Running top-notch digital campaigns for the holidays can be a lot of work, and your to-do list can seem never-ending: on top of the festivities of the season, you’re juggling fleeting promotions, revising stale ads, and trying to balance your budget —all in hopes of reaching holiday shoppers at the moment they’re looking to buy. So how do you succeed online during one of the busiest times of the year, and reach the right people with the right message, at the drop of a (Santa) hat? 

This season, we wanted to share a few of our favorite digital marketing “stocking stuffers” to put the cheer back in your holiday and help you plan, build, manage, measure and optimize your campaigns with ease. We took our best time-saving features that you can apply across your search and display campaigns, so you can find some extra time to sit back and enjoy your toasty apple cider -- while we take care of the rest. 

Plan your media buys strategically:
   
Solve the cross-channel puzzle with display remarketing from search ads.
It’s not a miracle on 34th Street: you can get your search and display campaigns connected and performing this holiday season, and beyond. Display remarketing from search ads will help you close the loop on those last minute shoppers who searched for your product or service but didn't convert. With this feature, set up search campaigns in DoubleClick Search and re-engage your audience with display ads across exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across Google Display Network - and do it all with an easy, tagless workflow.
Build your ad creative beautifully:
Schedule your asset swaps or make them on-the-fly with dynamic creative.
Admit it: manually updating every ad unit with new logos or creative assets can leave you feeling like a Grinch. When you know you’ll have to change the assets for a campaign, use dynamic creative to schedule the updates in advance. The new assets will automatically replace all the old ones in your ads, and you’ll be singing fa-la-la-la-la all the way home.
Don’t get tangled up with your holiday designs.
Google Web Designer lets you create beautiful HTML5 ads with ease, for free. Build cross-screen creative directly for DoubleClick Studio -- all the ad tags and rich media metrics are automatically built into the ad, so your designs can shine on every screen.
Manage your campaigns easily:
Do the work of a team of elves with automated rules from DoubleClick Search.
Stay up 'til midnight waiting for Santa -- not your campaign updates -- with a little help from automated rules. Schedule changes to specific ads and keywords, based on criteria you specify, to ensure that your holiday search campaigns are in tip-top shape. That means you can spend less time on repetitive tasks, and more time setting up those reindeer traps.
Meet mobile under the mistletoe.
As consumers turn to their devices to research and shop, you can turn to us to reach and engage them. Whether you’re running search or display, our system is device-aware. With DoubleClick Search support of AdWords enhanced campaigns, seamlessly reach your customers across locations and devices with custom mobile bid adjustments based on your Floodlight tag activities. With Bid Manager mobile-specific targeting and formats, we automatically detect if users are on a mobile device, so you can engage your audience on both mobile web and apps -- without any additional work. So cozy up with mobile this season!
Measure and optimize your campaigns successfully:
Get a new perspective on the year - and your performance - with data visualizations.
While Santa eagerly awaits his midnight milk and cookies, you can treat yourself to “infosnacks” - data visualizations that give you a snapshot of your campaign performance - right from the DoubleClick Bid Manager UI. Infosnacks bring information that’s commonly viewed - like conversion and CPA - to your fingertips. In addition, you can see how these metrics are trending over time. So you’ll spend less time digging through data, and more time spreading the yuletide cheer.
Race to the top with real-time bid and campaign optimization.
Looking for a solution that’ll help you go as fast as Rudolph? Put your best bid forward with the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite and DoubleClick Bid Manager automatic campaign optimization. Both suites are designed to drive campaign performance through speedy, data-driven bid optimization. Our systems use instant conversion data to update bids in near real-time, and on DoubleClick Bid Manager, we automatically shift your budget to the best performing line items.

Do you have a DoubleClick tip or trick that gets you through the busy holiday season? Email it to us at dclk-holiday@googlegroups.com with your name and title. We’ll feature the best tips on this DoubleClick blog!

*Bonus* If you want even more product-specific tips, check out our DoubleClick Search and Rich Media Gallery blogs next week!

Posted by the DoubleClick Marketing Team