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>>: Go ahead and welcome Michael Johnson. Michael Johnson used to work
directly with me in the DPE group, and he recently abandoned us and moved to ad
SDK, and now he is an expert in the way that the ad SDK works. He's going to
share that with us today. So without further adieu, let's welcome Michael
Johnson. MJ.
>> Michael Johnson: How you guys doing? So expert is stretching it, because
we're learning something new every day, because people are pushing the limits
on what our Ad SDK can do today so we're constantly making changes and getting
feedback. So feedback is welcomed.
So I kind of just want to talk about the Ad SDK. How many of you guys are
using it today? I know you are. How is it going for you so far? What are you
looking to get from today because you're here and you're using it, so I'm just
curious.
>>: My fill rate is really, really low.
if there are techniques.
So I wonder if it's an SDK thing so
>> Michael Johnson: Someone else in the back raised their hand that was using
the Ad SDK. What are you looking to get today?
>>: Sometimes I don't get any ads, the Bing or -- because I'm not seeing the
Bing, the default Bing that I used to see.
>> Michael Johnson: Okay. So we will talk about that. So let's just kind of
jump into. I got a couple demos to kind of just talk about some of the ad
experiences and talk about some of the sizes, because I didn't know where
people's skill sets were with Ad SDK, if people knew it. So it's kind of like
an introduction. And some of you I may have to go offline with.
So the reason we at Microsoft have invested in advertising is because the
industry is going to get to a $10 billion business. So we still have a lot of
work. We're new on Windows 8. Windows 8 came out in October. There are some
things we vice president implemented yet that we'll have on the road map to
kind of make our advertisement platform even better. Considering that Windows
8 is new, our advertisement SDK kind of came out with that. Although we
leveraged a lot of experience from Phone, we actually are looking to do a lot
of things with Windows 8, because Windows 8 will give us a lot more real
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estate, so we can create some unique experience.
those.
And I'll kind of show some of
It's easy to use. It's free, and it's a simple process to implement. And then
you can leverage our platform is what we would like you to do. There are other
platforms out there that you could use. If you already have relationships with
some of those platforms, you could use those on Windows 8. We actually deliver
better experiences and we still got work to do on those, and we are working on
that.
One Advertisement SDK, I'm sure you guys this, you can [indiscernible] -- what
we do that I think is unique, and kind of going to answer some of your
questions, we try to work with top 500 advertisers, because we want to work
with quality advertisement, which, if we deliver you quality advertisement,
we're delivering you higher CPMs per impressions.
We don't want to see, like, hey, go lose weight, dieting pills or come here
and, you know get your loss weight pills and stuff like that. So we try to
stick with like name brands, high quality advertisement. The other thing we
work on is we don't want the user to leave your apps. So we try to create
immersive, engage advertisement experience that keeps the user within your app.
So when they actually click through and engage on an advertisement, they're
still in your app and can use the back button to go back to your app, which
helps with your impression level and also helps with engagement. And then we
try to make them immersive, great experiences.
The other one is quickly enable. There's a few lines of code to add, for our
HTML or XAML. So the way it works is once you decide, say, I'm going to
monetize my advertisement or monetize using advertising, you actually go to
download the SDK. You can use some of the test codes that we have to kind of
test your app out. You go to pub center, sign up. And it's really that easy
to implement and then you publish it to the store and start tracking your
information.
How we pay, because there's a lot of different ways people pay. They pay based
on click-throughs right now, we're doing it just per impression. So the way to
think of that is a thousand compressions. So if we go work a deal with our
advertiser and you say I'm going to pay two dollars, ten dollars or 20 dollars
for every thousand impressions, if a user is creating a thousand impressions,
you'll get ten dollars or two dollars, whatever that impression is. We're not
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playing for click-throughs right now.
So we'll talk about how that works when you actually -- impressions show up on
the screen.
Now, the key thing is, and I thought I looked at your app. You didn't have a
rating. Because of child online protective privacy act, we don't advertise in
apps if you have your apps under 12. So we can't do advertisement. So it has
to be 12-plus for your apps to use our advertisement platform.
And then there's the 70 percent/30 percent split. So based on the net profit
that you make from advertisement, you, the developer, get 70 percent, we get 30
percent. And, of course, if you go over 25,000, that changes to where you get
80 percent, we get 20 percent. And it is net, not gross.
>>: So I set my app at seven plus, right, but I'm seeing ads.
extra?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
So let's take that one offline.
So are those
You shouldn't see ads.
Okay.
>> Michael Johnson: Because what it goes to the store, your rating and
everything should block you from seeing ads. So we should talk about that if
you're seeing ads in your app, because you shouldn't. Or you're actually
getting numbers and dollar signs in pub center?
>>:
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson:
Okay.
Thank you.
I'll say that's a bug.
>>: I am new to the platform [indiscernible] like impressions.
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson: So we're going to talk about that later. So let me just
be clear. This is strictly going to be a Windows 8 advertisement. Windows 8
Ad SDK is different from Windows Phone Ad SDK. I only focus on Windows 8 Ad
SDK. If you have questions about the Windows Phone Ad SDK, I will kind of help
you, but I don't want to go down that path because it is different.
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We deliver different experiences, and the whole process is a little bit
different. The problem is we did take a lot of things they did, like we
integrated everything in the pub center. So there's going to probably be some
changes coming to where you can actually see the differences between Windows
Phone and Windows 8 clearer in pub center.
>>:
Which one does the split change from 70/30?
>> Michael Johnson: Once you hit $25,000 in revenue. So some of the things to
consider for your advertisement is what I'm talking about is downloading Ad
SDK, consideration for integrating Ad SDK into your app so it's not intrusive.
Add a few lines of code, signing in the pub center, registering in the pub
center, and then sending your ad units to Sal.
So how many -- so there's only three or four people. How many people actually
have apps already published to the store? And those who are not using Ad SDK,
how are you currently monetizing your app in the store?
>>:
Paid.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
Paid app.
>> Michael Johnson:
converting to paid?
>>:
Paid?
So are you doing advertisement first on the free and then
Two apps.
>> Michael Johnson:
else?
So you have two apps, one advertised and one paid?
Anyone
>>: If you want to remove the ads on the side, you click on that, you got to
pay.
>> Michael Johnson: So it's free advertisement and you make them pay if they
want to remove advertisement? Do they get any additional functionality?
>>:
No.
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>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
It's just removing advertisement.
That's literally all, remove ads.
About ten percent of the people do.
>> Michael Johnson: Okay. I think I saw a hand over here. All right. So
what we're going to talk about is how easy it is to implement the Ad SDK, the
different ad unit sizes. What we try to do -- I hate PowerPoint, but I know I
have to. So here's the ad unit sizes. When you go into pub center, you're
going to be seven ad unit sizes. What we try to do is there's this
organization called IAB, and they have standards for ad unit sizes. So you
will see some of these similar sizes whether you go and do stuff on Apple IOS,
if you do stuff on Android, and things like that. So there's IAB standards,
and so the good thing is a lot of that is IAB standards fit very well within
the Windows 8 design element, like the grid. So we have the 250 by 250, we
have the 300 by 250. We even have some banners that get lined up with your
margins.
So we tell you to think about your ad unit sizes. So I'm going to pause here,
because I don't want to spend too much time on the PowerPoint. I want to make
this interactive. How it works is each ad unit that you create is a placement
in your app. There's accommodation. The first thing you do when you go into
pub center -- I guess I'll stick to PowerPoint, because I forgot people are
watching and they're recording.
The additional size is 728 by 90. So when you're thinking about doing your
advertisement, that's what we want you to think about. We want you to think
about all the different ad sizes you have and then how to place in your app.
So I'm going to show a couple of examples of some of the ad experiences we do
and how they'll look within your app. All right. So this is a demo app that
we have to kind of just show the ad experiences. And as you can see here, we
have different ad experiences.
We have a full screen image, and I can use the 160 by 600 anchor. I can use
the 350 by 250, and that ad experience still can be served in an anchor size.
So from a developer or a design perspective, all I have to think about is
integrating real estate of your app using one of the ad anchor sizes. We take
care of all of the experiences, the advertisements that's going to get sent to
you. You as the designer/developer, you do not have to worry about that.
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>>:
Is this app in the store?
>> Michael Johnson: No, this is a -- actually, they was going to try to
publish it. Let me confirm if it actually went through or not. But it's not a
full -- it was just a demo app for us. But it would be great for you guys to
see. So, for example if I click here, this is the fabric man daily app. And
so when you think about this app, you can see here's the advertisement. It's
the banner 160 by 600. One of the things you will notice about the banner, it
kind of fits with the content. The margins and the content line up. It's not
out of place and it feels like it's part of the application versus
advertisement.
And so once again when I click on this advertisement, you can see the
silhouette behind. I guess you can kind of see it maybe. But you can see I
didn't really leave the app. I didn't go to a browser. I didn't open up some
Internet Explorer or Chrome browser. I stayed within the app. And I can see
the full screen image. So advertisers like this. Although we're not paying
for click-through, we have more interaction and there's more recall memory.
So what we mean by recall memory is can you
in the app, and we almost have a 98 percent
like that. The only time I leave this page
more at the bottom. It will then open up a
click the back button, I'm back at the app.
recall that advertisement you saw
recall percentage. So advertisers
is if I click here and go to learn
browser and take me to fort. If I
Now, we talked about impressions. So when I loaded this app, that's one
impression, because it's right on the screen. So an impression happens, so if
I had a grid and I was scrolling and panning left to right, when it's 60
percent on the screen, it's counted as an impression. So like I left the app
and I clicked through the advertisement. When I went back out and I went back,
that's going to be another impression.
Questions on that? So that's just one of the experiences. The other one is we
have like full screen video again. We have the 250 by 250 anchor. If I click,
you can see again the fabric man's daily and you can see how I integrated it
within my grid and I just kind of pretty much made an interstitial within the
content of the grid. You can see it's the cobra. So once I click again, you
get the different experience and I have the full screen video.
>>:
[inaudible].
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>> Michael Johnson: So clicking isn't the impression. Me going to the app is
the impression. So like right now, I'm in the app and I click back, that's
going to count as another impression. So again, this is just if I scrolled
over and I scrolled back, it will count as an impression. So it's much the
impression I want.
Think of it this way. Someone playing the game, and we're going to get into
this. Someone playing a game, and they just sitting on your screen like
solitaire and you have an advertisement at the bottom, peoples like okay, well,
they're not moving. They're not doing anything. How does it count as an
impression? We have what we call ad refresh, and so we'll talk about that, how
the ad refresh works, and that's how if you just sitting in a game, so games
are the ones that are very successful, because you get someone just in your app
playing in your app, and that -- you have the advertisement just sitting
somewhere, as long as they're playing in your game, you're going to have
impressions counted.
So if I just sat on the screen, I'd be counting impressions, and that's because
of the ad refresh, and we'll talk about that. Again, we don't pay for
click-through yet. It's strictly impressions.
So those are some of the experiences we work on. So we have an intern on a
team that takes a lot of these creatives to create these advertising
experiences. The other one we have, like, full-screen and video. So right
here, you can see again how I just took one of the ad units and integrated it
into my content. It's not distracting the user. It just flows with the
content. And when they click on it, you get one of those ad experience.
This one actually been acting funny. Oh, it worked that time. So you can see
I got the picture and the video. And so again, these are experiences that
you're not going to get with some of the other advertisement. What will
typically get from them is a banner, and you click, and it opens up a browser
like this. So now, I'm out of the app. And I can go back and now I'm back
into my regular app.
I'm not going to click through all the experiences. Most of you guys probably
seen the hot spot ones, because that's one of our test out ones. I actually
like this one so I'll show the ad rotator real quick. So it's almost like an
app within an app, and that's what our ad experiences are. So that's what's so
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unique about that.
So when you think about an advertiser and you think about what an advertiser is
thinking, because there's two teams that we have. So my job is to work with
you guys to implement that real estate. We have a sales team, a national
worldwide sales team that go try to partner with Ford, Nissan, I'm going to say
even Adobe, whoever else want to do advertisement, because you guys are the
supply and we say we have all these apps that you can actually put
advertisement in. We go the advertisers. They're the ones that demand certain
ad anchors, certain type of apps, certain categories because of what they want.
So, for example, like you're going to work with Rolex, what do you think
they're going to advertise in? They don't want to advertise in your game.
They're going to advertise into their target audience come will probably be
Wall Street Journal, things like that, right?
So that's what we work with, and that's how we work with different advertisers
to try to sell your space in your app. Questions on that?
>>:
Do you sell specific apps?
>> Michael Johnson: No, we do not sell specific apps. So I'm not on the sales
side so I can't speak for them. I was just kind of trying to tell you how
CPMs, how someone decide hey, I'm going to buy this advertisement elective
campaign, but I can tell you they don't sell specific apps.
>>: Is there any kind of statistics or, like, what is the best app to use to
get the highest seek out within the same pixel size. So if you have 250 by
250, does it just vary based on the market at the time if the image is getting
better or a full-screen image or a video? Are they all taking the same size?
Is there a way of telling which is going to be the best CPM rate or are we
going to run into fill rate issues where it might be better to actually have
three different ads and have your app change them out periodically, like every
half hour, hour change to ad type on that space there. Would that be better or
not effective?
>> Michael Johnson: I'm going to try to restate that to try to break it up,
because you asked like five different questions. Since we're recorded, I want
to make sure that I answer it.
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So the first one that I heard is, and not ad, is ad anchors. So again, you
don't control the ad, you control the real estate. So the first question was
about placement and choosing the right ad unit size. So when you go into pub
center, you have seven, eight different ad unit sizes. So his question is
like, do we have data that say the 160 by 600 is going to give me better CPM
versus the 300 by 250. Correct? That's the first question.
I would say it's kind of hard to say, because advertisers are kind of fickle
what they want, right. Most people -- considering how we deliver our
experiences, so if you notice, if I stay in this app, you can see here I have
the carousel at 160 by 600, and I also have just the image by the full screen
image, 160 by 600, and you can see here I have the full screen video at a 250
by 250. There's nothing stopping me from serving that same full screen video
in the 160 by 600. So the ad experiences that they're paying for, we could
literally serve between all of the ad anchors.
So there's kind of a balance of saying what they're willing to pay for. Based
on IAB standards -- and IAB standards go across all kind of advertisement.
Online, web, IOS and things like that. So based on a lot of those Bing, based
on that, advertisers do have like a consistent way of saying we're going to
purchase this. So that's why you'll see some ad experiences show up in the 250
by 250 and some show up in 300 by 250, because what they're typically buying in
the past, right.
So that's a mind set that we kind of got to change, because what we have done,
we have changed how advertisement work, right? Typically, it's just not your
text banner click to advertisement. We're actually giving you unique
experiences. So that's going to take us time to kind of ramp that up, and we
haven't ramped to the 500 advertisers, so we still got to do some of those
things.
The second question you asked -- so does that kind of answer it? The second
question, I think I kind of got lost, but the second question was about can you
place a lot of different ad units in your app and kind of rotate them out.
>>:
Like unload one and load another one.
>> Michael Johnson: So we'll talk about that. The answer is yes, but we'll
talk about that, because I'll show you some of the things you can capture,
especially in the no-ad scenario and fill rates issues, because it's hard to
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get 100 percent fill rate. So the chances of having a no ad will happen. Or
if you have an offline experience where your app isn't connected, you won't get
an ad. So we'll kind of talk about that. So hold that thought.
So since you brought that up, though, I do want to show, like, I got the 250 by
125 here, where I can do the anchor ads. As you can see here, it fits in here.
If I click it, I get the pop-out experiences. So again, I can have different
things in the 250 by 150.
If you use one of the test codes, you can see this same type of experience is
in a 300 by 250, and also in I think a 160 by 600. So that kind of helps that.
I think you had a third question.
>>: Generally, image-only ads, is it generally that the larger ads are going
to give a higher CPM, or does it vary? Because my experience was very varied.
Like one day the large banner ad would be getting more than the 250 by 250.
And then the next day, the 250 by 250 was getting more.
>> Michael Johnson: So I won't say it's based on size. I'd say it was based
on creative and experiences. So you can see, like, me being immersed in an ad
rotator experience, advertisers are going to pay more for that, because it's
more creative.
For me to just take an image and put it together, that's cheap for them to do.
So they're not going pay high CPM for that. For me to do one of these
experiences to where if I go back, I'll just show you this one. For me to do
this here experience, the carousel, they had to take a lot of their digital
image and then really create a carousel. This is different than just an image,
right. And so I got pictures and I have video within this advertisement. So
this is definitely at a higher CPM than just your banner ads. Whether your
banner ad was like a 700 by 700 or whatever size versus this, this is higher
CPM.
>>: The size generally just kind of depends on what the market's at the time,
but the more immersive ad styles that have videos and full screen images, those
generally do give a higher CPM than the straight image ads, then?
>> Michael Johnson:
definitely, yes.
Yes.
Than the ones that just dump you off to the well,
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>>:
So can I control what type of ad I get?
>> Michael Johnson: No. You cannot. If we could do that, we'd all be
millionaires right now. Let's be honest.
>>: Say you have a YouTube ad and I don't want to have -- like I would like to
have video ads because it's a video app. So how do I control that? My
preference is to get video ads.
>> Michael Johnson: With our Ad SDK, you can't. So let me just restate your
question just to make sure. So you want to -- that's two different things so
there's ad unit sizes. So I want you to think of like an apartment building,
right? You're going to get this three bedroom apartment, right. So I'm the
guy who owns the building. I'm giving you a three bedroom apartment, that's
empty. That's what you're giving us. You're giving us an empty space.
Whatever size you chose.
Now, if I'm an advertiser and I say I want advertising ad, we're going to serve
up those experiences, whether it's the video and picture experience or if it's
a full screen image or if it's the rotator or the hot spot that dumps you off
and have you purchase stuff through e-commerce, we're going to control what we
send you. Because it's the advertiser who is paying us to give them so many
impressions on whatever that campaign is that they're running.
Now if you step outside of the box and you say, okay, I'm going to use
Microsoft Ad SDK. I'm going to use, say, Ad Tech or, what is it, Ad Duplex or
something like that, where you can promote other people's apps. Then from that
perspective, what you control is which ad, and then you're going to render an
ad with. You don't control the experience within our Ad SDK, right.
Just like we're Googling everyone else, you're not going to really control
that, unless you got your own sales team and you're buying your own
advertisement, then you can serve whatever you want. So that's you doing first
party ad serving, meaning you are the first party. You're going out making
deals with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, and you're serving your own stuff.
But if you take that 250 by 250 and you have these relationships with all these
other ad providers, you could build logic in your app, but you got to think
about the user, and the user experience. But you could build lodge nick your
app. There's nothing stopping you to saying my first chair advertisement is
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going to be Microsoft Ad SDK. If I get to no ad, I'm going to reclaim that
space, either put content in it, or I'm going to put a static banner ad, or I'm
going to go to some other ad network and bring another one in, right? So that
you control. Does that make sense? Okay.
Any other questions?
All right. So let's talk about design considerations. We have dos and don'ts.
And so to your point, and this is where design come in handy, and when you
think about your user, you think about the overall experience of your app,
there's a couple things. You built the app, the first reason you built the
app, I'm assuming, to make money, right. You thought like, okay, this is
something that people are going to use and people are going to need.
In order for you to make money, there's a couple things that got to happen. No
matter which way you choose to monetize your app, you got to make sure it's a
great user experience, and you got to make sure your user is not offended or
your user is not -- they got to be impressed, and you want them continuously
using your app.
So when you think about advertisement, you need to have the same mindset. How
can I get great reviews and get a million people downloading it. The more
people downloading your app, the more impressions. I don't care if that
impression is 20 cents for CPM up to $50 per CPM. If you got one person,
you're not going to make any money. If you got a million people, 20 cents
start adding up. So you kind of got to think about that.
So some people get caught up in, well, my CPM low. Well, what's your download?
So when he brought up analytics, he was right on. How are people using your
apps so I encourage you to look at reviews, look at your analytics. And your
analytics is also going to tell you, the most critical thing, where to place
your ads, where are people spending the most time in your app. Because people
say, well, I'm not getting any money. Okay, where did you put your ad? If
your ad's over here and they never go in here, you're not going to get a lot of
impressions. But you got a million download but no impressions because where
you place your ad. So you got to think about that.
When you're thinking about all those things, we don't want you to lose the
quality that you put on your app. We don't want you to lose the design that
you put in your app. So we want you to think about those thinks. So if you
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know right out of the box that you're going to be doing advertisements to make
your money, we want you to think about that in the wire frame stage all the way
to building your app, how this is going to fit into my app. How do I think
users are going to be using my app. Analytics drive more of that after your
app is in. And that's going to take you to a V2 of kind of placing things
around, right.
So we want you to think about that. And like I said, we built a lot of things
for layouts. So when you think about advertisement, you can see again, we put
the flight app, and you can see how we lined it all up so everything actually
fits with my content. It's not like up above and then my content is down.
Everything is margined correctly, it's all sitting in together, and this is a
nice experience. Again, if I'm sitting here playing with this app, I'm getting
impressions as long as I'm sitting on this. It's not distracting from the
user, because you're not getting paid on click-throughs. So you don't have to
say user, I'm over here advertisement. We pay you based on impressions. So
you could keep the quality of your app and you can keep that experience and
still make money. So we want you to think about that, and foremost.
The other one, you can see here, most people say well, that's kind of
[indiscernible], but you can still see it's lined up evenly with the margins,
the edge, the left, the right, and so it's not -- again, it's not in the user
way. It's not really distracting from your content. It kind of feels like it
fits in. Although me personally, I still don't like this, but it's still a
good experience, versus other things.
So when you think about other ways, like this one. You can see the difference.
It's not lined up. It's just like I just thought about it at the end and I
just plopped the ad there, right. It doesn't fit with your content. So you
want to kind of think about those things.
I mean, those are simple things, but it makes a big deal about how people
review your app and how they look at your app. So use your real estate wisely.
You have a lot of real estate. We have a lot of different ad unit sizes. So
to your point of switching them out, because you can see the difference between
your little banner ad at the bottom versus a 300 by 250 versus a 160 by 600.
If you're trying to rotate those out, you actually going to be changing your
cop tent around, because you still want to make sure it fits and flows within
your content.
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>>: I was referring more to using this in-ad size but changing the type of ad,
going from an image to a video.
>> Michael Johnson:
You can't control that.
>>: Well, I know. But if you had a different ad unit for each one and then
you just remove one and add another.
>> Michael Johnson: All right. So great point. Let me just make sure I
understand it. So when you go create ad unit sizes, you have application and
then you have ad unit sizes. So you're saying, I'm going to go create five 300
by 250s, and they're all going to have different ad IDs. That may not change
your story. Because I'll tell you how -- what happens is it's going to be a
campaign running against that. So if it's a campaign running against 300 by
250 and you send your application ID and ad unit id to our service center
request back, you're going to get that ad.
Then if you say oh, well, I'm going to go change it, you may not get a
different experience. You may get the aim ad. But with that same ad unit,
I'll talk about how you can do the refresh to get your impressions up and also
make a call to get a different ad if a different ad is available. But you
don't control if it's a banner or text or image or ad rotator. We control
that.
>>: Make the ads with video or with full image, those are different types that
you select.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
So those are different ad experiences.
Yes.
>> Michael Johnson: You do not control those. So all you control, again, is a
size, your application ID and ad unit ID for that size. That's it. So it's
empty space right now. So like he's saying I get a no ad, and that means he
gets nothing, he still have that empty space there. We're not sending him
anything back.
>>:
But [indiscernible] but those are the on the text ones.
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>> Michael Johnson: That's only text. And the only reason we do that, so you
can see the difference. That's just text. So ad unit IDs, when you do it in
pub center and go live, it doesn't map to video. It doesn't map to full image.
It doesn't map to video and full image. So correct. The text was strictly for
development. So you can kind of see how users interact.
Because there's a lot of things that people are not doing. So like you can
suspend an ad, you can see if the ad is engaged. So that's why we have all the
different test modes also is not just oh, let me see how this look in my app,
but it's also to see if a user's in there watching the video, and I want him to
do something else like can I see if he's engaged in the app before I suspend
that ad and then have him do something else. So it's things like that. So
that's the other reason we have the test code so you can test all those
different scenarios. Because if it's just a full out image, the chances of you
saying oh, he's doing something in it, you can say I'm going to suspend that ad
and pull it down and have him go back to my app. Versus if he's watching a
video and he's in the middle of the video, you can see he's engaged, and then
you want to see when he's not engaged so you can take him out of the ad and put
him back in your app. So it's things like that.
So I can see how that's confusing. We should get some -- that's a great point.
We should get some clarification, documentation on that.
>>: I have a question. I still don't understand how we affect the CPM. I
mean, you pull up an ad, right. I mean, I as a developer have no say about
what CPM I'm going to get, right?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
That's correct.
You guys decide it, right?
>> Michael Johnson: So yes and no. So we decide based on what the advertisers
want. So the advertisers are going to come to us and say we want to run this
campaign. This is what we want to do. And that kind of decides CPM. Because
they're going to come back and say we want X number of impressions on this.
And so then we share that love across all of the apps out there. So let's just
take, for example, the Bing ad that you guys were saying.
So say we want to work with the Bing team. The Bing team says we want a
million impressions, and we're going to pay you X dollars. So that came out to
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be, say, two dollars per -- for CPM. So that's every thousand impressions.
That developer get two dollars. So but they only wanted to pay up to a
million. So once they hit that million, that campaign is done.
But if they got all that million with you for the two dollars, you do the math.
That's how much you get paid. After we do the split.
>>: So the thing this I'm confused on, because I'm seeing ads every day, but
the CPM seems to be changing every day. How does that come to play?
>> Michael Johnson: So there are thresholds that advertisers can set based on
impression levels, like a tier. So you could see CPM fluctuate based on -again, this is all on the sales side. I am not the sales side guy, and they
probably be shooting me for even talking about it. I'm more on, hey, Mr.
Developer, this is what you need to do and this is how we serve ads.
But when you try to figure out CPM, people look at it and look at different
pricing. It's also about impressions, ad unit sizes. A lot of those things
play in the mix, and then it's about what that advertiser want. So I don't
control CPM. We try to set the bar high, that's why we create experiences
versus a banner that you click and you go to a web page, right.
So that's kind of what we try to do. We try to influence great ad experiences
so those are the things that I work with our team on. We try to create all
these unique ad experiences. So what you got to think about is here's a good
way to think about it. There's a car dealership, right? There's Nissan,
Toyota, Audi, BMW, Mercedes.
Let's say there's Yugo. I don't think those exist anymore, but I couldn't
think of a lower grade car. What is a lower grade car now, like a Yugo? Are
you guys all familiar with the Yugo? Anyway, that was like old car that was
like $2,000, you could go buy, it was a little bucket thing, right?
So that's the ad experience you get today is a Yugo, because all it is is a
banner ad, you click on it, the user leaves your app and they go to a web
browser. Those are cheap. Those are cheap for anyone to create. I could go
create one and have a t-shirt or whatever and click and you come to my website.
That's cheap. You're going to get below a dollar CPM, period. It's going to
be cheap.
17
Now, when you talk about adding the ad rotator examples like I was showing you
with images, pictures and videos, that takes a lot more, because now I want
high quality resolution images. I want video. I want a full video. So you
can see the creative to go behind to make just an image versus the creative
that go behind to make that full experience.
So now you can see the CPMs are different. So that's kind of where we try to
go to advertisers and say look at the great experience we can create, and it's
a recall. So remember, I said it's the recall.
So when you think about people clicking on just the image and going to the
browser, how many people going to recall that advertisement? So good example,
if you look at Super Bowl, NBA, playoff games, the final four, all of those,
and you look at the advertisement that's going on during those games, those are
memorable advertisement that you're going to remember.
You're going to recall those. You're going to be telling those stories, right?
So that's what we're creating versus just a banner text ad, you click and go
away. You're like yeah, I think I went to the leg go site, I can't remember.
Versus oh, yeah. I had that great experience with Ford and I was able to see
the 3D image. That's what they pay for. That's where you get the higher CPMs.
So does that kind of help? But you have no control. I mean, yeah, you have no
control. Let me take that back. I take that back. Let's talk about that for
a second.
You have no control of the price setting. You have no control of what we send.
You have all the control in the world of how many impressions you get, how
people are using your app, how great your app is, and how they're engaging your
app. So if you're not successful, when you talked about analytics, that's your
friend. That tells you how people are using your app, that tells you why
people left your app, that tells you where they're spending all their time at
in your app. That's where you then go and say, hey, this is where I need to
place advertisement. This is where I need to make changes in my app. This is
where I need to add new features to my app and things like that.
So you kind of have a control, but you can't control what my baseline CPM is,
but you can kind of control, like, can I get more impressions, right? So I'm
going to get to that real quick. Any more questions on that piece?
>>:
When you set up an ad, you pick a category.
What is that used for?
18
>> Michael Johnson: That's mapped to the Windows store category. And so
people do buy based on categories. So like great question. So if you look at
the Windows store categories, if you go in the Windows store categories, these
categories put in place for a reason. So remember I gave the example for Rolex
watch? Rolex is not going to come to -- where is games? They're not going to
probably come to games and social. What's the chances of someone that's
playing a game that's going to buy a Rolex watch, right?
So that's kind of what the categories are for. So when you think about
categories, advertisers also know this. Advertisers know user base.
Advertisers know who's going to be in a cooking app versus who's going to be in
a game. Advertisers know who's going to be reading the Wall Street Journals
and things like that, or New York Times, who is going to be reading USA Today,
versus playing a game. So that's what the categories are for.
So again, it's also based on your app too, because your app, like, games,
there's only a certain type of advertisements that can go into games, versus
into business apps and versus into health and fitness and things like that. So
you kind of got to think about that also.
>>: [indiscernible] that goes into like if you call an app shopping but you
set up your ad for games, will it ->> Michael Johnson:
Question in the back.
>>: Can you filter within tag words? So like if you're getting an
entertainment apps, movies versus [indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
Yeah.
Can you, the developer, filter?
Can you target apps to people [indiscernible] or is that --
>> Michael Johnson: At this time, no. You, the developer, cannot target apps.
Keep in mind we own what we're sending you. And what we do is we say okay,
this is a movie app. So it's hard -- movie is probably a bad example, because
to be honest with you, all kind of advertisements show up in movies. If you
watch TV, you'll see all kind of advertisements. That's the number one
advertisement channel right there is putting in between shows. And they
advertise everything from sleeping pills to health pills to work out videos,
19
right?
But no ->>:
Like entertainment, you know.
Like chick flicks versus horror movies.
>> Michael Johnson: Yeah, so you from the developer, you cannot control, but
us from Microsoft, we can control.
>>: Question. Does the amount of download you have or the number of
impressions that you previously gotten affect your CPM rate at all?
>> Michael Johnson: So let's talk about CPM rate versus my overall amount of
money I get. CPM rate, no. Keep in mind, CPM rate again is all base driven by
advertisers.
>>: Right. But does it increase based on, like you had a million downloads so
the advertiser is going to give you more money.
>> Michael Johnson: No, because they're not going to know about you, the
individual. They're not going to know about you, the individual. So they're
not going to know that John Paul App is where all my impressions came from. We
do run of apps, meaning if you go -- like, for example, you could see the same
advertisement that you will see. He may see the same advertisement you'll see.
So we're not going to know -- the advertiser is not going to know. You'll
know, we'll know.
So when you say my CPM level, again, you have no control over that. That's a
set price. And it could change based on dates. So again, what you got to
think about is a campaign. When you run a campaign and say I'm going to run a
30-day campaign, you're going to -- I give you a bad example.
Let's remove advertisement, and I hate to use this as an example, but it's
true. What's this place that -- the people looking for people, the bad people.
Crime Stoppers, right? When Crime Stoppers first starts something, they'll
start out with a thousand dollars. If they didn't get anything in seven days,
they may increase it to two thousand dollars. If they don't get anything in
three weeks, they may increase it, right?
So the same thing from an advertising perspective.
They say, okay, this is a
20
shelf life. We're running this campaign for 30 days. If I don't get the
projections that I wanted in the first week, maybe I need to increase, like,
something so they'll come back and they may want to increase their reach. So
that's the same thing, right. So like somebody was asking why CPM changed a
day and stuff like that. It's because people set thresholds, right. That's
the change.
But again, the developer's not
just automated. Again, from a
need to think about is ad unit
unit sizes, and integrating it
that easy. And then just kind
the ones that control that. That's kind of all
developer perspective, the only thing that you
size, going to the pub center, creating your ad
in a nice way in your app. It's really just
of work it.
Placement, where you want to put it at, doing multiple levels if your app goes
deeper, putting your ads in multiple levels. Those are the things that you as
a developer designer want to think about. Wrapping your head around trying to
figure out, ooh, how much ECPM this one advertiser is going to place, do not
even go there. Because you don't control that.
I'm in the advertising group. I don't even know. That's a whole separate team
that's going out and selling. The thing that I try to tell you is the best way
is to try to think about your app is from analytics, once you got that data, I
can work with you and say, you should put an ad here. You should put an ad
here, you should put an ad here, you should put an ad here.
Based on what users going to be. Because the beautiful thing of it is, it's
impressions, not click-through. No user action is required except to be in
your app. And you want the highest traffic part of your app. And the best way
to do that is find out analytics, where people are in your app. That's really
what you can do as a developer. Does that help?
So any more questions about sales stuff, I'm going to not talk about them,
because I'm trying to help you as a developer to think about how you can use
what you can use. Because you can't control that. You know, you can't
control, Go Daddy is going to go buy this campaign like they do at the Super
Bowl, right? That's just the luck of the draw where people going to buy it.
Our sales team is trying to do that.
The other thing that we try to tell you, again, you can see again the Halo Ad
just fits with the content. It just blends in. So just try to think about how
21
to integrate different ad unit size, but the main point I want to bring home to
you, again, using the grid layout, you can see it's integrated into the
content.
So I showed you guys all different types of sizes and how they fit with the
content and how it just look like it just marries your content. It's flowing
with your content. It's not out of the way. It's not distracting the user.
And again, if I'm using this app, I'm still doing what I need to do. I'm
reading this, I'm scrolling the content, and I'm still getting the impression.
So you can control how successful you are in advertisement if you place your
ads in the right place, because it's all based on impressions. So that's the
one thing to think about.
>>:
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
[indiscernible] 60 percent.
[indiscernible] does that count?
>> Michael Johnson: Let me just make sure I understand. So if you have a -so first of all, I shouldn't have it on the loading screen. The store should
deny you. If I'm thinking of a loading screen, like my app first launching ->>:
Say you're trying to [indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson: Okay. So you're saying you got it, then you're dismissing
it and hiding it? That's a great question. Let me find out for you on that.
So give me your contact, because I'm not sure if there's a short time cycle of
like two second. But I know once it shows on the screen 60 percent, it counts
it. How fast that is, I would say it is counting because how it works -- don't
quote me on this.
How it works is you setting a space in your app, in your real estate, and that
space is marked with an application ID and an ad unit ID, and it's firing off
to our server and sending the request back. So at that point, it's counting as
an impression because it showed up on the screen to make that call.
So that round trip, if your ads show up, it should be counted. But the thing
you got to think about, did the trip complete. Like making your call and then
22
coming back two seconds may be really fast, then it may not be. Just departing
on where your user's at for internet connectivity enough for the ad to fully
render before you're dismissing it so you could be losing impressions.
So that's why I said don't quote me on it, but I'll try to find out.
>>: I think there's a confusion between [indiscernible] does the ad
impressions, because those are based on time.
>> Michael Johnson: We have something sometime.
talking about first [indiscernible].
>>:
He's
The first time you're saying is actually at this place --
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
That's refreshed.
That's correct.
That's displayed.
So if it's a 250 by 250, how many pixels is 60 --
>> Michael Johnson: 60 percent on the screen. Again, what he's saying -- so
when I'm scrolling, if I'm scrolling here so you can see how my ad is showing
up, if I got this on 60 percent, it's an impression. It's going to count. But
so he may be dismissing too quickly. Because he's suppressing his ad. He's
hiding his ad, versus waiting for it to load.
And then we'll talk about the differences of refresh, like on window phone, I
think when they first did it, I don't know what it is now, I think I was
talking to someone in the back where people was able to refresh, refresh,
refresh ->>:
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson: Yeah. We have some of that on Windows 8, so I'll talk
about the limitations. It's not the same as Windows Phone, and a lot of people
are making that mistake and they're getting in trouble.
>>:
An ad like this [indiscernible] left to right, like left?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
Yes.
You have an ad right here.
If there's another ad four pages over and
23
you're patting, does that count as another ->> Michael Johnson:
That's another impression, correct.
>>: So you technically have an ad here and an ad four columns over and both of
them show up on the screen at the same time, is that two impressions?
>> Michael Johnson: I'm going to address that for you in the demo.
through this, because how long do I go 'til?
>>:
You've got quite a bit of time.
Let me get
It's your call.
>> Michael Johnson: Let me get through this and I'll show you to answer your
question. But I want to get to this slide, because he hit on a good point. We
do frown against this. Where you're stacking ads. So you see how the banner
ad and then I have another ad? We do have people monitoring for that, and it
would be considered abuse. So I would tell you to read the usage policies and
the rights of how you can use that.
That's not the same as what you're saying. So I'm going to show what you're
saying. But that we do frown on. So we don't want you to have multiple ads
like that, because you can see it's not panning. It's just the screen, and now
it's kind of tacky. Your users are not going to be happy, because they're
going to be like why you throwing all these ads at me, right? And then it's
kind of out of place. It's just weird.
So don't do that, because you will get in trouble for that. The other one is,
again, another example, you can see how they have advertisement here,
advertisement here advertisement there. Don't stack ads. So we have a 160 by
600. Some people, their excuse is I stacked a 300 by 250 and the 300 by 250,
because I wanted you fit and mirror my content, that's stacking two ads. We
come back so I know we got a 160 by 600 that can do the same. And you can kind
of put a little buffer around the ad to kind of get a border so it fits with
your content.
So we don't buy that, right?
So don't overuse, oversaturate.
Now, let's talk about the no ad and the fill rate. So we -- I don't know any
network out there that has 100 percent fill rate. Again, one of our things is
we're on boarding a lot of advertisers and we're on boarding a lot of
24
developers. And Windows 8 is new.
trying to get caught up, right?
So we're kind of doing this little cycle of
Now, what we do try to tell people to do is there's two cases where you get no
ad, the one, your ad unit at that point is not running the campaign. So you
can reclaim that space and put some of your own content back or do something
else. We do not want just the empty space, and I'll show you an example -- I
shouldn't do this, but I am. I just hope he doesn't see this recording and
yell at me.
So you can see it's very obvious that that's supposed to be an ad. That's
supposed to be an ad. He has a bug in his app. It's not that there's no ad.
And I'm working with him to fix his bug in his app, right? But that's still
the same of not getting a no ad experience. You don't want that. That makes
your app look all misplaced and out of line. So kind of reclaim that space and
do something else with it.
Part of that is a fill rate issue, because it's not at 100 percent. So how
many of you guys are familiar with fill rate? Okay. So I'll hit on that, but
you had a question first.
>>:
That was the question.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
What is fill rate?
Yeah.
>> Michael Johnson: Okay. So it's pretty much based on, the best way to
explain is there's supply and there's demand, and they're at par and even.
Meaning everywhere that I have an ad request, I'm sending an advertisement, so
that's 100 percent fill rate. Meaning for every ad unit size that we have
available, for every developer out there that has that ad unit sizes in their
app, and for every one of those ad units that's making a call to us, we sending
successful ad return. We do not have 100 percent fill rate on certain ad units
and categories. That's what they're saying. So they get a no ad.
>>: [indiscernible] I'm not sure that it's because of the fill rate issue or
is there a bug in my [indiscernible] or is it because of a bug in the ad
[indiscernible].
25
>> Michael Johnson: We have in our codes, and I'll show you our different code
that you can look for and capture, and you should -- and I'll tell you about 98
percent of the people are not doing a lot of the things they could do to be
very efficient with leveraging the ad platform. One is the refresh. And I'll
talk about that. And then one is just error handling and reclaiming a space
and sending another call to the ad server and receiving an ad unit request,
things like that.
It's just different stuff. Now, bug and codes, you could test -- there's ways
to test that. This topic wasn't really on that, but you could use fiddler, and
it could tell you to request calls back and stuff. And the other one is just
doing an error code and you can kind of just see if it's bugging your code, but
I'll tell you, it's probably -- could be a combination of things.
One of them is network connections and things like that. Because I have people
who are trying to do creative things with like flip view controls and they're
trying to load an ad on flip view controls and stuff like that. If you think
about how the ad unit works, it's making the call back and forth. That means
they're literally trying to load stuff instantly. And so you could have issues
with that.
So there's a lot of best practices that we could talk about on that.
>>:
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson: That's correct. It should be enabled by default unless
someone go remove it. So whenever you create a Visual Studio project, that
should be enabled by default. That's the only capability that's always
checked. And you do need that.
>>:
[indiscernible] remove their ads.
>> Michael Johnson:
So you said is it possible to --
>>: The user could you [indiscernible] start folder, remove that from the XAML
file, still open it with no ad?
>>:
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson:
We'll table that one, because I'm not going to say with a
26
sophisticated user what they can and can't do, but just a regular user, no.
But people doing hacker stings, anything is possible. I'm not going to address
that. You have to kind of -- we can talk about that one offline.
>>: For about two weeks, I was not using the testing of IDs. How likely is it
that you guys are punishing me for that, for running from the same machine,
calling for ads for many hours.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
I fixed it.
In development?
Yeah.
Sorry.
>> Michael Johnson: That could be the case, because once -- what we do, we do
a lot of different things. We have the P support team, which is a huge support
team, free support for anyone that's having issues with advertisement. They do
monitor certain things like that, and they do look -- we do run reports that
talk about impressions. And then if we're going to look and we don't see that
app in the store then yes, stuff like that could happen to where they could
kind of suspend or stop calls from your application ID and stuff like that.
If you just having issues not getting ads now that it's in there, you could
send an email to P support and they can do research on that. That's a great
one. Please use the test ads, because you're taking away from yourself if your
ad is not public, you know, published. Because it's not going to be a tie-in
to like the store and all of that. So definitely use the test ads for
development purpose, and I'll talk about those a little bit.
So you can see again how there's no ad and how it just kind of makes your app
look not as great, but considering that you got the great tiles, you can say
hey, there's only three content things I pulled in anyway. But if you have
more that showed up, you can kind of see how it's different.
This one, don't try to say, ooh, let me put this ad in front of the user,
because you can kind of control some of the ads to kind of make them have focus
in front like in XAML and stuff. Don't do that. Because it's not all about
click-throughs. You don't have to put it in front of the user. Just having it
integrated into your app is an impression. So don't distract your user from
your app, because I'll tell you, I will uninstall your app real fast and I
guarantee you, a lot of other kids will, a lot of other people will.
27
If they go into your app thinking you they can do something else and you're
throwing this in front of them, they're going to get frustrated with you and
they're going to uninstall your app. You're going to get a bad review, and
that is going to stop your download. People are not going to do it. So you
have to think smart about it.
So let me just show a couple of things that I want to show. So let me just
show you how easy it is to do the Ad SDK. I know we say, like, two lines of
code is really it's two line of code. I just kind of broke it up. The first
thing that you're going to do is add the -- this is XAML. You're going to add
the reference to the name space. So I can use the name space for the Ad SDK
and I'm only doing this for people who haven't implemented it.
And then I'm going to make a call, again, here, if you see -- let me just make
this -- you can see here I'm just making a call to my application ID. By the
way, this is the test code. The test application ID, and the test ad unit ID
for a 250 by 250. And so you can do this. And that's literally, besides
making a reference. So if I go into reference and I hit ad reference, all I
have to do is check the Microsoft Ad SDK. That's it.
And the XAML, if you go to the tool box, you can literally just drag over Ad
SDK. Now -- go ahead.
>>:
How do you get the ad ID?
>> Michael Johnson: We'll talk about that. So this is test. But in pub
center, I'll show you how you go into pub center, you create a user, and you
create your application ID and you create the unit ID. And so when you go into
pub center, there's three things that you're going to have to think about, and
it's kind of weird, because if you don't specify a height and width, you won't
get an ad. You have to specify height and width. You have to specify the
application ID and the ad unit ID.
And I'll show you that in pub center. But when I run this, again, this is a
blank application, so I will share this with you. These are samples that we
have on the site. How easy that I just told you, and I know this is being
recorded, but I'm just going to try to be honest. How easy that I told you
that it was to do that with a couple of lines of code, really it is for the ad
implementation portion. It's literally making a reference to name space in
XAML and then me putting in to the grid and the tags and all of that the
28
application ID.
And so you can see here, it goes to a browser, that's just one of our test ads.
If I go and do this in HTML, again, it's going to be easy. I'm just going to
do the same thing. I'm going to make my JavaScript reference to it, and I'm
just going to do a deal tag. Same thing. I'm going to do the application ID,
ad unit id. Those are a lot of the codes that you add to actually implement
it.
Now, mind you, I did this in a blank app. A hundred percent of developers are
not going to have a blank app. So that was easy for me, and if I started a
blank app for XAML and go to toolbar, I can just drag it over. It will make
the reference for me. It will give me a test ID, an application ID, and then I
can replace that, right? But in 80 percent of the people not going to end up
with a blank app. So you got to think about how do I actually integrate in my
content. How do I add this like in my grid so if I'm doing XAML, how do I put
this in my HTML if I'm doing tags and things like that.
So you've got to think about that. So I know we say it's very easy, but in all
reality, it is. But it depends on how complicated your application is. So
I'll show you another sample. Let me just make sure I don't close the wrong
one. So this example, actually, let me just show another one before I go
there.
So I did this in HTML 5. So you see here, as auto refresh enables equals true.
So this is where I can control, on ad refresh, I'm making a call saying my ad
refresh and I'm logging it. So I'm going to show you that. So let's talk
about the refresh. Auto refresh enable equals true, that means it's going to
auto refresh. That means we're going to automatically control it. And that's
going to happen every minute. So every 60 seconds, we're going to make an
attempt to refresh your ad.
So let me just run this. So you can see here, I have auto refresh enabled.
You can see my refresh count and so I'll just kind of wait for 60 seconds. But
that's a new impression. So every time it refreshes, so just remember I was
telling you I'm playing a game. So just imagine I'm playing a game here. It's
this black game, trying to find something on the screen. And I can't find it.
So imagine if you have something, you tell a kid to find something on a screen,
how long they're going to be looking, like where's Waldo and they're just
29
looking and looking. There's an app idea, wow. So as long as they're sitting
there, it's going to do an auto refresh, and that's going to be a new
impression.
So that's auto. So what do you guys think of that?
a lot of people are using, right?
All right.
So wow, that was a long 60 seconds.
That's pretty much with an
I hope that's working right.
>>: I'm guessing there's no way to change it from 60 seconds to, like, 30
seconds.
>> Michael Johnson: Oh, there is too. Holy cow. I thought I talked longer
than that. So any questions so far, besides if we could change it? All right.
So that was 60 seconds. So it was enabled to true so I'm just going to check
this to set it to false. Now I can actually do a refresh every 30 seconds.
And people say wow. So now instead of getting one impression in a minute, I
can get two. No, you can't do two seconds. No, you can't do ten seconds like
you do on the phone. We have 30 seconds.
>>:
It doesn't help.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
It doesn't help?
Doing two seconds refresh.
>> Michael Johnson: Oh, yeah. Good. So I think -- let me see if that was 30
seconds. Here, it wasn't 30 seconds, but you can see here, I'm clicking. Oh,
that was 30 seconds. So you can see here I'm clicking and it's telling me no,
no, no, it's not refreshing. So you cannot do it anymore than -- like I can't
do it in ten seconds, I can't do it in 20 seconds. I can do it in 30 seconds
so you see it refresh. So I give it a little more time and then I do a refresh
again and it goes to four.
>>:
We need to have our own timer for 30 seconds and refresh our status.
>> Michael Johnson: Yes, so you can go set as auto refresh enabled to false
and then you can kind of code and say call this 0 on ad refresh, because
there's an app on ad refresh and I'll show you guys those functions and events
30
that you can call, and you can be refreshing it.
Now, here's the beauty part of that. That's per ad unit ID. So if you've got
15 ads, you can refresh all 15, different time cycles, at 30 seconds. That's
not me refreshing all of them in one app. So that's each ad unit ID. So that
was probably about 30 seconds. So if I refresh, now it's four times. Right?
So that's one way of looking at it. And so you can see here, this is just one
ad unit ID, and I'm saying, of course, I have this [indiscernible], but I just
built that, I can show people because they didn't believe it. On ad refresh,
and I'm calling my ad refresh, so that kind of some of the ways that you can do
that.
Questions on that?
>>:
Yeah, so if you are not [indiscernible] can you just like force a refresh?
>> Michael Johnson: Yes. Only in 30 seconds. That's great. Let me address
him and I'll come to you. That works too, because a lot of people say okay, I
didn't get an ad that time so let me just issue a command and do a refresh, and
you probably come back on an ad. I can't tell you how that works on the back
end, but yeah.
>>:
Do you have to wait 30 second?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
You have to wait 30 seconds.
But what you can --
[indiscernible].
>> Michael Johnson: Let me try that on a no ad serve. I don't know if I ever
tried that. I would think it would, because you never received the ad, so it
never completed your request, so I think you could do a refresh.
>>:
[inaudible].
>> Michael Johnson: I don't know if you can spin it in a loop that much. But
I'm going to try that. I'll test that out. That's a great one. But you
should be able to submit a refresh to see if you get another ad. And now I
don't know if you can just keep refreshing it in the loop until you get one,
because you may say you're not getting one because there's no campaign too.
31
Right?
>>: So two questions. One, I heard in the latest version of the SDK, you
don't see ads when you're [indiscernible]; is that right when you're just
[indiscernible] or do you still get adds served to you?
>> Michael Johnson: I'm local. Do you mean if I'm not connected to the
internet? As long as I'm connected to the internet and I'm using the test ads,
I could.
>>: [indiscernible] what if you're using your own ad unit, you're not using
the test ads?
>> Michael Johnson: Okay. So you may have that problem. That's what he was
just talking about in his test environment, in his dev environment, he was
actually using what he created in pub center. So they may go in and see those
requests and they may suspend. So you may not get anything.
But it's best to do this because you're guaranteed to get an ad to see how it
works in your app. What you could also be running into when you're doing dev
work and using your actual pub center, you could also be experiencing no ad
scenario. So that's why we tell you to use the test ones too.
>>: I noticed that in the SDK documentation, it says that the normal refresh
rate for interval is 30 seconds. So if you're using auto refresh, it will be
30 seconds; is that right?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
Well, because then it says if the user's on a meter --
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
No, auto refresh is a minute.
It's a minute.
-- can be detected, then it will be a minute.
>> Michael Johnson: Yes. So let me clarify it. So that should be updated.
So if you're doing auto refresh, auto refresh is going to happen in a minute.
If you're on a meter network, it's still going to happen at a minute. If
you're doing manual refresh, you can choose whatever you want, 30 minutes and
greater. I meant, sorry, 30 seconds and greater.
32
If you're on a meter network, that 30-second rule is not going to apply. It's
still going to go to a minute, because on a meter network, it will a minute.
The only time you can go below a minute to 30 seconds is if you're manually
doing refresh.
So the other thing a lot of people do too, based on their app, they'll do a
longer refresh, because they're not really worried about impressions that way,
because they get enough impressions, so they may delay the refresh.
The other thing is some people do a refresh because if they suspend and then
they do a resume, they may shoot a refresh command too, depending on how they
trying to control their app and their user and stuff.
So like in your scenario of the game, instead of dismissing right away, you may
want to do a suspend and then a resume and stuff like that. So there's a lot
of different events and functions that you can use.
>>: Are you pretty much better off just using your own timer and putting it at
30 seconds to effectively double your impressions as long as they're not on a
metered -- because that's something I looked into and I read all that when I
made my app, but I stuck with the auto refresh because I wanted to be sure
everything was going to work.
But through testing, the timer was refreshing the app every 30 seconds so I
didn't have an issue. So you're just better off going that route? Is there
any down side to it?
>> Michael Johnson: Yes and no. There's down side. Just depends on your app.
It depends on what you're doing. One of the down sides is you miss a hit on
getting an ad, a no ad return. Could be higher, because you just constantly
just refreshing. But if it was me, because I'm building my app to make money,
I'm going to control my refresh.
When I do that at 30 seconds or a minute or two minutes or three minute, I
actually want to be in control based on how I want to control my user
experience, how I want to control my user navigating. So I'm going to try to
use all the functions there for resume, is the user engaged in my ad and all of
those things just so I can control the experience of the user and not get a
user bad experience.
33
So think about this. You saw our experiences so say if I was on your page and
I clicked it, and I opened up to the video and I'm just watching it. It may be
a video of someone talking and dancing. I don't know. Like the Jack Reacher
video. I'm engaged with that. But you don't check to see if I'm engaged and
do a refresh, it may just take the user out of there and the user go like whoa,
what happened, right? So you kind of got to think about your user base and if
you're going to do certain things, you may want to look at all of the
functionality. So like do I do -- if the user's engaged, maybe I don't do a
refresh. If the user's not engaged, I do a refresh, right?
So that's why it's kind of like a yes and no.
would want to control my refresh.
But I personally, I think I
>>: If you're [indiscernible] different pages, like similar apps and it's less
than 30 seconds, does your second page not get an ad for 30 seconds?
>> Michael Johnson: So keep in mind, my suggestion on that, I wouldn't even
worry about that. Here's why. If I'm going on different pages, I may want to
have different ad units. Here's why. You want to track where users are too,
right? So if I don't have analytics, and I'm on page one, and I'm using a 300
by 250 ad unit ID XY and Z, on page 2 I may still use a 300 by 250, but it's
going to be ABC ad unit. I can see which one is giving me the most
impressions. But if you just use the same ad unit ID in each one, you have no
idea where that user's at.
>>:
[inaudible].
>> Michael Johnson: Yes. So let me just show you this here. So this is the
default grid app. I didn't change anything. And you can see I integrated
[indiscernible] in it. So the question was, can I have more than one ad per
page when I scroll. So you can see here, if I scroll, now I'm kind of coming
in to two, and so now I literally have two impressions. Then I come and I got
another one. Come on.
And I keep scrolling so now I got another one coming up. And so now I got two.
But they're in groups. And so how this works is if you guys -- I'm sure all
you guys are familiar with one or the other, XAML or JavaScript on the grid
template and how they pull in data. So all I did was created a data template
selector in XAML and I'm switching between content and ad unit ID. And so I'm
34
kind of rotating.
So if you look here, I got one, two, then I took over three, and I moved three
down versus I put it at the end on this one. So I got one, two, three, four.
So you can do things like that. So in a grid template style, we're not going
to frown at you, because I may end up with 12 items in one group and my ad may
be somewhere in those 12 items right.
So you can kind of get away with having them show up more than on one page.
Now, to answer your question on drilling down, mind you, these are all the same
ad unit IDs, because these are all on my hub page. So I can say on my hub page
I got X impressions with my 250 by 250. Now, if I could drill down on my title
page, I have a different ad unit ID, because I also have a different ad unit
size.
And same thing, I chose the item collection and I inserted an ad in the item
collection.
>>:
[inaudible].
>> Michael Johnson: Oh, I just chose the same -- this is test so I just chose
the same ad test ID. I'm not using real ads. So the chances are it could be a
different ad or it could be the same ad. But I would say it would probably be
different ad more likely, because this is a different ad unit size versus the
other one, so they may have different advertisement campaigns running against
them, or it could be the same.
>>:
One page, I can have multiple ad units, and they can be --
>> Michael Johnson: No, no, no. So let's just clarify. Let's not use the
word paint. I don't want to use the word paint, because you get me in trouble
and you get in trouble. So that's what I stuck with the grid. So if I got a
group, group one, because I don't want to call that a page, because I'm
spanning, right, content. So I don't really want to call that a page.
So I'm going to say I got group one, group two, group three. So what I'm
saying is you can get away with putting it in groups because you're kind of
inter mixing ads within your content. A page is there. If you got more than
one, you're going to get spanked. They're going to say no.
35
But that's why I use -- I'm trying to just kind of politically say grids. But
so answer your question, on the first one, the hub page, if I go back to this,
yes, these are all the same ad unit IDs. Because what I did is -- and I'll
just show you. So what I did here is I have, in my standard -- so I literally
only have two ad unit IDs. One right here for my 250. And so these are all of
my -- on the hub page, the 250 by 250 that I was throwing up is all of the same
ad unit ID, because I created a template for it.
So I can kind of replace the grid template style, the item template control
that you have by default. So I can kind of interchange them, do a template
selector. And then for the other one I did the 500 by 130. And again, it's
the same ad unit ID. So I'm only using two ad unit IDs, but my ad is showing
up in multiple places.
So you can do that, or I could get very complicated and say, well, in this
group, I want this ad unit ID. In this one, I want this ad unit ID, and stuff
like this. But I didn't see a reason why just for this demo, right.
So just to make it really easy and simple, I created the two classes so you can
see here the grid view data template selector. So this allowed me to rotate
from the grid view, the hub, between my advertising 250 template and the
standard 250 template that comes by default with the grid application, and then
I created the second item view template selector so when I went into the items,
I created again the 500 by 130, and then I rotated between the default one that
you get with the grid. So that just made it easier for me to just have those
two ad IDs associated with it.
So that answer your question in the back about having more than one ad kind of
as I pan, correct? In the back?
>>: More or less. Just saying as long as it doesn't look like you're piling
them all on one screen?
>> Michael Johnson: Yeah, as long as I'm not stacking them. So what you can
do, to kind of address both of them, if I put an ad here and then an ad here,
try stacking them. But as you can see me, I'm just kind of panning, and I got
an ad in group three. I didn't put one in group two. But I could easily put
one in group two, but I kind of try to give it spacing because, again, I don't
want to over-advertise to my user. So if you know you're going to have 12
groups, try to do group one, group three, you know, do the odds or do the even.
36
I would say do the odds, because you want the first ad to show up in group one.
But you can see, I kind of did group three, then I did group four. I did five
and six. Just kind of show you that you can kind of change it up a little bit.
>>: If your ads are part of your game or something like that, is it okay to
load one on the screen? In other words, let's just say that those squares are
something, like a ball bounced on those. Could you have two 250 by 250
squares ->> Michael Johnson: No. So that would go back to, if I go back to the
PowerPoint, that would go back to this slide right -- like right here, where
you can just say this is my game, and now I got two ads. Even if I move the
banner way over here.
>>:
Even if it were actually part of the game.
>> Michael Johnson: What do you mean by part of the game? Because our ad is
not going to be part of the game, unless you're going to have it on a shirt of
some -- they're going to be very creative, and I would love to see you do that,
because I've been trying.
>>: Otherwise [indiscernible] squares, like you just happen -- but they're
filled with ads some of the time.
>> Michael Johnson: No, no. As a user, I'd stop playing your game right away.
I'll just be honest. I mean, so put it this way. Try it. If you get away
with it, more power to you. I mean, seriously. But what you got to think
about is is that something you want to play with, right.
I know we're all here to make money, but let's be real, and let's be realistic,
and let's try to be truthful to our user base, right. We don't want to
manipulate our user base. The last person you want to offend is your user
base, because when you think about a restaurant, it's the same thing in the
applications. If you go to a restaurant and it's bad and it's horrible in the
service, how do you think restaurants survive? Word of mouth. Reviews.
Ratings. People believe in that.
So if you do things in your app that a user is just going to really be annoyed
with, they're going to say it, and they're going to see ratings, and they're
37
going to see one star, one star, one star, two star, one star, one star, and
that's going to stop your download. Because the store itself is promoting your
app. So you kind of got to think about that.
So now, I don't know what your game look like, but I'm just trying to envision
it. So ->>:
It's just a for instance.
>> Michael Johnson: I would say my personal opinion, don't try to interact ads
into your game unless we can come up -- I'll give you a good example. Well,
let me hold that example. Any more questions? Let me get to something else,
because I do want to have, like, a level of conversation where we're not
recorded.
So let me -- we did that. So we talked about pub center. So let me show you
guys pub center. Oh, you know what? I'll show you guys something real cool,
real quick. I thought I had it on here. Maybe this is it. Nope, that's not
it. I'll come back to it. I can't remember which app it was in.
Oh, it's Chicago Tribune. So let me just show you how we think about
advertisement. So this is -- I think this is pretty cool. So we worked with
the Chicago Tribune to do this advertisement. So you can see here when I
scroll within the app, just notice how the black background changed so now I'm
on the Ford. So it's showing the leather up top. And then when I keep
scrolling, if you keep scrolling, you see how the light's kind of glaring over
the leather.
Then when I keep scrolling, you see how the background changes to where it's
matching into the advertisement of the Ford. That's what we think of
advertisement, right. We think about experiences. We think about how can we
create something that's very unique. So then when I keep going, you can see
how the green leaf come. And in the advertisement on the Ford dash, the leaf,
right? Those are advertisement experiences we create. That's a customer
experience that we worked with Ford and Chicago tribune on. But you can see
our creative thinking of trying to make your guys experiences great to make a
user have a recall, and they go I want to go back to the app to try to find the
advertisement experience. It's immersive, it's engaging.
So that's what we think about so when you say can I put two on the thing to
38
kind of do it, you kind of got to think about how do I keep my user engaged,
and how do I keep them great. And so that's something we're working on that
I'll kind of share with you when we're not online.
I was going to open up a browser. Sorry. You guys got to keep me focused,
because I can go off in multiple different areas. So let me just show you pub
center.
So you go to pub center, you can do one of two things. You can sign in with,
like, your Microsoft account. That's what I those to do, because I'm just
[indiscernible] trying to remember user passwords now because they're all over
the place. So I'm just going to sign in. And when you get to pub center, I
don't have -- this is like demo. I have zero money. I'm not making any money.
You guys need to go download my app. I don't have one. Just kidding.
I will have some, then you don't have to download so when you go to setup,
you'll see -- for those who are familiar, you can see I can do the my Windows
Phone application, and I can do the Windows 8 application. And you can see
here, I have two applications so I can actually go say register an application,
and so if I actually go in and register an application, I can choose -- I'm
just going to call it app X [indiscernible] and choose Windows 8 and I'm going
to hit save.
And you can see now, I have my application ID. So you're going to need to make
a note of your application ID. This is really how easy it is, right? Just
make a note of your application ID. So then if I go back and I go to ad units,
I can literally go to my Windows 8 applications, I going to say create an
application ad unit ID, and I can name it.
To me, the best thing to do is kind of come up with a naming convention so you
can kind of track your ad unit IDs to kind of fit where you are in your
application. So I always put the reference of the size in my ad unit ID, and
I'm also thinking about my placement. So in my example of the app I had on my
hub screen, I would sigh, like hub screen, 250 by 250, blah, blah, blah,
something.
That way, you just kind of know and you can track to see which one is
you the impression, because you just leave a generic name and say 250
you're going to be like, oh, which one is this. So kind of make sure
think. But for now, I'm going to say test ID. I say all that, and I
giving
by 250,
you
say test
39
ID, right?
And then you choose from one of your sizes. So all the sizes we're talking
about the 160 by 600, 250 by 125, 250 by 250, and then just remind me to say
something about an ad size when we're not recording.
So I'm just going to choose 300 by 250, and so here is where you can go and set
your tier one categories. It doesn't allow you to choose tier two. Maybe
something in the future. So I can choose education and it automatically
chooses all education. Or I can go into books and reference, and it will
choose all of the books and reference by default.
And then I just hit save.
>>:
What's the point of the green ones?
>> Michael Johnson: That's a great question. Oh, yeah. So yeah, great -- so
it's the tier twos. But I think eventually, you're going to be able to select
tier two. So then I just hit save and then I get my ad unit ID. And then you
go and put these in your apps, you come back and you see your report, see how
you're doing and see your money. So somebody asked about, I think it was you
asked about how you get the application ID and ad unit ID. Now, do not use
this in development. So if that was my actual app, these are things for
production.
So we have test codes that I'll share with you. I think I have links in here.
That's where you go use the test codes and we have a long list and you do the
same thing for testing and coding. Questions on pub center?
>>: Is there a way to see the rate on the website itself?
stats?
Do you have any
>> Michael Johnson: You can get stats. I don't have any, because this is just
demo. But you get all kinds of stats. You can see stats and metrics. I
actually been trying to get them to populate with dummy stuff, but they won't
do it yet so I'm still fighting with that. I'll come back to you, but I have
him next.
>>: Yes, I wanted to ask you that typically, in an application, I would have
one application ID and a couple of ad unit IDs, correct?
40
>> Michael Johnson: Correct. So your application ID is tied to that actual
application. So you're going to have one application ID, and you're going to
have an unlimited number of ad unit IDs. It just depends on how you want to do
your app.
>>: So the multiple ad IDs, I will likely have one ID per dimension of the ad?
Is that -- or for this [indiscernible] I may have multiple ad unit IDs?
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
So my question is this.
>> Michael Johnson:
>>:
Let me make sure I understand what you're saying.
So --
[indiscernible].
Okay.
For example, you just give the dimension and then we have the ad unit ID?
>> Michael Johnson: So let me just make sure. I'm going to try to paraphrase
it. And if you caught something different, help me. So what I'm hearing you
saying, so let me just give you the flow first. So here's what I'm hearing you
saying. When I go create an ad unit ID, I'm creating the size, and I'm
choosing the size, right.
That
unit
this
make
size, with that ad unit ID, once you create that size, you name the ad
ID, you choose your category, you'll get an ad unit ID right here. And
ad unit ID is going to be paired with that application ID. So let me just
sure I'm with you.
So I have three applications, right, in this demo account. If I took this ad
unit ID and went with another application, it's not going to work. So I got
it. I'm just trying to answer it too.
Now, with that ad unit ID, this ad unit ID is tied to, I think I chose 300 by
250. So that's my size. That's my category for this ad unit ID for that
application.
Now, if I go create another ad unit ID for this same application ID, it's going
to be a different ad unit ID. It could be the same size or a different size,
same category or a different category for that application.
41
>>: So my follow-up question to that is for the same dimension of the ad,
would there be cases where I would want to have two different ad unit IDs,
different categories?
>> Michael Johnson: Different categories, different places in your app. If
I'm on front page, back page. I mean, be honest with you, that's your choice.
But what you want to do is be smart. So okay. Let's say everything in my app,
whether it's on the first page, second page, third page, over here, over here,
whatever. All of the sizes, everything to make one of my ads fit into the
size, everything is a 300 by 250.
So all ad unit IDs that I'm going to create is going to be 300 by 250, right?
If your app is like a news app, with different categories, like sports or -what else does a news app have, finance, crime, or whatever. You may want to
have an ad unit for that section, for this section and for that section, right?
So you would create a separate ad unit ID, although it's the same size, you're
going to match that to a different category, and you're going to put that in
different placements within your app.
>>: The part that I don't understand is why wouldn't I want to use the same
unit ID, given the [indiscernible] is the same?
>> Michael Johnson: You can. What you do is you -- I'll be honest with you.
When you're on the freeway if I gave you a choice to get on the freeway and I
told you, you had to get somewhere in 30 minutes, and if you get in there 30
minutes, you're going to make a million dollars, versus if you don't get there
in 30 minutes. I'll say there's this one-lane freeway versus this five-lane
freeway. You're going to take the five-lane because you're going to be able to
maneuver traffic versus being stopped.
So now, think of that same concept with an ad unit ID. I got one ad unit ID,
I'm in one category, and I'm blasting this all over my app. Versus now
remember, I told you advertisers are doing things based on campaign. So we got
the Final Four happening now. We've got the NBA finals starting. We've got
baseball kicking off. So if your app had a sports section and you chose one ad
unit ID and it was on education, the chances of you getting great
advertisements is that. That's why you create different ad unit IDs in
different categories, because you're going to be trying to mirror your content
with what advertisers want to buy.
42
So in the sports section, I may want sports. In the education section, I may
want education. In health and fitness, I may want to mirror with health and
fitness. That's why.
>>: You also wouldn't be able to determine what happened in one area versus
another if they all shared the same ad unit ID. You went and looked in the pub
center, it would report that you had this many impressions. You wouldn't know
how many impressions were from this page and how many were on a different page
if you used the same one.
>> Michael Johnson:
app in the store.
>>:
Did you want to add something extra?
Because he got an
Before taking more questions, go ahead and map up the pub.
>> Michael Johnson: So let me just finish real fast. The other thing I'll
tell you guys to think about, we already did this, is we have this reference.
So someone's asking how do I know and how do I handle if I get a no ad. So you
be looking for like the code one and then you just do on error, do X, Y and Z
or whatever and replace content with this banner ad or static ad or in-house ad
or content, like network connection, client figuration and steps like that.
The other things we have is we have a lot of different methods. So we talked
about the refresh. There's also the suspend, and there's also, like, dispose
and things like that. So this is all on the site for you guys to check out. I
suggest using this, because they come in handy in certain situations. It all
depends on your application and how the user using your application.
And then we also have events so you saw the on-ad refresh and JavaScript. I
don't think I showed you error -- yeah, I did error handling when I was doing
ad refresh. I should have showed that. Then you see it's engaged, if the user
engaged in the ad and things like that.
Then you got properties, which we talked about. The auto refresh is enabled.
You talk about the ad unit ID, application ID is suspended. Longitude and
latitude, we didn't talk about, but it's there. And then just resources.
We have a new site which I will show. It's actually been redesigned, which I
think is beautiful. Let's get out of this. Let's do this here. And so that's
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the new site. For those guys who did phone and other stuff, you remember the
old red and white site? This is way better. We got the content laid out.
This is targeting only Windows 8, though. And people say why did you guys
break out? So we're still working with the phone team to try to do the same.
And it gives you a great, pretty much everything I covered. You can find a lot
of great information on here. So some of the experiences and stuff like that,
if you want to learn more, is on this site. Learning more about pub center is
on this site. The ad unit sizes, you can see here, all that's on the site, the
captivating ad experiences. So everything I was kind of showing you is kind of
publicly available.
So that's it for public. You guys got any questions on public, we can go now.
Other than that, we have 15, 20 minutes afterwards, offline.
>>:
[indiscernible].
>>: Let's go ahead and wrap up the public portion. Again, thank you very much
to MJ for coming and talking to us about the Ad SDK.
>> Michael Johnson:
Thank you, guys.