Archive for February, 2006

We are happy to announce the re-release of API Versioning and the AdWords API Version 3 (V3).

And… since we had an extra two weeks of development time, we were able to include the AdWords Keyword Tool.

So to recap…

Version 3 includes support for our new Content Bidding functionality. For background information on the Content Bidding feature, please see our earlier post entitled “Exposing Content Bidding via the API in January”.

In addition, we have exposed the AdWords Keyword Tool via a new KeywordToolService.

Finally, the campaignNegativeKeywords field is deprecated. Please use setCampaignNegativeCriteria and getCampaignNegativeCriteria requests in CriterionService instead.

Per our earlier stated policy, V2 will be supported for one month from today, at which time it will be turned off. Therefore, please make sure that you upgrade your code to v3 before March 27, 2006.

For technical details about V3, please review the Release Notes section of the Developer’s Guide.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

Striving to make your Monday more entertaining with what's new on Google Video:

Two classics from the HBO/Cinemax comedy anthology series, "Likely Stories" will likely tickle your funny bone.

Continue laughing with comedy from writer/actor Paul Wagner.

Got some old 3D glasses lying around? Try them on with "3D Experience Logo - Red/Cyan 3D".

Or perhaps you've got an old deck of cards you'd like to play with. Learn some tips and tricks, or just sit back and watch a good game of Poker, with videos from the "Players Network".

Market research tell us that Armani and Gucci are the world's most drooled-over brands...

eCPM is a bit of industry shorthand that seems here to stay. You've seen it listed in your AdSense reports; it means, "effective cost per thousand impressions." So how is eCPM calculated, you ask?



eCPM is calculated by dividing total earnings by total number of impressions in thousands. It is a great performance measure for your various ad units, so when experimenting, you can use eCPM to compare your results.



But what if your site doesn't receive enough impressions to have a large sample size? Even for smaller sites, eCPM can be a useful statistic to track ad performance.

For example, let's imagine we have two custom channels named 'Blue Skyscrapers' and 'Red Rectangles', respectively, which reflect the types of ad formats we're testing on our site. During our test, the 'Blue Skyscrapers' channel receives 370 page impressions and $1.48 in total earnings. The 'Red Rectangles' channel receives 187 page impressions and $0.97 in earnings over the same period. To make these figures more comparable we calculate eCPM -- i.e., the estimated earnings for every 1,000 impressions received. We find that eCPM for blue skyscrapers is $4.00 while the eCPM for red rectangles is $5.18.

This means if we received 1,000 impressions of blue skyscrapers, we would earn roughly $4.00. But for 1,000 impressions of red rectangles, we would earn about $5.18. Therefore, assuming that our sample size is large enough, it is to our advantage to switch to red rectangles throughout our site because they generate more revenue per impression.

Posted by Theresa Chow - AdSense Publisher Support

We noticed that a lot of you are looking for movies currently in theaters.  To help get you the info you want faster, we recently launched an instant answer for movie showtimes!

We worked with our buddies in MSN Movies to bring you current showtimes for movies near you.  You can search for movie names or the theater down the way:

Movies: eight below, curious george
Theaters: landmark metro cinemas seattle, amc fenway 13 boston

You can also find movies by genre, rating and other movie related words.  Some examples:

loews action movies, movies omaha ne, children movies, imax movies new york, PG movies

Check it out and let us know what you think.  We’re listening.

Enjoy the show,
Jamie Buckley and the Instant Answers Team

Back when web directories were still cool, AOL had an effort to build their own based on the Dewey Decimal System. They had 60 contractors in Arizona typing in web urls and assigning DDC numbers to them. This didn't work....

Here's a tip from Ann-Lee, on the account management tools team:

This week, you may have noticed an Advanced Search link next to the search box on the Campaign Management page, as well as on the Tools page of your account. These new links bring you to our suite of account management tools, such as the Find and Edit Max CPCs tool. While we haven't changed the way you use these tools to make account-wide changes, we hope this makes searching your account easier and faster. So, if you need to find ad text across multiple campaigns or keywords that meet certain criteria such as number of clicks, average position, or clickthrough rate, these searches are now just a click away.

As always, check out our past posts to get a refresher on how to leverage these account management tools or to read up on our latest additions.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew