AdWords, AdSense, AdMob & DoubleClick

Transcription

1 } AdWords, AdSense, AdMob & DoubleClick INTERNET MONETIZATION } Ali Kamran Maken August, 2014

2 Contents 1 AdWords 3 2 AdSense 12 3 AdMob 20 4 DoubleClick 29

3 1 AdWords Figure 1: Google AdWords Logo. 1.1 Description The general structure of an account is described using the following picture: Figure 2: Google Adwords account structure. The structure consists of an adwords account. For each website the advertiser owns, it is recommended to create a separate account. Although it is possible to maintain multiple websites in the same account, but there is no grouping on campaigns per website, so the advertiser has to keep track of which campaigns belong to which site Account The account is the highest level on Google Adwords interface. At this level the advertiser can configure options that will be applicable to all the sub levels of this account. The configuration options available to the advertiser are as follows: 1. Access The account can be shared among multiple users. And the access level can be set to readonly or full access etc. The Account Access section of the AdWords interface will allow the advertiser to invite new users. Once an invitation has been accepted, the advertiser have to grant access to the user by visiting again the Account Access section. 2. Billing Information The overall due payments and transactions to and fro the account can be seen in this section. 3. Notifications Page 3 of 37

4 General notifications, messages and suggestions from Google AdWords team can be found in this section. 4. General Preferences This section contains the general preference settings that will be applied to the entire account Campaigns In an AdWords account the advertiser can create up to 10,000 campaigns. A campaign is targeted at a specific scenario and situation of advertisement. For example to target the on going sale in your store, you can create a specific campaign to cater this need. A campaign contains many parameters that can be set per the need of the advertiser. Following are the di erent properties that can be set in a campaign: Networks This section allows to chose the specific ad networks you want to this campaign to run on. Budgets The advertiser can set daily budgets. So the ads will be served until the budget is available and once the budget is over the ads will cease to display, to avoid over charging. Languages This defines the targeted language for the ads. If you are selling something in Italy, the language would be Italian in the case. An ad in English will not be able to capture large population in this case. Locations Many times the ads are displaying the on site o ers and store names. This information is most useful in the vicinity of the physical location of the site and store. So the advertiser can limit the ads to be displayed only if the user is coming from that area or location. Schedules If the ad is showing some information which is only valid for a time period or a season. Then the schedule can be setup so that the ad is only served in that schedule and after the schedule gets over the ads cease to display Ad Groups Each campaign can contain up to 20,000 ads in the form of ad groups. Ad groups are groups of ads with similar properties, targets and features. The ads can be created of one of the following types: Page 4 of 37

5 Textual Ads made up of standard text. Consisting of up to 4 lines. These are suitable and the only allowed option for ads displayed along search engine results. Graphical The ads other than text ads can be divided in to following subcategories as follows: Image Ads Ads made up of static images. Video Ads Animating ads made up of videos or GIFs. Rich Media Ads Keywords Ads with which the user can interact, by hovering the mouse and clicking on the ad to get more information without leaving the current page, he is viewing. These ads can extend out of the standard boundary of the ad units. In each Ad Group the advertiser can ad millions of keywords. These keywords will be matched according to the preferences set by the advertiser and will decide whether a specific ad is targeted to the current web page being displayed to the user Display Targets Other than targeting unknown and new users, the advertisers can target users who fall in to specific categories based on their actions in the past. For example if a user have registered on the website and downloaded a brochure of a product but haven t bought it. That user can be specifically targeted for new promotions about that product Opportunities A section dedicated to optimization guidelines and tips generated by AdWords team based on the current setup of campaigns and ad groups. It is a good place to visit often to keep the things optimized for maximum return of investment (ROI) Conversions Suppose a user clicks on an ad placed on the a web page and the click leads him to the website of the advertiser. If the user performs an action which leads to achieve a goal of the advertiser, then that is known as a conversion. For most websites the conversions could be: Online purchase Lead generation Page 5 of 37

6 Newsletter subscription Contact form or call Other type of uncommon but useful conversions could be: Social follow ups File downloads Promotional video views Coupon downloads Getting driving directions These conversions need to be tracked by the advertiser by managing success pages and actions so that it would be automated to calculate the monetary impact of the marketing campaign. 1.2 Auctioning Functions Google want to make sure that the ads that are displayed to the user must have a high ad quality. This benefits the user and also ensure that the advertisers maintain a certain level of quality in their ads and landing pages. So that is why the auction doesn t solely depends on the biding price, but a combination of the bid price with the ad quality Quality Score The ad quality is measured as quality score. There are three components of quality score: 1. CTR Google checks that which ads are best for the current query by the user. 2. Relevance Google makes it sure that the user is only displayed with the relevant ad to the keywords as well as the user query. 3. Landing Page An ad is only useful if landing page allows them to find the information the user is looking for. The page must be quick to load. Minimum pop-ups should be placed on this page. This page must also clearly state the nature of the information collected from the user and its use by the company in case. Page 6 of 37

7 Figure 3: Ad Quality Score Ad Rank Ad Rank is the bid of the advertiser multiplied by the quality score that the ad gets. max bid quality score = ad rank Below is an example of a bid for top 3 slots. The placement is calculated by arranging the ad rank in descending order. Advertiser Max Bid Quality Score Ad Rank Position 1 $ $ $ $ Table 1: Sample Ad Rank calculation Determining Click Cost Finally in order to calculate the amount payable by the advertiser if the user clicks on his ad is determined by the following formula: Let P 1 be the amount payable by advertiser who won the auction. Let Q 1 be the quality score of the advertiser who won the auction. Let B 2 be the bid amount of advertiser who was second best. Let Q 2 be the quality score of advertiser who was second best. P 1 Q 1 =B 2 Q 2 (1) P 1 = B 2 Q 2 Q 1 (2) Page 7 of 37

8 Using the second best bid price as the amount payable, makes the advertiser happy as well as gives the incentive of getting high quality score that will provide users with quality advertisements. In this scenario and according to the equation described before. If an advertiser improves his quality score, then he will have to pay even less than what he was paying before. This gives a great incentive to advertiser to improve there quality score. 1.3 Parameters Keyword match types 1. Broad Default based on relevance to the user queries Increases reach, similar words, plural worlds, synonyms Increase the ad tra c so must be done carefully Broad match modifier: Using a + sign with a part of the keyword. example: +Athletic Shoes. specifies a part of query to be present in the query or must be very close to the one that the user has typed in. The order of the words in the keyword phrase doesn t matter. 2. Phrase Restricts tra c even further as compared to the broad match. Order of the keyword phrase must match the order by which the user query is done. The phrase match can be done by part of the user query. So a phrase could be in the start, middle or at the end of the user query. Exact phrase must exist somewhere in the user search terms. The keyword must be specified by using ( ) sign at both ends. For example athletic shoes. 3. Exact To be more specific. Our allowed ad will show only if the user query matches exactly with the keyword we have specified. This can be specified by using ([]) square brackets around the keywords. For example [athletic shoes]. Exact order must match and no other words must be in the user s query. 4. Negative This match modifier helps to reduce the unwanted extra tra c in case the user was searching for something else and some words of his query matches one of our keywords. For example paris hilton query doesn t meant to get to the business which is Hilton hotels in Paris. By defining a negative match modifier you can avoid extra useless tra ctothe account. This helps in increasing the relevance of the tra c of our ads. The keyword must be specified by a - sign with the keyword. Negative keywords can be maintained on all levels including account level, campaign level and eventually on ad groups level. This is because most often the negative keywords are required to be reused in many campaigns. Page 8 of 37

9 1.3.2 Evaluating Keywords 1. Frequency How often the people are typing in to Google when searching. This is important because we want to bid on the keywords that people actually search for. Similarly if you bid on the keyword that is searched too often, then the tra c will be too generic and may get extra and irrelevant ad tra c. This often happens when you use a single word keyword. The keyword become too generic and it is hard to get any real relevant ad tra c. 2. Relevance (a) Advertising Goals (b) Ads (c) Landing pages of ads (d) Products or services that you o er The keywords should try to describe the exact service you provide. Instead of using roses as a keyword, it is better to use buy roses online. 3. Competition You are competing in an auction for your keywords so the popular terms will have a higher price as compared to the terms that nobody uses. So you have to create a balance between bidding for popular terms and the unpopular terms Longtail keywords Specify keywords that are extremely likely to end up on your site. This includes specifying long phrases as keywords which exactly describes the products and services you provide. This keyword may not be matched quite often but when matched will surely lead to your website. So the point is to create many of such variants of keywords. 1.4 Analytics Dashboard After setting up and the account and filling up a few campaigns, ad groups and keywords, the homepage of AdWords interface will start showing a lot of overview details about the account and its performance. The interface is built in such a way that it can be customized in any way desired. Elements can be added and removed from the interface quite easily. This gives a quick overview of the entire account, once the advertiser logs in Overview plots The homepage dashboard contains many overview plots to visualize the data in a nice and quickly understandable way. Few of the overview elements that are displayed on the home page dashboard are as follows Page 9 of 37

10 Clicks Impressions CTR Avg. CPC Avg. CPM Cost Avg. Pos Detailed performance metrics Once the data starts pooling up, the advertiser can see the detailed performance metrics in the Campaigns section of the interface. This data can be drilled down to ad groups as well as keywords level. So the advertiser can know what combinations of targeted user and keywords are giving the most ROAS Google Analytics Google has made it possible to share the performance data among its multiple platforms. So the advertiser can see the detailed data and perform further analysis by connecting his Google Analytics account with Google AdWords account. 1.5 Tools provided Data Exporting The data can be exported in many formats to support further and o ine analysis. formats that are available are as follows: The CSV XML PDF etc Filters The metrics displayed in the interface are intuitively formated and visualized to give the advertiser a complete picture of whats going on under the hood. Many filters are provided to customize the data as per the requirements and needs of the advertiser. Following are few of the filters that can be applied while analyzing the data: User Segment Page 10 of 37

11 Date Wise Network Wise Click type User Device Conversion Tracker This section allows the advertiser to generate a Java-script code snippet for every type of conversion that is successfully happened on the website and the code will automatically update the AdWords information base about the specific campaign, ad group or even a keyword that lead to the successful conversion. This will help in measuring the Return of Ad Spending (ROAS) and can be displayed in reports to analyze later on. This will also let the advertiser know which keywords, ad groups and campaigns are more profitable as compared to others Keyword Planner Search for new keywords and ad group ideas: This place gives you ideas of keywords that you may want to target. Suggestions for more tightly themed ad groups. You can also specify the landing URL and Google will get suggestions from the page itself. Get search volume (frequency of search over time) for a list of keywords or group them into ad groups: In case you already know the keywords and just want to group them together in to a ad group. Get tra c estimates for a list of keywords: Let s you play with hypothetical bids and to see what predicted impacts you will get. Multiply keyword lists to get new keyword ideas: Let s you quickly combine existing keywords to get new keywords. Page 11 of 37

12 2 AdSense Figure 4: Google AdSense Logo. 2.1 Description AdSense is a wonderful tool if we want to monetize from the display advertising on our websites. Display Advertising: Certain areas of a website or blog are reserved and sold to advertisers to promote a particular product or service. Determining value is an important aspect in display advertising. Web add spots can be sold in the following schemes: 1. Flat rate (monthly, quarterly, annually) Depends on the preference of the website s owner. 2. Cost per action (CPA) Action an add receives from the user. e.g. Clicking on the add and then submitting address. This technique generally helps the advertiser more than the website s owner. 3. Cost per click (CPC) The advertiser pays the publisher a certain amount of money every time a user clicks on their add on the publisher s website. 4. Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) An impression is simply when a user navigates to a website and sees an advertisement. If a webpage has 3 add spot on one page. When a user navigates to this page it actually creates 3 impressions for the website owner. Figure 5: Impressions vs. Page views. Page 12 of 37

13 This method of selling display adds tends to benefit the website s owner then any other display add selling techniques. 2.2 Auctioning Functions Google AdSense automatically choses the highest paying advertisements to be displayed on a particular website to maximize the revenue that a website owner can make. The advertisements are placed by the Internet Ad Networks on the add spots that the website owner creates. Internet Ad Network: Network of publishers earning revenue from ads displayed on their website and advertisers paying for the displayed ads Bidding Process Advertisers will chose the keywords, categories and topics of websites on which their adds are to be displayed on and on the same time they also specify the maximum bid price they are willing to pay for their add. Google AdSense will compare the bids for a specific ad spot on the web page. Among all the advertisers that are bidding on the ad position. The one that has the highest bid price will win the bidding contest and their adds will be displayed in that specific ad spot. Google AdSense will make sure that the publisher earns the maximum amount of money possible, by intelligently selecting the highest bidding ads. This process is done for every ad spot on the webpage. Figure 6: Bidding Process Ad Network s share Every ad network takes a cut out of the earnings of the publisher. But generally speaking the amount that it takes is less than the expenses the publisher would incur if he goes out and get ads manually. Page 13 of 37

14 2.3 Parameters Ad Units There are many parameters that can be fine tuned in order to generate maximum revenue. Described below are few of the items: Google s recommended Ad Units (Ad block sizes) 1. Large Rectangle (336 x 280) 2. Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) 3. Leader board (728 x 90) Works great on the top or the bottom of a page. Users are more likely to see the ads which are at the top as compared to the ads which are on the bottom. 4. Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600) Wider then the standard skyscraper. Although taller ad units are discouraged in favor of wider ad units. But this one is more wider and may be useful on the free space on the margins of the webpage. These recommendations are also known by the advertisers. So they might as well bid higher on these ad units as compared to any other unusual sized ad spots on the page Custom Channels Publishers can create custom channels comprising multiple ad units from their webpages. This allows them to track the combined performance of group of ad units. Individual ad units can also be tracked, but sometimes it is more useful to track a group of ads altogether to see any impact on the overall revenue of sub domains or specific topics of your website. A custom channel can be created by going to the My ads ) Custom Channels section of the Google AdSense interface and clicking New ad unit button URL Channels Similar to custom channels which deals with ad units and their groups. The URL channels allows the publisher to track group of up to 500 URLs of their websites.this helps in finding out what content is attracting most users and generating more revenue as compared to the other content of the same website. This will also give us an idea what kind of content and topics gives the user more interest and can attract more ads that are relevant to the users, or which can attract ads with higher bid rates. The URL channels can be created by going to the My ads! URL Channels section of the Google AdSense interface and clicking New URL channel button. Page 14 of 37

15 2.3.4 Experiments This sections allows the publisher to create alternate color schemes of text based ads. Later on the publisher can set to distribute the tra c among the schemes and analyze which color schemes attract more users. This is why it is called experiments. Color schemes can be used from the default ones or can be created and customized and saved to be used later on. The Experiments can be created by going to the My ads! Experiments section of the Google AdSense interface and filling out appropriate details. Figure 7: Default and High contrast color schemes Custom Search Engine Google allows the publishers to create a custom search engine. This allows the publisher to have more ads similar to the ones that can be seen in Google s search results. The search engine page can be customized to a great detail. The analysis of the search page can be done separately and thus it can be tracked that how much revenue is being generated from the custom search engine. This is done by creating a custom channel from the same page of custom search engine creation Allowing & Blocking Ads Although there is no pinpoint control available to set a specific add to be displayed or not to be displayed. But publishers can control this at a certain level. This can be achieved by navigating to Allow & block ads section of the Google AdSense home page. Following are the few possibilities on controlling ads: 1. Ads can be blocked based on the advertiser s URL 2. General categories can be turned o. By default all categories are allowed. 3. Sensitive categories can be turned o. This includes categories like Politics and Religion. By default all categories are allowed. 4. Certain Ad Networks can be turned o. By default all ad networks are allowed. By default the new ad networks that will join Google s AdSense platform are also allowed. There are Page 15 of 37

16 more than 1300 ad networks in this section. It is recommended to keep them turned on unless there is a specific reason to do so. This ensures generating the maximum revenue. 5. Ads can be blocked based on their types. This includes text based ads, animated ads etc. 6. Ads can be blocked by selecting individual ads from the Ad Review Center section. This applies only to the ads that are being displayed at the given moment. The default behavior, i.e. allow all ads without approval, can be changed to approval within 24 hours. This way the publisher can disallow any add in advance. But if no action is taken before timeout, the ad will automatically be allowed. 2.4 Analytics Terms used in Reports Pageviews in Google AdSense are when an advertisement in an ad unit is viewed by a user on a website. Clicks are when an advertisement in a Google AdSense ad unit is clicked on by a user on a website. Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks a particular ad on a website receives in comparison to the number of total page views it has received. Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money paid by an advertiser for each click an ad in a Google AdSense ad unit receives. Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is the average amount of revenue earned by a publisher for 1,000 impressions on a particular ad unit or website. Ad requests refer to the total number of times an ad unit on a particular website requests Google AdSense to serve a relevant advertisement. Coverage is the percentage of ad requests in which a relevant advertisement is found and displayed within the ad unit Reports 1. Dashboard After the publisher starts earning, the homepage of the AdSense becomes a dashboard which gives an overview of the entire account and its performance. Earnings for current day. Earnings of yesterday. Earnings of last month. Comparison between this month and last month. Scorecard section which allows the publisher to see how well the site is optimized. There are three subsections. First one tells how well the site is optimized for mobile devices (tablets, smart-phones). Second one tells about revenue optimization, like how well we have done Page 16 of 37

17 for optimizing our website for AdSense display ads. Last section is site health which tells how fast our website is loading. Faster loading pages can attract and handle more users. At the end of the homepage we can find detailed information about todays performance. This information includes: Pageviews RPM Top channels Top countries from where the visiting users belong Top sites in case of multiple sites configured with same AdSense account Top platforms from where the site is accessed (mobile, web etc) 2. Performance Reports The reporting interface allows the publisher to filter down the data based on a large variety filter. Some of the prominent and more useful filter are: Custom Channels URL Channels Ad Units Ad Networks Ad Types 3. Data Visualization Many di erent type of visualization options are available for the AdSense users. The main components can be described as follows: Date filters for selecting flexible range of data Bar Graphs for comparison among categorized items Line Graphs for time continuous data of: Earnings Pageviews Clicks CTR CPC and RPM 4. Custom Reports The AdSense s reporting interface allows the publisher to create custom reports. The process is simple and intuitive. All that is needed to be done is filter down the required data and select Save Report and the filters and settings will be saved. Page 17 of 37

18 This saved report can be accessed any time later and also an option can be selected to generate and send the report by to the publisher by the chosen frequency. For example a report can be set to be generated daily, weekly or monthly. Multiple recipients can be added by just entering their addresses and they will start receiving the report whenever that report is generated. 5. Exporting Reports There is also an option to export a report generated in Google AdSense reporting interface to multiple formats and destinations. Following are the formats to which a report can be exported to: Excel CSV Google Drive spreadsheet Google APIs Explorer BigQuery code 2.5 Tools provided Optimization Notifications Over the time of the Google AdSense account usage, the Google AdSense team may send you tips and messages on how to optimize your settings in order to generate maximum revenue. These messages come up as a notification icon at the top right corner of the interface ( ). It is represented by a bell shape and an indicator of the number of messages waiting for you Transaction history Complete detailed history of transactions between Google AdSense account to the account you have provide while registering for Google AdSense. The details can be filtered according to the date range you specify Holding payments The default behavior is to payout at the end of every month if your balance is more than 100$. But this can be customized according to one s own choice. For example the settings can be changed in order to receive payments in a big chunk every 3 months instead of every month Policy Violation Status This interface will display any violations of the policy contract, if been done, on your account. The details of the violations and their consequences are displayed as a list. The information displayed for each violation is: Violation detail Page 18 of 37

19 Occurrence date of violation Status of site after violation Consequence of that violation Site on which the violation is done Google AdSense Help Customized help and Search for optimization articles and definition of terms used is available on demand. This can be accessed by using the search tool available in the top right corner of the interface. Page 19 of 37

20 3 AdMob Figure 8: AdMob Logo. 3.1 Description AdMob is a mobile advertising service and it is designed to help mobile app developers monetize and promote their apps. Since 2012 it is a subsidiary of Google. Google acquired AdMob to widen its ad market to ios and Windows Phone devices. Publishers across the world are connected using Google s ad networks. They get paid when a user clicks on their add. Google will make sure that the ad is relevant to the user to make it more likely that the user clicks on it House Ads This feature let s the developer of an application, create a normal campaign but the ads will be specified before hand. This will allow the developer to display ads about other applications developed by him. This allows him to let the users notice other applications developed by the same developer Terminology Cost per click (CPC) The advertiser pays the publisher a certain amount of money every time a user clicks on their add on the publisher s website. Clickthrough rate (CTR) CTR is the ratio of clicks a particular ad on a website receives in comparison to the number of total page views it has received. Impressions An impression is simply when a user sees an ad on a mobile platform. Fill Rate It is the rate by which the ads are served vs. the total ads requested. Usually it is targeted to 100% to maximize the user s revenue. FillRate depends on the ad network selected. You can also select to allow Google to maximize fillrate. Page 20 of 37

21 Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) RPM is the average amount of revenue earned by a publisher for 1,000 impressions on a particular ad unit or website Ad Formats Click to call A convenient option to allow the user to directly call a helpline to get more information about an advertisement. Figure 9: AdMob click-to-call Ad format. Website link This is the default behavior of any mobile ad. Usually the person is taken to a home page. Expandable map The user can click on the ad which then expands to show a map so that the location of the advertiser s store or restaurant can be identified. Figure 10: AdMob map-directions Ad format. Product ad To promote a specific product, this type of ad can display a small picture of the actual product to capture attention of the user. Page 21 of 37

22 Figure 11: AdMob product Ad format. App promotion To promote an application the user is presented with an ad which takes him to the appropriate application store from where the application can be downloaded. This format is also used in case of house ads. Figure 12: AdMob app-promotion Ad format. Adjustable width banner This format automatically adjusts its width according to the size of the device s screen. It looks better then the ads that appear in the center with the borders all left out. Figure 13: AdMob adjustable-width Ad format Tablet specific ad formats Leader Board: 728x90 Figure 14: AdMob Tablet leader-board Ad format. Rectangle: 300 x 250 Page 22 of 37

23 Figure 15: AdMob Tablet rectangle Ad format. Banner: 468x60 Figure 16: AdMob Tablet banner Ad format. 3.2 Auctioning Functions Starting from February 2012, AdMob has been shifted to the same auctioning mechanism as of Google s AdSense. This is done to streamline both platforms and to make it possible for the future to merge the two platforms together at some point in time. After 31 st August, users of AdMob will no longer be able to access legacy AdMob but will have to transfer their data and settings to new AdMob version which is entirely based on Google s AdSense and AdWords platforms. 3.3 Parameters Campaign A new campaign must be created by entering the following details: 1. Campaign Name A descriptive name of the current campaign being created. 2. Start Date and Time A starting point in time for the current campaign. Page 23 of 37

24 3. End Date and Time This is optional. Useful for the campaigns having temporal nature. 4. Daily Budget Amount in $ to be used as a daily limit. The minimum is at least 10$ Ad Group A campaign contains many ad groups. Ad group must be uniquely named in a campaign. An ad group can target a specific platform. The available platforms are: iphone OS Universal (iphone + ipad) iphone ipad Android Targeting The ads in a specific ad group can be targeted with respect to the following categories: 1. Platform/Device This filter allows to chose specific version of the mobile operating system (e.g. Android OS 2.0) and/or specific targeted devices (e.g. Samsung Galaxy S5). 2. Geography/Operators An ad group can specifically target people from a region/continent/country. Also people using a specific mobile carrier can be targeted. 3. Demographics People can be targeted based on their age and gender. An age range can be specified Ad Filtering The ads can be filtered in many ways. They are described as follows: Advertiser URL You can prevent ads from specific advertiser URLs from showing up on your app. The limit is 500 URLs per account. Category Page 24 of 37

25 General Category Although the list contains hundreds of categories, but you can only block up to 50 categories. Beware that ads can belong to more than one categories at the same time. (e.g. Business, Finance, Travel etc) Sensitive Category Language This list includes categories more sensitive as compared to the general category list. (e.g. Politics, Religion etc) Regardless of the language of the application, ads from other languages can be blocked. Search You can search using the ad review center for a specific ad in the entire network to block it Ad style 1. Look & feel Banner Banners can be used to display text and image ads. Interstitial This type allows to receive text, image and video ads. You can choose one or all of the types. But it is recommended to check all types to get maximum revenue. Interstitial timeout As interstitial ads are heavy and may require some time to download on slow networks. So there is a time out setting to let the download attempt cancel if nothing is downloaded in the time specified. You can select from 3 to 10 seconds and it must be a whole number. Text Ad Select a text ad style that complements your app. You can use the standard style or customize your own style. 2. Refresh rate Determine how often a new ad impression is generated. You can choose not to refresh or to refresh ads every 30 to 120 seconds. We recommend setting a refresh rate between 45 and 60 seconds. 3. Layout & Placement Header This ad will show up at the top of the application content space. Page 25 of 37

26 Footer This ad will show up at the bottom of the application content space. Fullscreen This ad will cover the entire screen of the user s device. The user have to click on the close icon (X) to return to the previous screen. This mode is suitable for video ads. 3.4 Analytics Built-in analysis 1. Homepage dashboard A dashboard layout is available on home page which shows most relevant metrics directly once logged in. The dashboard shows the following analytics: (a) Estimated earnings (Today, yesterday, this month, last month) (b) Estimated conversions (In case you are using AdMob for app promotion) (c) An overview graph of earnings given by: Estimated earnings Impressions Request RPM FillRate (d) Tabular details of each app, which makes you able to identify the application(s) which is making more revenue than the others. 2. Monetize section An overview graph of earnings given by all the previous metrics on homepage and including new metrics like: Requests Clicks Impression CTR Impressions RPM Filtering is available to better understand the contribution of di erent aspects. The filters can be applied based on: Date Apps Ad Units Geo-Map report can also be viewed for quick visualization of the source of add tra requests on a map c Page 26 of 37

27 3. Promote section An overview graph of showing the progress of events over a time period is displayed. The graph can be seen for the following categories: Impressions Clicks Conversions Costs On the same page you can also find tabular details of the same metrics broken down with respect to all the applications you have added to the account. This can give quite a good idea on the applications which are making more business than the others Google Analytics Integration After Google s acquiring of AdMob in 2012, they have provided the option of integration of Google Analytics with AdMob account. After the integrations is enabled users can find new reporting options in their AdMob account. Some of the additions are discussed below. 1. Updated Home Page Sessions The total number of sessions for all of your linked apps. A session is the period of time a user interacts with an app. All usage data (Screen Views, Events, E-commerce, etc.) is associated with a session. Avg. session duration: The average duration of sessions for all of your linked apps. Users The sum of all active users of each of your linked apps during the requested time period. 2. Analyze Tab Real-Time See user tra c as it happens on your app. Monitor users, top active screens, top locations, and more. You can use Real-Time as an end to end debugging tool for your Google Analytics SDK implementation. Audience Get to know the people using your appwhere they are, how often and long they use an app, and what devices are popular with your visitors. Acquisition Find out how often your app is downloaded and installed, and how successful certain marketing campaigns are in attracting visitors. Page 27 of 37

28 Behavior Track in detail the ways users interact with your app. Find out which screens are viewed in a typical visit, or set up Event Tracking to analyze custom actions, like button clicks and video plays. Technical exceptions and crashes are also included in this set of reports. Conversions Know the real value of your app. Set up Goals and E-commerce to track targeted objectives, like completed sign-ups and product sales. 3.5 Tools provided 1. Conversion Tracking This type of tracking will let you know how much of clicks on your ads showing up in your applications is being converted in to actual purchases of the application. For Android application, there is no need of anything else, but for ios Applications, you need to add a small code snippet in the application source code. For each application you can set a conversion value, which is usually slightly lower then the actual cost of the application. This cost is also known as Cost per Acquisition (CPA). 2. Conversion Optimizer This option will let you chose to have more priority to the adds which belong to the applications which are giving you more conversion over the previous tracked time period. For this option to work and predict correctly you must enable the conversion tracking first and let it run for at least 30 days or 15 conversions (whichever comes first). 3. Ad Filters Similar to Google s other advertisement platforms, users have an option of blocking ads based on the following categories: Advertiser URLs You can block ads from specific advertiser URLs. For example, you might not want to show your competitions ads on your apps. General categories You can block ads from general categories such as Apparel, Internet, Real Estate, and Vehicles. Sensitive ad categories You can block ads from categories related to sensitive topics such as Religion, Politics, and References to Sex and Sexuality. Sensitive category blocking is available for ads in a limited set of languages, regardless of the language of the app. Page 28 of 37

29 4 DoubleClick Figure 17: Google DoubleClick Logo. 4.1 Introduction Google acquired DoubleClick in 2008 to extend its operations in to Ad Exchanges. DoubleClick can act as an Ad exchange connecting di erent ad networks together as well as an Ad Server providing publishers with ads from other Google services such as Google s AdSense. It can also provide ads from privately owned ad servers. It is also capable of handling pass-back requests from ad servers when the ad servers are not able to provide any suitable ads at the moment, to display ads from its own sources. Figure 18: How DoubleClick works for Advertisers (A) and Publishers (P). 4.2 Auctioning Functions DoubleClick Ad Exchange uses a Second Price (SP) Auction model. Where possible and if the ad network supports DoubleClick also uses Optional Second Price (OSP) Auction. SP Auction is described below: 1. In the open auction, Ad Exchange matches buyers targeting with sellers inventory and seeks the highest bid. Page 29 of 37

30 2. The buyer with the highest net bid wins. 3. If two or more buyers bid the same amount for an impression, the winner is selected randomly. 4. The Ad Exchange auction closing price is determined as the second-highest bid price in the Ad Exchange auction or the ad unit s minimum CPM, whichever is greater. Sellers are paid the Ad Exchange closing price, net of Google s Ad Exchange revenue share. 5. If Preferred Deals or Private Auctions are in play for an ad unit, they are taken into consideration before the impression goes to the open auction. The Preferred Deals and Private Auctions are described below: Preferred Deals This feature provides the ability for publishers to o er inventory to one or more buyers on a fixed price basis. Deals are pre-auction, meaning that fixed price deals will transact if the buyer accepts the inventory, even if the price is below that of the auction. Publishers can o er a Preferred Deal to more than one buyer. Private Auctions Private Auctions provide Ad Exchange publishers more control over how they sell their inventory, while providing preferred buyers an advantage in auction buys. Google has subdivided the service in to two distinct modes. These modes are discussed in the following sections. 4.3 DoubleClick for Advertisers (dfa) Description DFA is an ad-serving solution that helps media agencies and advertisers manage the entire scope of their digital advertising program. DFA streamlines campaign work-flow and enables agencies to tra c, target, and serve creatives. DFA users can also pull reports to view and optimize campaign performance. Google is continuously improving the platform and is in state of entire transition from DFA to DoubleClick Campaign Manager (dcm) which is a component of DoubleClick Digital Marketing (ddm) umbrella of platforms. When a publisher webpage is visited by a user. The page will call the DFA for an ad request. This is done by placing a specific code in place of the ad. The DFA will then select an ad among the list of all ads based on user location and other parameters, and will serve the ad to the publisher web page. This process usually takes a fraction of a second to complete Parameters 1. Advertisers Page 30 of 37

31 As the DFA platform is designed to be used for both individual advertisers as well as for marketing companies who are running campaigns on behalf of other advertisers, so you can add advertisers in the account. These advertisers could be your own branch of business as well. This will help in better management of campaigns. 2. Campaigns For each campaign, an advertiser is required. In case of a marketing company, the advertisers would be the clients of the company. In case of individual advertiser, the advertiser would represent the business itself or one of the branches of the business. A name and duration of the campaign is required. The duration could be timed which is suitable for campaigns targeted at limited time o ers and seasonal sales. In other case the ending dates are omitted to set the campaign to run for unlimited time period. Each campaign must be assigned one or more landing pages. These will be used as a default landing page for all the creatives and ads. 3. Placement A placement is a location specified by publishers on their website for advertisements. You can search for a website by its name. The results will display the website URL, the type of creatives it supports, such as pop-ups or in-stream video etc. The final cost for that the advertiser wishes to pay for this placement is also defined. 4. Creatives Creatives are the actual graphical resources, which represent an advertisement. For example a banner or a flash animation. Each creative must be associated with a dimesion so that it could be referred where a suitable placement is available. 5. Types of creatives Figure 19: Ad Types for DFA. Image Upload an image in *.JPEG or *.GIF file formats. Page 31 of 37

32 6. Ads Flash in-page A flash file in *.SWF format and a backup image file in *.JPEG or *.GIF format for users who can t view flash in their browsers. Rich Media Rich media ads are interactive ads including videos and expandable ads. In-Stream Video Video ads that are displayed before playing videos. Batch Upload Batch upload helps in speeding up the process of individual file uploads by allowing the user to upload all the *.SWF, *.JPEG and *.GIF resources as a single zip file. Advertiser-level If you want to reuse a creative from a previously created campaign, you can select one from the list of all creatives. Ad is a logical binding between a creative and its placement on a pageone or more creatives can be associate with one ad. It is required to select the appropriate dimensions. Smaller creatives can be displayed in larger ad dimensions, but not vice versa. A duration is required to describe the e ective active period of the ad. You have to provide appropriate landing pages for each ad. By default they will be set to the campaign s default landing page. If you choose more than one creative for an ad, then you can chose an ad rotation method to specify how the ads will be changed among each other and over time. The rotation methods are: Sequential c will be evenly distributed among all the cre- Random (Unlike the name, the tra atives) Weighted (Weights have to be provided for each ad in this case) Best performing (Based on the CTR of creatives) Optimized For each ad, you have to chose a placement as well. You can practically assign ads to all the available placements for maximum coverage. 7. Tags for Publishers In order to advertise manually on websites not managed by DFP, tags can be created for placements and can be sent to publishers so that they can place the tags in their webpages and on clicking the DFA account can serve ads on those websites. Page 32 of 37

33 4.3.3 Analytics Report Builder Report Builder is a tool completely built on Google Analytics technology and specialized for reporting for DFA. The graphs and tables can be totally customizable. Comparisons can be made between di erent metrics. Fields and columns can be added where and when required. Reports can be downloaded in standard MS Excel and CSV formats for local o ine analysis purposes. Reports can be scheduled to be generated automatically and sent to the recipients based on their addresses. The schedule can be set for daily, weekly (day or days of week) or monthly (day or days of month) reports. Figure 20: DFA Report Builder Interface. DFA Reporting API To make the reporting process streamlined and available on multiple platforms as native applications, Google has provided the developers with the DFA Reporting API. This is a Rest based API using standard HTTP and JSON, but also pre-built client libraries are available in many languages including the most common languages such as.net, Java and Objective-C. This allows developers to use the reporting API in their native applications for Windows Phone, ios and Android application with ease Tools provided DoubleClick Studio A free end-to-end work-flow management system that allows creative teams to easily build and preview Rich Media creatives. Google Web Designer Page 33 of 37

34 With this tool you can create engaging, interactive HTML5-based designs and motion graphics that can run on any device. This tool can create resources for the web as well as have specialized user interface to create interactive ads. There is also built-in support for publishing directly to DoubleClick Studio which will help streamlining the advertiser s work-flow. 4.4 DoubleClick for Publishers (dfp) Description DFP is an ad-serving solution that helps publishers manage the entire scope of their digital advertising program. DFP streamlines the campaign work-flow for publishers and allows them to tra c, target, and serve creatives. DFP users can also pull reports and optimize ads serving on their ad inventory Parameters 1. Ad Units Ad Unit is the basic unit referring to a section or space on your website which will be used to display advertisements. The unit is defined by means of a name and its size in pixels referring to width and height. An ad unit can be fixed size or can be considered as Smart Banner. As per the name suggests the fixed size ads do not change the size which the smart banners can change their size based on the user s interaction (e.g. mouse over). It can also be specified whether the target of the ad will be the same window or a new window when the user will click on the add. This can be specified by selecting one of the options from top which means the same page or blank which means a new page. 2. Ad Placement As the Ad Unit is considered to be a reusable entity, so to use the same ad unit at more then one locations on a website, the placements can be defined per ad unit. 3. Ad Inventory It is the collection of ad units defined in the account. The ad units them self are not attached to any ad requests directly. For ad request establishment, specific orders have to be created on selected ad units. 4. Orders Order defines the source of advertisement. It is a container that can hold one or more Order Line Items (defined below). 5. Line Items A line item takes an ad unit or ad placement and attaches it to one of the orders. This setting will enable an ad to be displayed in an ad unit. Next step would be to generate Page 34 of 37

35 specific code for an ad unit and place it in the source code of your website to start displaying ads. 6. Goal oriented line item A line item can be goal oriented. Which means that a specific goal will be associated to a line item, and the focus would be to complete the goal. The goals could be one of these: Percentage goal in terms of portion of tra Absolute goal for number of impressions or clicks Unlimited which would be stochastic in nature 7. Line item priority When creating a line item for an order, a priority level can be set for each line item. The priority level ranges from 1 (lowest) to 16 (highest). This priority will later help in deciding the decision of dynamic allocation of ads to slots Ad Selection Mechanism c Figure 21: DFP Ad Selection Mechanism. Page 35 of 37

36 1. A user s browser reads a web page that contains DFP ad tags and sends an ad request to a DFP ad server. 2. The DFP ad server receives the ad request and gathers information to help select the best ad. 3. The ad server creates a list of all line items matching the targeting criteria. The criteria could be for an example, geographic location or operating system of the user. 4. The ad server filters out line items not eligible to serve. These will leave out the line items which have reached their daily frequency caps. The frequency caps are maintained on client side using DoubleClick cookies. 5. The ad server scans the list of eligible matching line items, starting with highest priority and working down until a line item is chosen to serve. The matching for each priority then looks at the goals in this specified order: Line items with percentage goals Line items with absolute goals Line items that are unlimited 6. Once the best line item is selected, the DFP ad server chooses the best ad in the following way: (a) Only consider ads that match the size of the ad request, with an allowance for slightly smaller ads. (b) Only consider creatives of a valid creative type for that slot based on format (image, Flash, and so on). (c) If there is only one matching creative in the line item, serve it. (d) If there is more than one matching creative in the line item, follow a creative rotation rule: Random (Choose a creative at random.) Weighted (Choose a creative at random, but according to the relative weights specified for each, such as 70/30.) Optimized (Choose the creative with the highest historical average click-through rate.) 7. The creative from the selected line item is served to the user Analytics Multiple reporting options As in all other Google products, reporting feature is quite detailed and robust. So in a single interface, a user can create reports based on delivered order, inventory performance and overall sales. Page 36 of 37