Search marketers understand that the right optimization tools can make or break campaign performance. But for many, optimizing ad creative can be a challenge: beyond just relying on algorithms, marketers can spend hours repeatedly writing, testing, and refining ad copy across large-scale campaigns. To address this, today we’re excited to extend the suite of DoubleClick optimization solutions by partnering with Boost Media (formerly BoostCTR) -- bringing the company’s ad creative optimization solution to the DoubleClick Search platform.

With DoubleClick Search, customers are already taking advantage of performance-driving features to save time and improve results -- including inventory-aware campaigns for dynamic ad creation, A/B landing page testing to drive traffic to the highest ROI landing pages, and the Performance Bidding Suite for real time bid optimization. By coupling Boost Media’s ad optimization platform with core workflow and optimization tools from DoubleClick Search, advertisers can benefit in the following ways:

• Increase ROI with proven optimization algorithms. On top of intra-day keyword bidding from DoubleClick Search, Boost Media tests ads side-by-side, and chooses ads based on Boost Media’s proprietary algorithms. According to Boost Media, their clients experience an average of 30 percent increase in sales volume.
• Scale campaigns, save time with custom-tailored ad creation. Boost Media offers a network of professional copywriters to develop engaging and high-performing ads at scale. Advertisers can expect unique and creatively written ad text, distinguished from the standard Dynamic Keyword Insertion templates that are often used today. According to Boost Media, advertisers save an average of 60 hours per month on writing, testing, and reporting on creative.

• Cut costs by focusing on the right ads. Boost Media decreases cost by identifying and eliminating underperforming ads, allowing clients to capture additional, unseen revenue from their ad groups. According to Boost Media, users see an average 5% decrease in CPAs.

DoubleClick Search customers interested in using Boost Media can contact their DoubleClick Search Sales representatives.

We’ll continue to develop more optimization features to drive ROI for our customers. Stay tuned to learn about our plans in to deliver deep performance-driving capabilities across audience, attribution, and more.

Earlier last year, we announced improvements to our Conversions API -- a flexible offline conversion platform that lets you automatically upload, report, and optimize on offline data (like calls) in near real-time. Today, we wanted to highlight one of our success stories around this feature. The following story comes from ymarketing, a full-service digital agency who adopted the Conversions API to fuel their search campaigns with offline call data -- giving them access to more powerful insights than ever before.

Tired of importing and reconciling call data into their standard online reporting manually, ymarketing moved one of their clients, Clark Pest Control, to DoubleClick Search to take advantage of call tracking integrations from the Conversions API. Because Clark Pest Control’s prospective customers would often schedule their first appointments by phone, having the ability to optimize from offline call data was key. Today, DoubleClick Search integrates with ymarketing’s call tracking partner, Mongoose -- one of many call-tracking service providers working with DoubleClick -- ensuring that their client’s reporting reflects the most up-to-date call information for more insightful analysis and optimization. 

Steven Hellbusch, Performance Media Supervisor at ymarketing, says, “With the Conversions API, we have the ability to attribute calls to the specific keyword by search engine in almost real time. The ability to then optimize from both online and offline conversions has allowed us to better meet our clients’ goals. With all of our data in one place, we have a more accurate picture of what’s happening from a user experience, and more importantly, we have ability to unearth new opportunities for our client.” 

A month after implementing this solution for Clark Pest Control, ymarketing was impressed by the results: the team increased conversions by 173%, while cost per action decreased by 20%, and conversion rate doubled from 16% to 32%. On top of these significant performance gains, the team was able to save an estimated 20-30 hours of work a week.

To get the full scoop on ymarketing’s success with the DoubleClick Search Conversions API, read the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

Today, we’re launching Enhanced Formats in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, which allow media agencies to easily add engagement reporting to their standard banner ads and upload larger creative files (such as HTML5 creatives) to DoubleClick Campaign Manager directly. 

Digital advertising has moved beyond the impression and the click -- consumers can now interact with ads in more nuanced ways and advertisers need to be able to measure and understand these interactions. As digital creative becomes more interactive and built for multi-screen, it is also challenging publishers’ website specifications with larger and more complex files. Enhanced Formats provide an easy and inexpensive tool, built into your existing DoubleClick Campaign Manager workflow, that allows you to ensure all of your digital ads are built to accommodate the changing realities of the modern web.

Measure user engagement and interaction for every digital ad you create 

With Enhanced Formats, you can add basic engagement metrics and multiple exit links to your standard banner ads automatically. These will let you track metrics such as interaction rate, display time, the number of times people click on different exit links in your creative, and the breakdown of impressions that occur on various versions of your creative (back-up image vs. HTML5 vs. Flash.) 

Enhanced banner in the DoubleClick Campaign Manager dropdown menu

Upload larger files sizes, such as HTML5 files

Instead of compressing your HD assets to meet publishers’ specifications, add a polite load image and load your heavy file after the rest of the website loads. That way you preserve your high-res assets without violating publisher specs. Because many HTML5 ads require larger file sizes, the polite load is essential for running mobile-compatible ads. You’ll also be able to pay a fixed price for your assets, rather than paying “by the KB,” so you’ll know exactly what to expect when invoices show up.

Upload mixed mode creative

Instead of showing a static backup image when Flash isn’t compatible, show a more robust HTML5 ad. Enhanced Formats support mixed mode creatives (creatives that include Flash, HTML5 and backup image assets.) DoubleClick automatically renders the correct assets, based on the end user’s environment. Metrics for each type of asset are available in the reporting tab. 

Fewer steps; elegant execution and reporting

We’ve simplified the steps needed to “enhance” your banners and built everything into the existing DoubleClick Campaign Manager workflow. 

• Add multiple exits: DoubleClick automatically creates exits for the clicktags in a creative and lets you customize the reporting label for each exit. You only have to traffic one creative (as opposed to a creative for every clicktag), and you get all the exits alongside the rest of your metrics in the reporting tab. 
• Batch upload: Upload a zip file full of assets and DoubleClick will automatically detect which assets go with which creative. Enhanced banners will be created for larger assets in the zip, and flash or HTML5 formats will be created for smaller assets in the zip. 

Less expensive than full rich media

With Enhanced Formats, you get access to engagement metrics, polite load, and larger file sizes at a lower cost. 

To add Enhanced Formats to DoubleClick Campaign Manager, please contact your account manager. Note that Enhanced Formats are only available in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, so if you’re still using DFA, ask your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager first. 

You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on our Google+ page.

Posted by Jordan Sumerlus, Product Manager, DoubleClick

In an earlier blog post, we highlighted how shoppers exposed to a brand’s Product Listing Ads (PLA) and text ads are more likely to engage with that brand. To take full advantage of this opportunity across ad formats, it’s important that retailers have both a complete, accurate product feed and the tools to manage their campaigns at scale.

Today we’re excited to announce that DoubleClick Search will integrate feed management and optimization capabilities from Channel Intelligence. As an add-on solution to the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, the first step in this integration combines the data feed expertise from Channel Intelligence with the core workflow and optimization features from DoubleClick Search. Especially with the announcement of Shopping campaigns, having a detailed product feed is crucial for retailers to run high-impact search campaigns. This integration benefits retailers in the following ways:

• Build optimized product feeds. Channel Intelligence works with retailers to refine product feeds -- ensuring that the feed is comprehensive, the data is organized, and product attributes are accurate.
• Use improved feeds to dynamically create and update PLAs and text ads. Channel Intelligence feeds can power DoubleClick Search inventory-aware campaigns for automated campaign management. Using these optimized product feeds, DoubleClick Search can generate customized PLAs and text ads at scale, and keep them up-to-date based on changes to a retailer’s physical inventory.
• Optimize in real time to maximize ROI. To further boost performance across these ads, DoubleClick Search bid strategies update bids up to 4 times a day, based on up-to-the-minute conversion information. This scale and speed allows retailers to respond to product inventory changes and market trends at the drop of a hat -- even during the busiest holiday shopping days.

Performics pilots solution for major retail client

Global leader Performics is one of the first agencies to take advantage of the integrated offering for one of their clients, a large department store retailer.

"We're really excited to team with Channel Intelligence and DoubleClick Search to optimize and fully integrate the search experience for our retail brands,” says Eric Papczun, President US of Performics. “The integration is greater than the sum of its parts, and we feel that these combined technologies will give our clients a clear competitive edge in the marketplace."

Even more to come

To learn more, join us for a webinar on March 10th where we’ll cover the integration, as well as discuss the power of moving toward real-time for retail campaigns. Sign up for the webinar here http://goo.gl/cBlAcx

Our teams will also be attending eTail West coming up March 3 - 6. Come meet us during the pre-day panels and roundtables, hear us present a keynote on Day 3, or find us on the conference floor.

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest. And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.


Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of two exciting DoubleClick Campaign Manager training offerings: DCM Academy & DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification.

Get started with DCM Academy

DCM Academy is an easy-to-use, self-paced learning path designed to guide DoubleClick Campaign Manager users by role through core Help Center articles and online training material.

DCM Academy is for ad traffickers, analysts, and media planners – guiding them through curated help content and online training, so that you can learn and master DoubleClick Campaign Manager based on how you use the product.

DCM Academy covers:

• Basic information for new users: Just getting started? With the DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification, this is your first step toward mastering DoubleClick Campaign Manager.
• Implementation guide: Learn how to structure your new account or advertiser.
• QA and troubleshooting: Find out how to address and resolve common issues.
• Advanced topics: Learn about advanced tracking, Google Tag Manager integration, and more.
• Rich Media: Get tips and best practices for trafficking DoubleClick Rich Media in your DoubleClick Campaign Manager account.

Since DCM Academy covers a lot of material, we’ve set it up so you can track your progress.

The core curriculum: DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification

DCM Fundamentals covers key concepts, including:

• Ad serving basics
• How to use the DoubleClick Campaign Manager interface
• Account structure and administration
• Step-by-step ad trafficking instructions
• Creating Floodlight tags for conversion tracking
• Best practices for managing ads, placements, & creative
• An overview of reporting

Access DCM Fundamentals through the Training page in the Help Center.

If you're an existing DFA customer, you can continue to use DFA Academy and Fundamentals eLearning for online training. Contact your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today.

Stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on our Google+ page.

Posted by Sarah Payne, Product Trainer

Yesterday, the AdWords team announced the full launch of Shopping campaigns -- a streamlined way to organize, bid and report on your Product Listing Ads. The team also announced that they will be working closely with search management platforms to support these features.

We’re excited to fully support Shopping campaigns in DoubleClick Search in the coming weeks. Delivering smarter, faster tools for retailers is at the heart of our DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite investments, and with Shopping campaigns, we look forward to further helping marketers run effective search campaigns for their entire product catalogue.

For updates on our support of Shopping campaigns, stay tuned on the DoubleClick search blog, or follow us on Google+.

Each year, people are falling deeper in love with Valentine’s Day; in fact, this year’s numbers show consumers will spend $1.6 billion on candy to celebrate the day of love. And while Cupid’s been busy pairing up sweethearts, here at DoubleClick, we’ve been focused on connecting digital marketers with the right audiences to boost performance for their online marketing campaigns. To share that warm and fuzzy feeling, today we’re highlighting love notes from our top clients who are making eyes at ROI -- showcasing just a few ways they’re winning the hearts of consumers with faster, smarter tools from DoubleClick. 

Make sure your valentine knows you exist, with a creative message they can’t resist.

Every Romeo knows that snagging the prettiest Juliet starts with the perfect words and a timely delivery. That’s why Unfold Agency’s Brick Rucker and Daniel Weisinger have been using DoubleClick Rich Media for years to build beautiful creative messages that they can get in front of their target audience at the right time. Because they can review, approve and publish all their creatives themselves, they’re able to quickly turn their campaigns around and get them live on a deadline. 

“We believe in turning around creative quickly,” Weisinger says. “And most of the ad units we build are really complex.” By using DoubleClick, Unfold is able to push every banner as far as it can go, building innovative and engaging experiences within their rich media ad units. One recent creative even coordinated the ad unit with the surrounding skin of the website to provide a holistic brand experience for the user. “We’ve been using DoubleClick Studio for years...We’re as good as we are because DoubleClick created the platform for us.” 

Make it love at first ‘site’ with a sleek, new interface

Now that you have just the right message for your Valentine, you’ll also need to look sleek to really impress them. That’s why with DoubleClick Campaign Manager - the new version of DFA - we focused on building a beautiful, intuitive interface to help you work more efficiency and maximize your results across screens. 

For all those who have already upgraded to DoubleClick Campaign Manager, it’s been love at first ‘site’. Power users from Situation Interactive - Mara Winkler, Senior Media Planner, and Joyce Tse, Media Coordinator - told us about the benefits they’re seeing from using the new trafficking interface: “With the upgrade to DoubleClick Campaign Manager, we’ve been able to streamline the trafficking process. The new trafficking workflow makes it easy to edit everything without switching pages, and allows us to use our time more efficiently. For example, when we swap creative it’s an extremely easy and intuitive process, and changes are reflected almost immediately. This helps us to ensure that the correct creative is running at all times.”

Go ga-ga over programmatic buying

As Cupid would have it, no meaningful connections with your sweetheart should be overlooked, and neither should an opportunity to connect or reconnect with your customers. 

The agency Deutsch LA turned to programmatic to help a major real estate company reach customers at scale, at the lowest possible cost. To drive success, Deutsch brought the best of targeting, formats and inventory together on the DoubleClick Bid Manager platform.

To maximize share-of-voice, the team paired contextual and audience targeting using both display and video formats. Best-in-class semantic contextual targeting ensured they could engage users in the moment they read content related to their client’s products. While contextual comprised of 20% of campaign spend, it drove the highest clickthrough rate, at a CPA 50% lower than the rest of their buy. Stephanie Waddle, VP and Digital Associate Media Director at Deutsch LA tells us why she’s a fan: “Targeting endemic content is important for our client. It qualifies our audience and drives lower CPAs. In addition, it keeps them top of mind in a very competitive category.” 

The team also coupled their cross-exchange buy with a programmatic direct buy, to augment reach with increased focus on private marketplaces. Integrating their reserved and programmatic display buy within the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform gave the team added efficiencies and fresh, holistic reporting across their buy.

Get your heart racing with real-time insights

And when it comes to seeing the results of your efforts, any Valentine’s Day planner knows it’s never good to wait until the last minute -- not with dinner reservations, and certainly not with your digital campaigns. 

With instant conversions in DoubleClick Search, DigitasLBi was able to analyze their performance in a heartbeat, and use that up-to-the-minute information to influence bid decisions. “It’s been a great tool for DigitasLBi,” says Ashley Tsoumas, Search Marketing Analyst at DigitasLBi. “DoubleClick Search makes bid and budget adjustments automatically based on your goals, and then within the same day, you have an understanding of how those adjustments have impacted the overall business.” For one particular account across all Google and Bing keywords, these optimizations from instant conversion feedback contributed to 30% more orders at 68% lower CPO, month-over-month.

Customers are feeling the real-time romance across the DoubleClick platform, too. Megan Moldovan, Director of Platform Logistics at Annalect, tells us how unified reporting lets her team take advantage of every opportunity across their digital marketing with fresh, accurate data:  "Integration of search, display, RTB -- the ability to track all of that within one system, see how thats impacting media and actually start to act on that in real-time across all channels is an amazing new feature."

For more customer love stories, be sure to check out our list of case studies here. 

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at DoubleClick!

The world’s major brands are now building their marketing campaigns for the digital world, from Dove's Real Beauty Sketches, to Toyota's Car Collaborator, to Kate Spade’s holiday ads.

Brands and their agencies want to better measure their digital campaigns, but they don’t want one-off science experiments or fuzzy numbers; they want metrics that are as meaningful and actionable as the click has become for performance advertising:

Did someone actually see my ad? And was it the right audience?
What did people think about the ad? How did the ad change their mindset?
What did people do as a result of seeing the ad?

As we invest to improve brand measurement for the entire industry in all these areas, we are keeping a few things in mind. First, measurement should be actionable - real time insights to improve campaigns as they run, not after-the-fact reports that can only improve future ad buys. Second, we know our clients want measurement that is open and transparent so we’re partnering with the industry to create metrics that serve as a true currency between buyers and sellers, and offer flexibility and choice to marketers.

Today at the IAB Leadership Summit, I gave an update on a few of our brand measurement products:

Active View 
Last year, comScore estimated that 54% of ads running on the web aren’t seen by the user. Maybe the reader scrolled past your ad; maybe she never got to it.

We’re supporting industry initiatives, like the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) to establish new standards. And late last year, we made it possible to buy based on viewability on the Google Display Network. This capability is based on our MRC-accredited Active View technology, a transparent and actionable viewability metric that we’re gradually rolling out to both marketers and publishers. It’s early days, but we’ve already seen more than 1,500 brands buying impressions based on viewability, across more than 100,000 sites on our network.

comScore vCE 
In TV, marketers use the concept of a Gross Rating Point (GRP), by which they measure the reach and frequency of their campaigns among different demographics. For digital campaigns, there are a number of options for marketers wanting a digital GRP across screens. For example, last year, we started testing comScore vCE (validated Campaign Essentials) and Nielsen OCR (Online Campaign Ratings) for campaigns on YouTube and across our network.

While we’re excited by the efforts in the industry to introduce GRPs to the digital market, we believe we haven’t yet reached the full potential of this metric. And so today, we’re excited to announce that we’re taking another step forward by partnering with comScore to turn vCE into a digitally actionable metric.

By working closely with comScore and the industry, we believe we can make a GRP metric that will be completely actionable: both advertisers and publishers will be able to see if a campaign is reaching the right audience in real time and make adjustments if it isn’t. No more waiting days or weeks for reports, no more wasted media, no more missed opportunities. This objective, third-party vCE metric is being built directly into our DoubleClick ad serving products, where it can serve as a transparent currency for both marketers and publishers to buy, sell and measure ad space across sites, formats and screens.

Brand Lift 
At the top of the pyramid, brands want to measure the impact of advertising on core brand metrics like awareness, favorability, purchase consideration and, ultimately, sales. We're developing a suite of Brand Lift products to help here. Last year, we began a small test of surveys to measure the impact of a brand's campaign.

Measuring ad effectiveness by conducting surveys is not new. But generally they’re slow to provide results, and get very low response rates.

In our early tests, we’re seeing 20-30% user response rates (significantly higher than traditional surveys), coming through in near real time. This enables brands to turn the results into immediate action: brands that are using Survey Lift have seen an 82% lift in ad recall, along with a 64% lift in brand awareness. For example MasterCard was able to double brand recall for one of their holiday campaigns based on insights gleaned from surveys. Based on this early promising feedback, we’ll be rolling these surveys out more broadly, for more types of campaigns, in coming months.

 

Going forward 
There’s lots more to come, and we're working on ways to help brands at all stages of the measurement pyramid. More actionable, open and transparent measurement will help bring more great campaigns and brands online, which in turn helps to fund web services and content. We’re looking forward to working with the industry and partners to help make this a reality.

 -- posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Today, almost 50% of the US population has a smartphone* and one in five webpage views now occur on mobile devices.** Even though consumers have quickly incorporated these devices into their daily routines, advertisers haven’t necessarily followed suit. While a few of the savviest advertisers are taking advantage of the multiscreen opportunity, it’s time that the entire industry think critically about how to make mobile a first class citizen in their campaigns.

One key aspect of “making mobile work” is using mobile-compatible ad creative; HTML5 creative works on smartphones, tablets and desktops, allowing advertisers to build a single ad unit that can run across all screens. By using HTML5, advertisers open the door to cross-screen branding opportunities, as well as enable publishers to monetize their highly-trafficked mobile properties.

To call out this need, the IAB today published an open letter, signed by Google, 16 US publishers and six UK publishers, asking marketers to use HTML5 for their ad creative so that their campaigns can show up properly across screens.

This plea to marketers is the first step in a larger “Make Mobile Work” Initiative, in which the IAB, supported by Google and the other publishers, will provide additional resources to marketers to educate them on how to implement successful mobile campaigns.

By fostering the conversation and educating marketers, we hope the “Make Mobile Work” Initiative will invigorate the production of mobile-compatible campaigns, enable marketers to take advantage of the mobile opportunity, and provide publishers with the inventory they need to monetize their mobile properties.

Posted by Bonita Stewart, VP Americas Partner Business Solutions, Google

*source: eMarketer “US Mobile Phone Internet Users and Penetration, 2012-2017.”
**source: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201012-201312