2019 Google Ad Manager releases archive

Manage inventory

Completed monitoring for transition to a first-price auction

When we transitioned to a first-price auction in October, a small percentage (3% or less) of Ad Exchange traffic continued to be governed by the second-price auction model to monitor performance. That monitoring is complete, and now all Ad Exchange traffic uses a first-price auction.

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New Data Transfer sample files are available for download

The sample Data Transfer files available for download in the Ad Manager help center have been updated. Three existing sample files have been refreshed, and six new sample files have been added. Learn more

Preparing for changes to mobile app impression counting

The new “Ad server provisional impressions” metric and the new “Mobile App SDK status” dimension have been introduced to help you prepare for upcoming changes to the counting methodology used for mobile app impressions. You can use the new metric and dimension to learn more about the impact of these changes on your network and whether you need to update the Google Mobile Ads SDK in your apps. Learn more

Other product or Help Center updates

Helping publishers comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a new data privacy law that applies to certain businesses which collect personal information from California residents. The new law goes into effect on January 1, 2020.

Google already offers data protection terms pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. We are now also offering service provider terms under the CCPA, which will supplement those existing data protection terms (revised to reflect the CCPA), effective January 1, 2020.

These service provider terms will be made available alongside new tools for partners to enable restricted data processing. Restricted data processing is intended to help partners prepare for CCPA. Some partners may decide to send a restricted data processing signal for users who click a CCPA opt-out link. Other partners may decide to enable restricted data processing for all users in California via a control in our products. Subject to the service provider terms, Google will act as your CCPA service provider with respect to data processed while restricted data processing is enabled. You can refer to this article for more information on restricted data processing and to determine whether restricted data processing meets your CCPA compliance needs. Please also refer to our Help Center articles for Ad Manager, AdMob, and AdSense for more information on enabling restricted data processing.

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Trafficking improvements

The trafficking experience has recently gone through some significant changes. We're actively listening to your feedback and continue to work hard to improve your experience. In the coming months, you can expect improvements to the targeting picker, creative bulk upload, calendar input, bulk actions, and more. Learn more

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New reporting experience for Ad Manager

We’ve designed an improved Ad Manager reporting experience, including several updates across the reporting user interface to streamline common processes. Reporting will gradually transition to this new experience over the coming month. Learn more

Improved compatibility for ad speed

Custom dimensions in the Ad speed report and the Ad speed Home dashboard are now compatible with metrics in the “Creative load time” and “Non-viewable reason” metric families. This increases the flexibility of ad speed reporting in Ad Manager and offers you greater insight into the latency across your network.

Forecast inventory

Forecasting for European Economic Area traffic

You can now more accurately forecast on line items by specifying how traffic is expected to be served to users in the European Economic Area (EEA). The “Limit EEA serving” dropdown, which already appears in line item settings, now also appears when you check inventory. Note that this forecasting launch has no impact on delivery.

To use the new forecasting setting:

1. In Ad Manager, navigate to Delivery  Orders or Delivery  Line items.
2. Next to “New order,” click Forecasting.
3. On the “Ad type” page, keep the default of Standard and click Select.
4. In the “Adjust Delivery” section, make a selection from the “Limit EEA serving” dropdown and complete your forecast.

Note that "Limit EEA serving" doesn’t always appear in forecasting settings:

• If you're using the new forecasting user interface: The "Limit EEA serving" setting appears if you have elected to "Limit line items" on the "EU user consent" page. The default setting is Don't serve for any EEA ad requests.
• If you revert to the previous forecasting user interface: You won't see the "Limit EEA serving" setting. However, if you have you have elected to "Limit line items" on the "EU user consent" page, the default setting, Don't serve for any EEA ad requests, will still be applied to the forecast.

Learn more about setting up forecasts and about the “Limit EEA serving” setting.

Other product news and updates

Market study by the UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA)

The UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is conducting a market study into online platforms and the digital advertising market in the UK. In connection with the market study, at the CMA's direction, Google is providing the CMA with a very small random sample of UK ad impression data covering the period June through September 2019 and representing less than $5,000 revenue in aggregate across all included impressions.

Manage inventory

New recommended GPT passback snippet

There is now a new recommended snippet for creating GPT passbacks. Use of definePassback() and defineOutOfPagePassback() is discouraged, since these functions behave synchronously and may be blocked by certain browsers. If you want to use a passback from a 3rd party ad server, use a standard Google Publisher Tag written into an iframe. Learn more

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COPPA controls for line items

Starting in November, a control that allows you to specify whether a line item is safe to serve on child-directed requests or not will be introduced. The "Child-directed ads" setting in Ad Manager helps you comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Learn more about COPPA

Although available in November, there's no impact on ad serving until January 2020. Become familiar now with this setting and COPPA to ensure your network is configured to comply with the law. Learn more

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Ad Exchange Data Transfer fields will be deprecated soon

Ad Exchange click metrics, creative conversion events, and view termination events will be removed from Ad Exchange Data Transfer files soon. Additionally, Programmatic Guaranteed and Preferred Deals Ad Manager metrics will no longer be available in Ad Exchange Data Transfer files. Ad Manager Data Transfer files aren’t affected by this change. Learn more about Ad Exchange Data Transfer

View experiment results in a new table format

We’ve introduced a new viewing format to help you understand your experiments better. You can now toggle between chart and table formats when reviewing experiment results. All values are rounded for both views.

Yield Partners dashboard generally available

Use the Yield Partners dashboard to evaluate the performance of Open Bidding Yield partners to make better informed decisions when structuring and targeting Yield groups. The Yield Partners dashboard is now generally available from the Home page in Ad Manager. Learn more

Changes to counting methodology for “Total code served count” and “Unfilled impressions” mediation metrics

As we continue to improve Ad Manager Reporting, we’ve increased the accuracy of some mediation metric counting methodologies. Due to increased precision, you may notice a decrease in “Total code served count” and “Mediation fill rate” and an increase in “Unfilled impressions” when compared to the previous methodologies.

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Simplified smaller ads

We’re starting to roll out the simplified process to serve creatives that are smaller than the original inventory size. Previously, you used the flexible sizes Ad Exchange rule type to determine how small of a creative you’d accept, or to opt out of smaller sizes altogether. Once ad slot contraction is activated for you, Google will automatically choose an appropriate range of smaller sizes that maximizes revenue while preserving user experience. The legacy flexible sizes rules and UI will be removed once ad slot contraction is activated. Learn more

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New Query Tool metrics

Four new metrics have been added to Ad Manager Query Tool. These include "Ad server tracked ads," "Ad server unfiltered tracked ads," "Ad server begin to render impressions," and "Ad server unfiltered begin to render impressions." Learn more

Manage inventory

Transition to a first-price auction

Ad Exchange traffic has transitioned in full to a first-price auction. Review Protections, URLs, and unified pricing rules according to the Guide for transition to first-price auction to ensure they're ready for the transition. Open Auction rules are no longer available. Learn more

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Target or exclude line items from serving to rewarded ad inventory

Some upcoming changes will affect how line items serve to rewarded ad inventory. Beginning October 9:

• You'll be able to target line items to serve to rewarded ad inventory only. This will be available under the new "Request format" targeting section on your video and display line items. Select Rewarded for that specific line item to serve to rewarded ad inventory only.
• Existing line items that serve HTML5 creatives will be updated to exclude rewarded ad inventory. Any new line items created after this date that you do not want to serve to rewarded ad inventory should explicitly exclude the rewarded request format. This is in preparation for an upcoming launch that will allow you to serve HTML5 creatives to your rewarded ad inventory.

Improving revenue on traffic without third party cookies

When third-party cookies are blocked or restricted, frequency-capping functionality is impacted. As a result, users may experience the same ad repeatedly, some advertisers may decide to exclude certain media altogether, and publishers may earn less revenue as a result.

Cookies named __gads are first-party cookies set on the publisher’s domain and are currently used by Google Ad Manager on behalf of the publisher as a fallback for frequency capping on reservation campaigns, when third-party cookies are not available. Going forward, these cookies may also be leveraged on behalf of the publisher to support buyer frequency-capping on programmatic traffic, when Google Ad Manager third-party cookies are not available, to further improve publisher revenue while still respecting the user's choice to opt out of cross-site tracking.

Please reach out to your account teams if you want to learn more about the controls associated with this feature.

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Expand ad slots to increase revenue

A new ad slot expansion Insights card is now available. Experiments indicate that full-width creatives on mobile can outperform creatives that are narrower than the width of the device. Learn more

Manage inventory

New Google Ad Manager trafficking experience

Starting this week, all Google Ad Manager 360 publishers begin to transition to the new trafficking experience. The new experience provides a more consistent workflow and better creative management. Learn more

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Update your Tagless Request base URL

Beginning September 15, 2019, your Tagless Requests will stop sending cookies correctly if you are still using the previous URL, http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/adx?. Please update the base URL to https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/adx? to ensure all requests are secure. Learn more

Other product and Help Center updates

Exchange Bidding is now Open Bidding

Exchange Bidding has been renamed Open Bidding, which aligns Ad Manager with AdMob’s Open Bidding. This name change will roll out gradually in the help center and in-product over the next few weeks. You can continue to work with the same exchanges and networks through the yield groups functionality while we improve the product and move to unified branding. Learn more

Manage inventory

Transition to a first-price auction

Starting September 10, Ad Exchange traffic starts to be transitioned in full to a first-price auction over the course of a few weeks. Ensure that you've set up Protections, URLs, and unified pricing rules according to the Guide for transition to first-price auction. Once traffic is transitioned, new Open Auction rules can no longer be created and existing ones will no longer be accessible. Learn more

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Target web and mobile app out-stream formats as well as in-stream video

With the recent launch of request platform targeting (RPT), you are now able to target web and mobile app out-stream formats in addition to in-stream video. Any line items created after September 4 without specific request platform targeting (including line items created via the API) are eligible to serve into web display and out-stream, app display and out-stream, and in-stream video. To minimize the impact of this change, all line items created before September 4th with empty RPT have been updated to target only in-stream video.

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Upcoming Ad Manager report type, dimension, and metric retirements

The existing Reach metrics aren’t compatible with the new version of the Reach report because it uses updated methodologies for aggregating data and calculating reach. The following Reach report metrics have been deprecated: "Average impressions / visitor," “Average revenue / visitor,” and “Unique visitors.” Going forward, Ad Manager 360 users should use the new Reach report and the new "Unique reach" metrics family. Learn more

Manage inventory

Improved yield through shared mediation information

Currently, information like minimum bid to win and reserve price is shared in the bid requests to buyers. Sharing this information helps buyers bid more competitively, which can improve your yield. In some cases, buyers may have the highest bid but lose to mediation. Starting the first week of October 2019, some additional information derived from mediation demand will also be shared with buyers to avoid this situation. Sharing this additional information helps buyers realize they are not bidding competitively due to mediation, enabling them to appropriately adjust bids. Learn more

Declare authorized sellers for apps

Create app-ads.txt files directly in Ad Manager to identify who is authorized to sell your inventory on mobile apps. Authorized Sellers for Apps, or app-ads.txt, is an extension to the Authorized Digital Sellers standard for web. It expands the initiative to improve transparency in programmatic advertising to support ads shown in mobile apps. Enforcement for app-ads.txt files begins August 27. Learn more

Private Auctions has a new look  ^(Beta) 

In the coming weeks, a new Private Auctions experience will be introduced. The new experience includes an updated workflow for creating and managing Private Auctions as well as for Private Auction troubleshooting, formerly known as Deal Check. Learn more

Other product and Help Center updates

Updated Google Ad Manager Partner Guidelines

We made some updates to the Google Ad Manager Partner Guidelines, including the addition of terms of the Multi Client Management (MCM) program for publishing partners. These terms outline the requirements applicable to third party inventory and provide external policies governing MCM and the roles of parent and child accounts in this new architecture.

Manage inventory

Open Auction branding and blocking move to Protections and URLs

On August 14, blocking controls in Protections and branding controls in URLs start to apply to some of your traffic. On this date, the new blocking and branding controls first apply to on up to 5% of your traffic. Review and update Protections and URLs now to prepare for the transition. Learn more

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New opportunity: “Increase max ad duration to increase video ad revenue”  ^(Beta) 

Using maximum ad duration, you can control the length of a single video ad within a video pod, which may lead to an increase in video ad revenue. Learn more

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Transfer Ad Exchange queries to Ad Manager is deprecated

The tool to transfer Ad Exchange queries to Ad Manager is deprecated. You can create new Ad Exchange historical reports in Ad Manager. Learn more

Manage inventory

Transition to first-price auction

Starting this week, ten percent (10%) of your Ad Exchange traffic will be transitioned to a first-price auction, where the closing price is determined by the highest net bid in the auction. Learn more

Streamlining Private Auctions

Starting mid-July and through the end of the month, Private Auction or Private Auction deals that have not transacted will be archived or stopped respectively. Cleaning up Private Auctions streamlines your view of active Private Auctions. You should expect the following:

• Invites to join a Private Auction that have not accepted by the buyer for more than 30 days will be or have been canceled
• If a buyer has not transacted through a Private Auction in the past 12 months, that Private Auction deal will be stopped for that Private Auction
• Private Auctions that don’t have any active buyer will be archived

Buyers whose invites have been cancelled can be reinvited to a Private Auction. If a Private Auction deal has been stopped, it can be restarted again by setting it to "Running". Archived Private Auction can be unarchive at any time.

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Out-stream video support for Programmatic Direct

Programmatic Direct now supports buyer-hosted out-stream creatives. Out-stream formats include interstitial video ads, native video ads, rewarded ads, and in-article or in-feed video ads. Learn more

Target video line items to request platforms

You can now target video line items to request platforms, including web display and out-stream, app display and out-stream, or in-stream video. Learn more

Style a programmatic native ad in app code

You can now style a native ad for programmatic eligibility directly in Android or iOS app code. This is a good choice for sophisticated app developers who want full control of their rendering in apps. The resulting native creatives can now serve as programmatic ads in addition to traditional ads. Learn more

Simple URL is now Tagless Request

Simple URL has been renamed Tagless Request, as this name is more descriptive. Learn more

Report and optimize

Report on the video SDK version

Beginning August 1, you can report on the specific video SDK versions used to monetize each ad request using the “Video SDK version” dimension. See the possible values or more information about each SDK.

Data Protection report has been deprecated

The Data Protection report has been deprecated and is no longer available. Learn more

Reach report updated

The new Reach report includes updated methodologies for aggregating data and calculating reach. This new method isn’t compatible with the previous version of your Reach report and shouldn’t be compared to previous datasets. Learn more

Manage inventory

Semi-transparent controls in URLs

To prepare for the deprecation of Open Auction pricing rules, you can now specify the branding setting (Branded / Semi-transparent) in URLs. With the Semi-transparent setting, buyers see your domain, but not the subdomain or path, in the bid request.

These settings will only be active once the transition to first-price auction is complete, in late July. Until then, branding settings (anonymous/semi-transparent/branded) in Open Auction rules continue to be applied across all Ad Exchange traffic. Starting late July, if you don’t specify a branding setting, your inventory will be set as Branded.

New limit on buyer protections

You can now block a maximum of 200 buyers per protection.

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Changes to native video impression counting

Ad Manager has changed the way native video ad impressions are counted to align with industry standards for video. Previously, native video ad impressions were counted automatically on ad render, as it's done with display ads. Beginning today, native video impressions are now only counted after the player begins playing the ad.

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Increasing auction transparency with the unified first-price auction

As announced in the Google Ad Manager blog, your inventory will gradually transition to a first-price auction in the coming months. Moving to a unified first-price auction facilitates additional auction transparency for both publishers and advertisers.

• As part of the unified first-price launch, Ad Manager 360 publishers will get access to bid data from all Authorized Buyers and Exchange Bidding buyers through reporting in data transfer files.
• Buyers currently have the ability to access feedback on prior bids they submitted into the auction through the cpm_micros field in BidResponseFeedback in the callout. This feedback gives them visibility into the CPM that should have been exceeded in order to win that auction. As part of the transition to a first-price auction, buyers will gain access to a similar field (minimum_bid_to_win) that provides feedback on the minimum bid value necessary to have won a prior auction. Learn more
• Currently, reserve prices are shared in the callouts to bidders, which is informed by the floor price that you specified in Ad Manager. This information helps bidders bid more competitively, improving publisher yield. To enable a bidder to additionally avoid situations where a bid is submitted for a specific ad candidate that would otherwise be filtered out (for example, because the bid for a specific ad size is below the specified size floor), candidate-specific floors will also be shared in the callout. This helps ensure the most relevant bids compete in the auction for each query.

Transition to first-price auction

Five percent (5%) of your Ad Exchange traffic has transitioned to a first-price auction, where the closing price is determined by the highest net bid in the auction. Learn more

Open Auction blocks migration and protections improvements

At the beginning of July, we’ll migrate eligible Open Auction pricing rules that block Semi-transparent, Branded, and Anonymous transactions to protections. When the migration occurs and the controls available in protections have been expanded, you’ll be able to:

• Block ads from specific buyers from appearing on your network or specified inventory.
• Block all Open Auction ads from appearing on your network or specified inventory.
• Combine advertiser/brand protections with other protections (except Custom labels). We also added targeting options to advertiser/brand protections.

To ensure the health of our system as we expand protections, we also added these limits:

• 200 advertisers/brands per protection
• 200 general categories per protection
• 25,000 advertiser URLs per protection
• 300 protections per network

Learn more about the enhancements, limits, and recommended action to take to prepare for the migration.

Manage inventory

Transition to first-price auction has begun

One percent (1%) of your Ad Exchange traffic has transitioned to a first-price auction, where the closing price is determined by the highest net bid in the auction. Learn more

Multi-size pricing is now available in unified pricing rules

You can now set muli-size pricing within a unified pricing rule. Learn more

Traffic and deliver ads

New trafficking experience for Ad Manager

In the coming weeks, you'll notice a new trafficking experience. Orders, line items, and creative trafficking will have a new look but continue to work as before. These changes make Ad Manager more consistent and streamline your work. Learn more

Report and optimize

Ad Speed in Home dashboard

Your Home dashboards now include information about the speed at which ads were served across your network. Click “Home” in Ad Manager to access your Home dashboards, then click “Ad Speed” to access your new dashboard. Learn more

Bid landscape report deprecated

As part of the unified first-price launch, the Bid landscape report will be deprecated in late July 2019. While new data will no longer appear in the report, you may run the report to view historical data generated for up to six months after it’s deprecated. Learn more

The out-stream video opportunity generally available

Enabling out-stream video demand to compete for existing display inventory may generate higher CPMs and increase revenue. This opportunity is now generally available in Ad Manager. Learn more

Custom dimension key-value limit increased to 20,000

The custom dimension key-value system limit has increased from 5,000 to 20,000. Only available in Google Ad Manager 360. Learn more

Manage inventory

Make forecast adjustments based on upcoming traffic pattern changes

Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.

These adjustments allow the traffic pattern changes to be better reflected in traffic and inventory forecasting numbers. Providing your own version of future traffic data is helpful when:

• Upcoming trends are not included in the forecast’s historical timeframe.
• You can anticipate traffic spikes during new high-profile events.

Learn more

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Optimize GPT speed by updating the hosted library domain

The Google Publisher Tag library is now hosted at https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js, in addition to being hosted at googletagservices.com. While not required, we strongly recommend that you update all references to GPT on your pages to use this new domain. This change consolidates all ad serving requests to one domain. The result is an improvement in the speed of your tags and fetching ads a bit quicker. Learn more

Manage inventory

See estimated revenue impact of adding protections

You can see how blocking a general category is predicted to affect your revenue. Keeping categories unblocked allows more advertisers and buyers to compete for your inventory, which increases coverage and helps you maximize your revenue. Learn more

Update to video content ingestion for MRSS feeds

Ad Manager now treats the content ID in your MRSS feeds as case sensitive. A content ID with both uppercase and lowercase letters is considered separate from the same ID with only lowercase letters. This is also reflected in your Ad Manager reports.

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Change to ranking of House line items

House line items no longer compete on price with remnant line items via dynamic allocation. House line items now only serve when no other line item can monetize an ad request. House line items still compete with each other on a CPM basis and will not need to meet floor prices set in unified pricing rules in order to be eligible to serve an ad. Learn more

Other product or help center updates

Notifications has a new look

Notifications has a new grouped view, summarizing notification types and the number of total notification instances for each type. The detailed view of notification instances are sorted by newness, with notifications which are new since the last visit displayed in bold font. Learn more

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Let Google design your native ads

You can now have Google automatically choose a design for your native ads to get started with native quickly and easily. Google creates the ads so they’ll perform well for in-article inventory — we choose the layout, elements, call-to-action button, and more (for in-feed inventory, Google can suggest a native style). If you don’t have the resources to manually design effective native ads, or you want to try native without investing a lot of time, let Google design native ads for you.

This feature is now fully launched. To try it out, click Delivery  Native  Create native ad, select the “Guided design editor” option, and then select “Google-designed for in-article.”

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Differentiate between custom dimensions with similar names

To differentiate between custom dimensions with similar names in Targeting and Reporting, each custom dimension now includes its canonical name in parentheses after the display name.

Example: Two custom dimensions with the same display name, “Position,” could be displayed as “Position (pos)” and “Position (pos1)” in Reporting and Targeting.

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Simplifying programmatic with first price auctions

In the coming months, publisher inventory will transition to a unified first price auction for Google Ad Manager. A first price auction simplifies programmatic deals by reduces complexity. Transition to a first price auction creates a fair and transparent market for everyone. Expect the transition to be complete by the end of this year. Learn more

Custom creatives for Programmatic Guaranteed

Publisher managed creatives allow you to host creatives in Ad Manager for Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns. In most cases, advertiser managed creatives is more advantageous for your campaign as they are easier to implement and manage. Cases where you need to manage creatives in Ad Manager might be if you want to:

• Sell custom formats and use existing Ad Manager creative management tools.
• Have more control over the creatives that serve on your site.
• Ensure creatives fall under the same policy as direct reservations.

This feature is not enabled in all networks and is only available for transactions with Display & Video 360 partners. Learn more

Let Google suggest a native style

Have Google scan your page and automatically create a native ad that blends in with the look and feel of your content. This is helpful if you want to get started serving native ads but don’t have the resources to design your own native styles.

This feature is now fully launched. To try it out, click Delivery  Native  Create native ad, select the “Guided design editor” option, and then enable Let Google suggest an in-feed style. Learn more

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Changes to the way Creative Size (Delivered) is displayed

The values displayed for the Creative Size (Delivered) dimension have been expanded. In addition to the width and height of your fixed size ads, the dimension will also display other ad types. Learn more

Manage inventory

Activation of ad experience controls

Ad experience controls are now live, and the related legacy rules have been removed. Please check your settings now. These controls allow you to manage programmatic eligibility for all ad experiences in one place. Learn more

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Ad Exchange Preferred Deals stop serving in March

Ad Exchange Preferred Deals stop serving at the end of March 2019. Transition to the new Preferred Deals in Ad Manager now. Learn more

Request video ads from third-party exchanges

Beginning February 28, you’ll be able to serve video ads from third-party exchanges in Exchange Bidding for desktop, mobile web, and mobile app inventory. In addition, you'll be able to send key-values to exchange partners, and to report on Exchange Bidding performance. Learn more about the requirements and restrictions, how to set up an video yield group, or how to report on Exchange Bidding video performance.

Delay rendering on hidden pages on mobile devices

Beginning February 28, Ad Manager will delay the rendering of below-the-fold ads on background tabs on mobile devices. These below-the-fold ad slots will begin rendering when the user brings the background tab into focus. This change reduces resource consumption for users and improves viewability rates by decreasing the volume of non-viewable ads.

Report and optimize

Impression counting method dimension

The "Impression counting method" dimension will soon become available for use in reports. It will identify the methodology used to count impressions being reported on. Possible values are Downloaded, Displayed, and Begin-to-render. Learn more

Updates to the AudienceSegmentIds field for Data Transfer

Previously, the AudienceSegmentIds field displayed IDs for all matched user lists (up to 35 total). To make the values in this field more useful for you, it will soon show only the user list IDs that were used for targeting. Learn more

Other product or help center updates

De-duplicating protection names

To differentiate existing protections and to improve internal processing, we’re adding text to the ends of protections with the same name:

• Active protections: We’ll add the product and protection type. Example:
  • Original: “Protection ABC” and “Protection ABC”
  • Updated: “Protection ABC (Display Opt-in)” and “Protection ABC (Display Block)”
• Deactivated protections: We’ll add “(deactivated)”
• If active protections have the same product, protection type, and status, we’ll add a number. Example:
  • Original: “Protection ABC” and “Protection ABC”
  • Updated: “Protection ABC (1)” and “Protection ABC (2)”

The change will occur this week. You’ll also now be able to edit these protections, so you can update the names as needed.

AMPHTML Ads available on all web pages

Google has expanded serving AMPHTML ads from just AMP pages to regular web pages as well. Pages tagged with the Google Publisher Tag (GPT) will now serve an AMPHTML ad whenever available and possible. This leads to higher impressions, CTR, and a better user experience. You can create AMPHTML ads for image, custom, native and third-party creative types directly in Ad Manager. Read the announcement and learn more

Manage inventory

AdSense ad type and style selections are retired

When you opt to give AdSense buyers access to your unsold inventory, those ad units now automatically serve all relevant ad types and use the optimal ad styles. As a result, we removed the AdSense ad type and ad style settings from Ad Manager. Learn more

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Filter the Overview home dashboard by inventory type

A new inventory filter has been added to the Overview home dashboard. You’ll be able to access it from a drop-down menu at the top of the dashboard. The filter will be set to “All inventory” by default.

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Removed the ability to use private fields in the GPT API

We have begun to remove access to private fields and methods that aren't documented in our GPT API reference guide as part of a phased rollout over the course of the next month. Some publishers have been relying on these undocumented fields, which we don't support and can change without notice. If you are aware of JavaScript on your page that accesses these unsupported fields, you may need to remove the reference to avoid any breakage. It's also possible that scripts provided by third-party vendors access these fields, and those vendors may need to repair their scripts so they continue to function correctly. We recommend that you make your vendors aware of this change.

The best way to test whether your pages will be impacted by this change is as follows:

1. Open Chrome Developer Tools on your page and check the Console for any GPT-related errors.
2. Append #googEnableStrictApi to the URL of your page and reload the browser.
3. Check the page for any breakage or error messages in the Chrome Developer Tools Console.

If you find that any of your ongoing needs are not met by the documented GPT API, we recommend that you submit requests for new fields/methods using the "Send Feedback" button in the upper right corner of our GPT API reference guide.

Learn more

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Let Google suggest a native style ^(Beta) 

Have Google scan your page and automatically create a native ad that blends in with the look and feel of your content. This is helpful if you want to get started serving native ads but don't have the resources to design your own native styles. Learn more

Deprecation of SDK Mediation creatives

On January 28, the SDK Mediation creative type will be deprecated and stop delivering to mobile app content. Use Ad Manager yield groups instead. Learn more

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Connect Ad Manager to Google Data Studio ^{(Google Ad Manager 360)}

You can add Ad Manager as a data source in Data Studio to visualize your reports and share them with others in your organization or publicly. Learn more

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New mappings to enhance Protections

We added functionality that provides more flexibility when setting up Protections. You can now:

• Add brands to companies the same way you add advertisers and associate the brands with orders. You can then use the brands when blocking advertisers and brands and in competitive exclusions.
• Create labels based on categories and associate those labels with companies, orders, and line items. You can then use the labels in competitive exclusions.

Support ended for legacy GAM tags

The legacy GAM tag has been deprecated since 2013. Now, we no longer respond to queries generated by the legacy GAM tag. If you currently use legacy GAM tags, you must retag your pages with Google Publisher Tags instead. Learn more

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Yield report deprecation

The Yield report has been deprecated and is no longer available. You can find similar functionality in the "Demand comparison" card on your Overview Home dashboard, along with more insights and analysis. Learn more