We think that better online brand measurement is a hugely important area where technology can play a significant role. We’ll have much more to announce in the coming months; but we wanted to highlight one early experiment. Our research team is working with our clients and Vizu to conduct online brand measurement research for about 70 DFA campaigns.

The IAB’s publication on online ad effectiveness measurement noted that true experimental design (creating consistent, randomly assigned control groups) would be a major step forward in online ad effectiveness research. Our approach does just that. We use DoubleClick ad serving technology to create two randomly selected groups of users - one that sees the campaign’s ads, and another that sees public service ads instead. We maintain this control group for the duration of the campaign, across all sites where DFA serves ads. Vizu’s sampling technology is then used to deliver a brand lift survey to all users so that we may individually measure variables like brand awareness, purchase intent and favorability.

The brand results, presented through DFA, will show how ads performed across the campaign, as well as different sites and ad frequencies. This data can be used with the other campaign metrics in DFA to help marketers to see the impact of the campaign using any metric they want - from impressions to clicks to brand impact to conversions.

Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President of Research, Analytics and Measurement at the IAB commented, “This is very promising and innovative research. After years of settling for less than optimal designs, the industry will finally see if a true experimental design is possible through the use of technology. The results of this research, if successful, could have far reaching implications for the future of brand impact measurement of online advertising campaigns.”

DoubleClick is sponsoring the survey research for all participating clients. We hope this pilot will show that the use of experimental design principles is a great way to address the brand measurement challenge, and to provide real and actionable insights to brand marketers. It’s one of our early stage efforts to re-imagine measurement for online marketers.

To participate in the Brand Lift experiments pilot with DoubleClick and Vizu, you can contact either your DoubleClick or Vizu sales representative for more information and eligibility requirements.

Posted by Jim Dravillas, Google Research team

(cross posted from the DoubleClick Search blog)

It’s become a cliche for good reason: the future is mobile.

A few relevant statistics:

• Smartphone users now account for 9% of all online traffic
• Mobile searches have grown by 400% since 2010
• By 2013, more people will use mobile devices than PCs to get online

All of these figures are growing rapidly, with many analysts predicting mobile web activity to increase by several times in 2012.

Most advertisers will benefit from targeting mobile searchers, but not everything you’ve learned from your experiences optimizing for desktop search applies to mobile.

Here are some best practices for managing mobile campaigns, and specific instructions for doing so within DoubleClick Search.

1. Create separate campaigns for each platform you’re targeting.
Because everything from your budget to your landing pages to your keyword list will differ for your desktop, smartphone, and tablet campaigns, it’s highly recommended to create separate campaigns for each of these. Some advertisers find it easier to manage their mobile and tablet campaigns in completely separate engine accounts.

DS3 note: Tablet-specific targeting will have to be set directly in the search engine user interfaces.

2. Write specific ad texts for different device operating systems
Especially useful if you’re selling smartphone-related products such as apps or content, you can use AdWords’ additional settings to target only Android or iOS devices, and write ad copy that highlights your user’s device preference to increase engagement.

DS3 note: Create separate campaigns for each device platform in DS3 as above, setting the Advanced mobile and tablet options in the AdWords interface.

3. Bid differently
Smartphones and tablets will have fewer ad slots available per page of search results, and as a result, you may need to target a higher position in your mobile campaigns to receive traffic.

DS3 note: Employ position-only bid strategies or CPA strategies with a position target to bid for higher ad slots for your mobile campaigns.

4. Direct users to a mobile-optimized landing page
While the resolution of smartphone screens keeps increasing, they still don’t approach that of desktops and laptops, so all advertisers serious about getting mobile traffic should create a mobile-specific site to use as a destination for your mobile search campaigns. Howtogomo.com provides great tools to help advertisers and agencies optimize their sites for the small screen.

DS3 note: When copying keyword lists from a desktop campaign, test your landing pages on a mobile device or using a device emulator to make sure they go to the mobile version of the site, either directly or via a redirect.

5. Tailor your keyword list to the mobile searcher
It’s still a good idea to copy the keywords from your desktop campaigns as a starting point. However, mobile searches still tend to contain fewer terms than desktop, so it’s likely long-tail keywords that receive traffic on the desktop will be less effective in smartphone campaigns and may even bring down your quality score. Also, many mobile searches (over 20%) contain geomodifiers; be sure you’re including those city and region names in your keywords for stronger matches.

DS3 note: If you have longer-tail terms in a desktop campaign you don’t want to appear in your mobile campaign for QS or other reasons, it’s faster and cleaner to delete them from your keyword create bulksheet before uploading into DS3 rather than creating and deleting later.

6. Bridging online and offline
Mobile click-to-call campaigns can be powerful lead generators. When setting up a click-to-call campaign, consult with your DoubleClick Search Technical Account Manager to learn how DS3 can import data from your advertisers’ call tracking solution to allow optimization on both online and offline conversions.

With a lightning-fast UI, efficient workflow, and best-in-class infrastructure, DoubleClick Search allows you to quickly and intelligently manage and optimize your mobile search campaigns at scale.

- Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

We’re bringing the convenience of downloading campaign reports straight into a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation to users of ReportCentral in DoubleClick for Advertisers. Now you can easily extract campaign performance data at the site, ad or creative level with the PowerPoint Campaign Summary reports query in ReportCentral. The easy-to-digest charts and graphs will make it that much easier for you to share the results of your online advertising campaigns with your clients, team or manager.

To read more about how to access this new feature, check out this Help Center article (DFA sign-in required).

You should also check out Report Builder as we have recently added a couple of new options to make it even more efficient in running and managing campaign reports. For instance, now you can re-run any previously saved reports and run multiple ones at the same time from the report list page. You can also aggregate data for several activity groups at a time, search for and re-run saved reports as well as run multiple reports at a time in the “Reports” tab in Report Builder. Detailed information on these latest enhancements is available in the Help Center.

Expect more exciting news from the DFA reporting team in the coming months as we’re looking to introduce a host of new features to make campaign reporting that much more robust, insightful and efficient.

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

[cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog]

In DoubleClick Search, we’ve recently launched new algorithms for CPA, ERS, and Floodlight tag bid strategies, but have they made a difference? Now that some time has elapsed, we’ve been able to analyze the long-term impact of the new ROI algorithms.

NOTE: The following analysis was performed on CPA bid strategies, but CPA, ERS, and Floodlight bid strategies all use the same model.

87.5% of bid strategies saw statistically significant improved performance (the remaining 12.5% saw no significant statistical change or fell within the +/- 10% variance interval). Improved performance is defined as meeting one of the following conditions:

Conversions increased and actual CPA decreased: 46% of the improved bid strategies achieved this. Of these bid strategies:

• The median increase in conversions was 150%.
• The median decrease in CPA was 55%. Note that the conversion increase and CPA reduction happened at the same time to the same bid strategies. In other words, these bid strategies enjoyed both of these improvements.

CPA and conversions moved in the same direction, but moved closer to the target: The remaining 54% of improved bid strategies met this goal.

Excited about these improvements? Ready to see if an ROI bid strategy can improve the performance of your important keywords? It’s easy!

1. In the left nav, under the engine account box, click Bid strategies.
2. Click +New. The panel of properties for the new bid strategy appears.
3. Name your bid strategy, select the engine account, and select the desired type of bid strategy (Target CPA is selected in the above image).
4. Enter the desired settings for the bid strategy. Learn more about CPA, ERS, and Floodlight tag bidding settings.
5. Include a position range if you want to ensure the keyword never drops below a particular position.
6. Click Save, and then navigate to a page with a list of keywords.
7. Select the keywords you want to add to the bid strategy, click Bid strategy, and select the bid strategy in the panel that appears.
8. Enter a min bid and max bid for the keywords. We recommend entering a wide range (low min and high max) to allow DS to fully optimize your keyword performance.
9. Click Save.
10. After a week or two, check DS reporting to see how your bid strategy is performing.

Check out the Help Center for more information on setting up any type of bid strategy. If you have any questions, contact your Technical Account Manager or email ds-support@google.com.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Learn all about ad capabilities this month in the DFA Webinar series. We'll be covering click trackers, 1x1s, priority, frequency capping, and much more. Visit the DFA Help Center to register for any or all webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving your ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - March 14
• Atlanta - March 15
• Toronto - March 19
• San Francisco - March 20
• Los Angeles - March 27

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite:Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - March 15
• Atlanta - March 16
• Toronto - March 20
• San Francisco - March 21
• Los Angeles - March 28

MediaVisor: Learn more about planning and creating campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• New York - March 8
• Chicago - March 15
• Atlanta - March 16
• Toronto - March 20

Webinar Training

DFA Ads: Making Them Work For You - March 13
Learn the basics of setting up ads in DFA while thinking strategically about campaigns. Things like setting ads up as efficiently as possible, managing start and end dates, and avoiding serving too many defaults.

Priority, Frequency Capping, Targeting and Other Ad Level Capabilities - March 20
DFA offers a lot of flexibility with your ads, and in this session you’ll learn how to leverage the options available to you such as priority, frequency capping and targeting.

Click Trackers and 1x1s: Getting it Right - March 27
Did you know that you can track site-served creatives using DFA? Are you familiar with how to best work with sites to ensure that click trackers get implemented correctly? Trafficking these types of ads can get tricky and we're here to show you how to get it right.

DFA for New Users - March 7 and March 21
An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - March 13
Learn the Fundamentals of MediaVisor.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for regular updates to our training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer