2014 Year in Review

The end of the year is approaching and before we say goodbye to 2014, we'd like to recap all the AdSense product enhancements launched this year.

Multi-screen additions: 

• Responsive ad units 

Responsive ad units can help you provide a great ad experience for users on every screen (i.e., computers, phones, tablets) if you have a responsively designed website. To make your code simpler and save you time and effort, our responsive ad code automatically adapts the ad unit size to your page layout.

• Multi-screen scorecard

Check the new multi-screen category in your publisher scorecard to see what percentage of your pages are multi-screen optimized, and review how this compares to other AdSense publishers.

• Tools for building multi-screen sites

New to multi-screen? The AdSense Multi-Screen guidelines can help you get started on or improve your mobile site. For more technical resources on developing a mobile website, visit the Web Fundamentals course and the Web Starter Kit.

Ad unit updates:

• Custom size ad units

Creating custom ad unit sizes for your website will give you the flexibility to design your ads and your site to fit your audience. We now have 434,216 new ad unit options which behave just like their standard sized counterparts.

• New ad sizes

Increase the flexibility of your ad units with the the new Billboard (970 x 250) and Portrait (300 x 1050) ad unit sizes. Learn how these sizes can help you reach more advertisers while also enhancing user experience and engagement on your site.

New features in your AdSense account:

• New features in the Ad review center

Discover how filtering reviewed ads, searching by ad sizes, and finding related ads can give you more control. Learn more about these new Ad review center features.

• A/B testing for categories in the AdSense interface

Interested in testing how blocking certain ad categories changes your site�s revenue? Now you can run A/B experiments without changing your ad code to better understand how to use ad category settings to your advantage.

Toolbar and plugin updates:

• View Google Analytics data in the Google Publisher Toolbar

You can now view visitor data from Google Analytics in the Google Publisher Toolbar. Learn how to install the Google Publisher Toolbar and use Google Analytics insights while you browse your pages.

• AdSense Plugin for WordPress

Using Google products within WordPress just got easier. Link your WordPress site to your AdSense account, easily place ads, and check your page visibility with the AdSense Plugin for WordPress.

We�d like to thank you for sharing your feedback about these launches over the past year. Please keep sharing your thoughts and suggestions through our AdSense +page and stay tuned for more AdSense updates in 2015.

Happy New Year, and see you online in 2015!

Posted by Lizzie Pace and Yigit Yucel - Inside AdSense Team
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How do you grow your app business? Top tips from successful developers in our video series

Welcome to the final video in our six-part series of interviews with leading app developers and experts. This week�s video tackles the tough question of how to grow your business. After success with one app, how do you repeat it and shape your business for the future?

This is the last video in this six-part series. You can re-watch or discover any you may have missed over the past six weeks on this YouTube playlist.

The App Developer Interview Series and App Developer Business Kit are initiatives from AdMob to educate app developers about how to grow their idea into a successful app business. To learn more about building, marketing and monetizing your app, visit the The App Developer Business Kit on the AdMob website, and stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Mike Schipper
Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

AdSense now speaks Hindi

We're proud to announce that AdSense now supports Hindi, one of India's most widely spoken languages.

With over 500 million speakers around the world*, a wealth of quality Hindi content is available on the web.  We�re excited to launch AdSense Hindi language support today to help fuel even more quality content creation on the web, and to help advertisers connect with a rapidly growing online audience.

If you have a website in Hindi, you'll now be able to earn money by displaying Google AdSense ads on your website. To get started:

1. Make sure your website is compliant with the AdSense program policies.
2. Sign up for an AdSense account by enrolling your Hindi website.
3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, simply add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your users.

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Welcome to AdSense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi, Product Sales Lead on behalf of the AdSense Internationalization Team

* Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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Deadline Extended! Earn Your Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals Certification by Dec. 18

In November, we introduced the Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals course to provide an opportunity for developers to learn the ropes of mobile app analytics. This self-paced online course is designed to explore the tools and reports that can help you better understand user acquisition and behavior.

Due to an unprecedented number of students joining the course in December, we�ve extended the deadline to earn your course certificate by one week. Students who complete all four course assessments with an overall score of 80% or better by December 18, 2014 at 11:59pm PST, will earn a certificate of completion that can be downloaded from the My Profile page in the course.

Still need to sign up? Register here. The course should take about two to four hours to complete.

Also, don�t miss the YouTube recording of Product Manager and course instructor, Fontaine Foxworth, discussing common mobile app analytics questions with other Google Analytics experts, including Product Manager, Rahul Oak, and Software Engineer, Andrew Baldwin. Our experts discuss creating a measurement plan, tracking installs and events, and monetization models.

Posted by Becky Bowman
AdMob Global Commercialization Lead

How do you market your app? Get tips from top developers in our video series

Launching your app is one thing, driving lots of downloads is another. Your app is competing against millions of others and whether you have a marketing budget or not, you should have a promotion plan in mind. But what does a good app marketing plan look like? What features can you build into your app so it markets itself?

Don�t answer that right now. Watch the fifth video in the App Developer Interview Series by AdMob instead. Our panel of app developers has discovered how to get millions of downloads, so check out their tips and tricks!

The App Developer Interview Series and App Developer Business Kit are initiatives from AdMob to educate app developers about how to grow their idea into a successful app business. To learn more about building, marketing and monetizing your app, visit the The App Developer Business Kit on the AdMob website, and stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Mike Schipper
Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

Google Analytics in AdMob helps mobile app developer Eltsoft go global

Cross-posted on the Google Analytics blog

Since April 2014, Google Analytics has been fully available in AdMob, and now app developers are increasingly seeing results by combining data from both platforms. Here�s one story that illustrates the power of AdMob and Google Analytics together.

Passion for languages and learning

Jason Byrne, and business partner Robert Diem, are passionate about making a difference in education. They came together during their time as professors in Japan to found Eltsoft LLC, a company that builds mobile language learning apps for iOS and Android. Together, they started creating a series of fun tools that allow users to study whenever they want, wherever they are.

Global expansion

Their most popular app is English Grammar, which has been downloaded by more than a million people looking to sharpen their English-language skills in nearly 120 countries.

All of the company�s apps are available for free or as paid versions. To increase revenue, they chose AdMob to earn money from the free versions of their apps with advertising. �AdMob monetization is central to our success because it delivers high-quality, appropriate ads to our audience in their native languages, wherever they live,� says Jason.

The Google Analytics data within AdMob helped them understand more about their users. "Our app, English Grammar, has users from all around the world, so we turned to data from Google Analytics and AdMob to understand which languages we should consider for localization. For example, we knew we had to prioritize German and French, but we discovered other languages that we didn't expect, such as Russian and Japanese."

A data-driven approach to marketing

Eltsoft uses data to focus their marketing campaigns and assess where to use their resources most effectively. �Google Analytics keeps making campaign analysis simpler and clearer,� Jason says. �Data from various sources - Google Analytics and Google Play, for instance - are now all in one place. That helps me understand what�s happening with our ad campaigns.�

While data analysis helped Eltsoft validate some of their hypotheses, it also uncovered opportunities according to Jason: �The greatest takeaway for me is that the results are never really what I expect. I am often surprised. Analytics has given us great insights into who our users are, and has provided a very important lesson in the value of surveying our user base. Our simple assumptions are often inaccurate.�

Replicating successful strategies

Eltsoft has developed a way to calculate the value of users by using a combination of AdMob metrics (like ad request values) and Analytics metrics (like user counts and sessions per user). Having Google Analytics in AdMob has unlocked such analysis because the data is available in the same interface.

As a result, Eltsoft can now understand what works best for their users. �For example, we�ve made changes to our apps, and Analytics has really helped us to track the effectiveness of those changes. I would say six months ago, that our success was a mystery. The data said we were doing well, but the whys were not clear. Therefore, we couldn�t replicate or push forward. But today, we understand what�s happening and can project our future success. We have not only the data, but can control certain variables allowing us to understand that data.�

�Google Analytics data is literally a goldmine,� says Jason.

If you want to learn more about how Eltsoft is using Google Analytics and AdMob, download the full case study.

Want to learn how to get the most from Analytics in AdMob? Sign up for our free online course, Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals.

Posted by Russell Ketchum
Lead Product Manager, Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

10 Cool Places to Find Your Ancestors Online (USA)

For Genealogy Research

FamilySearch Genealogy Record Search
You'll find all sorts of free genealogy indexes and records here with more being added fairly often.

National Archives Online Public Access Search
Here you can search the online resources of the U.S. National Archives, including the Access to Archival Databases (AAD).

Online Searchable Death Indexes, Records and Obituaries
A list of indexes for death certificates, death records, newspaper obituaries, cemetery burials and probate records.

Online Birth and Marriage Records Indexes
A list of indexes for birth and marriage records.

Online Military Indexes and Records
A list of online military indexes from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam.

Ship Passenger Lists on the Internet
Internet sources for digitized and transcribed passenger records and indexes.

Online Naturalization Records and Indexes
A directory to help find USA naturalization records.

Bureau of Land Management (BLM), General Land Office (GLO) Records
Here you can search for some federal land records from the BLM.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
A growing collection of searchable digitized newspapers (1836-1922) from the Library of Congress.

Some Free Online Census Records and Indexes
A list of some free census records and indexes on the Internet.

Official AdMob video: implement interstitial ads in the right way to earn more revenue

When monetizing an app with ads, you want to make sure that you�re implementing them in the right way to create a positive user experience. AdMob developers, such as Raon Games, are discovering that interstitial ads are an effective way to monetize. These are full-screen ads appearing at natural transition points in an app.

However, with poor interstitial ad implementations, it's possible to see an increase in accidental clicks. This happens most often when users are not expecting an interstitial ad to appear on the screen (for example, in the middle of a game or on an exit screen). Sometimes we see poor implementations leading us to refund advertisers and disable ad serving until the issue is fixed.

Learn to implement interstitial ads the right way by watching our new best practice video.

For additional guidance, check out our help center page, and stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Danielle Chang and Pauline Wang
AdMob Policy Team

Helping users find mobile-friendly pages

(Originally posted on the Google Webmaster Central Blog)

Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone.

This can be a frustrating experience for our mobile searchers. Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they�re looking for, we�re adding a �mobile-friendly� label to our mobile search results.

This change will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. A page is eligible for the �mobile-friendly� label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• Uses text that is readable without zooming
• Sizes content to the screen so users don't have to scroll horizontally or zoom
• Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

If you want to make sure that your page meets the mobile-friendly criteria:

• Check your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test 
• Read our updated documentation on our Webmasters Mobile Guide on how to create and improve your mobile site
• See the Mobile usability report in Google Webmaster Tools, which highlights major mobile usability issues across your entire site, not just one page
• Check our how-to guide for third-party software like WordPress or Joomla, in order to migrate your website hosted on a CMS (Content Management System) to use a mobile-friendly template

The tools and documentation above are currently available in English. They will be available in additional languages within the next few weeks.

We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.

If you have any questions or want to help others make mobile-friendly sites, visit our Webmaster Help Forum. We hope to see many more mobile-friendly websites in the future. Let�s make the web better for all users!

Posted by Ryoichi Imaizumi and Doantam Phan, Google Mobile Search

For AdSense publishers: Don�t forget to check our Multi-Screen Starter Guide to start building your mobile-friendly website today.

What are the different ways to monetize your app? Top app developers explain how

Choice is a good thing. As an app developer you have many different ways to make money from your app, such as ads and in-app purchases to name just two. But how do you decide upon a strategy, and what�s working in the market today?

Don�t take a leap into the unknown. These questions about app monetization are explored further in the fourth video in the App Developer Interview Series, featuring insights from our panel of developers and industry experts.

The App Developer Interview Series and App Developer Business Kit are initiatives from AdMob to educate app developers about how to grow their idea into a successful app business. To learn more about building, marketing and monetizing your app, visit the The App Developer Business Kit on the AdMob website, and stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Mike Schipper
Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

Celebrating our AdSense Top Contributors at Google offices worldwide

Last year, the Top Contributors (TCs) of our Help Forums joined us at the Googleplex for the annual Top Contributors Summit. This year, we had 17 Google offices around the world host the Top Contributors from all Help Forums including the AdSense Help Forum.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the AdSense Top Contributors, Rising Stars, and AdSense Experts for helping our publishers by answering questions on a daily basis in the AdSense Help Forum. We appreciate your contribution and dedication.

A  snapshot from the Tokyo meetup for Japanese and Korean forums

Interested in becoming an AdSense Top Contributor? Learn more about the Top Contributor program and start getting involved in the AdSense Help Forum.

Posted by Eri Shikamura -  AdSense Support Team