phenomena Neil Patel says that there is an alternative to buying Google Ads to grow your company. The answer he says is creating a free leader product or service that drive customers to your site for you to later upsell. Patel sees this alternative solution as a less expensive and more sustainable “growth hacking” strategy.

    Neil Patel discussed this growth hacking strategy in a recent video:

    You Don’t Have to Buy Google Ads to Create a Big Company

    Google Ads are continually rising in cost. What if I told you I have a really cool solution that’ll give you a much better ROI in the long run than Google Ads. Today, I’m going to share with you the best alternative to Google Ads. What most people don’t realize is, you don’t have to spend money on Google Ads to create a multibillion-dollar company.

    Have you heard of Dropbox? Of course, you have and the chances are it’s on your computer. Did you know that when Dropbox first came out they tried to grow by doing Google advertising? And what they found is, even though they had a product that costs around $5 a month, which is around $60 a year per customer, they were spending roughly $200 to $300 to acquire a customer from Google Ads.

    Can you see how those numbers don’t work out? Not only are they spending more to acquire a customer than what they’re paying in the first year, but just because someone’s paying you $5 a month, doesn’t mean that $5 is pure profit either.

    How to Leverage a Growth Hacking Strategy

    So, what did Dropbox do? They leveraged growth hacking. They figured out a way to get users to come to their site and generate more customers. They did this by creating a free product or a service, and that’s a better alternative to Google Ads. If you look at Dropbox, you look at Slack, even look at Amazon, although Amazon’s not really doing free with Prime buy you get free two-day shipping.

    By creating something that’s free or such an amazing offer, think of it as your carrot that you’re dangling, you’re going to get so many people over to your website that then when you upsell them into your paid products or services, it’s so much easier because they’re already using your product or service, you’ve already built that brand loyalty, that connection, that rapport with them. It’s much easier to get that upsell.

    It Does Cost a Lot to Offer a Free Product or Service

    And here’s what most people don’t understand; they’re like, “Whoa Nellie, if I spent all this money getting people over to my website by having a ‘free’ product or service, it’s going to cost me a lot of money,” and it does. I recently released a tool called Ubersuggest. If you look at Uber suggest, I’m spending $150,000 a month releasing a lot of the features you see in tools like BuzzSumo or SEMrush, for free; 150 grand a month, that’s my cost. My cost isn’t going down, it’s continually rising too.

    But you know what, if I had to do paid advertising on Google to get those visitors, my estimation shows that I would be spending a bit more than $600,000. Do you see how giving something away for free that costs me $150,000 a month is much better than spending $600,000 a month on paid ads?

    Get Creative with Your Marketing

    You do not have to spend money on Google Ads to create a big business, just look at Dropbox. Leverage growth hacking, and then as you have these free tools, these free products, these free services, and it may not be the best ones out there but something that people are used to paying for, what you can do is do things like creating invite flows. Dropbox has it: you want more free space, invite more users. I can do the same thing with Ubersuggest; I don’t, but I can say “Want more free usage? Invite more members.”

    You can get creative with your marketing, leverage growth hacking. Just don’t put all your money into Google Ads, and the reason I say that is not because I don’t like Google Ads. Ideally, you should be doing both. But the reason I say this is, the moment you stop Google Ads you don’t have any more traffic.

    By creating something that’s free, and it doesn’t have to continually cost a ton of money, like HubSpot, they have this free email signature generator. It doesn’t cost them much money; they only spent a few thousand dollars creating it. They don’t even spend any money maintaining it each and every single month. But they found that it can drive over seven figures worth of revenue to their business per year; not too bad from one free tool.

  • YouTube is Now Making it a Lot Cheaper to Advertise on TV

    YouTube is Now Making it a Lot Cheaper to Advertise on TV

    In its bid to capture a portion of television advertising revenues, Google’s YouTube has finally launched an option to run campaigns on TV screens. Labeled “TV screens device type” on the Google Ads platform, the option will allow advertisers to target engaged viewers watching YouTube content on their TVs.

    It’s not surprising that YouTube has added TV to its list of devices for video ads, along with computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Based on the video giant’s estimates, people watch an average of 180 million hours of YouTube on TV screens daily.

    The considerable shift isn’t harming mobile device viewership, though, as many viewers use their tablets and smartphones to stream content onto their TV screens.

    The availability of set-top boxes Roku and Apple TV, devices like Chromecasts, video game consoles, and smart TVs have paved the way for video streaming and changed viewing behavior. YouTube saw the potential and allowed marketers to develop ads tailored for TV viewing. Advertisers will also receive television-focused analytics to determine an ad’s impact on their overall campaign mix, so they can make tweaks wherever necessary.

    With the flexibility and affordability of Google Ads, YouTube advertisers can optimize and set specific bidding prices for campaigns or ad groups on different devices. After all, viewing habits tend to change depending on the platform being used. Mobile viewers, on average, watch videos in 60-minutes increments, while the watching duration for TV screens is about 4.5 hours.

    Brand awareness and ad recall may also be different on TV and mobile, but on both platforms, high-quality content on ads remains essential.

    For companies that already created amazing TV commercial ads, it’s cost-effective for them to post the video on YouTube as a way to spark more interest in their brand. They can tap into new markets while keeping their existing customers engaged. And, by uploading the video ad on YouTube, companies get the added benefit of easily uploading it to the company’s website for more views and sustained interest.

    [Featured image via YouTube TV]

  • Amazon Emerges as a Major Player in Digital Advertising

    Amazon Emerges as a Major Player in Digital Advertising

    “Amazon” and “ads” are two words that are not usually associated with each other. However, that will soon change as Amazon appears set to become the third largest online advertising platform in the United States.

    According to eMarketer, there’s a strong possibility that the retail giant will surpass Microsoft and Verizon in terms of online advertising this year. The company estimated that Amazon’s advertising arm will bring in around $4.6 billion in profits in 2018. This gives Amazon a 4.1 percent slice of the advertising pie. What’s more, $1.6 billion of that revenue would likely come from mobile ads, giving Jeff Bezos’ company a 2.1 percent share of America’s mobile ad market.

    Alphabet (Google) and Facebook remain the market leaders, controlling 37.1% and 20.6% respectively. However, eMarketer theorizes that Amazon’s share will reach 7 percent by 2020, while Google and Facebook’s combined hold on the market will drop to 55.9 percent.

    [Graphic via Nasdaq]

    The news of Amazon’s emerging ad dominance is unexpected as the company is more known for making money from its online store and cloud services. Meanwhile, consumers who use the company primarily for shopping or watching videos rarely notice the ads that permeate Amazon’s services. However, these ad products have been steadily growing. It includes paid ads on Amazon’s own marketplace while also facilitating advertisements on other sites.

    Most people are unaware of this but the retail giant’s advertising arm used to have three key divisions—the Amazon Media Group (AMG), Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP), and Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). In a bid to make it easier for brands to buy ads, the three groups were merged into a single unit early this month and renamed “Amazon Advertising.”

    Amazon’s SVP of Advertising Paul Kotas explained in a blog post that merging the three groups was another step in the company’s goal of “providing advertising solutions that are simple and intuitive for the hundreds of thousands of advertisers who use our products to help grow their business.”

    The company is also looking into ways to push its advertising further. For instance, Amazon has rolled out a new service dubbed “Scout.” The feature offers suggestions for visually-inclined products, like shoes and furnishings, based on the customer’s preferences. A spokesperson for the company explained that Scout is a novel way of shopping. It provides customers the chance to browse thousands of items and refine their selections based on the products’ visual characteristics.

    The changes that Amazon has made clearly shows that the company is setting its sights on advertising. It further reinforces CFO Brian Olsavsky’s claims during July’s investors’ call that Amazon’s advertising arm is a rising star and will soon have an impact on the business’ overall gross revenue.

  • Denny’s Says That Google Ads Are Bringing Customers to the Table

    Denny’s Says That Google Ads Are Bringing Customers to the Table

    The Google Ads Team recently provided an interesting profile on how Denny’s focused their marketing on digital in order to reach people as they were making decisions on where to eat. In 2018 Denny’s decided to move away from traditional print and TV advertising and instead focus on a more targeted digital approach.

    “If you look at the history of Denny’s, it’s really been focused on the family,” noted Luis Martinez, who currently leads marketing for Denny’s. “We recognize that American families are changing. They’re becoming more multicultural and more diverse. But families still value experiences and good food.”

    “Denny’s was pretty traditional in its advertising and marketing approach,” he said. “We relied very heavily on print, and very heavily on TV. The spray-and-pray approach that existed beforehand, it really was relying on the hope that you were talking to the right person with your message. Platforms like Google Ads, they remove the mystery from that.”

    The guest is usually the one that’s telling you what it is they want,” says Martinez. “You look at something as simple as a search campaign. They’re looking for “pancakes near me” or “I want a burger.” For people who want those items, we want to make sure that we’re surfaced and relevant in that moment of considerationwhether it’s lunch or late night.”

    Google Ads Increased Our Late Night Business

    “Google Ads data let us see that our late night performance was really strong,” explained Denny’s search marketing specialists Eric and John. “So after 8:00 p.m., we adjusted our ads to call out that we were open late night, and we saw that, as a result, click-through rates really skyrocketed. Google really gives you the holistic view across all the different channels. It gives you data, it gives you insights, and it gives you a real pulse on the performance of the overall brand.”

     

    Martinez noted how working with data has really provided new insights for Denny’s. “That’s insight that is not necessarily built into a lot of other channels. It really is our responsibility to take what we learn about our guests and apply it across the entire marketing ecosystem.”

     

    Digital Has Changed Our Culture

    “Digital has changed our culture, and it’s actually changed the way we do business,” says Daniel, Denny’s restaurant manager. “Over the last year, we have experienced an increase in sales. It’s bringing in a new crowd. “You can have confidence not only in serving that right message to the right consumer but that digital marketing translates to in-store traffic,” added Martinez.

    Google Ads Are Bringing Customers to the Table

    “Ultimately it brings the customer to the table,” noted Martinez. “As Denny’s has made more investments in Google Ads, we’ve been more and more successful in bringing in a more representative sample of today’s America to set our stores up for success in the future.”

     

  • Google Rebrands AdWords, Introduces ‘Smart Campaigns’ for Small Businesses

    Google Rebrands AdWords, Introduces ‘Smart Campaigns’ for Small Businesses

    Google has revamped how its ad services and products are organized and sold in a bid to make its advertising system easier for brands to understand.

    After two decades, Google is retiring AdWords and DoubleClick names and rebranding them instead. They are also being reorganized in order to better showcase their capabilities and growth trajectory. DoubleClick products and the Google Analytics 360 Suite will now fall under the umbrella of Google Marketing Platform. DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers will be integrated into the Google Ad Manager while AdWords will now be called Google Ads.

    The newly introduced Google Marketing Platform is designed to assist clients in planning, buying, measuring and optimizing their digital media and customer experience. The decision to merge the DoubleClick and Analytics 360 Suite brands was the result of marketer feedback regarding the advantages of using analytics and ads technology to create improved customer understanding and bigger business results.

    Meanwhile, Google Ads will represent the extent of the company’s advertising capacity across its numerous properties, like Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube. Google Ads will also roll out a new type of ad strategy called Smart Campaigns. This feature will be utilizing machine learning technology and focuses on small businesses. It will be the default experience of start-up companies.

    As for the Google Ad Manager, the unified programmatic system is developed to help partners to generate higher revenue in a more efficient manner.

    The three new brands are being hailed as a way to help all advertisers and publishers pick the right solutions for their business, regardless of the size. It also aims to make it easier for companies to provide consumers with trustworthy ads and an improved experience regardless of the channels and devices used.

    The restructuring of its ads business was announced on Tuesday by Sridhar Ramaswamy, the SVP of Ads at Google. According to Ramaswamy, the company’s extensive ad offerings is challenging for advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers to navigate. He also mentioned that while advertising opportunities have never been greater, it has also become more complicated.

    “It is harder for advertisers, publishers, and agencies that help them choose the right products for their business and know how to use them,” Ramaswamy said.

    Despite the changes, brands have nothing to worry about as Ramaswamy emphasized that Google’s “underlying products aren’t changing.” But while the rebranding is basically just a name change, there will be small changes in some ad interfaces that will streamline the different services that the company’s advertising and marketing products offer.

  • Facebook Ad Network Takes On Google

    Facebook Ad Network Takes On Google

    Facebook ads will now target non-users of Facebook on outside websites and apps, directly challenging the supremacy of the Google Display Network. Previously, Facebook only showed ads on third party websites to users that were concurrently logged into Facebook.

    Facebook is also taking on the hundreds of other ad networks such as Taboola, Adblade, Chitika that serve up ads on various websites. Facebook thinks it can be the gold standard in advertising ensuring a good experience for the website visitor by avoiding popups, slow loading ads and suspicious advertisers.

    Andrew Bosworth, Facebook VP of Ads and Business Platform posted about this in a blog post, “One of the things we’ve heard from people is that many of the ads they see are annoying, distracting, or misleading. We think companies can do better, and that’s why we’ve been focused on improving ads both on and off Facebook.”

    Bosworth elaborated on how Facebook can stand out and win over publishers wanting to offer their visitors a better experience while still profiting from advertising on their sites:

    We’ve all had this experience. You open a news article on your phone’s web browser and the page takes unusually long to load. Once it appears, the article is blocked by an ad. You might see a tiny “x” to hide the ad, but if you tap in the wrong spot, you get redirected to an app store or another website. It can be unclear who’s behind the ad or even if the website you’ve been directed to is safe to visit.

    Advertising may be here to stay, but bad advertising like this doesn’t have to. That’s why we’re working to provide a better online advertising experience for everyone: people, publishers, and advertisers.

    While more than a hundred companies already serve interest-based advertising on websites and apps today, we offer a better experience because we care about the integrity of Facebook ads.

    Ads are reviewed against our standards and to ensure they are as respectful of people’s experience as possible. For example, we don’t permit ads that include sound unless you interact with them and we prohibit deceptive ads and ads for unsafe products and services. We’ve developed technology to determine when someone clicks on an ad on a mobile device by accident, so you don’t get taken to a website or app you didn’t mean to visit.

    We also offer everyone controls over the ads they see, including tools to opt out of online interest-based advertising. If you have an account, you can do this directly from your Facebook settings, and we honor your choice wherever you use Facebook.

    Facebook plans to offer advertisers the same types of targeting of non-Facebook users as it currently does to Facebook users by utilizing data from cookies that follow web surfers wherever they go on the Web. Bosworth told the Wall Street Journal, ““Our buttons and plugins send over basic information about users’ browsing sessions. For non-Facebook members, previously we didn’t use it. Now we’ll use it to better understand how to target those people.”

    Facebook will take in data about sites a user visits and associate that with a likely target. For instance, someone who visits photography tip sites could be viewed as interested in photography and photographic equipment and supplies. This is currently commonplace with Google and other ad Networks. That’s why when you visit a site that sells sunglasses, you often then see various sunglass ads on other sites too.

    Bosworth believes that because Facebook already has tons of data on a huge swath of the world’s population they are better positioned to pull all of the behavioral data points together and serve highly targeted ads, even to non-users. Bosworth told WSJ, “Because we have a core audience of over a billion people [on Facebook] who we do understand, we have a greater opportunity than other companies using the same type of mechanism.”

  • Google Lets Users Click An X To Stop Seeing Ads From Specific Campaigns

    Google is launching a new [x] button on some of its display ads over the next several weeks. Much like display ads on Facebook, the user will stop seeing ads from that campaign, once the [x] is clicked.

    It’s unclear on what all ads the feature will be included, but Google says it is starting on those that are based on remarketing and interest categories.

    When the user clicks the [x], they’ll be presented with a confirmation page, which explains that the ad has been muted, and provides a link to Google’s Ad Preferences Manager.

    Google Ad muting

    Google does note that clicking the [x] isn’t a 100% guarantee users won’t see the ad again. Ads might appear again if shown by a different ad company or if a marketer runs a separate campaign targeting specific content.

    This isn’t the first way Google has tried to give users more control over ads.

    “We’re investing in many ways to give users control over the ads they see,” says product manager Michael Aiello. “On YouTube, our TrueView ad products enables users to skip video ads. On Google search, you can click ‘Why this Ad?’ and stop sites you’re not interested in from showing you ads. Our Ads Preferences Manager, available with one click on the AdChoices icon on ads on the Google Display Network, enables you to edit your interest categories, or opt out of all interest based ads including remarketing ads on our Display Network.”

    Advertisers who get the [x] clicked a lot might experience further ramifications, as Google says it will use the feedback it collects from users to “improve” its ads over time.

  • Google’s DoubleClick Digital Marketing Insights Conference Start a Revolution in Online Advertising

    Google wants users to know that they are doing everything that can to facilitate a revolution in online advertising that puts control in the viewers hands. This means they have to reengineer the whole system of buying and selling ads along with the way they are created.

    As you know, Google has already made great strides with creating tools and services that make ad creation and refinement a lot more accessible, but more recently, today in fact, they’re meeting with some of their closest customers to discuss how an advertising revolution should proceed. They’re calling it the DoubleClick Insights Conference.

    Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, Neal Mohan will be meeting with industry leaders to discuss how technology is reshaping the environment and how consumer’s relationship with advertising has changed. They will also discuss how advertisers and publishers can work together to create a richer and more engaging marketing experience. The bad news is, the conference is already underway and kicked-off at 9am PST. You can probably still catch some of the conference if you register now.

    Today’s Insights Conference Speaker Line-up

    Neal Mohan – Vice President, Display Advertising, Google
    Terry Kawaja – Founder and CEO, LUMA Partners
    David Kenny – Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel
    James Pitaro – Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group
    Omar Tawokol – Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai
    Greg Stuart – Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association
    Kurt Unkel – President, VivaKi
    Shishir Mehrota – Vice President of Product Management, YouTube
    Brad Ruffkess – Social Marketing and Connection Strategy, Coca-Cola
    Mike Lowenstern – Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA
    Peter Minnium – Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB
    John Caldwell – Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic Society

    If you’ve completely missed the events, that’s okay because all the details are available on the DoubleClick Advertising Blog. Obviously reinventing the way the advertising business functions is going to take an awful lot of conscious effort from a lot of different groups. Framing the challenge is only the first step and I think Google had done a good job.

    Here’s how Neal Mohan, VP of Display Ads, explained the rather complex nature that plagues digital advertising initiatives today:

    “One of the central challenges we’re looking to solve with this effort is that digital marketing is still incredibly complex—with marketers juggling multiple systems to manage their different digital efforts across banner ads, paid search campaigns, mobile ads, online video and measurement using systems that don’t talk to one another. We think of this a bit like an old school ‘90’s stereo system, with separate CD, cassette and radio players and a mess of wires in the back.”

    “What we want to provide to our partners should be more like the intuitive, powerful smartphones we carry in our pockets today—which not only play all our favorite music, but take pictures, keep our schedules and more.”

    “Towards this end, DoubleClick Digital Marketing will weave together the technologies that buyers currently use to plan, manage, schedule, deliver and measure their online buys in a way we think will not only help them work smarter and faster, but ultimately be more responsive to their customers and deliver better ads.”

    So if you’re interested in the online advertising revolution, you can read more by following this link to Google’s official blog. If you’re interested in starting your own ad campaigns, Google is also a great resource for creation tools and analytics. The DoubleClick Insights Conference runs until 1PM PST today, but updates about the events and speakers will be posted throughout the week.

  • Google Ads API Getting Java Client Library Rewrite

    Java is really popular or so says Google. The Java Client library for Ads API is still used by a lot of developers despite the fact that it’s really old. Google tried to fix what was already there, but old dogs can’t learn new tricks. That’s why Google got a new dog that can learn all kinds of new tricks.

    If the above canine analogy was lost on you, all it means is that Google has completely rewritten the Ads API Java Client library. It was in the experimental phase for a while, but now it’s ready for showtime. It contains a number of improvements that make this the definitive version of the Java Client.

    The new features contained in the new client includes product level support for AdWords, DFP and DFA while sharing a common layer code, and the library is now hosted on Maven. Other changes include support for both OAuth 1.0a and OAuth 2.0 alongside using the SLF4J logging facade. Finally, it adds more control over session building and experimental AppEngine Support.

    The two big changes, however, come in the form of configuring a session and obtaining service objects. The company has provided a migration guide that explains this new code in depth. It also contains tips and strategies on how to take advantage of the new Java Client library. It’s a must if you intend to start using it for future Ads API projects.

    If change frightens you, worry not, Google will still offer the old Java Client library. It’s being put into maintenance mode, so the new client will be the primary focus. The old client will still receive support for new releases of AdWords and DFP for the near future.

    They don’t say how long developers have until they fully stop support for the old Java Client, but I suggest you upgrade. It can only be a good thing especially with all the new features that came along with the client. If anything, you can pat yourself on the back for supporting progress.

  • Facebook Ads Reaching More Than Google! [Infographic]

    Making your advertising dollars count is important to the success of your organization and you have to draw on as many sources as possible to make informed decisions about where to spend those dollars. Since online advertising is one of the most effective components of any modern ad campaign, I want to look at Facebook advertising as it seems to be one of the trendiest spaces available today.

    This next graph comes to us from NeuroFocus.Com, a Nielsen affiliated company, committed to using neuroscience to enhance marketing and advertising efforts. The graph is the result of a study on advertising in different contexts and the subsequent attention, engagement, retention, and overall effectiveness of campaigns utilizing the different platforms. In this case they compare company website, Television, and Facebook ads.

    Take a look at what they found:

    Facebook and Visa ads

    So the company website receives the most attention toward the product, but Facebook wins for overall effectiveness and emotional engagement in the product ads, which in this case is Visa. Memory retention is best on television, but it is outweighed by overall effectiveness. I am sure there are other psychological factors at play here too.

    The following infographic comes to us from Brian Carter, a recognized expert in the field of online advertising and media campaigns. What he shows us is the value of $100 spent on Google versus the same amount on Facebook. The numbers are pretty revealing.

    Check out what he found:

    Yes Facebook ads infographic

    The results really speak for themselves. The ads on Facebook reach fifteen times more people and get thirty-five time more exposure. Obviously Google is great place to advertise, but Facebook seems like a lot of value for your dollars. I would research it further before taking the plunge, but Carter does present some convincing figures.

    This is by no means an exhaustive search to find the best advertising platform, but it should give you some ammo to get started. More or less, these are just fun comparisons and interesting facts about angles researches have taken while attempting to bring value to marketing campaigns.

  • Google DFP API Gets New Features

    Google DFP API Gets New Features

    Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers offers small businesses “a free hosted ad serving solution” that helps them manage their “growing online advertising business.” The DFP API Google+Ads+Developer+Blog%29″>updated to version 201203 yesterday and brought with it a host of new features that should help developers get the most out of it.

    The first new feature of the new version is the ability to create test networks. Google says this offers “a wider range of functionality than the existing sandbox networks.” To take advantage of this new ability, developers will have to create a new Google account. The new account allows you to sign into test networks without having a DFP account. They’re also moving SOAP requests from sandbox.google.com to just google.com. This allows developers to move from test networks to production with only a change of network code.

    Speaking of network codes, they will be required from now on for everything except NetworkService.getAllNetworks() and NetworkService.makeTestNetwork(). Google says the change will reduce latency and make it easier to keep track of which requests are going to which networks.

    They have made video creatives read-only through the CreativeService. There will be more information on this area in the near future.

    The previous version of the DFP API introduced teams. With the new version, you can set team IDs on inventory, orders and company. This makes it so that “when calls are made with that user, only objects that belong to their team will be returned.” As an extra caution, users will receive an error if they attempt to access an object that they don’t have the permission for.

    There will be updates on how to properly use the new test networks in the near future. When these tutorials hit, we’ll let you know. For now, check out the release notes for the newest version for the skinny on the update.