DoubleClick Publisher Blog

Today at 10AM PDT: Hangout with Susan Wojcicki to celebrate AdSense 10

2013-06-18T12:49:00.000-04:00

Join the live Hangout on Air with Susan Wojcicki, SVP of Advertising and Commerce, and three AdSense publishers to celebrate our 10th anniversary today, at 10 AM PDT/ 1 PM ET. We'll share stories from the early days of AdSense and discuss the future for publishers and online advertising.

You can watch the hangout live below and submit a question to Susan with the hashtag #adsense10onair on Google+. Please note that she won't be able to address individual account questions.

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro, Product Marketing Team

Live at 10:30PT/ 1:30ET - Hangout with Mark Walker, SVP, Disney.com

2013-06-13T12:56:00.001-04:00

How is Disney.com leveraging online video to deliver engaging user experiences?

That's the question Xavier Kochhar, CEO, Structured Data Intelligence, is going to explore in our hangout on air with Mark Walker, SVP, Disney.com.

You can view the conversation right here at 10:30PT/ 1:30 ET. If you'd like to leave comments or questions for Mark, please look for the Hangout in the Think with Google +page stream.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Video in the Future: Hang out with Mark Walker, Senior Vice President, Disney.com

2013-06-11T15:18:00.000-04:00

How can large publishers create digital video content strategies that drive user engagement? That's the question Xavier Kochhar, CEO , Structured Data Intelligence, will ask of Mark Walker, Senior Vice President, Disney.com, in the next edition of our Video in the Future hangouts on air series.

Join the conversation live on Thursday, June 13th, 10:30 AM PT/ 1:30 PM ET. Questions and comments welcome!

Did you miss our last couple of conversations featuring AOL's SVP of Video, Ran Harnevo, Silver Chalice's EVP Rich Routman and TubeMogul's Chief Strategy Officer Jason Lopatecki? Watch them now.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Lights, camera, ACTION for video advertising

2013-06-11T09:01:00.000-04:00

[Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertisers blog]

When we think about the multi-billion dollar future of digital advertising, we believe that much of that growth will be driven by video. Video advertising is a very compelling way to connect and grow an audience, especially when we layer on technology’s creative possibilities. What’s driving its astronomic growth?

We took a look at video ads across DoubleClick’s advertising platforms to identify areas of opportunity for advertisers and publishers, and shared these areas of growth in a three-part research collection: “Video Advertising Momentum”. We exclusively analyzed in-stream video ads that played against video content, and focused on ads served on sites globally, excluding Google owned and operated sites like YouTube. We're going to unpack the findings over the next two weeks, kicking it off with this infographic.

Digital video advertising is essential for brand campaigns.

Advertisers are getting into digital video in a big way: two out of five video ads on the DoubleClick advertising platforms came from advertisers new to digital video in 2013 - and many of them were large brand advertisers.
68% of video ads in the last 12 months came from four advertiser categories dominated by large brand advertisers. The top video advertiser categories were Automotive and Retail, with Consumer Packaged Goods and Technology advertisers rounding out the top four.

Publishers are growing audiences and revenue with more video.

News publishers are redefining the way they deliver the news. As they increase their focus on video news content, they're running 3 times more video ads this year than last.
Video content is coming from all across the web - not just from TV or entertainment publishers. Sites that have benefit from increased video spending include Automotive & Vehicle, Sports, Computers & Electronics, and Shopping sites.

For video, the opportunity is clear: brand advertisers are using video to reach their audiences across the web, and publishers are powering their content strategy with more video. We can't wait to see how video rockets digital advertising to new heights.
Stay tuned for next week’s post as we dive into how programmatic video has hit its prime-time. And if you can’t wait that long, check out the full Video Advertising Momentum collection to explore them on your own.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan, Product Marketing

thinkDoubleClick: Connecting digital, accelerating growth

2013-06-04T11:45:00.001-04:00

This morning, I’ll be kicking off thinkDoubleClick, our annual industry event where we discuss the future of digital media. At this same event last year, we unveiled DoubleClick Digital Marketing, the unified platform we’re building to help advertisers and agencies manage the entire breadth of their digital marketing efforts.

Our goal with this year’s event is to take a deeper look at how digital helps us forge deeper connections within organizations, with our partners and with consumers. We also have several exciting pieces of news to share about investments that will help our advertiser and publisher partners make the most of these connections.

Connect your business
At the core of of digital media is its ability to build connections, and we’ve seen that it can be incredibly valuable in helping our partners connect across their business, offering a holistic picture of how all their marketing efforts work together. This was the vision behind DoubleClick Digital Marketing, and today we’re making two key improvements:

A new DFA: DoubleClick Campaign Manager. We’re excited to announce a brand new version of DFA, which we are calling DoubleClick Campaign Manager. In the biggest upgrade to our core ad server in the 15 years since its inception, DoubleClick Campaign Manager completely re-imagines the ad management and ad serving process. DoubleClick Campaign Manager will be available to all advertisers globally in the coming months.
DoubleClick goes social. Today’s digital platforms play a critical role in helping marketers adapt to constantly evolving formats and channels. Today, social is a good example of that; it has changed the way we communicate, share and interact. And not just with our loved ones -- 80% of consumers say social interactions with brands influence their purchase decisions. It’s why we acquired Wildfire last year, and today, we’re happy to announce that we’re taking steps to integrate Wildfire into the DoubleClick platform. Now, marketers can address a critical part of the customer journey, and do it alongside search, display, rich media, video and mobile as part of the broader DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. This is just the beginning of how we’re incorporating Wildfire’s technology. There are more exciting things to come in this area.

Connect with your partners
Technology is also about connecting you with your partners - bringing buyers and sellers together at scale. We’re introducing a few new ways to make this happen as well:

Shared sales with YouTube in DoubleClick for Publishers. For our publisher partners, we’re hearing that video, and YouTube in particular, is becoming an increasingly important part of your selling strategy. But when you have a partner like YouTube that is also selling this inventory, we’ve heard that the process of booking these shared sales was incredibly cumbersome. So I have some news: in the coming months, we're introducing a new feature called Cross-Sell in DoubleClick for Publishers, to automatically and easily manage joint sales for our YouTube partners. Our goal is to let your sales team work hand-in-hand with ours to maximize every sales opportunity and to give you extra time to focus on your advertiser relationships.
Making native native... to DoubleClick. Recently, “native formats” have emerged as an important new model. They provide new types of brand experiences, like sponsored stories, that are unique to each publisher. We want to support formats like this that connect advertisers and publishers in a meaningful way, while also creating real value for users. We're already testing this capabilities with a handful of publishers and will be looking to expand in the coming months. Our goal is to make this technology seamless for publishers who want to have flexibility in implementing native formats and making the most of them on their properties.
Making a viewable standard a reality with Active View. To help publishers tap into the accelerating brand opportunity, we’re focused on unlocking new ways of measurement with the rollout of Active View in our core publisher products: DoubleClick for Publishers, AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Publishers using these products will be able to measure what inventory is viewable. In early tests, we’ve found that Active View can help uncover “gold below the fold.” Click-through rates double for viewable inventory below the fold - in other words, users that are engaged with the content are also engaging with the ads. Active View complements our other investments in making digital an effective medium for brand marketers and their awareness-building campaigns, like Lightbox ads and TrueView in AdMob and games. These efforts appear to be paying off for brand advertisers: we saw a 65 percent increase last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools. We think these investments will be mutually beneficial for publishers, their advertiser partners, as well as users.

Connect with consumers

The third (and in my mind most important) type of connection that digital helps create, though, is with consumers. As you all know, we are now living in a multi-screen world. Consumers are effortlessly shifting from screen to screen. In fact research has found that 90% of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete tasks. We’re investing in helping advertisers and publishers connect with them across screens as well:

Google Web Designer. To help advertisers and publishers more seamlessly unlock the potential of cross-device programs, we are investing in a new HTML5 creative development tool - Google Web Designer. Available in the coming months, Google Web Designer will empower creative professionals to create cutting-edge advertising as well as engaging web content like sites and applications - for free. Google Web Designer will be seamlessly integrated with DoubleClick Studio and AdMob, greatly simplifying the process of building HTML5 creative that can be served through Google platforms.

No other medium builds connections like digital - it’s one of the reasons I remain so bullish on this industry. But digital is not just a medium. It’s the bedrock which enables connections between advertisers and publishers, within our own organizations, as well as brands and consumers. That’s why we’ll continue to invest in helping build these connections - between re-imagined creative tools, reinvented measurement solutions, and revamped ad buying platforms - that will accelerate and propel digital advertising into a $200 billion industry that funds and supports great content.

And this is just some of what we’ll be discussing today at thinkDoubleClick, I encourage you to tune in to our live stream to check out the entire program running from 9 am to 12:30 PDT today.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

What’s on Neal Mohan’s Mind for thinkDoubleClick? Social, native formats and more

2013-05-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

Ahead of our thinkDoubleClick digital advertising summit on June 4th, we caught up with Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, to hear what’s on his mind heading into the conference.

The theme for thinkDoubleClick this year is “Connect & Accelerate.” Why did that resonate with you?
I get asked all the time why I'm so bullish about the future of digital media. It's a long answer, but if I had to boil it down, it comes down to two things. First, I think there’s a $200 billion opportunity as brand spend shifts online that I think will help grow the pie for everyone. Second, digital has an unparalleled ability to connect the things that will help marketers and publishers address that opportunity - their businesses, their partners and their customers. We'll be talking about this at the conference, as well as how technology can help accelerate our partners’ growth.

What discussions are you looking forward to at thinkDoubleClick?
I’m looking forward to some honest conversations about brand-building in today’s connected world, how marketers are re-thinking their marketing mix, and how publishers are embracing new models, like native formats.

We really hope that people walk away from this event with actionable insights from our fantastic lineup of speakers featuring Coca Cola’s Wendy Clark, Omnicom Digital’s Jonathan Nelson, and CBS Interactive’s Jim Lanzone.

Will there be any announcements?
I’m not going to give away too much, but I think what might surprise people is that we’ll be talking about social’s role in the customer journey, as well as the growing importance of native formats to our publisher partners at a level of detail we haven’t to date. I hope everyone tunes in next week to learn more.

thinkDoubleClick is being live-streamed publicly on June 4th from 9am - 12:30pm PDT. If you haven’t done so already, register now.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Explore the Future of Digital Marketing with Google and Industry Executives on June 4th

2013-05-21T12:57:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, June 4th we’ll host our annual digital leadership summit, thinkDoubleClick, with provocative conversations about the future of digital marketing and media, and you’re invited to join via live stream by registering here!

Hear executives from advertising, agencies and publishers discuss some of the big questions in digital such as:

How do creatives leverage, but not be overwhelmed by, technology to deliver next-generation consumer experiences?
What unique experiences are publishers developing that add value to consumers and advertisers alike?
How do CMOs best use social with other marketing channels to build strong brands?

The full agenda for the thinkDoubleClick event is listed below. You can join in the conversation on June 4 by using the #thinkDCLK hash and commenting during the live stream at www.youtube.com/doubleclick.

June 4, 2013, 9 am - 12:15 PDT

9:00 - 9:30 am	Connecting Digital, Accelerating Growth Neal Mohan, VP Display Advertising, Google
9:30 - 10:00 am	The Coca-Cola Company's Liquid & Linked Marketing: How a 127-year-old company is pivoting for success in a real-time, socially-connected world The Coca-Cola Company sells over 500 brands in 207 countries, with over 700,000 System associates and 1.8B+ servings of their beverages everyday. Hear insights and lessons learned on how the world's most valuable brand is remaining relevant by becoming more connected, transparent and nimble in real-time. Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities, Coca-Cola
10:00 - 10:35 am	Advertisers Must be Inventors This year, Volkswagen and Deutsch LA partnered with Google to work on a briefto re-imagine how to build a stronger, bigger community around its brand. In today’s connected world, telling stories alone isn’t enough; we need to create tangible value and utility to bring the brand’s promise to life. In this session the creative team from Deutsch LA will be talking about the process for developing more rewarding and shareable experience. Winston Binch, Partner/Chief, Digital Creative Officer, Deutsch LA David Kim, Group Creative Director, Deutsch LA
10:35 - 11:15 am	Time to Rethink the Marketing Mix? Emerging trends in digital marketing -- including new ad formats, the rise of social media, and proliferation of channels -- are creating new challenges and opportunities for brand marketers. What are the key trends marketers should be concerned about -- and how should they respond? AdAge deputy editor Michael Learmonth poses the hard questions in an executive dialogue on what’s next for brand marketing. Fireside chat with: Michael Learmonth, Deputy Managing Editor, Advertising Age Lorraine Twohill, VP, Global Marketing, Google Jonathan Nelson, CEO, Omnicom Digital
11:15 am - 12: 15 pm	New and Native: Extending the Conversation Technology has had a profound impact on the media industry. This disruption, though, has brought along significant opportunities for creative publishers to thrive. In this session we’re bringing in three executives to show how they’ve leveraged the digital revolution to deliver more engaging content and differentiated solutions to advertisers. Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau (provocateur) Jim Lanzone, President, CBS Interactive Peter Horan, President & Chief Operating Officer, Answers Meredith Kopit Levien, Group Publisher & Chief Revenue Officer, Forbes Media

We look forward to seeing you on June 4th at thinkDoubleClick.

Posted by Scott Brown, Product Marketing team

CM Summit with Neal Mohan - Live Stream - May 21, 9:45am ET

2013-05-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Today at the Conversational Marketing Summit (CM Summit), Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of Display advertising, will be speaking on ‘The State of Google.’ We'll reveal new insights for today's digital advertisers on how to bridge data-driven buying with brand marketing in our interconnected world.

Tune in as Neal discusses the future of advertising at Google:

Live stream on YouTube.com begins on May 21, 2013, at 9:45am ET
Following us? @GoogleDisplay tweeting live during the event

The Conversational Marketing Summit (CM Summit) is taking place from May 21-22 2013 in NYC. This year’s theme is “Parting the Clouds: Bridging Data and Humanity.”

Posted by Mary Shirley, Product Marketing Manager

Starting at 11AM PT/ 2PM ET: Video Everywhere. What's the Opportunity?

2013-05-16T13:49:00.001-04:00

As part of our "Video in the Future" content series, today we speak with IAB's Head of Brand Initiatives, Peter Minnium, and The AOL On Network's Senior Vice President of Video, Ran Harnevo, about the challenges and opportunities of Video Everywhere.

Watch the conversation live below. If you'd like to leave questions and comments for the speakers, please log into your Google+ account, and leave them in the comment box for the hangout on the thinkwithGoogle +page.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

New on Think Insights: Building websites in a multi-device world

2013-05-13T14:44:00.002-04:00

People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. They expect a great browsing experience regardless of what device they use - PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, hybrid device, mini-tablet and television.

Creating a great website experience for consumers across all devices can help businesses generate more engagement and increase conversions. We want to support you in finding the right strategy for your business and help answer key questions related to user experience and website creation. So, today we’re launching a new initiative on Think Insights dedicated to multi-device web strategies: www.google.com/think/multiscreen

We understand that the key to success in a multi-screen world is to deliver a great user experience across devices and specifically address user needs based on context. Our new Think Insights page offers tips for businesses on how to approach multi-device websites and outlines different implementation options. We're also providing links to helpful resources, like a testing tool to analyze your website's load speed, examples of great multi-device user experience, and a list of partners that can help you get started.
This is part of our ongoing effort to provide you with industry-leading best practices, technical guidance and third party services that can help you optimize your site across screens. To stay up-to-date on the latest content added to the site, please subscribe to our monthly Think Letter.

Nabil Haschemie, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Video Everywhere: What's the Opportunity?

2013-05-13T10:43:00.001-04:00

Join us on Thursday, May 16th at 2:00PM ET/ 11:00AM PT to hear Ran Harnevo, Senior Vice President of Video for The AOL On Network, talk about the opportunities and challenges of video everywhere, with Peter Minnium, IAB's Head of Brand Initiatives. Sign up here!

In the last Hangout in our series "Video in the Future", IAB's VP of Ad Technology, Steve Sullivan, discussed the value of programmatic video with TubeMogul's Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Lopatecki, and Silver Chalice's Executive Vice President & General Manager, Rich Routman. Brands and publishers are acknowledging that programmatic video has a place in today's media plans, and provided perspectives on how the space is evolving. They touched on how fast online video is growing and what programmatic buying will mean for transparency, effectiveness, and the reduction of waste.

Watch the video:

Posted by Jonathan Arp and Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Explore the future of digital marketing at thinkDoubleClick, June 4th

2013-05-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

What’s the future of digital media and marketing? How are CMOs from some of the largest consumer companies thinking about leveraging digital to reach and engage audiences? What marketing channels are proving most effective in building brands - paid, owned or earned? In a world of rapidly shifting consumer expectations, how will media companies continue to differentiate themselves?

These are some of the questions senior executives from the digital advertising ecosystem will address at thinkDoubleClick, Google’s annual executive discussion on the state of digital.

Register now to join the event livestream on June 4th, 9:00 AM - Noon Pacific. Participate in the conversation, ask speakers and panelists your questions with #thinkDCLK.

thinkDoubleClick 2013 speakers include:

Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, The Coca-Cola Company, @wnd
Jim Lanzone, President, CBS Interactive, @jlanzone
Peter Horan, President & COO, Answers @peterchoran
Meredith Kopit Levien, Group Publisher & Chief, Forbes @merdith_levien
Randall Rothenberg, CEO, IAB @r2rothenberg
Lorraine Twohill, Chief Marketing Officer, Google
Michael Learmonth, Chief Editor, AdAge @learmonth

We look forward to seeing you on June 4th!

Missed last year’s highlights? It’s not too late to catch up.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

The Importance of Being Seen: Viewability and Brands

2013-04-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

Brand marketers since the “Mad Men” era have often sought insight to a simple question: ‘Was my ad seen?’ The answer was that your ad was published, your commercial ran, your online impression served on a web page, but it was impossible to say with certainty whether an ad was viewed or not. Thanks to leaps forward in digital technology and the hard work of many in the industry, it's now possible to measure whether an ad is viewable onscreen. Given this progress, it's not a matter of if this becomes the standard, but when.

We support a viewable impressions standard and have been partnering with the industry to push this forward. Today we've reached an important milestone on this journey - Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for our viewability measurement solution, Active View, which we introduced last year.

"We are very pleased that Google has achieved accreditation for its Active View product" said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council. "Viewable impressions are an important foundational improvement in digital measurement and an important step toward comparability with other electronic media."

Active View complements our other investments in making digital an effective medium for brand marketers and their awareness-building campaigns, like Lightbox ads and TrueView in AdMob and games. These efforts appear to be paying off for brand advertisers: we saw a 65 percent increase last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools.

The Active View Roadmap

Viewability has the power to transform the industry: improving the value of marketers’ spend, and of publishers’ sites. We’ve also designed this metric to be actionable, not just for after-the-fact reporting. Based on Active View, advertisers can buy reservable inventory on the Google Display Network (GDN), paying only for impressions that meet the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s proposed viewability standard - at least 50% on screen for one second or longer.

Effective metrics also serve as a universal currency, building an understanding between marketers and content creators about the best way to reach an audience, and the value of an ad on a page. This is why we’ll be building Active View into our products both for advertisers and publishers. In addition to its use on the GDN, Active View reporting will be available in DoubleClick for Advertisers and DoubleClick for Publishers in 2013. Long term, we see this becoming the new standard for how impressions are bought, sold and measured, replacing the “served impressions” metric we have today.

While many intuitively suspected that increased viewability would directly translate into better campaign performance, we now have data to back that up. On our network, we compared ads by the number of seconds they appeared on screen and found:

Users are more likely to click on viewable ads -- up to 21 times more.
Viewability can help publishers discover “gold below the fold,” with CTR doubling, on average, for below-the-fold inventory. On average, we’ve found that CTR is comparable for viewable above-the-fold and viewable below-the-fold inventory.
The longer users view an ad, the bigger the boost for click-through rates (we saw up to a 125% increase when an ad was viewed for more than 20 seconds).

Figure 1. Comparison of CTR for viewable v. non-viewable ads, shown for all ads (left panel) and BTF inventory only (right panel) (100% = the average CTR of the specified dataset).

Figure 2. CTR by viewable time, detail.
*Data source for all figures: Google Display Network 2% sample from February 2013; display ads only; viewable = 50% onscreen. In all figures, 100% on the y-axis denotes the average CTR across all ad queries in the specified dataset.

Google’s MRC accreditation, which currently applies to the Google Display Network and DoubleClick for Advertisers, was based on a thorough assessment of a number of factors, including the detection process, quality control and delivery standards.

With this accreditation, we are one step closer to making a viewable standard a reality for our partners. With better measurement, we think it's possible to unlock a new golden age of creation across the web, where users can enjoy great content, brands can connect with their customers and content creators can accelerate their growth.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

Programmatic in the Future: Collaborating for Growth

2013-04-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

On April 8th, DoubleClick sponsored the AdExchanger Programmatic I/O conference. In front of 300+ agencies, marketers, and publishers Sean Downey, Managing Director of Media & Platform Sales interviewed David Chiang, VP of Monetization at CBSi and Mike Wann, EVP of Business Development at Demand Media about how buyers and sellers can work together to succeed in programmatic.

What’s the moonshot idea that we think can help grow buyer and seller relationships and revenue by 10X? Check out the highlights from the discussion below:

Or watch the entire interview:

See the entire Programmatic in the Future series on the DoubleClick YouTube channel and look out for our next series of hangouts, Vid eo in the Future.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer, Product Marketing Team

Video in the Future: Is there any value in programmatic video?

2013-04-17T12:09:00.000-04:00

Over the last few months, we've hosted industry thought leaders like Digitas' Joel Aranson, CBS Interactive's David Chiang, The Weather Company's Curt Hecht over Hangouts to talk about 'Programmatic in the Future'.

This month, we shift gears to focus on 'Video in the Future'. Our first conversation kicks off with IAB's VP of Ad Technology, Steve Sullivan, leading a discussion on the value of programmatic video with TubeMogul's Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Lopatecki, and Silver Chalice's Executive Vice President & General Manager, Rich Routman.

Join the conversation live tomorrow, Thursday April 18th, at 1:30ET/ 10:30 PT. Login with your Google+ or Gmail account and look for the hangout in the thinkwithGoogle +page. Comments and questions are welcome.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Driving Higher Yield for Publishers in AdX

2013-04-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

DoubleClick Ad Exchange connects publishers with every major programmatic buyer and millions of AdWords advertisers. This massive pool of demand is one of the world’s largest, and it’s the foundation of our platform’s ability to help you make the most of every impression. In this post and tomorrow’s webinar (~~which you can still register for here~~ watch the video), we’re going to focus on how it all works and some of the new features we’re launching to improve it.

When the programmatic channel emerged about four years ago, not only was the demand pool much smaller, but publishers didn’t have the technology to safely harness it. It was difficult to block advertisers and set price floors, and there was nothing like the granular controls and reports we now offer in AdX.

In addition, there was no mechanism to create higher-CPM programmatic opportunities. Last year we launched Preferred Deals so you can negotiate fixed-price, first-look deals with individual buyers. Since then, buyers have cut hundreds of Preferred Deals with premium publishers including Forbes, Time Inc., and others.

In the coming weeks, we’re expanding this functionality further with Private Auctions, a new deal type in which multiple buyers compete against each other for the right to access your inventory before the open auction. And if you use DFP, we’re also launching a feature that enables you to import your first party data directly from DFP to AdX to enrich the inventory you sell in Preferred Deals and Private Auctions.

Other platforms support similar kinds of deals. But only DoubleClick Ad Exchange can optimize your revenue across all these inventory and transaction types: from direct sales in your primary ad server, to Preferred Deals and Private Auctions, to an open auction powered by one of the world's largest pools of demand. In short, however you want to sell, AdX (and DFP) help you maximize your yield doing it.

Lastly, we want you to know that we’re working to increase demand in AdX even further by integrating the best of Admeld into it. We’re in the process of rolling out ad network optimization: a technology that enables tag-based networks to compete dynamically in the exchange. If you’re interested in learning more about this or anything in this post, ~~sign up for tomorrow's webinar~~ watch a video of the webinar or reach out to our sales team.

Posted by Drew Bradstock, Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Deeper Transparency & Control for Publishers in AdX

2013-04-02T11:04:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago we announced our plans to evolve DoubleClick Ad Exchange with a series of robust, publisher-centric features derived from our acquisition of Admeld. Today we’re pleased to go in-depth on the first group of these enhancements: those that give you deeper insights into how buyers are buying and more control over how you sell. For a guided tour of everything in this post, ~~register for our live webinar this Thursday, April 4~~. Watch a video of the April 4 webinar.

Greater Transparency
Maximizing your revenue starts with a deep understanding of how advertisers, DSPs, and trading desks are bidding on and buying your inventory. To give you quick access to these insights, we’re adding a handful of new reports to AdX including Bid Landscapes which helps you track the activity of specific buyers over time.

The Bid Landscapes Interface

In Thursday’s webinar, we’ll talk about Bid Landcapes and and other new reports such as Pixel Analysis--a feature that enables you to monitor the pixels firing on your site (and see who’s firing them).

Increased Control
A great ad operations team can protect your users and your brand by ensuring the right ads are running and the unwanted ones aren’t. To make this as easy as possible, we overhauled the Google Publisher Toolbar and integrated Google Image Search technology into AdX’s Ad Review Center (ARC). Now you and your ops team can find visually similar ads in ARC by uploading a screenshot or logo, searching for text in images, and more. You'll get the full demo on Thursday, but here's a sneak preview:

Two weeks after Thursday’s webinar, we'll cover the next group of features (about higher yield) in another webinar on April 18 (~~register here~~ watch the video). In the meantime, if you have questions or you want to learn more about these features, contact your DoubleClick account representative or our sales team.

Posted by Jarid Maged & Ari Feldman, Ad Exchange Product Management

Programmatic in the Future: Will it be safe for brands? MAP's Michael Brunick, Media6Degrees' Andrew Pancer and Digiday's Brian Morrissey weigh in

2013-04-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

In the last hangout in our series "Programmatic in the Future," Mediabrands Audience Platform's VP of Strategic Solutions, Michael Brunick, Media6Degrees' Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Pancer and Digiday's Editor-in-Chief Brian Morrissey debated whether programmatic can be safe for brands.

Here's a snapshot of the conversation:

Or you could watch the hangout:

For those of you joining us at the AdExchanger Programmatic IO conference in San Francisco on April 8th, we'll be continuing the discussion on stage with Sean Downey, Google's Managing Director of Media & Platforms. See you there!

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Programmatic in the Future: Digiday's Brian Morrissey interviews Media6Degrees' Andrew Pancer & Mediabrands Audience Platform's Michael Brunick

2013-03-21T11:48:00.001-04:00

Is programmatic safe for brands? Join us tomorrow, Friday, 3/22 at 1:30 ET/10:30 PT as Digiday's Brian Morrissey seeks the answer to this question in a conversation with Media6Degrees' Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Pancer, and Michael Brunick, Mediabrands Audience Platform's VP of Strategic Solutions.

To tune in, log into your Google+ account and look for the Hangout on Air in the Think with Google +page stream. Hit play! Comments and questions are welcome.

Missed the other conversations in the 'Programmatic in the Future' series?
Find them at: http://www.youtube.com/DoubleClick

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

The Ad Exchange Evolves

2013-03-19T09:45:00.000-04:00

We’re constantly looking for ways to help publishers simplify their operations, make smarter decisions, and generate more revenue. That’s why we bought Admeld, the world’s leading Sell Side Platform (SSP), and it’s why we’ve spent the past year integrating Admeld’s best features into the Ad Exchange.

In the coming weeks we’ll be rolling out a series of enhancements that provide you with even more transparency into who’s buying, more control over how you sell, and higher yield. These features don’t just represent an evolution of DoubleClick Ad Exchange, but an evolution of our philosophy about what an ad exchange should be. Combining the strengths of an SSP and an exchange into one platform is more efficient for you and it fosters a more robust marketplace--and that's ultimately better for buyers too.

Transparency & Control
We're following up on a recent redesign of our reporting system by making it easier to track the buying and bidding behaviors of advertisers, DSPs, and trading desks in granular detail. Plus, we're overhauling the Google Publisher Toolbar and the Ad Review Center (ARC) so it’ll be even easier to find and block unwanted ads. We’re also adding a feature to ARC that uses technology from Google Image Search to let you find visually similar ads by uploading any image, logo or screenshot. ~~Register for a live webinar on April 4 to learn more about this first group of upcoming features~~. Learn more about this first group of features, watch a recording of the April 4 webinar.

Higher Yield
RTB continues to grow, but every year there are still billions coming through traditional ad networks. To help you tap into this demand, we'll be integrating Admeld’s ad network optimization engine into the exchange. Through this technology (now in closed beta), ad network tags can compete dynamically against RTB, helping to drive higher overall CPMs. We’re also introducing Private Auctions, a new way to increase yield from your high-value inventory by pitting select buyers against each other. If you use the new DFP, you’ll be able to raise the value of your Private Auction inventory even further by importing your first-party data directly into AdX. ~~Register for a live webinar on April 18 to learn more about this second group of upcoming features.~~ Learn more about this second group of features, watch a recording of the April 18 webinar.

There’s a lot more on the way, so watch this space for details. If you have questions, or you’d like a deeper dive on any of these features, contact your DoubleClick account representative or our sales team.

Posted by Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management

The brand revolution is underway

2013-03-18T12:35:00.001-04:00

As we’ve said before, we’ve entered the next wave of digital marketing, as major brands like L’Oreal, Audi and Kay Jewelers embrace digital media and make it a core part of their marketing strategy. We’ve seen a 65 percent increase in the last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools.

This influx of brand investment is translating into meaningful results for digital publishers.

We looked at the 50 top publishers that enable brand-friendly ad formats on their sites. Over the past three months we found that, on average, they experienced a CPM increase of 2x or more when running these engagement-driven ads, such as our Lightbox ad, which expands to a full page only after a user has deliberately engaged with the ad. "We've seen CPM increases of more than 3X, and our advertisers love the large canvas and pay for engagement model," says Rich Dredge, Answers.com's Chief Revenue Officer.
We’ve seen an overall increase in higher CPMs across our exchange -- in the U.S., CPMs over $5 have increased 24% year-over-year while those over $10 have increased 23% year-over-year. Brand spend is a critical piece of these increases.

Fueling brand adoption
To continue this momentum, we’ve been investing in a suite of brand solutions over the past year to help these advertisers make the most of what digital marketing has to offer:

New Ways to Buy -- Last year, we introduced Active View, offering for the first time the ability to not only measure whether ads are viewable, but actually buy based on it. Brands are able to “reserve” a guaranteed number of impressions on brand-friendly sites across the web -- and they pay only for impressions that are viewed.

Over the past year, the number of advertisers using the reserve option has increased fourfold.
Nearly two-thirds of those are Ad Age top 100 brands.

New Ways to Engage -- Last year, we introduced a new family of brand-friendly, engagement-focused ad formats. Engagement formats are already showing terrific early returns. For example, L’ORÉAL PARiS was one of the first brands to run a campaign using engagement ads. They ran an expandable ad in Germany as part of their “Beauty Minute” campaign and found that 30% of those who expanded the ad watched the entire 30-second embedded video.

New Ways to Measure -- We’re committed to providing meaningful metrics for brands, measurement that goes beyond just clicks and conversions. Earlier this week, we introduced Brand Lift in AdWords, which will enable marketers to run surveys along with their ad campaigns, to determine how their ads helped their marketing objectives (i.e., whether their ads helped build awareness, increased favorability towards their brand, etc.). Brand Lift complements our other investments in brand measurement, like Active View and Active GRP.

Digital media represents an amazing opportunity for both brands and publishers, bringing together sight, sound, motion, interactivity and measurement in ways we’ve never seen before.

Over the coming year, we’ll be continuing to invest in our products and systems that will help brands thrive in the digital space, as well as help publishers capitalize on the shift...so stay tuned for more to come.

Posted by Neal Mohan

Improved format support for Publishers

2013-03-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

At DoubleClick, we’re constantly developing new ways to help publishers provide valuable, highly engaging solutions to advertisers. Recently we launched the new LightBox full page expandable ad - an innovative format to drive greater campaign performance and deliver rich creative options for publishers.

Today we’re adding to our toolkit for publishers with new innovations for mobile and video ads available on the DoubleClick publisher platform. We’re happy to announce new features that make it easier for our partners to create memorable brand experiences for their advertisers and maximize the revenue from all their mobile and video inventory.

Mobile Rich Media is easier with DoubleClick Studio and DFP
Brand advertisers want a partner that can not only offer them a great audience, but also deliver a highly engaging memorable campaign. With DoubleClick Studio’s integration of HTML5 capabilities with DFP, publishers can utilize all of Studio’s tools to create and deliver impactful, measurable rich media campaigns across devices with ease.

Whether offering a full service solution or dealing with creative built by an advertiser, this integration allows publishers to seamlessly push rich media creative, including HTML5, directly from Studio to DFP. The creatives will automatically appear in DFP’s creative library, associated to the correct advertiser and be ready for delivery on both desktop and mobile devices. Then when the campaign begins, the rich media reporting will appear alongside the basic campaign metrics like impressions and clicks. To see examples of HTML5 rich media creatives that leverage DoubleClick Studio, see our mobile creative gallery here.

Video monetization with DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Selling inventory through programmatic channels can be a powerful method for publishers to increase their revenue from their inventory. DoubleClick Ad Exchange provides publishers a full set of monetization tools to sell not only desktop, but also mobile and video impressions while maintaining full control of their inventory. Publishers can maximize their revenue by accessing Ad Exchange’s video demand for in-stream VAST, VPAID and skippable TrueView formats to sell :15s and :30s inventory.

To learn more about DoubleClick’s technology for publishers, visit our website.

Posted by Marcel Gordon, Product Manager for DFP and Ari Feldman, Product Manager for Ad Exchange

Building for the Future: an update on DFP and the end of DART

2013-03-07T12:00:00.000-05:00

In 2010, in order to help publishers maximize the value of every impression, we introduced the new version of DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

In the years since, we’ve continued to invest in this platform, including new features that we heard were most important to our publisher partners - like the ability to manage desktop, mobile and video on a single ad server, and tools that help publishers better optimize campaign performance and save time. Today, thousands of publishers, such as The Weather Company, Gawker Media, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and YouTube, are all leveraging DFP. And over two-thirds of our overall publisher ad impressions run through this new platform, up from one-third last year.

As far as we’ve come, we are just getting started with innovation to help publishers build for the future. To preview just a few of our 2013 plans, we’ll be helping publishers grow with new data-driven revenue models by enabling Audience Extension from directly within DFP. We’re increasing their ability to tap into the accelerating brand opportunity with new ways to measure such as Active View reporting for viewable impressions. We’re investing to make it easier for publishers to manage advertising across devices with tools like the Google Publisher Tag, which automatically selects the appropriate ad for the screen size (aka “responsive design”). And we’ll also be making it faster to access online content: since the new DFP is roughly twice as fast at serving as DART, when we’re done upgrading we’ll be saving Internet users 63 years a day in waiting for ads to serve.

This year our team is shifting all of our effort and investment to DFP to deliver even greater innovations for our partners. With this in mind, we’ll be ending support for our DART for Publishers legacy ad serving platform on September 1, 2013. To ensure continuity of ad serving, support and training, publishers who haven't upgraded to DFP by that date will be automatically scheduled for an upgrade date between September 1 and December 31, 2013 when ad serving on the DART for Publishers legacy platform will cease. Note that publishers using the DFP Small Business platform do not need to take any action and are already supported on the new DFP.

We strongly advise all publishers to complete their upgrades to DFP before September 1 to make sure you are able to use the new DFP to its full potential during the busy 2013 holiday season. Please contact your account manager as soon as possible if you don’t have an upgrade date scheduled. And if you’re not sure who to contact, you can always reach out to our customer support team.

We know our partners are looking for tools that can grow and adapt to the needs of their business not just today, but also for tomorrow, the next year and ten years from now. That’s why we’re fully committed to the new DFP. We’re ready to accelerate our pace of innovation on our platform, and we look forward to helping publishers as they break new ground in digital.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management

[Update] Programmatic in the future: Are programmatic channels safe for brands?

2013-03-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

Update: Due to unexpected circumstances, this hangout has been canceled on Thursday, March 7. Stay tuned for more information when it is rescheduled.

This will be the discussion in our next installment of "Programmatic in the future". Join us on Thursday, 3/7 at 1:30 ET/10:30 PT as Digiday's Editor-in-Chief Brian Morrissey, interviews Penry Price, President, Media6Degrees, and Nate Stricker, VP, Group Account Director for Digital at Initiative.

In case you missed our last conversation with Mike Finnegan, Xaxis' VP of Product Development, here's a snapshot:

Or you could watch the video:

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Programmatic in the Future: A Q&A with Mike Finnegan, Director of Product Development, Xaxis

2013-02-12T13:00:00.001-05:00

We hope you've been following our series "Programmatic in the Future", featuring conversations with publishers, advertisers and Google's product development team, on how programmatic technologies are going to evolve.

Join us on Thursday, 2/21 at 1:30 ET/10:30 PT, as we speak with Mike Finnegan, Director of Product Development at Xaxis, on how WPP's largest audience buying company is leveraging programmatic channels to meet brand demand.

In case you missed our last edition with IAB's VP of Ad Technology, Steve Sullivan, and Scott Spencer, Google's Director of Product Management for DoubleClick Ad Exchange, here's a snapshot:

Or you could watch the video:

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team