During the keynote at I/O 2016, we announced that Firebase has become a complete mobile platform that helps developers build high-quality apps, grow their user base, and earn more money. AdMob is part of how Firebase helps publishers earn revenue, and now that the dust has settled on I/O, you might have some questions about what the change means and how it affects people already monetizing with AdMob ads.
How does this affect my existing apps?
The short answer is: however you want it to. The apps you've already built are just fine the way they are, and they can keep monetizing with AdMob exactly as they do now, without changes. We've also made sure that when you do make the decision to integrate Firebase, the process is simple and straightforward. You can link your AdMob apps to Firebase projects right from the AdMob console. Firebase Analytics comes out of the box with the Firebase SDK, and you're free to choose the particular combination of Firebase services that fits your app.
Do I have to use Firebase with my new apps?
Nope. If you prefer to use AdMob by itself, that's just fine. You can import the Google Mobile Ads SDK the same way you do now, and continue to create ad units, campaigns, and reports at apps.admob.com.
My app is small! How big is the Firebase SDK?
We know SDK size is a big deal for mobile developers, and Firebase has been designed from the start to minimize its footprint. Publishers can pick and choose which services they're interested in, and only need the gradle libraries and frameworks they actually use. In our testing on Android, for example, importing the Mobile Ads SDK using the firebase-ads:9.0.0 gradle library instead of play-service-ads:9.0.0 increased the post-ProGuard size of our banner example's APK by about 100kB (though your results may vary).
Which Firebase service should I start with first?
All of the services are built to help mobile developers through the “develop, grow, and earn" lifecycle, so it depends which stage you’re at. Analytics, though, is something that every app can benefit from. Just by registering a Firebase project and importing the Firebase SDK into your app, you can start monetizing more intelligently with Firebase's free and unlimited analytics solution. Things like sessions, user demographics, revenue from in-app products, and a lot more will appear in the Firebase Analytics dashboard, with no extra code required.
Publishers can also add their own Analytics events and track them to improve their monetization strategy. For example, by adding events to monitor how users navigate between screens within an app, publishers can better understand the flow of action and find the best places to show interstitials without disrupting their users.
Are AdMob's developer resources going away?
No. The developer site has moved to a new domain, and we've added new content where appropriate, but everything you're used to is still there.
Our samples for iOS and Android now include the Firebase SDK when they build. We've also changed our quick-start guides for iOS and Android to help publishers get on board with Firebase, and the guys behind the Mobile Ads Garage are cooking up a new episode right now.
For more direct support, Firebase has a bunch of options, and as always, If you have technical questions about the Mobile Ads SDK, you're welcome to stop by our support forum.
There is now a month left before the final submission date for the AdMob Student App Challenge. At this point in the contest, your team should have completed the design of your app, and it should be live on the Google Play Store. For the remainder of the contest, we recommend that your team focus on the following:
Monitor user feedback so that you can make improvements as the app gets the feedback. Your app should be high quality, and part of that is improving it based on user suggestions.
Promote your app. Think about creative ways to do it. Next week, look for a post on promotional suggestions that are simple and effective.
Now is the time to start readying your business report, which is due on June 28, 2016 by 5:00PM PST through this link. The Challenge website already has a recommended template on it, and we will be sending out some pointers on having the best possible project soon.
Remember, your project will be reviewed by a panel of app experts from Google, so your business report will need to be thorough and of professional-level quality.
Continue to follow us on AdMob G+ and Twitter for updates on the last month of the Challenge and keep an update on #AdMobSAC16 too, for any last-minute posts.
The Mobile Ads Garage is a new series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and Doubleclick For Publishers. Each episode will cover one aspect of the SDK, break down the feature, and show screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
With two episodes on banner ads on the books, the Mobile Ads Garage now turns its focus to interstitial ads.
Andrew and Gary the Graphics Guy are back this week with a detailed explanation of the interstitial ad lifecycle, how to load ads, and how to display at just the right time. Along the way you'll get screencasts of Android Studio and Xcode, plus links to guides, samples, and other resources.
If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.
We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.
The Mobile Ads Garage is a new series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and Doubleclick For Publishers. Each episode will cover one aspect of the SDK, break down the feature, and show screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
With two episodes on banner ads on the books, the Mobile Ads Garage now turns its focus to interstitial ads.
Andrew and Gary the Graphics Guy are back this week with a detailed explanation of the interstitial ad lifecycle, how to load ads, and how to display at just the right time. Along the way you'll get screencasts of Android Studio and Xcode, plus links to guides, samples, and other resources.
If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.
We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.
Six years ago, Cheetah Mobile began as a small company of ten employees that built softwares for PCs. Today, they’re one of the world’s leading developers with over one thousand employees. Their popular apps Clean Master and Battery Doctor have been downloaded by millions around the world.
“What we also enjoyed is seeing the speed at which AdMob is innovating, delivering new features. One good example is the support for native ads.”- Charles Fan, Chief Technology Officer, Cheetah Mobile
The problem
With a growing user base, Cheetah Mobile needed a partner to help them expand to the global market while monetizing their apps.
The solution
Cheetah Mobile turned to Google as their first partner, using AdWords to drive downloads and AdMob to increase revenue from their apps.
The results
Within three years, Cheetah Mobile saw its user base grow 16X with 600M active users. 74% of their users came from outside of China and after implementing native ads for its popular Battery Doctor app, Cheetah Mobile saw its revenue increase 4X.
To check out other success stories, visit us at the AdMob website. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.
Eighteen months ago, Firebase joined Google. Since then, our backend-as-a-service (BaaS) that handles the heavy lifting of building an app has grown from a passionate community of 110,000 developers to over 450,000.
Our current features -- Realtime Database, User Authentication, and Hosting -- make app development easier, but there’s more we can do, so today, we’re announcing a major expansion!
Firebase is expanding to become a unified app platform for Android, iOS and mobile web development. We’re adding new tools to help you develop faster, improve app quality, acquire and engage users, and monetize apps. On top of this, we’re launching a brand new analytics product that ties everything together, all while staying true to the guiding principles we’ve had from the beginning:
Developer experience matters. Ease-of-use, good documentation, and intuitive APIs make developers happy.
Work across platforms. We’ll support you whether you’re building for iOS, Web, or Android.
Integrate where possible. Firebase has one SDK, one console, and one place to go for documentation and support. You can mix-and-match any of our features and, where it makes sense, data flows between them to help you do more, faster.
Introducing Firebase Analytics
Firebase Analytics is our brand new, free and unlimited analytics solution for mobile apps. It benefits from Google’s experience with Google Analytics, and features some new capabilities for apps:
Firebase Analytics is user and event-centric and gives you insight into what your users are doing in your app. You can also see how your paid advertising campaigns are performing with cross-network attribution, which tells you where your users are coming from. You can see all of this from a single dashboard.
Firebase Analytics is also integrated with other Firebase offerings to provide a single source of truth for in-app activity and through a feature called Audiences. Audiences let you define groups of users with common attributes. Once defined, these groups can be accessed from other Firebase features -- to illustrate, we’ll reference Audiences throughout this post.
Develop Faster with Messaging, Storage, Config
To help you build better apps, our suite of backend services is expanding.
Google Cloud Messaging, the most popular cloud-to-device push messaging service in the world, is integrating with Firebase and changing its name to Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). Available for free and for unlimited usage, FCM supports messaging on iOS, Android, and the Web, and is heavily optimized for reliability and battery-efficiency. It’s built for scale and already sends 170 billion messages per day to two billion devices.
One of our most requested features is the ability to store images, videos, and other large files. We’re launching Firebase Storage so developers can easily and securely upload and download such files. Firebase Storage is powered by Google Cloud Storage, giving it massive scalability and allowing stored files to be easily accessed by Google Cloud projects. The Firebase Storage client SDKs have advanced logic to gracefully handle poor network conditions.
Firebase Remote Config gives you instantly-updatable variables that you can use to tune and customize your app on the fly to deliver the best experience to your users. You can enable or disable features or change the look and feel without having to publish a new version. You can also target configurations to specific Firebase Analytics Audiences so that each of your users has an experience that’s tailored for them.
In addition, we’re continuing to invest heavily in our existing backend products, Firebase Realtime Database, Firebase Hosting, and Firebase Authentication. Authentication has seen the biggest updates, with brand new SDKs, and an upgraded backend infrastructure. This provides added security, reliability, and scale using the same technologies that power Google’s own accounts. We’ve also added new Authentication features including email verification and account linking. For Hosting, custom domain support is now free for all developers, and the Database has a completely rebuilt UI. We’re working hard on other great Realtime Database features, stay tuned for those.
Introducing Test Lab and Crash Reporting
We’re adding two new offerings to Firebase to help you deliver higher quality apps.
When your app crashes, it’s bad for your users and it hurts your business. Firebase Crash Reporting gives you prioritized, actionable reports to help you diagnose and fix problems in your iOS or Android app after it has shipped. We’ve also connected Crash Reporting to Audiences in Firebase Analytics, so you can tell if users on a particular device, in a specific geography, or in any other custom segment are experiencing elevated crash rates.
Cloud Test Lab, announced last year at Google I/O, is now Firebase Test Lab for Android. Test Lab helps you find problems in your app before your users do. It allows for both automatic and customized testing of your app on real devices hosted in Google data centers.
Grow Your App with Notifications, Dynamic Links, and More
After you’ve launched your app, we can help you grow and re-engage users with five powerful growth features.
Firebase Notifications is a new UI built on top of the Firebase Cloud Messaging APIs that lets you easily deliver notifications to your users without writing a line of code. Using the Notifications console you can re-engage users, run marketing campaigns, and target messages to Audiences in Firebase Analytics.
Firebase Dynamic Links make URLs more powerful in two ways. First, they provide “durability” -- links persist across the app install process so users are taken to the right place when they first open your app. This “warm welcome” increases engagement and retention. Second, they allow for dynamically changing the destination of a link based on run-time conditions, such as the type of browser or device. Use them in web, email, social media, and physical promotions to gain insight into your growth channels.
Firebase Invites turns your customers into advocates. Your users can easily share referral codes or their favorite content via SMS or email to their network, so you can increase your app's reach and retention.
Firebase App Indexing, formerly Google App Indexing, brings new and existing users to your app from the billions of Google searches. If your app is already installed, users can launch it directly from the search results. New users are presented with a link to install your app.
AdWords, Google’s advertising platform for user acquisition and engagement, is now integrated with Firebase. Firebase can track your AdWords app installs and report lifetime value to the Firebase Analytics dashboard. Firebase Audiences can be used in AdWords to re-engage specific groups of users. In-app events can be defined as conversions in AdWords, to automatically optimize your ads, including universal app campaigns.
Monetize Your App With AdMob
To help you generate revenue from your app and build a sustainable business, we’ve integrated Firebase with AdMob, an advertising platform used by more than 1 million apps. We’ve made it easier to get started with AdMob when you integrate the Firebase SDK into your app. Using AdMob, you can choose from the latest ad formats, including native ads, which help provide a great user experience.
Introducing a New Console, Documentation, and SDK
Along with new feature launches, we’re moving our website and documentation to a new home: firebase.google.com.
We’re also launching a brand new console to manage your app. It is completely redesigned and rebuilt for improved ease of use, and we’ve deeply integrated it with other Google offerings, like Google Cloud and Google Play.
Firebase now uses the same underlying account system as Google Cloud Platform, which means you can use Cloud products with your Firebase app. For example, a feature of Firebase Analytics is the ability to export your raw analytics data to BigQuery for advanced querying. We’ll continue to weave together Cloud and Firebase, giving you the functionality of a full public cloud as you grow.
You can also link your Firebase account to Google Play from our new console. This allows data, like in-app purchases, to flow to Firebase Analytics, and ANRs (application not responding) to flow to Firebase Crash Reporting, giving you one place to check the status of your app.
Finally, we’re announcing the beta launch of a new C++ SDK. You can find the documentation and getting started guides here.
Announcing New Pricing Plans
We’re excited to announce that most of these new products, including Analytics, Crash Reporting, Remote Config, and Dynamic Links, are free for unlimited usage.
For our four paid products: Test Lab, Storage, Realtime Database, and Hosting, we’re announcing simpler pricing. We now offer:
A free plan with generous limits
A fixed-rate plan for early-stage startups who need a predictable monthly price
A metered pay-as-you-go plan that scales with the largest apps
Some Things Stay the Same
Many things are changing, but Firebase’s core principles remain the same. We care deeply about providing a great developer experience through easy-to-use APIs, intuitive interfaces, comprehensive documentation, and tight integrations. We’re committed to cross-platform development for iOS, Android, and the Web, and when you run into trouble, we’ll provide support to help you succeed.
If you were using a Firebase feature before today -- like the Realtime Database, GCM, or App Indexing -- there’s no impact on your app. We’ll continue to support you, though we recommend upgrading to the latest SDK to access our new features.
More to Come
As far as we’ve come, this is still early days. We’ll continue to refine and add to Firebase. For example, the JavaScript SDK does not yet support all the new features. We’re working quickly to close gaps, and we’d love to hear your feedback so we can improve. You can help by requesting a feature.
Get Started!
All the new features are ready-to-go, and already in use by apps like Shazam, SkyScanner, PicCollage, and more. Get started today by signing up, visiting our new site, or reading the documentation to learn more.
We can’t wait to hear what you think!
Posted by James Tamplin & Francis Ma, Firebase Product Leads
Advertising experiences on mobile are evolving quickly, providing developers with a wide variety of ad formats to help them make money from their apps. Now, when consumers are on a mobile device while waiting for a bus, getting some ‘me time’ at home, or countless other situations, they’re just as likely to be delighted by a video ad, as they are to click an interstitial ad and view a product that’s captured their interest.
Yet, mobile screens are small. Any content that’s poorly designed, or enters the app’s flow when a user least expects it, can disappoint users - and the same rules apply to ads. Native advertising has emerged as a way to create a more seamless ad experience on mobile, one where ads match the look and feel of an app’s design. It isn’t a new idea, yet it hasn’t been within reach of all developers; many of today’s native ad solutions require significant resources to implement and can be an ongoing burden that’s difficult to scale. Who wants to be writing lengthy code to serve ads instead of building the next killer feature in their app?
We want to make native ads better for developers, so today, we’re excited to announce the full launch of AdMob native ads express, an easier way to implement native ads in apps. Here’s what makes native ads express special:
It’s super-easy to get started. Choose a template from many different pre-defined templates available in the native ads express interface, customize it, and get a great-looking native ad in less than 5 minutes - that’s why it’s ‘express’. The code you implement in your app is kept to a minimum - it’s the same amount that you’d add to request a banner ad.
Ads go live in a flash. You can go live with native ads on the same day you start building them (as soon as your app is approved in the app stores). Our smart technology validates your customization of the ad to help ensure it meets our guidelines and provides a good experience for your users.
Optimize on a whim. Customize, tweak, and redesign the templates in native ads express through the AdMob interface, preview changes, and set your native ad unit loose without rewriting app code. Optimization is no longer a huge time commitment, so you can easily find the best performing native ad for your app. Some publishers using the beta version of native ads saw up to 4X higher CTRs than other ad formats in the same app.
Using the native ads express interface to choose an ad size and customize the ad colors
Developers with millions of users, such as Linghit Limited and Cheetah Mobile and have already found success with AdMob native ads. Linghit Limited needed a way to monetize their Chinese Almanac Calendar app, Shunli, while retaining the great user experience the app is renowned for. They implemented AdMob native ads express and saw a 100% increase in daily ad revenue and a 114% increase in ad impressions.
“Native ads are more intuitive so we displayed them in more prominent positions within apps. We were able to view the effects on user click-through rates in real time based on the information in the ads backend. We could make quick adjustments to the native ads to maximize the effect of the ad.”
Jinnee Lee, Vice President, Linghit Limited
Cheetah Mobile implemented AdMob native ads for its popular Battery Doctor app, and saw its revenue increase 4X.
AdMob native ads in Cheetah Mobile’s Battery Doctor app
We’re also excited to share that AdMob is now used by more than 1M apps. We’re delighted that iOS and Android developers count on AdMob to build and monetize apps that users love. For Google advertisers, our large network of apps means marketers are able to reach more potential customers as they spend time on mobile devices.
Posted by Pasha Nahass, Product Manager, Mobile App Ads
The AdMob Student App Challenge deadline is fast approaching (June 28th) and we can’t wait to see your creative ideas come to life.
To make sure you’re fully prepared, join us for an informational Hangout on Air on May 20th. We’ll be sharing the competition’s judging criteria, tips on how to build an app that stands out, and answer any lingering questions that you might have. Here are the details:
You can ask questions in advance by: a) Posting your question as a comment here or b) Up-vote someone else’s question by giving it a +1 if you have the same query.
Feel free to share these details with anyone you think would be interested in participating. With a little over a month left, it’s not too late to register a team and build an app. We look forward to seeing you all on the Hangouts on Air!
Posted by Shefali Arora AdMob Student App Challenge Team
AdMob Mediation is an easy way for you to manage different ad networks and help maximize revenue, all from a single interface. With AdMob Mediation, you can also take advantage of ad network optimization, a feature that helps you generate the highest CPM from your mediation stack. Ad network optimization does this by obtaining the freshest CPM from each ad network based on historical performance, and dynamically reorders them in the mediation stack, so that the ad network with the highest CPM serves ads to your apps.
Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve enabled ad network optimization support for Chartboost and Unity Ads, with country-level specific CPM support. They will join over twenty of our existing supported ad network optimization ad networks.
Getting started with ad network optimization is easy; simply select the ad network(s) you want to add to mediation, enter your ad network login credentials and AdMob will pull the accurate CPM data for each network.
1. In ad network settings, check ‘Automatically pull the eCPM value from this ad network’ box.
2. Enter your login credentials so AdMob can collect the latest CPMs from your ad networks, and review the checkbox language.
Here’s what developers have to say about AdMob mediation:
“We integrated AdMob sometime last year and it doubled our income, which was really good. Mediation is one of the things we mainly use in AdMob. It supports a lot of different networks, so we don’t need to integrate different SDKs.” - Amit Goyal, Co-Founder and CTO, Appkruti
“We’ve seen a 30% to 40% bump in revenue since we started using mediation in AdMob. AdMob offers a simple way to work with multiple ad partners to maximize fill rates and revenue. The way AdMob automatically optimizes across multiple ad networks is fantastic.” - Micah Koffron, Founder, Digitalchemy
To learn more about ad network optimization and AdMob Mediation, please visit our help center, and to stay connected on all things AdMob, follow our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.
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:
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.
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.
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!
- Andrew Brogdon, Mobile Ads Developer Relations
