Episode twelve of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.

With their customizable presentations and ability to be precached, Native Express ads fit right in with list-based user interfaces:

In this deep dive episode of the Mobile Ads Garage, you'll learn how to integrate Native Express ads into an iOS app that uses a UITableViewController for its primary UI. Along the way you'll get a detailed set of step and see screencasts of an implementation in Xcode. The episode also covers a handy technique for tapping into the ad lifecycle to load native express ads sequentially, from the top of the list to the bottom.

If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.

We'd love to hear which AdMob features you'd like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

 - Andrew Brogdon, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Hello ads PHP developers! Today we're pleased to announce the stable release of the new ads PHP client library. This has been in beta for a while now, is a huge overhaul of the library, and offers the following improvements:

• Uses namespaces and conforms to PSR-4 autoloading.
• Conforms to PSR-3 for logging.
• Supports installation via Composer.
• Uses the Google PHP auth library for OAuth2, offering more features, flexibility, and service account support.
• Uses Guzzle for non-SOAP HTTP calls, conforming to PSR-7.
• Contains better object-oriented library design and stub interfaces, including builders to configure settings.
• Contains upgraded and easier to use utilities for AdWords reporting, AdWords batch jobs, and DFP reporting.
• Enables SSL by default for SOAP API calls and non-SOAP HTTP API calls.

This library has been pushed to the master branch on GitHub. The old library is now deprecated and moved to a deprecated branch with reduced support until it reaches end of life (EOL) on July 31, 2017. Reduced support details can be found in issue #193. To help you upgrade, we've written an upgrading guide.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line on the AdWords or DFP API forums, or the Ads Developer Google+ page.

 - Vincent Tsao, Ads API Team

Today we're excited to announce iOS and Android sample projects that display AdMob Native Express ads in a feed. These samples address a common use case for monetizing apps with feeds or lists of content. The iOS (Swift and Objective-C) apps display Native Express ads in a UITableView and the Android app shows them in a RecyclerView.

Native Express ads work well in lists of content for two reasons. First, impressions are not counted until the ad is on screen, which enables you to preload the ads ahead of time. Preloading can help with optimizing scroll performance by making sure the ad is ready to be displayed when the user scrolls through the list. Second, you have more control over the styling of the ads, allowing you to create presentations that fit naturally with your content.

You can check out these sample apps by downloading them from our iOS and Android GitHub repos, and you can see them being coded in the Mobile Ads Garage YouTube series. Episode 11 walks you through the implementation for adding native ads into an Android RecyclerView. Episode 12, which will cover the implementation of native ads in an iOS UITableView, is due out next week.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding our SDK, feel free to contact us through our forum.

 - Tristan Emrich, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Today we're announcing the release of video campaign management support in AdWords scripts. You can now create and manage in-stream, video discovery, and bumper ads in your existing video campaigns, set targeting for your video campaigns and ad groups, and report on performance including views and view rate.

To get started, visit our Video Campaigns guide for an overview of the new functionality. You can also view a variety of samples both in the docs and by using the Show examples button in the script editor. These are pre-built functions that may be useful to drop into your code or use as the basis for expansion into your own custom script.

When you're ready to dig in or when you're ready to learn more, check out the "Video" section of the left navigation bar under our AdWordsApp documentation.

If you have any questions about this new feature or AdWords scripts in general, you can post them on our developer forum.
- Mike Cloonan, AdWords Scripts Team

As you've probably heard, DCM will stop serving Flash display ads on January 2nd, 2017. This is part of a wider initiative to go 100% HTML5, which you can learn more about in the DCM help center.

What does this mean for DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API users?

Beginning on January 2, 2017, the following changes will take effect:

1. Flash uploads will be disabled in API v2.5. Beginning with v2.6, the DCM API stopped supporting uploads of Flash assets and prevented users from creating new Flash In-page creatives. These same restrictions will be applied to v2.5.
2. Active Flash creatives with no HTML5 equivalent will be deactivated. Existing creatives that have not been converted to HTML5 will have their active field set to FALSE. Users will not be allowed to reactivate these creatives.

What can API users do to prepare?

Users are strongly encouraged to review their active creatives and take immediate action to replace those that will be affected by this change. We've created code samples in Java and Python to help API users identify creatives in their accounts that will be deactivated if no action is taken. See this article for links to tools to help you transition your creatives to HTML5.

Users of DCM API v2.5 are also encouraged to begin migrating to a newer API version immediately. Be aware that this version is already scheduled to sunset on February 28th, 2017.

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

At the beginning of the year we announced an experimental bi-monthly release schedule for the AdWords API. Based on the results of this pilot and feedback from our developer community, we've decided on a quarterly release schedule for 2017. The 2017 API releases are scheduled for February, May, August and October.

We received positive feedback on increasing the release frequency from the previous three-times-a-year schedule. We also heard that the accompanying sunset schedule was an added burden for some API users. The quarterly release schedule aims to address this feedback. We will continue to monitor the release frequency and your feedback

On average, every AdWords API version released in 2017 will be available for approximately 10 months. One month after every major release, we will sunset the oldest outstanding API version. Similar to the 2016 schedule, we will support 3 releases concurrently at all times and 4 releases for a brief period of 4 weeks at a time to accommodate developers who want to skip two major releases.

As a reminder, v201605 is scheduled to sunset on February 28, 2017. We will post details about the release and sunset of other AdWords API versions on this blog and our developer site. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us on the AdWords API forum.
Herlen Zoljargal, AdWords API Team

Today we’re pleased to announce the v201611 release of the DFP API. This release contains the addition of MobileApplicationService, which allows you to claim apps from various app stores to use for targeting in your network. For a full list of API changes in v201611, see the release notes.

With each new release comes a new deprecation. If you're using v201602 or earlier, it's time to look into upgrading. Also remember that a double sunset happened at the end of November 2016 - both v201508 and v201511 have been sunset.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line on the DFP API forums or the Ads Developer Google+ page.

 - Vincent Tsao, DFP API Team

What do I need to do?
Please migrate any existing Flash display ads to HTML5 by January 2, 2017, when Flash ads will stop serving. In May 2016 we announced that you would no longer be able to upload Flash display ads in AdWords by June 30, 2016 with tips on how to migrate.

If you have video ads built in Flash, they will not be affected at this time. You do not need to migrate these ads.

Where can I learn more?

• Help Center Article
• HTML5 Ad Examples in the API
• HTML5 Template Ads
• HTML5 Ad Specifications
• Ads API Client Libraries: Each of the client libraries has examples on how to add an HTML5 ad and how to upload a media bundle with the contents of the ad. Here are the examples for Java to get you started:
  • Add an HTML5 ad to an ad group
  • Upload an HTML5 zip file as a MediaBundle

Questions? Visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.
Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Episode 11 of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and Doubleclick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.

In a break with tradition, this video is a deep technical dive on one subject: Native Ads Express in an Android RecyclerView. You'll learn how to modify an existing RecyclerView implementation to include Native Express ads, all the way from updating the adapter to loading the ads. In addition, you'll get a clever trick that makes sure your ads are always sized to match the UI, so they fit right in with your content.

If you haven't used Native Ads Express before, you can see them in action in Episode 7. Andrew and Gary cover all the basics: loading ads, placing them in layouts and storyboards, and using CSS to style the ads to match your app.

If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.

We'd love to hear which AdMob features you'd like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

 - Andrew Brogdon, Mobile Ads Developer Relations