One piece of feedback our sales and support teams have heard over the years is that users want to know about urgent issues impacting DoubleClick products as soon as possible.

Accordingly, we are launching the Ads Status Dashboard, a new publicly-accessible tool that allows you to learn about major outages or functionality concerns across DoubleClick products, including DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick Planning, and DDM Reporting. When a major issue impacting large numbers of users is identified, we will post an outage notice in the appropriate row on the Dashboard, then provide updates to the outage notice at a regular interval until the issue is resolved.

We’re hoping this will allow all of our users to get access to crucial information quickly and without friction -- anyone who may be impacted can access the dashboard to check on the status of our products.

We’re looking to add additional products and features to the Dashboard in the coming months, so bookmark it, share it, and return to it often. We hope it saves you time!

We all do it - set lofty resolutions that never make it past January. That’s because meaningful resolutions can take time to embrace and implement. Many marketers have told us that in 2015, programmatic buying will be at the heart of their strategy. In fact, the majority of marketers are managing at least 20% of their ad spend programmatically, and almost two-thirds plan to spend twice that amount over the next 12 months. (Source)

To help make the transition easier and more actionable, we connected with Bob Arnold, a digital marketer who has worked at Procter and Gamble, Kellogg, and is now Google’s North American Digital Media and Strategy lead. Bob shared with us three resolutions for marketers as they implement programmatic in 2015.

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Posted by Kelly Cox, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

With over half of ads measured not viewed, it’s more important than ever for advertisers to be able to act on viewability measurement. That’s why we’re happy to roll out new product updates we announced at CES, that make viewability more actionable for advertisers using the DoubleClick platform.

As we heard from Neal Mohan earlier this month, “when it comes to impact, having your ad seen is not just important, it’s fundamental.” It’s why we’re investing heavily to help make viewability a common currency across the industry. Over the last year, we’ve enabled advertisers to buy only viewable impressions across the Google Display Network, built Active View viewability reporting into our DoubleClick platforms for display and video, and today we’re building on this even further with two launches that will help advertisers act on these viewability metrics. 

• Viewability targeting in Doubleclick Bid Manager. Clients of DoubleClick Bid Manager can now measure and target impressions globally based on the historical viewability of an impression. By programmatically targeting viewable impressions, marketers are able to improve the performance of their campaigns, in real-time, eliminating the need to manually reallocate spend to find viewable impressions. 
• Viewability data in DoubleClick Ad Exchange bid requests. Ad Exchange clients can now see the historical viewability percentage for every impression when available. With this signal, programmatic buyers can make smarter decisions about the value of impressions before they place their bids on Ad Exchange.

Viewability reporting has given marketers the data to understand how many of their ads were seen. Now they can use that same data to programmatically increase the viewability of their campaigns. For brands like TalkTalk Telecom Group, using viewability targeting on DoubleClick Bid Manager has driven strong results.

TalkTalk generates 94% more viewable impressions
TalkTalk Telecom Group, a leading TV, broadband, mobile, and phone provider in the U.K., was eager to boost the viewability of its ads while maintaining costs. Having already implemented programmatic buying to reach potential customers at the exact moment they're ready to commit, TalkTalk wanted to then ensure its ads were actually being seen by targeting viewable impressions. To do so, the company deployed DoubleClick Bid Manager with Active View. TalkTalk generated 94% more viewable impressions, increased CTR 133%, and lowered CPC by 40%.

"Being able to target by viewability with Active View is groundbreaking. Active View enables us to measure the viewability of our ads, and Bid Manager's viewability targeting feature provides us with a solution to increase the number of viewable impressions we buy." - Rich Bailey, online marketing manager, TalkTalk Telecom Group.

To learn more about the team’s approach and results, check out the full case study here.

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Posted by the DoubleClick Product Marketing team

Today’s consumer spends more time in digital than any other media, often while fluidly moving across screens. In the past three years alone, multi-screen media consumption has jumped by 500 percent, with 90 percent of consumers moving between one device and another to complete a task, whether it’s to shop, plan a trip or browse content. And the growth rates are stunning: on YouTube, more video content will be uploaded today than all three major networks created in the past five years.

Today at CES I announced two really exciting developments that will help turbocharge the future of video advertising:

• First, more than 30 mainstays of video advertising--broadcasters, premium publishers and major brands--have joined our premium video marketplace, Google Partner Select and;
• We’re rolling out viewability reporting across our ad platforms. This will, for the first time, inform brands whether their video ads on digital channels were actually seen or not (as opposed to, for example, appearing off-screen, going unwatched or being swiped past).

Our goal with both of these updates is to help marketers succeed in today’s world of media abundance by connecting them with consumers at the right time in the right place and enabling them to measure what truly matters.

An update on Partner Select
In June we introduced you to Google Partner Select, a premium video marketplace that brings together the best of brand advertising with the best of programmatic. Our goal was to create a marketplace of top-quality video content from the best producers. Today, we’re happy to share some of those partnerships.

Since launch, more than 30 broadcast and premium publisher brands have signed on including CBS Interactive, Fox News, Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel, Hearst Television, Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, Men’s Fitness, and PGA Tour. These publishers are helping brands discover a wide range of their premium video content including full-episode shows, live sports & news, and short-form content across a broad range of audiences and content categories. And all of this inventory is exclusive to Google Partner Select.

We’ve also seen strong traction on the advertiser side with over 20 major brand advertisers, including iconic brands like Allstate, BMW and Netflix, and their agencies having signed significant commitments to buy through Google Partner Select. In our early tests, we've seen video ads running through Google Partner Select driving significant audience engagement with 74% video ad completion rates, demonstrating that when brands pick the right moments, engagement follows.

Viewability for Video
When it comes to impact, being seen is not just important, it’s fundamental. That’s why this time last year, we set a goal for ourselves to help make viewability a common currency across the industry. I’m encouraged that this issue is staying top of mind for so many and hope that marketers and publishers continue to push for the full transparency and accountability they deserve.

In our latest of ongoing investments in this area, in the coming days, we will start to offer viewability reporting for video campaigns available to all marketers and publishers using our DoubleClick platforms, as well as for the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. We’ll soon have this capability for reserved inventory on YouTube as well (including all of Google Preferred) across desktop and app views, a significant addition with so much viewership now happening in mobile. In the coming months, we’ll start offering the ability to target viewable impressions in DoubleClick, as well as the ability to buy only viewable video impressions across the Google Display Network. Later in the year, we also plan to report on audibility for video ads, as well as the total amount of time an ad was viewable.

We’re adhering to the industry definition for video viewability (as set by the MRC and Making Measurement Make Sense): 50% or more of the video being on screen for two seconds or longer.

Viewability, though, is just the starting point, not an end in and of itself. With the confidence that their ads can be seen by a real person, marketers can then go on to strive for--and measure--what really matters, impact and engagement. Along with our commitment to viewability, we’ll continue our investments in other ways to help marketers drive engagement, like our TrueView format (where advertisers only pay when consumers engage) and Brand Lift surveys, which help marketers measure the impact of their campaigns on their branding goals.

I’m incredibly excited about the future of digital video for brand building. No other medium brings together sight, sound and motion--and incredible measurability. This is the start of what we expect will be a year of leaps forward in the industry in making digital work for brand advertisers. So watch this space for more to come.

-- posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Video & Display Advertising