Street View is now a feature we take for granted in all our mapping services, but in 2007 it was a very ambitious effort by Google to photograph the world. The feature on the latest version of Google Maps on Android received a slight revamp to make navigation on mobile easier.
By choice, Google has put relatively few ads in Maps. However, that’s going to change (via Recode) as advertisers will now be able to add “promoted pins” in Maps and place deals and discounts on place cards.
As Sundar Pichai said in the 2016 Founders’ Letter, advertising allows Google’s services to be free. At the same time, it cares about delivering high quality ads and nothing ruins the experience more than accidental clicks. In a blog post, the company delved into various measures that prevent accidental clicks and announced it was extending click protections to native ads on mobile.
After announcing a new ad platform for television last week, Google is launching a new six second “Bumper” video ad format for YouTube. Aimed at “snackable” videos consumed on smartphones, Bumpers cannot be skipped over.
Following big Google Cloud announcements at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show earlier this week, the company is announcing a new ad platform to monetize and personalize video content, as well as that live TV listings are coming to Search results.
While I don’t necessarily commend the liberal use of plastic on the supposed ‘all metal’ LG G5, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed its launch and marketing strategy. This year, the Korean tech giant decided to have fun at the product unveiling, and now with one of the wackiest all-action product ads we’ve ever seen.
Google is today showing off redesigned apps for its AdWords advertising service that it says bring a completely reimagined experience based on user feedback.
Google Contributor allows readers to pay a monthly fee to see fewer ads on the sites they visit. Ads are either outright removed or replaced with a thank you message. The service launched in 2014 and was opened up to those in US last year. Today, Contributor is getting a revamp that sets the starting monthly fee users can pay to $6.99.
Unsurprisingly, Lenovo “product engineer” Ashton Kutcher is also doing online videos to promote Motorola. His last appearance demonstrated how people are incapable of not touching their phones. Now, Kutcher is talking with engineers and showing off features specific to Motorola phones.
YouTube and its YouTube AdBlitz channel are always popular destinations for watching Super Bowl ads that will air on TV during and online leading up to the game– and this year even an alternative half-time show. Following yesterday’s Super Bowl 50 with the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos, YouTube has now shared some data on what the most popular ads were this year based on views as of this morning, and we’ve embedded the list in video form below for easy viewing…
T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ads last night were definitely aimed at millennials. One involved Steve Harvey and referenced Verizon’s “Colorful Balls” ad once again (as well as Harvey’s forgetful stumble on Miss Universe), and the other brought in Drake to show how ridiculous the other carriers could be on the set of “Hotline Bling”…
Update: VentureBeat received information from a source, shedding a little more light on the situation.
A source close to the situation indicates that Google considers this a “unique case” because two apps are required to invoke the ad blocking. Furthermore, the source adds that Google has no problem with browsers which can block ads within themselves via built-in functionality (like Adblock Browser) or via plugins.
Earlier in the week, Samsung’s new browser API meant developers, if they wanted to, could build ad-blocking apps to work alongside the browser. It’s similar to the ad-blocking feature Apple introduced in iOS 9 with Safari, which lead to a number of ad and tracker-blocking apps become popular within the first few weeks of iOS 9’s arrival.
With this feature added, more developers could develop standalone ad-blockers for Android which work with Samsung‘s mobile browser. It turns out however, that Google has pulled some apps, and rejected updates for others. It seems the company isn’t keen on having standalone apps — designed to work alongside browsers to block ads — on the Play Store…
Next month’s launch of Accelerated Mobile Pages on Google Search will support ads right out of the gate. AMP, an industry effort to speed up and improve mobile web pages, has garnered the support of many tech companies and publications. The latter will have full control over ads on AMP pages and get accompanying statistics.
Google has published a blog post revealing just how many bad ads it removed from the web in 2015. Spoiler: they removed a lot.
There can be all kinds of bad ads, whether they’re ads which falsely claim to help weight loss, or phishing sites that trick unassuming web users to submit personal information. Thanks to a team of some 1,000 employees, and some clever computer algorithms, the company was able to remove a ton of ads and ban a huge number of misbehaving advertisers…
YouTube today has shared a new video on its YouTube For Business channel that highlights the advertising opportunities that exist on the platform. The video features the popular characters from the hit TV series The Simpsons and shows Lisa using YouTube advertising to help advertise Homer’s “Mr. Plow Snow Removal” business.
Google introduced a really awesome feature called app streaming to search results last month, and now a very similar technology is coming to the company’s AdMob ad platform. A couple new app ad formats are being introduced today, the first of which allowing users to try out an app within an ad itself before downloading… Expand
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Google over the past several months has spoken a lot about its ever-growing cloud business. It recently dropped prices across the board for its Cloud Platform, and now one Google executive believes the business will soon grow to outpace revenue brought in by the company’s ad division…
Google Play will soon show users what apps are ad-supported before downloading as the company asks developers to declare the status of ads in their apps by January, 2016. Expand
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HTC’s launch of the One A9 has caught the attention of many. The company insists that the latest mid-tier device isn’t an iPhone copy, despite the fact that — from almost every angle — it looks like one. Having spent time with it, we agree in many ways. Even if it is, the very fact it runs Android 6.0 is a big enough differentiating factor. Still, the Taiwanese manufacturer isn’t helping itself by releasing its latest advertising campaign.
The latest full length ad, named ‘Be Brilliant’ has a clear message: Be Different. Sound familiar?
There’s nothing worse when browsing the web — or hitting a search result — and coming across a page completely obscured by a huge pop-up window asking you to install the site’s (or someone else’s) app. In fact, full-page interstitial ads in general are incredibly frustrating, when all you want to do is read the article. Thankfully, Google is doing something about it…
Google today has made several of the features it originally previewed back at I/O for developers available today. Google says that these new features will help developers further grow their business and improve decision making on developer insights on Google Play.
First up is AdWords Campaigns:
With just a few simple steps, universal app campaigns lets you easily set up ad campaigns from within the Google Play Developer Console and promote your app across Google Play, Google Search, YouTube and the Google Display Network. You will now be able to more effectively find and grow your install base with the help of Google’s unparalleled reach.
Google also today has made a new performance report feature available to developers:
When you’re growing an audience for your app, you’ll want to understand where your most valuable users are coming from. The new performance report on the User Acquisition tab in the Developer Console lets you see how people are finding your Play Store listing, how many install your app, and how many go on to make purchases.
These new features are accessible for developers via the developer console. More can be found in the video seen below:
It’s no secret that Google makes the majority of its money from advertising revenue, and has done for a very long time. So, when a product comes along to threaten that major revenue stream, it has to find ways to combat it. That’s seemingly what it’s done with AdBlock Plus, a relatively well-known Chrome extension used to block out ads across the internet. This includes the ads shown before and during video playback on YouTube…
Background audio from a video or ad that starts playing in a tab you’re not using is arguably one of the most annoying experiences in modern web browsing. Slowly but surely, web browsers have started to recognize this annoyance and the Chrome team has been one of the best at introducing solutions. Chrome has an icon telling you which tab is playing the audio, recent builds of Chrome let you mute these annoying tabs with a single click, and now Google’s browser is introducing another feature: Backgrounded tabs will no longer autoplay media at all until you bring them into the foreground. Hallelujah. Expand
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Not you too, Samsung. After reporting early this month that HTC was sending advertisements to owners of its devices through push notifications, it appears that Samsung is doing something similar.
Android Police is today reporting that owners of Samsung devices have reached out to the site to share with them screenshots of ads appearing in the slide-down menu that includes all their notifications. The ads — one for the Galaxy S6 Edge+ is pictured — appear inside cards that looks just like every other notification. They’re delivered via the Samsung Push Service, a piece of software Samsung pre-installs on its Android devices to send helpful information to device owners. Not exactly helpful this time, though.
We weren’t terribly surprised when HTC started doing this, being in the kind of financial straits they are, but it’s definitely surprising coming from a technology giant like Samsung. The company’s software is already notoriously bloated and known to kill running apps a little too quickly, so this is just another blow for a company that has only just began to produce great phones again after an uninteresting Galaxy S5.
Aside from people just not liking ads in general, much of the frustration here centers around the distrust it creates. While we pay for cable television and still see ads there, it hasn’t become acceptable practice to see ads in and around the gadgets we buy with our hard earned money. Hopefully OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) don’t think they can make it okay.
Google today announced in a blog post on its AdWords blog that it is rolling out new 360-degree video advertisements to help advertisers “engage their audience in an entirely new way.” The feature is currently supported in Chrome and on Android and iOS. Users can navigate through the 360-degree video by either dragging their mouse or tilting their phone up, down, left, and right. Google originally unveiled 360 video support earlier this year.
Image via <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/buy-button-coming-to-google-search-2015-7" target="_blank">Business Insider</a>
Google confirmed at a conference in May that a “buy” button was planned for products in its search results, and today the company elaborated on those plans at a press event in NYC. The new feature called “Purchases on Google” will allow consumers to purchase products directly from ads in Google Search results. Featuring a buy button in ads when searching for products should make purchasing those products more seamless for consumers and boost the value of ads for merchants. Expand
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HTC is really struggling to sell its One M9 flagship, and personally, I don’t think that today’s new ads are going to help it very much. The company has released three new spots to show off some features of the One M9—selfies, sound, and speed—through “blind test” videos, comparing the handset to the iPhone 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6. Of course, the M9 wins in all three tests… Expand
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Google has a new update out to its Remarketing Lists for Search Ads product that will make it easier for marketers to use Analytics to target the right potential customers and in the process get a higher return on their advertising dollar investment. And while these terms might sound like complete gibberish to you, from a high-level it’s actually not too complicated.
Following similar actions by Amazon and eBay, Google today announced that it is removing all goods with Confederate flag symbols from its Shopping service and Ad network. The move comes following a tragic shooting in South Carolina last week that took the li
Well, the rumors are true: HTC has just announced that it has begun testing the “displaying of a limited number of promotions” to users of the BlinkFeed app in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Taiwan, and China. If results are good, the pilot will roll-out to more countries over time.
Google has been working with Adobe to improve battery life drain caused by Flash and today flipped the switch on a new Chrome feature that does exactly that. The new feature aims to detect Flash on a webpage that is actually important to the main content and “intelligently pause content” that isn’t as important. The result is to hopefully make the web experience with Flash more power efficient to improve battery life on your laptop. Here’s how it works: Expand
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While Google’s ad business is definitely in a transition phase, largely due to the shift away from personal computers towards mobile handsets, Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy says that the company is handling this move well. Selling ads to advertisers may be harder with more of those ads ending up on mobile devices with smaller screens than notebooks and desktops, meaning more difficulty for customers to complete purchases, but Google is definitely taking steps toward slowing the rapid decline in ad prices.
According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, while Google is making several moves to make advertising more valuable, the market’s more recent move to larger-screened devices has helped significantly… Expand
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“Adblockers,” browser tools which work to hide ads from the web browsing experience, are a controversial topic of discussion among those in the media industry. And for good reason, as the media industry as a whole is in the midst of a large shift from creating content for – and earning a vast majority of revenue from – the print and desktop mediums, where large boxy ads have long reigned king. But when we talk about adblockers, the one tool we’re all probably referring to, the one which has become synonymous with the term, is Adblock Plus (ABP), and the company behind it has released a dedicated browser for Android…
The Financial Times is reporting that European mobile carriers are planning to block Google and other web ads in order to reduce demands on their networks and break Google’s hold on advertising (via TNW).
According to the story, which cites anonymous sources, the carriers have installed software from Israeli ad-blocking firm Shine in their data centers to block advertising in Web pages and apps, but not social networks.
Many websites, 9to5Google among them, depend on ad revenue to deliver free content to their readers. Any move to block ads could have far-reaching consequences … Expand
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The notorious leakster Upleaks has today posted a new image that appears to be an HTC training slide, outlining how the company plans to monetize the home screen of your HTC handset. Yes, you heard that right, HTC—if this rumor turns out to be true—is going to be placing ads and product promotions within its HTC Sense Home home screen… Expand
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LG has uploaded a few LG G4 ads to its YouTube channel, showcasing some of the most important new features of the device. The first ad of course shows off the phone’s genuine leather backs (and it looks a lot like the Moto Selfie Stick April Fools’ video we saw a few weeks ago). Secondly, there’s a spot focused on the G4’s IPS Quantum display, and lastly there’s an ad showing off its F1.8 aperture lens.
The Knowledge Graph is a controversial—but now fundamental—part of using Google, and for most casual browsers of the web, it’s nothing but an added convenience. It already does a great job of figuring out which pieces of information are most important and accurate, and gives them to you directly within the Google search page—there’s no need to go digging through countless results to find what you want. I myself even find it useful very often, usually when I’m searching for specific facts. Something like “When was George Washington born?” is a great example.
But I’m also wary of how intelligent it has gotten in recent years, and how much more integral to the Google experience it is becoming. Not only is Google pulling content from crowd-sourced Wikipedia articles, it is now getting smart enough to pull some of the content I’ve written on this website. Knowledge Graph has been known to bring death to many pages hosting all kinds of content, with lyrics websites being the perfect example. But what happens when Knowledge Graph and its Quick Answer box are so smart that you don’t need to browse the web at all?
Google has today started sending out a new round of invites for the “Contributor by Google” program it announced in November of last year. The service, which removes AdSense ads from your daily browsing for the price of a $2-10 monthly subscription, also saw some notable changes from when it was first shown to the world. Google has now detailed new tiers which will be available to those who have been invited to try out the expanded program…
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is currently in talks to allow advertisers to target ads towards existing customers in search results. According to the report, Google has approached advertisers with the idea of them sharing customer information that Google would then use to target the ads.
Google today has announced that it is introducing a way to automatically convert Adobe Flash-based ads to HTML5. Google says that eligible Flash ad campaigns, both existing and new, will automatically be converted to HTML5 when uploaded through AdWords, AdWords Editor, and a variety of third-party tools.
Google has updated several online security features to help protect users from malicious sites and content. Chrome has gained new warnings about sites that attempt to fool users into downloading unwanted software, providing an option to go back to the previous page and avoid these types of sites.
Search has been updated to make it harder for those sites to show up in results, and Google has started disabling ads that link to them. All of these moves continue Google’s recent push to enhance security on its products. The company recently helped improve security by providing users an incentive to enable two-factor authentication.
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Google along with other tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Taboola, have reportedly reached a deal with AdBlock Plus to prevent the service from blocking ads on their websites. Financial Times reports: Expand
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Microsoft’s sleazy and highly publicized Scroogled ad campaign has been its primary marketing effort against Google for two years now, but it appears that the program is finally dead. Speculation began to arise last year that Microsoft was slowly killing the controversial ad campaign after corporate restructuring.
Today, Winbeta noticed that the Scroogled website is no longer live, and instead redirects to a new “Why Microsoft” page. The Scroogled page had been live up until very recently, but without much publicity from Microsoft. The death of the Scroogled webpage also comes with no comment from Microsoft, who appears to want to act like it never happened in the first place.
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Lightbox – the scalable multimedia ads that Google first introduced to the desktop back in 2012 and finally brought to mobile devices in September of this year – are now available to all AdWords advertisers globally.
The Lightbox format allows advertisers to quickly and easily combine existing video, images and maps in an HTML5 ad that will scale correctly for all standard ad sizes and devices. Hovering over the ad expands them to full-size no matter what the device … Expand
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The Apple TV today received a brand new YouTube app, bringing it up to speed and largely mirroring the experience available on other set-top boxes, with new predictive search and recommendations. The previous app felt like something built by the Apple developers internally, whereas this new app seems to be predominantly designed by Google … with rich YouTube branding throughout.
Google has uploaded four new Android ads to its YouTube channel today, featuring more cute animated Android characters than you can probably handle. The ads span all of Google’s new Android products, including the new line of Nexus devices as well as Android Wear. The ads, named Scary Movie, Garage Band, Break Room, and Slightly Longer Road Trip, respectively, have hit YouTube on a day that we expect could be very big for Android. (Hint: Lollipop is probably going to start rolling out to some Nexus devices.)
http://youtu.be/fZOW0M4euyg
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Today, Google announced a new product search tool for its AdSense for Shopping platform that helps retailers monetize their websites. Walmart.com is among the early participants in the fairly new program, which displays sponsored ads across the discount mega-chain’s site that are relevant to a visitor’s product search results.
Android Wear is definitely getting a lot of attention over in Mountain View, and the company behind what has easily become the current top-dog smartwatch platform is now trying to make it even more clear why you need Android on your wrist. The LG G Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Gear are already out and making waves in the industry, and with the Moto 360 not far off—and presumably the competition as well–it seems as if Google is now ready to make sure you’re aware of all the great things Wear can do for you.
