Last week, we participated in an IAB Interactive Insights Webinar titled, “The Arrival of Real-Time Bidding.” In this webinar, Scott Spencer, Director of Product Management for DoubleClick Ad Exchange joined guests from Forrester Research, Inc. to define real-time bidding (RTB) and walk attendees through its impact on the marketplace for online ad inventory. Joining from Forrester Research, Inc. were Senior Analyst Joanna O’Connell and Analyst Michael Greene. Joanna explored how advertisers view the RTB trend and Michael explored how publishers view it. Scott, our foremost expert on RTB, discussed how Google works with advertisers and publishers on RTB.

For those of you who missed the webinar, we’ve posted the full recording here:

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted from the Google Agency Blog)

Following his keynote address titled "There's a Perfect Ad for Everyone" at New York's IAB Innovation Days @ Internet Week, Neal Mohan, our VP of Display Advertising was interviewed by Willow Duttge.

In his interview, Neal shed further insight into the new user revolution taking place in digital media and what it means for advertisers and publishers. Here are a few key takeaways from the interview:

• There’s a big opportunity for advertisers and publishers to deliver an enhanced user experience by employing dynamic rich media formats, delivering ads customized for each user, adopting user-centric metrics to measure campaign success, and offering users much more control over their advertising they see.
• Initial steps publishers and advertisers can take today toward this user-centric goal include looking closely at and listening to their audiences and experimenting with new formats and user experiences.
• The mobile revolution presents new opportunities for advertisers and publishers looking to connect with users in new and more meaningful ways.

And if you missed the livestream of Neal's keynote, watch it here.

Posted by the Google Display Team

Real-time bidding (RTB) solves the challenge of efficiently and effectively acquiring ad space online. It requires two distinct layers of technology: a “pipe” and a “brain.”

The “pipe” provides a server-side connection to an inventory source and announces each impression individually as they become available for purchase. In June of 2010, Criteo integrated with DoubleClick Ad Exchange’s RTB API to access a “pipe” for RTB.

The “brain” is a buying system responsible for making the best inventory acquisition decisions possible, on behalf of the advertiser. Criteo’s platform, which does retargeting on a pure performance, pay-per-click (PPC) basis, is a highly intelligent “brain” of RTB. Criteo submits a different price for every single impression it sees. As an advanced buyer, Criteo manages to handle 100% of the ADX impressions it sees, and submits hundreds of millions of bids every day.

Together, Criteo and DoubleClick Ad Exchange are producing great results. Criteo’s VP of Marketing, Karen Dayan reports, “The relevance of our advertising is demonstrated by the great CTRs and great conversion rates we deliver. For many publishers we regularly deliver CTRs of 1%--which is huge, when the average display CTR is closer to .1%.”

Criteo’s Chief Buying Officer, Jonathan Wolf, says, “Real-time bidding is enabling us to further scale our business, and drive increased volume and performance for our advertisers, while also improving CPMs for publishers. We appreciate the global reach of Google and how easy it is for us to turn on RTB in a new market. That’s what makes DoubleClick Ad Exchange so valuable to us.”

Today, Criteo is a high volume, global buyer with live campaigns through ADX in 19 different countries. Google’s Head of Buyer Development for ADX, Chip Hall, says, “Criteo’s technological focus and entrepreneurial spirit has made them a great partner for DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Their sophistication in buying via real-time bidding on a global scale is impressive and has made them one of our top global partners.”

For more details on how Criteo uses DoubleClick Ad Exchange for retargeting audiences at scale, download the full case study here.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager