Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers offers small businesses “a free hosted ad serving solution” that helps them manage their “growing online advertising business.” The DFP API Google+Ads+Developer+Blog%29″>updated to version 201203 yesterday and brought with it a host of new features that should help developers get the most out of it.

The first new feature of the new version is the ability to create test networks. Google says this offers “a wider range of functionality than the existing sandbox networks.” To take advantage of this new ability, developers will have to create a new Google account. The new account allows you to sign into test networks without having a DFP account. They’re also moving SOAP requests from sandbox.google.com to just google.com. This allows developers to move from test networks to production with only a change of network code.

Speaking of network codes, they will be required from now on for everything except NetworkService.getAllNetworks() and NetworkService.makeTestNetwork(). Google says the change will reduce latency and make it easier to keep track of which requests are going to which networks.

They have made video creatives read-only through the CreativeService. There will be more information on this area in the near future.

The previous version of the DFP API introduced teams. With the new version, you can set team IDs on inventory, orders and company. This makes it so that “when calls are made with that user, only objects that belong to their team will be returned.” As an extra caution, users will receive an error if they attempt to access an object that they don’t have the permission for.

There will be updates on how to properly use the new test networks in the near future. When these tutorials hit, we’ll let you know. For now, check out the release notes for the newest version for the skinny on the update.