Google I/O 2016 - Learn About the Latest in Monetizing and Growing your Business With Google

Google I/O 2016 is less than a week away (May 18-20th), and we�ll be there. Google I/O is for developers � the creative coders who are building what�s next. This year they�ll be dozens of talks discussing important topics that matter to you like, design & development, monetizing and growing your business, and the latest in tech, mobile, and more.

Here are some of the key sessions we�d suggest you check out at I/O 2016:

Wednesday, May 18th

Keynote: 10AM PST - Live streamed

Join us to learn about product and platform innovation at Google, starting with a live kickoff from Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Use analytics to build extraordinary apps: 3:00 PM PM PST / Stage 2 | Hydra  - Live streamed

The average smartphone user taps and swipes their way through 1GB of data each month. But how can you turn user behavior into meaningful insights that help you build a brilliant app? The answer is app analytics! In this session we'll explore the key metrics you need to know through the app lifecycle using real examples. From first release to a thriving user base, we'll show you how to detect user delight, user dissatisfaction and how to grow your app into a successful business.

Friday, May 20th

Find 'Em, Keep 'Em: How Ads Get You the Best App Users: 11:00 AM PST 

Attracting valuable users is crucial for long-term app success. You want users who will stick around for longer than one session, earn you revenue and spread the word to their friends. Google's machine learning is helping the most successful apps find the right users with ads, and retain them. Getting started with Google ads is simple, yet unlocks a huge range of ad formats that promote your app to billions of users. In this session, master when and how to run ad campaigns, while minimizing costs. 

Improve user acquisition campaigns with analytics: 2:00 PM PST / Stage 4 | Ursa Major - Live streamed

Got a great app and want more users? Having a user acquisition strategy is crucial to global app domination, but it doesn't have to be a leap in the dark! This talk shines a light on how you can run both organic and paid app install campaigns to deliver real results in a cost-effective way -- and how analytics ties it all together. You'll learn how to track user acquisition performance, understand the right metrics to compare ad networks and see why lifetime value really matters.

If you're going to I/O and want to learn the latest about AdMob check out these sessions � "Earn more revenue from the AdMob platform" at 9:00 AM PST and "Create a great user experience with native ads" at 10:00 AM PST both at Stage 6 | Virgo. These sessions won�t be livestreamed, but we�ll post the recorded video on our blog post afterwards.

Even if you can�t attend this year and want to learn about what's happening at #io16 as it happens, we've got you covered! We�ll be live tweeting and sharing posts from the event on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #io16. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob

Check out our developer talks at the Google Booth @GDC 2016

We�re excited to be at the Game Developers Conference next week. Come visit the Google booth (612 in Zone 1) to learn how to build great games with AdMob, AdWords, Cardboard, Cast, Cloud Platform, Play and Tango. We�ll also be doing talks throughout the day covering a wide range of topics from developing an app and growing users to monetization. The talks are 20 minutes long and open to anyone to drop in. Seating is limited so be sure to come 5 minutes early to the talk you want to hear. We hope to see you there!

Wednesday, March 16

10:00am-10:20am	Here Be Dragons: 4 years of DragonVale and Google Cloud Platform Chris Goody from Backflip Studios is going to talk to us about his experience building and running a top grossing mobile game on Google Cloud Platform for the past four years.
11:00am-11:20am	Gaming with Project Tango Schell games show their tango apps and talk about their experience building w/ Tango.
11:30am-11:50am	"The Purple Ocean Strategy" Cross-Platform Opportunities The Purple Ocean Strategy talk explores how Google technologies make it feasible to reach our enormous (1.4 billion Android users) installed base of potential gamers, AND explore exciting new technologies like our VR, Project Tango, Cast Games, Android TV and more, simultaneously.
12:30pm-12:50pm	PeopleFun and Google Cloud Platform Leon from PeopleFun will be discussing their experiences building mobile games using Google Cloud Platform.
1:00pm-1:20pm	App Promotion  Insights and best practices on how mobile-first companies are using Google's app promotion solutions to take their apps to new levels.
1:30pm-1:50pm	Optimize your ads stack Learn more about AdMob as a smart mediation platform and how it can optimize your yield across formats, regions, and third-party ad networks.
2:00pm-2:20pm	Realtime Multiplayer with Firebase and Unity This talk will cover how Firebase�s new Unity plugin can be used to enable real-time date synchronization across your Unity based games.
2:30pm-2:50pm	Exploring Open Data in the Cloud with BigQuery Robert Kubis, a Developer Advocate on Google Cloud Platform, will show you how cloud computing makes it easier to explore big data. You'll leave knowing how to use the cloud to effectively explore all that valuable data you've been logging.

Thursday, March 17

10:00am-10:20am	PeopleFun and Google Cloud Platform Leon from PeopleFun will be discussing their experiences building mobile games using Google Cloud Platform.
10:30am-10:50am	Bringing Multiplayer Social Game Experiences to the Big Screen Learn how to bring multiplayer social game experiences to the big screen through Google Cast, and find out about the many cool interaction models you can implement.
11:00am-11:20am	Promo Codes and You: A Love Story Overview, best practices, Q&A on self service promo codes now and into the future.
11:30am-11:50am	Engage more users with better ad formats See some of the exciting new ad formats AdMob is bringing to apps, including Native Ads, Interactive Interstitials, and playable Trial Run Ads.
12:00pm-12:20pm	Realtime Multiplayer with Firebase and Unity This talk will cover how Firebase�s new Unity plugin can be used to enable real time date synchronisation across your Unity based games.
12:30pm-12:50pm	Gaming with Project Tango iguanabee, Eike Consulting introduce 'Raise' and 'Slingshot Islands' will talk about Tango apps and their experience building with Project Tango.
1:00pm-1:20pm	App Promotion As the Team Lead for Google�s App Developer Sales, Beth will share insights and best practices on how mobile-first companies are using Google's app promotion solutions to take their apps to new levels.
1:30pm-1:50pm	Optimize your ads stack Learn more about AdMob as a Smart Mediation platform and how it can optimize your yield across formats, regions, and third party ad networks.
2:00pm-2:20pm	View-driven interactive storytelling for mobile and VR Concepts and techniques for sequencing nonlinear immersive stories, understanding the audience engagement and reacting to it in real time.
2:30pm-2:50pm	Exploring Open Data in the Cloud with BigQuery In this session Jen Tong, a Developer Advocate on Google Cloud Platform, will show you how cloud computing makes it easier to explore big data. She'll use Google BigQuery to poke around some really big data sets including the GDELT news database, Wikipedia logs, and weather data going back to 1929.

Friday, March 18

10:00am-10:20am

Real-time Gaming with Containers and gRPC Look at how gRPC can be used as a performant real time communication framework that works across platforms such as mobile and embedded devices as well as languages, such as Go, Node.js and Java. We will also combine this with Kubernetes� powerful ability to orchestrate containers at scale, handling and coordinating large amounts of traffic from all these users.

11:00am-11:20am

Lightsaber Escape Chrome Experiment We�ll discuss how the Lightsaber Escape Chrome Experiment (lightsaber.withgoogle.com) was built. Combining WebGL, WebRTC, WebSockets and Google Cloud Platform, this application lets you wield a lightsaber in a daring escape from the clutches of the First Order.

Even if you can�t attend this year, you�ll be able to stay in the loop. We�ll be live tweeting and sharing the event on our Twitter and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #Google #GDC16.

Posted by Henry Wang
Product Marketing, AdMob

Meet the AdMob Team at the Game Developers Conference 2016

We�re excited to be at Game Developers Conference 2016 in San Francisco, from March 14th to 18th. Visit us at the Google booth (612 in Zone 1) to meet with experts from a host of our teams: AdMob, AdWords, Cardboard, Cast, Cloud Platform, Play and Tango! Get your questions answered and discover how you can build a great game with Google.

Meet the AdMob Team at the Game Developers Conference 2016

On Monday the 14th of March, join us at the Google Developer Day, to discuss developing great games, growing your user base and earning more money. If you can�t make it on the day, tune into the live stream here.

On Thursday the 17th of March at 11.00 am don�t miss our ads talk: Grow Users, Earn Revenue: How to Build a Successful Games Business with Google, including a special Q&A with a top game developer. After this session you'll be fully up to speed with how game developers are finding success with AdMob to earn money, and AdWords and YouTube to find new users.

Even if you can�t attend this year, you�ll be able to stay in the loop. We�ll be live tweeting and sharing the event on our Twitter and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #Google #GDC16. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Mike Schipper
Product Marketing, AdMob

Meet the AdMob Team at Mobile World Congress 2016 Next Week

We�re going to Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain next week. If you�re attending the event, be sure to visit us at the Google booth in App Planet, Hall 8.1. We�d love to hear about your app and share ways that you could earn more with AdMob. We�ll be there with our colleagues from the Cloud Platform and AdWords teams, showing off a host of great services that can help you develop, grow and earn from your app.

Hear from one of our AdMob experts about our latest announcements, including SDK-less mediation, and the Active View metric, newly available in the AdMob interface.  You can also organize a meeting with someone from our team by completing this form.

If you can�t attend this year, you�ll be able to stay in the loop: we�ll be live tweeting and sharing the event on our Twitter and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #Google #MWC16. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Mike Schipper, Product Marketing, AdMob

Catch what you missed at Casual Connect SF

We had a blast at Casual Connect this year. We enjoyed meeting with game developers, chatting about the best ways to monetize their apps. If you weren�t able to make it, below is a video recording of one of our talks.

This talk was given by Alejandro Manchado, Google's US Gaming Partnerships Lead. He covered how AdMob is bringing the unique scale and innovation of its solutions to help game developers figure out the right monetization strategy for their audiences, whether that's IAP, ads, or both. This talk discussed monetizing games effectively through tools like ad mediation, plus adding value through new formats like native ads.

For more information on monetization, and to stay connected on all things AdMob, follow our Twitter and Google+ pages.

Posted by Mike Schipper

Product Marketing, AdMob

Register to see Jonathan Alferness' app monetization livestream at Google I/O 2015

Google I/0 2015 is just around the corner (May 28-29th), and we�ll be there. There�ll be more than 200 talks centered around some important topics which matter to you: Design & Develop, to help you build beautiful, powerful apps; Earn & Engage, where we�ll cover tools to grow your user base and create sustainable, successful businesses; and What�s Next, a peek into Google�s emerging platforms.

Be sure to tune into our session featuring Jonathan Alferness, VP of Product Management and Global Head of Mobile Display Ads Products for Google on Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 2pm PDT . He�ll be discussing how AdMob brings the power, scale and innovation to app developers who want to monetize effectively through tools like ad mediation for higher fill rates, new formats like native ads, and Audience builder with Google Analytics for list building and targeting. In this talk, we will also be unveiling some new features that will help make things simpler for developers. Click here to register for the livestream.

Posted by the Google AdMob Team

New AdMob features to help you monetize your app the smart way

Today, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we�re announcing three important updates to AdMob that will help developers build a smart monetization experience, and to help marketers reach the right users. We believe the best kind of in-app monetization experiences are the ones customized to individual app users, not a one-size-fits-all approach. Our vision for AdMob is to build a smart platform that makes such a tailored approach possible, or as we like to say, one that�s �audience aware�.

• AdMob In-App Purchase House Ads are a free, new format that can completely change how you think about your in-app purchase monetization strategy. You can use this format to create a customized ad to promote items to sell to your users, then AdMob�s audience-aware platform will predict those users who are likely to buy, and show them the ad. For all your other users - the ones unlikely to spend - AdMob can show them a regular ad. This approach means you can keep your high-value users engaged in your app, and for everyone else you�re making each impression count towards monetization. Currently in beta, this feature will be coming to all AdMob accounts in the next few weeks.

• Audience Builder is a powerful tool in AdMob that enables you to create lists of audiences based on how people use your app and then create customized experiences for users, ultimately growing your app revenue. For example, you could create an Audience List that defines those users who have not used your app in 14 days. Import that list into Google AdWords, and you can show ads to this list to re-engage users while they�re in other apps, or across the web. Audience Builder is available in all AdMob accounts now, and you can find out how to get started here.

• AdMob Native Ads are now in limited beta on the AdMob platform. Participating developers will be able to show native ads in their app from Google advertisers, and customize them to match both the form and function of their app. We pay close attention to user experience, so our native ads are designed to be clearly identifiable as ads to users. We�re thrilled to be working closely with Atari to bring native ads to RollerCoaster Tycoon� 4 Mobile; check out the screenshot below with an app install ad for Zagat:

• The user-friendly focus of native ads was an important consideration for Atari�s Chief Operating Officer, Todd Shallbetter: �Atari creates great game experiences for our broad audience. We're happy to be partnering with Google and be the first games company to take part in the native ads beta and help monetize games in a way that enhances our users' experience.'

• We�re testing native ads on non-gaming apps, too, partnering with developers globally, including CocoPPa in Japan.
  

These new features in AdMob can provide you with many new ways to supercharge your monetization. You can find out more about them on the AdMob website.

If you�re going to be at GDC, don�t miss my talk on Thursday, �Smart Strategies to Acquire, Retain and Monetize Gamers,� where I�ll be discussing these new features. And if you can�t attend, check out our live sharing on Google+ and Twitter to stay in the loop with what�s happening with #MeetAdMob.

Posted by Jonathan Alferness
Director of Product Management and Global Lead 

for Mobile Display Ads and AdMob

#MeetAdMob at MWC and GDC Next Week

Are you prepared for the huge mobile development conferences happening around the world next week? The Google AdMob team is excited to attend both the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Game Developer�s Conference in San Francisco. If you�re attending either event, be sure to visit our booth. We�d love to hear about your app and share ways that you could supercharge monetization with AdMob.

At Mobile World Congress, we�ll be at the Google booth with our colleagues from the Cloud Platform and Adwords teams, other great services that can help you build and grow your app. There�ll also be several exciting Google talks including a keynote from Senior Vice President, for Android, Chrome & Apps, Sundar Pichai, and a panel discussion with Senior Director for YouTube, Stephen Nuttall.

At the Game Developers Conference, we�ll be at the Google booth with Project Tango, Niantic Project, Cardboard, Analytics, AdWords and Cloud Platform. There will be tons of interactive demos and on-site consultations that you won�t want to miss.

We�ll also be hosting a session at GDC called Smart Strategies to Acquire, Monetize and Retain Gamers. This talk will be by Director of Product Management for Mobile Ads, Jonathan Alferness, and Google�s Lead Product Manager for Google Analytics and Mobile Apps, Russell Ketchum. See all the details about our Google Developer Day here and check out all the other Google talks on the GDC scheduler.

If you can�t attend either event this year, we�ll be live tweeting and sharing on Google+ and Twitter, so stay in the loop with what�s happening with #MeetAdMob. Also, you can still check out our morning talks from GDC on our livestream at g.co/dev/gdc-livestream.

Posted by the Google AdMob Team

We'll see you at GDC 2015!

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is less than one week away in San Francisco. This year Google will host our annual Developer Day at West Hall and be on the Expo floor in booth #502. We�re excited to give you a glimpse into how we are helping mobile game developers build successful businesses and improve user experiences.

Our Developer Day will take place in Room 2006 of the West Hall of Moscone Center on Monday, March 2. We're keeping the content action-oriented with a few presentations and lightning talks, followed by a full afternoon of hands on hacking with Google engineers. Here�s a look at the schedule:

Opening Keynote || 10AM: We�ll kick off the day by sharing to make your games more successful with Google. You�ll hear about new platforms, new tools to make development easier, and ways to measure your mobile games and monetize them.

Running A Successful Games Business with Google || 10:30AM: Next we�ll hear from Bob Meese, the Global Head of Games Business Development from Google Play, who�ll offer some key pointers on how to make sure you're best taking advantage of unique tools on Google Play to grow your business effectively.

Lightning Talks || 11:15AM: Ready to absorb all the opportunities Google has to offer your game business? These quick, 5-minute talks will cover everything from FlatBuffers to Google Cast to data interpolation. To keep us on track, a gong may be involved.

Code Labs || 1:30PM: After lunch, we�ll turn the room into a classroom setting where you can participate in a number of self-guided code labs focused on leveraging Analytics, Google Play game services, Firebase and VR with Cardboard. These Code Labs are completely self-paced and will be available throughout the afternoon. If you want admission to the code labs earlier, sign up for Priority Access here!

Also, be sure to check out the Google booth on the Expo floor to get hands on experiences with Project Tango, Niantic Labs and Cardboard starting on Wednesday, March 4. Teams from AdWords, Analytics, Cloud Platform, Firebase and AdMob will also be available to answer any of your product questions.

For more information on our presence at GDC, including a full list of our talks and speaker details, please visit g.co/dev/gdc2015. Please note that these events are part of the official Game Developer's Conference, so you will need a pass to attend. If you can't attend GDC in person, you can still check out our morning talks on our livestream at g.co/dev/gdc-livestream. We�ll also be live tweeting and sharing on Google+, so stay in the loop with what�s happening with #MeetAdMob.

Posted by the Google AdMob Team. 

Have an app and an idea? Google Startup Launch is for you

Since it�s unveiling at I/O this past June, Startup Launch has been building momentum. The Startup Launch team has been hard at work piloting the program with a select group of companies, and it�s now ready for its worldwide debut!

What is Startup Launch?

We�re so happy you asked. Startup Launch is a program and community dedicated to helping developers grow their startups into successful businesses. Featuring exclusive events, mentorships, trainings, a variety of tools, an easy-to-use interface, a supportive community and more � we give developers like you much of what you need to get your app business up and running successfully.

Startup Launch is more than just a help center or resource � it�s a real, empowering environment with colleagues and mentors there to guide and support you every step of the way.

What you can expect

Aside from a suite of awesome tools and a network of great people just like you, you may look forward to:

• Credits for AdWords and Google Cloud Platform
• Early access to product releases, APIs and SDKs*
• Online resources to help you design, develop, distribute and monetize your app
• Online trainings tailored specifically for startups
• Access to other startup professionals with Google Business Groups
• Exclusive invites to Startup Launch events all around the world
• Mentorship from an experienced member in Startup Launch�s mentor network*
• UX reviews by Google Developer Relations team and Google Launch�s mentor*
• Distribution and monetization guidance to maximize your success

*for select startups only

Startup Launch is already helping entrepreneurs like you in over 100 countries, and we can�t wait to have you join our community of creative, talented and passionate startups. Apply Today to join Startup Launch � we�re ready to help you take your app business to the next level.

Visit developers.google.com/startups to learn more, and make sure to stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Desiree Motamedi
Product Marketing, AdMob

Meet Phani Gaddipati, the Winner of The AdMob Student App Challenge 2014

These days, many of the great mobile apps we enjoy using are thanks to the skill and imagination of young developers. That made us think: how can we encourage up-and-coming developers�like students�to build their brilliant ideas? So last November, we launched The AdMob Student App Challenge, inviting students from all over the world to build a great app, monetize it using the AdMob platform, and win awesome prizes.

Today, we�re pleased to bring you the story of the global winner, Phani Gaddipati, from Colorado, USA. Out of thousands of contestants, Phani took home the prize for his mobile app, Stacks Flashcards. The app lets people create electronic flashcards on any subject, quiz themselves, and analyze their performance. Learn more about what inspired Phani to build his app in the video below.

As part of the winning prize, Stacks Flashcards is being featured on the Google Play Store this week. And next time you�re studying for a test, try Phani�s app to see if it helps you score a higher grade.

Posted by: Mike Schipper

Product Marketing Manager, AdMob