Last week at Google I/O, we had a Google Ads Track where we provided updates on our Google Ads products. We also made some product announcements, including the launch of a new AdMob to help you build your app business and Open Bidder to help you create real-time bidding applications.

If you weren’t able to attend these sessions in person or watch the live stream, we have recorded them for your convenience:

• Build a Great App Business with AdMob
• Dynamically Configure Mobile Applications: Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps
• Optimize Web and Mobile Apps, Across Devices, Using Google Analytics
• Introducing Open Bidder: Leverage Google’s Cloud Platform to Reinvent Display Advertising
• Google Analytics and AdSense Data Analysis in BigQuery

Share your thoughts on our Google+ page and tell us which session was your favorite!

 - Eric Leichtenschlag, AdMob Team

Toni Fingerroos, a games developer in Finland, became inspired to create a mobile app. He devoted 3 months to building it, often working 16 hour days. That idea became the hugely popular Hill Climb Racing, and the game has grown to be part of a successful app business called Fingersoft.

Hill Climb Racing has been downloaded in over 145 countries on both iOS and Android. AdMob consistently generates nearly 100% ad fill rates and enables Toni to monetize the game on a global scale. He uses AdMob house ads to promote his app too.

“Hill Climb Racing has over 60 million downloads. About 40% [of the revenue] comes from advertisements, and AdMob is our cornerstone,” says Toni. Hear more about Toni’s story in the video below.

Download the PDF version of the case study here.

Posted by Mike Schipper, Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

We recently announced upgraded ad extensions that provide many new capabilities, including mobile-optimized settings, new scheduling features, and detailed reporting at the individual sitelink level. We’ll be helping all advertisers transition to these improved extensions over the coming months. Starting on September 23, 2013, the AdWords API will support only these upgraded extensions, including the 25-character sitelink limit, and we’ll begin automatically upgrading legacy extensions to the new format.

We recommend upgrading your extensions ahead of September 23, 2013 so you can take advantage of all the new features and customize specific settings. Most advertisers are upgrading their extensions as part of their overall upgrade to AdWords enhanced campaigns. To help make the process easy for you, we’ve put together a number of resources:

• The feed services can help you create and retrieve upgraded ad extensions
• Our upgrade guide as well as a complete code example in Java provide best practices 
• Our client libraries provide full support for various feed services and code examples that show how to use them
• The AdWords API Required Minimum Functionality document is updated with information about how feed services can be used to create and manage upgraded ad extensions

As you are upgrading, you can create upgraded ad extensions while still keeping legacy ad extensions in the same campaign; however, only the upgraded extensions will be served. Beginning on September 23, if a campaign only has legacy extensions, we will auto-upgrade them to the new format. If a campaign has both legacy and upgraded extensions, we will only serve the new format, and legacy extensions will be marked as deleted.

If you have questions or need help with the upgrade, please visit us on the developer forum, or at one of the upcoming GDL Office Hours.

 - Anash P. Oommen, AdWords API Team

Thursday at Google I/O 2013, we announced Open Bidder, a fully customizable toolkit for building real-time bidding applications. By combining the speed and flexibility of the Google Cloud Platform with DoubleClick’s expertise in real-time bidding, Open Bidder provides developers a robust platform to quickly create innovative RTB solutions.

Currently, companies interested in building their own real-time bidding technology face significant barriers to overcome, including:

• Development and maintenance of a scalable and secure infrastructure for their bidder
• Development of a robust system to apply bidding logic to incoming bid requests
• Development of a bidder with sufficient latency at scale to meet real-time bidding requirements

Open Bidder removes these barriers by providing a customizable bidder toolkit with a reference implementation that developers can adapt to plug in their own bidding logic and data. Additionally, we provide an administration console for managing bidder and load balancer instances within Google Compute Engine. With Open Bidder buyers can significantly lower the latency of their bidders by leveraging Google Compute Engine’s scale, speed, and proximity to DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Now buyers can focus on developing new and innovative bidding logic instead of worrying about the complexity of scaling to over 250,000 qps while responding in under 100ms.

We’ve been working on Open Bidder for over a year, and over that time we’ve been fortunate to have some fantastic alpha testers that have helped us develop and improve the product. Going forward, we’re excited to see what brilliant ideas developers can bring to advertising through Open Bidder. If you’re interested in being a Beta tester, please submit an application here.

More details about Open Bidder can be found in our Beta documentation. To stay up to date on all of our ads-related technologies follow our Google Ads Developers Google+ page.

- The Open Bidder Team

We’re committed to helping app developers with discovery, distribution and monetization on all platforms so they can continue doing what they do best: creating awesome apps. Last year, we integrated our AdMob inventory into the AdWords system, giving mobile app developers access to many more new advertisers. And we’ve continued to invest in tools to help app developers succeed.

Today at I/O, we’re announcing that we’ve rebuilt AdMob, incorporating the best technology from our other ad platforms, like AdSense. It’s a particularly great tool to help small mobile app developers grow their business.

Starting today, we’ll begin rolling out the new AdMob to our developers. We expect it to be available for all of our developers globally in the coming months. If you’re an AdMob developer, you’ll see a notice in your account asking you to upgrade to the new AdMob.

With the new AdMob, some of the features available are:

• Smarter app promotion: Conversion Optimizer helps many AdWords advertisers increase conversions while decreasing cost per acquisition. We’re now bringing Conversion Optimizer to app developers using AdMob to promote their apps, so they can get the best possible number of installs for their budget. Choose a target cost per acquisition for each download, and Conversion Optimizer will show ads when they are most likely to lead to an install.
• Robust ad filters: Ensuring that your app is showing quality, relevant ads is important for app developers. Now, developers will have more control over which ads appear in their apps, by blocking sensitive categories, so they can increase relevancy and protect their brand.
• Maximized earnings: If developers want to show ads in their apps from more than one ad network, they can use AdMob Mediation with a new, simplified setup.
• Local payments: We’re introducing local currency payments, so developers don’t need to spend time calculating currency conversions and organizing money transfers.
• Intelligent reports: The new reporting interface enables app developers to slice the data in many ways with multi-dimensional reports that help them identify opportunities to grow. They can break down their reports over time by app or ad unit, platform, country, bid type, and more.

If a developer is just starting out, AdMob can connect them to more than a million advertisers globally, providing a consistent source of advertising revenue which can grow as their downloads take off.

We want AdMob to open up opportunities for many more app developers worldwide to help them build successful businesses. Join us at Google I/O at 11:15 AM PST today or watch a livestream of our talk: Build a Great App Business with AdMob, and see new demos.

Posted by Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, AdMob

We’re pleased to announce that the recorded talks for the AdWords API Workshops are now available. The talks are from the workshop in New York, but we had the same agenda for all other locations. The major topics include

• Enhanced Campaigns and New Extensions Support
• New & Improved MCC Services
• OAuth2 authentication
• New Bidding & Budgeting
• Account Performance Tracking & Optimization (and introducing a new tool - Kratu)

We have made available all presentation slides used in the workshop. We hope this is useful for those who attended other locations or didn’t attend the event in person.

- Takeshi Hagikura, AdWords API Team

Editor's note: repost from Developers Blog, --Stan Grinberg

At Google I/O 2013, we will share the future of our platforms with you. Developers from all over the world are the key innovators of powerful, breakthrough technologies, and that’s why we challenged ourselves to make the Google I/O experience available to every developer, everywhere.



Watch Google I/O live
From the comfort of your own home, office, secret lair, or anywhere you have a reliable Internet connection, you can stream Google I/O May 15-16 live. Brought to you by Google Developers Live (GDL), the Google I/O homepage will become the GDL at I/O live streaming hub starting on May 15th at 9:00 AM PT (16:00 UTC). From this page, you can:

• Stream 4 channels of technical content on your computer, tablet, or phone. You’ll feel like you’re right there in the keynote and session rooms, listening to product announcements straight from the source. Live streaming will run on developers.google.com/io from 9 AM PT (16:00 UTC) to 7 PM PT (2:00 UTC) on May 15 and 16.
• Watch exclusive interviews with the Googlers behind the latest product announcements. This year, GDL will be on site, broadcasting one-on-one product deep dives, executive interviews, and Sandbox walkthroughs from the GDL stage.
• Get the latest news in real-time. We’ll be posting official announcements during I/O. You’ll be able to see the feed on the Google I/O homepage, in the I/O mobile app (coming soon), and on +Google Developers.
• Never miss a session. All Google I/O technical sessions will be recorded and posted toGDL and the Google Developers YouTube channel. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for archived session updates.

Live blog the keynote
Grab our live blogging gadget to add the keynote live stream to your own site or blog. Customize the gadget with your site or blog name, live blog alongside real-time Google announcements, and share a dynamic Google I/O experience with your readers. Have questions? For more info, check out our live blogging gadget FAQ.

Get together locally
Experience Google I/O with your local developer community by hosting or attending an I/O Extended event. If you’re hosting, register here and learn how to hold a totally epic event with our handy Organizer Guide. Otherwise, with over 400 sites in 90+ countries, chances are good that there is an I/O Extended event near you. Find an event now!

And before I/O, tune in to Google Developers Live programming to connect with Google engineers, prep for this year’s event, and browse our archived content. For official conference updates, add +Google Developers to your Circles, follow #io13 for big announcements, join the Google I/O community, and keep an eye on the Google I/O site.

--Mike Winton, Director of Developer Relations