Building better experiences is the subject of the discussion at the annual EMEA DoubleClick Leadership Summit that kicked off yesterday at Google’s European headquarters in Dublin. And key to building a better consumer experience is reaching consumers with more precise and relevant marketing.

Today we’re excited to announce new DoubleClick precision marketing innovations that allow more relevant marketing for consumers, and that allow marketers to reach and measure their audiences across screens, programmatically, in a brand-safe and verifiable way.

Buy app inventory with more control.

Building better experiences means, in part, ensuring that your brand is present where and when you intend it to be. We know brand safety and control are important to advertisers, and we continue to develop tools that both safeguard your brand as well as help you reach the most relevant audiences for your message.

Sensitive category classifiers, now available in DoubleClick Bid Manager, let you specify categories of apps to exclude based on their fit for your brand. And coming soon to both DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Campaign Manager, app verification will provide you with greater insight around the apps your ads ran in, so you can understand where and how your brand appeared. (DoubleClick Bid Manager users can learn more about our brand safety capabilities here.)

Understand the impact to your brand across screens.

An important part of building better experiences is understanding when users see your ads, wherever they may be.

Active View measurement is rolling out for apps in DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager, so you can understand when consumers see your app ads. Brands like Bank of Montreal have already seen the benefits of using Active View in DoubleClick to measure viewability across the web, and these insights are now available for display and video app inventory.

Lastly, we’re announcing a new JavaScript API in Google Chrome, called Intersection Observer, which provides viewability measurement for your mobile and desktop web placements without the need for Flash. Built directly into the Chrome Browser, Intersection Observer improves viewability coverage for all video and display formats across screens by solving technical challenges associated with mobile viewability measurement. It also provides faster browsing and less battery drain, improving the consumer experience.

These innovations help marketers reach consumers with more precise and relevant marketing, enabling better user experiences across all screens for better results.

Posted by Steve Chang
Product Manager, DoubleClick

The digital landscape has changed the way people shop for the holidays. With the ability to instantly discover, research and purchase, people around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before — transforming into supershoppers, seemingly overnight.

Supershoppers are a new breed of buyers, keeping their options open and relying heavily on mobile for inspiration, research and e-commerce. They learn the latest brands and the top gifts of the season, and they know where to find the best deals. Where do they gather their knowledge? From you, if you know how to reach them.

DoubleClick Ad Exchange offers access to the broadest reach of premium, clean and brand-safe inventory across screens. We've created a new guide to help you get the right message to these supershoppers and to provide some tips to help set your campaigns up for success this holiday season.

Native advertising is fast becoming the chosen method for advertisers looking to reach mobile consumers. Native ads allow advertisers to build better brand experiences, particularly on mobile, by matching the ad to the form and function of the surrounding publisher content. According to eMarketer, native advertising is already a $16B business and is expected to more than double to $33.5B by 2020.¹

However, while users find this type of ad format useful, the process of building and scaling native ads is largely still manual, with varying standards and formats across publishers.

Over the past year, Google has been working with publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post to help them adopt native ads. And in July, we announced an expanded offering for both publishers and advertisers to help accelerate adoption of this user-friendly format with programmatic. Advertisers can now easily build and buy native ads that run scalably across all publishers with Doubleclick Bid Manager.

The results are starting to come in...

Since launch, we’ve seen a lot of excitement amongst advertisers who want to get started with the solution, and initial campaigns are seeing success. For example, San Francisco Travel Association and their performance marketing platform, Sojern, used programmatic native in DoubleClick to easily create a campaign that successfully converted interested consumers into San Francisco-bound travellers.

See SF Travel’s components come to life as various native ad formats

The component-based nature of the ads allowed SF Travel to test different headlines and optimize the campaign to the best performers. Sojern was also able to integrate their own travel-based marketing platform with DoubleClick Bid Manager to help deliver a campaign that exceeded SF Travel’s goals.

The two-month campaign drove:

• A 1662% rise in hotel bookings: 16X their previous campaign
• A remarkable 92% drop in cost per acquisition

"Thanks to our work with the San Francisco Travel team and Google, programmatic native ads in DoubleClick are now a proven method for driving direct bookings," says Jackie Lamping, VP of Marketing at Sojern. "We’ve since expanded this opportunity and made it available to all of Sojern’s clients."

Read the full case study to learn more about San Francisco Travel’s campaign. If you’re interested in building a programmatic native campaign with DoubleClick, reach out to your DoubleClick sales rep for more information.

Posted by Jason Bigler Product Management Director, DoubleClick

^{1 eMarketer, “US Native Advertising Update: Focus on Video,” July 16, 2016}

In the coming quarters, all major browsers, including Chrome, are phasing out the use of Flash technologies in favor of HTML5. HTML5 is not only available on more devices, but also offers improved security, reduced power consumption and faster page load times for users.

We began our transition to HTML5 with display ads across Google and DoubleClick back in 2015. We are now continuing that transition by shifting video ads in DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google Display Network to HTML5 over the next few quarters as follows:

• Starting April 3rd, 2017, new Flash video ads will no longer be able to be uploaded into DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords.
• Starting July 3rd, 2017, Flash video ads will no longer be able to run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords. Additionally, our Active View and Verification tools for video will no longer use Flash.

Transition timeline for HTML5 Video

It’s important to begin updating your ads and websites to HTML5 technologies in preparation for these dates. We fully support HTML5 Video across DoubleClick and AdWords and provide the tools to ensure advertisers and publishers can easily migrate all video ads to HTML5.

For guidance and best practices to help your team with this transition, see this Chrome one-sheeter, visit the DoubleClick help center or contact your DoubleClick sales representative.

Posted by Peentoo Patel and Sunil Gupta

Search marketers know the pain of trying to make their campaigns speak the language of their business. Campaigns optimized for your business depend on specific insights, but it's difficult to find those insights in standardized reporting and automation.

We’re introducing business data in DoubleClick Search so you can report on and automate search marketing in a way that’s unique to your needs — and learn if they’re being met. Whether for products, flights, hotels, marketing strategies or other aspects, you can incorporate business data tables to generate custom reports and manage your ads.

Focus on the metrics that matter most to your business

Business data in DoubleClick Search gives you the flexibility to view campaign data from the angles that align most with your business goals.

For example, if you’re a search marketer for an airline, you could use business data in DoubleClick Search to view your reports by region, airport or seating class to learn where — and among whom — your campaigns are succeeding, and which campaigns need adjustments.

Seeing your search marketing data in a business context can uncover deeper insights about where to invest search budgets. Your business dimensions can also help you understand how search fits into your broader marketing strategy.

Use your business data to automate campaign management

Business data in DoubleClick Search can also be used to automate campaign management. For example, if you’re building search campaigns for hotels, you can upload room availability data for each property. You can then use rules to pause campaigns with no vacancy and raise bids on hotels with empty rooms. Many other types of data, like inventory levels, competitive metrics and prices, can be used to change ad copy, bids, budgets, status and other properties of your campaigns.

Over the next few months, business data feeds will let you automatically update business data tables from a regularly fetched file. Rather than manually uploading a spreadsheet every time information changes, DoubleClick Search can automatically read data from your server and seamlessly incorporate updated information into your account. This data can be applied in rules and reporting, just like the business data you upload yourself.

See how this works:

Leverage sales and promotional events as signals for Smart Bidding

We’re also introducing the ability for you to upload data about product launches, promotions and other frequently recurring business events to your search campaigns. This data supplements your existing campaign metrics with extra information, providing additional context for DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding to use as it evaluates the effect of these events on conversions. With this information in hand, bid strategies set smarter bids that help you win more conversions while hitting your CPA or ROI targets.

For example, an e-commerce retailer may offer a free shipping promotion every few weeks. By uploading this promotional schedule into DoubleClick Search, Smart Bidding can analyze the effect of the free shipping offer on conversion rates before, during and after each sale. Over time, it will detect patterns in conversion rates driven by these events. Then, Smart Bidding will automatically raise or lower bids in order to achieve optimal results.

How will you get search marketing in sync with your business?

Advertisers like Cadillac are already using business data in DoubleClick Search for time savings and improved performance. They've thought through the numerous possibilities of business data and updated their accounts. Now it's your turn to do the same.

"With business data in DoubleClick Search we can better leverage our search marketing investments through customized reports that allow us to differentiate between conquest customers and existing owners. We are committed to putting customers at the center of all that we do and this enables us to provide the right information to the right customer." -Dan Han, Digital Advertising Assistant Manager, Cadillac

To learn more about business data in DoubleClick Search, visit our Help Center and reach out to your DoubleClick representative to bring better insights and automation into your campaigns.

Posted by Henry Tappen Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

Today we’re introducing a new API that allows you to securely connect offline conversion events to your digital advertising programs, allowing you to measure the full impact of your digital spend. In addition to gaining a more comprehensive view on campaign performance, you’ll also be able to use these insights to better refine your audience lists.

Take the auto industry, for example. Consumers in the market looking to buy a new sedan might start by watching video reviews of popular models. When they’ve narrowed down a few options that fit their needs, they’re likely to search for local dealers and make calls to schedule test drives. Finally, after all of this research, they’ll make their decision and buy directly from one dealer.

If you’re a car maker trying to reach consumers in this journey, you’re probably looking at proxy metrics (i.e. lead forms, time on site, video completion rates, etc.) to measure the success of your digital campaigns, leaving you with a partial understanding of their impact. With the Conversions API you’re able to measure offline activities as well — such as calls, visits or transactions happening in the dealership — giving you a complete view of the customer journey.
Some industry-specific examples

Enabling better decisions

By considering offline actions such as store visits, call activities and in-store transactions you can gain insights that will allow you to make your ads more relevant for consumers and perform better. For example:

• Exclude existing customers from your new acquisition program and focus on retention and loyalty
• Re-market to consumers who have called your call center but didn’t purchase
• Cross-sell new products to frequent visitors of your stores

Getting started with the Conversions API

You can use one of the approved partners to securely integrate with DoubleClick. Approved partners span various use cases including CRM onboarding, call tracking and foot traffic attribution:

                         

      

Conversions API is now available to all DoubleClick accounts. To get started, review the technical documentation in our Help Center, talk to your sales representative or contact one of the partners directly.

Posted by Luke Hedrick Product Manager, DoubleClick

With the holiday season fast approaching, DoubleClick Search customers get an early gift: new features to make their holiday campaigns more successful.

This year, new DoubleClick Search features will save you time and help you measure campaigns more effectively.

Improved workflows for finding and creating keywords

We’ve made a few adjustments to workflows in DoubleClick Search, making the management of your campaigns more efficient and productive.

First, we’ve made editing positive and negative keywords in DoubleClick Search as simple as entering data in an online spreadsheet. Each keyword gets a row, and column headings such as "Ad group," "Match type" and "Max CPC" let you easily adjust these important settings for each keyword.

It’s also easier now to add keywords. You can combine new the keyword experience with the search terms report available in DoubleClick Search, to find and build new keywords to include in your campaign in a matter of a few clicks. When you identify a positive or negative keyword that better matches the customer intent, you no longer have to leave the report to add it. New enhancements allow you to add new keywords to your campaigns directly from the search terms report, and more advanced filters check to see if the keywords already exist in the ad group, campaign or account.

To help you get started, we’ve added tips for using the keyword editor and how to use the search terms report to harvest keywords in the DoubleClick Search Help Center.

Greater control and flexibility for bid optimization

DoubleClick Search now supports device bid adjustments for AdWords. You can use these to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile devices, computers and tablets. DoubleClick Search reports provide critical insights into performance by device type, allowing you to set these device bid adjustments to maximize performance.

While device bid adjustments enable you to optimize with greater precision, you still need to factor in other signals which impact performance, like location, day of week and audience. To optimize at scale across this wider range of contextual signals, you should take advantage of automated bidding. DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding utilizes the power of Google’s machine learning to set more informed bids and help you get the most out of your marketing budget. Bid strategies with cost per acquisition (CPA), effective revenue share (ERS) or return on ad spend (ROAS) goals can all be optimized through Smart Bidding by device, location, remarketing lists and other factors.

And, to measure bid strategies more effectively, DoubleClick Search customers have new options to customize the data that appears in bid strategy reports. You can now segment bid strategy reports and add Floodlight activity columns.

Review our Best practices for setting up Smart Bidding strategies to develop the best possible approach to bid adjustments.

Additional transparency for measuring performance

DoubleClick Search executive reports now enable you to quickly see what can be optimized by displaying the top or bottom performers. They also enable you to filter reports using predefined or custom metrics, so you can choose to only see the data you want.

For example, if you’re a retailer and want to see the top 20 keywords that lead to a purchase, you can easily do so in an executive report that looks like this:

And, so you can ensure your top performing keywords are being seen, DoubleClick Search can now report on impression share for AdWords keywords, in addition to AdWords and Bing Ads accounts, campaigns and ad groups. We’ve also added Bing Ads quality score in DoubleClick Search.

Lastly, we’re rolling out the full launch of hourly reporting later this month. Hourly reporting can provide insightful data during special sales, where conversion behaviors are less predictable. Or, you can use these reports to quickly detect outages or problems with your conversion tags.

Review account activities more effectively

With all hands on deck during this busy period, the revamped change history report makes it easier for you to see who's changing an ad account, when they're making changes and details about the changes they made. These reports are fast and offer powerful filters to view and download activity by user email, change type, system and entity changed. Learn who your most active users are and implement reports to better manage your team.

If you’d like to learn more about any of these new features for your upcoming holiday search campaigns, contact your DoubleClick Search account manager.

Posted by Bashar Kachachi
Product Management Lead, DoubleClick Search

Becoming a digital advertising expert takes time, and it’s important to get off to a good start. Only 50 percent of marketers say they’re confident in their knowledge of digital advertising,¹ despite the wide range of educational materials available. Sometimes “more” isn’t the same as “better.” Many advertisers start learning about AdWords in our help centers, which offer an enormous trove of product information. But you’ve told us that you want quick, bite-sized training in more interactive formats. And we heard you.

We’re pleased to announce Academy for Ads, a new digital training platform designed to help you learn how to use Google’s ad products in a mobile-first world. We built Academy for Ads to promote learning on-the-go, whether you’re on a laptop, a desktop, or a mobile device.

Grow your Google product know-how

Guided by input from our team of product experts, Academy for Ads courses cover the topics that matter most to DoubleClick and Google advertisers – from Bid Manager and AdWords basics and the essentials of campaign management to bid strategies, reporting, optimization and more ways to successfully advertise with Google. We’re adding new content all the time, including a DoubleClick Campaign Manager Learning path in just a few weeks.

Learning paths, Assessments and Achievements

We’ve organized the courses into “Learning paths” that you can walk through at your own pace. At the end of each path, take an Assessment and earn an Achievement to show that you know your stuff. Earning an Achievement for Bid Manager or Ad Exchange helps you prepare for the more advanced training in the Help Center.

A few example Learning paths:

• Digital concepts: Learn the essentials of online ads — from third-party ad-serving to real-time bidding, programmatic media buying and remarketing.
• Get started with DoubleClick Bid Manager*: Learn your way around Bid Manager, what it offers and how you can use it to manage your online marketing campaigns.
• DoubleClick Ad Exchange: Learn how real-time bidding works in an open auction sale on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This learning path also covers the available programmatic deal types, along with the types of inventory available for mobile, video, display and television buys.

*Only accessible to DoubleClick Bid Manager clients

Academy for Ads is useful for anyone getting started with Google or DoubleClick training, and can help pave the way for the AdWords Certification program offered by Google Partners, as well as the Google Best Practices program, which offers more advanced AdWords education. DoubleClick users may also find additional training in DoubleClick’s help centers.

Get started

If you already use Google Partners, you can sign in through the Partner portal at g.co/learnwithpartners — or, you can go directly to g.co/AcademyforAds to sign up and start sampling courses and Learning paths. We’re constantly adding content, including advanced DoubleClick training. So if you like what you learn, keep coming back for more.

Posted by Tracy Bizelli
Head of Academy for Ads

^{1 6 Fundamentals to Managing Digital Marketing in 2015, TFM Insights (January 2015)}

As part of our Advertising Week announcements, we’re introducing new digital innovations to help advertisers close the loop between television and digital, online and offline, and mobile and desktop.

Consumers make purchase decisions across many different moments, and over 75% of people¹ switch from one device to another while shopping. This makes reaching consumers with the right message — in the right moment — more complex. Today we’re introducing new cross-device capabilities in DoubleClick, including cross-device remarketing, to make it easier to close the loop across screens and reach people where they are, on whatever device they’re using.

Connect moments across devices

In July 2015, we introduced the ability to measure cross-device conversions (when a consumer purchase journey starts on one device but is completed on another). These metrics are helping advertisers like American Express and Ringling Bros. better understand consumer behavior and make better decisions about allocating budgets.

The insights have proven to be useful, but we’re excited to help you put them into action. Today we are announcing that you can automatically optimize your bids based on how users are interacting with your ads and converting across devices. This capability will be available as an option for automated bidding² in DoubleClick Bid Manager, helping you to drive greater impact from cross-screen campaigns.

Re-engage with consumers across devices

As consumers make purchase decisions, they may interact with your business multiple times along the journey. For example, when they’re shopping for their next car, they might download a brochure on their laptop while at work, watch videos while commuting home and read reviews on their tablet on the couch — all before booking a test drive. As an automotive marketer, you could use remarketing to re-engage with consumers who downloaded the brochure and encourage them to book a test drive — but in the past you could only reach them on their laptop.

Today we’re announcing cross-device remarketing in DoubleClick Bid Manager, allowing you to reach consumers across all of their devices, in the moments when they’re most receptive and your ads are most relevant. Cross-device remarketing will be rolled out as a beta early next year. You can contact your DoubleClick team to learn more.

To reach people in real time across all of the moments that shape their decisions, you need a platform that makes it easier to connect with them on all of their devices. DoubleClick surfaces the right cross-device insights while also allowing you to take the right actions to reach your marketing goals.

Posted by Payam Shodjai
Product Management Director, DoubleClick

^{1 Google/IPSOS Connect, March 2016, Digital Devices Bridge the Physical World, n=2013 US online respondents 18+
2 Only accessible to DoubleClick Bid Manager accounts.}

A few weeks back, Paul Muret, Google’s VP of Display, Video and Analytics, made several announcements about enhancements to the DoubleClick platform to support Programmatic Direct deals. Paul also shared that the number of Programmatic Direct deals transacted on DoubleClick Ad Exchange tripled in 2015¹ alone.

Everyone knows that programmatic is growing and is increasingly becoming the way we transact digital advertising. But what’s the deal with programmatic deals, or as we say, Programmatic Direct?

To answer that question, we dug into the data to analyze the key drivers of Programmatic Direct growth on our platforms. You can explore some of the data for yourself, with our interactive report: The State of Programmatic Direct.

Looking through Ad Exchange data from October 2014 to December 2015, one thing became incredibly clear: In every region, across every platform and publisher category, there are fascinating trends of adoption to be found.

Programmatic Direct has gone mainstream...

Depending on whom you ask, the history of programmatic exchanges can be traced back nearly a decade. However, it was only a few years ago that some of the world’s largest global spenders started making big commitments to programmatic and “programmatic” became ANA’s Marketing Word of the Year.

It hasn’t taken as long for advertisers and publishers to use programmatic technologies to transact the deals they’d traditionally buy and sell directly. In reviewing the data from DoubleClick AdExchange, we found that:

• 90+ marketers on the Ad Age Top 100 Global Marketers list made Programmatic Direct deals in 2015².
• More than half of the publishers in the US comScore top 50 list from December 2015 offered their inventory through Programmatic Direct deals³.

… On every screen

Programmatic may have been born on the desktop, but Programmatic Direct is taking off on mobile — probably not a surprise if you’re reading this article on your phone. Programmatic Direct impressions served on mobile and tablet grew 4x faster than desktop in the period surveyed⁴.

… In every region

The growth of Programmatic Direct isn’t limited to any specific country or region. So, where is it well adopted and where is it growing fast?

• Programmatic Direct impressions in Ukraine, Turkey and Spain each more than doubled in just 12 months⁵.
• Japan was the strongest adopter in APAC but Taiwan and Indonesia saw Programmatic Direct impressions grow more than 20% monthly⁶.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we dig through the data to share more insights. You can also explore our interactive research report to find additional trends, like how quickly Programmatic Direct impressions on mobile apps grew for game publishers in Japan. To get started, take a look at the infographic below.

Posted by Carlo Acenas
Associate Product Marketing Manager
Yamini Gupta
Sr. Product Marketing Manager ^{1 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, year end 2014 to year end 2015.
2 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014-Dec 2015. Minimum $1K spend.
3 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014-Dec 2015. Cross-referenced with comScore 50 US list, December 2015.
4 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.
5 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.
6 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.}

Efficient and effective bid management is a foundational component of any successful digital marketing program. Today, we’re excited to announce Smart Bidding, our new name for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search that reflects the powerful machine learning behind it.

Making bidding smarter for improved performance

Smart Bidding is built on Google’s deep experience using machine learning to power a wide range of products, including the Google assistant, automatic album creation in Google Photos, and AlphaGo, the first computer program to ever beat a professional player at the game of Go. Smart Bidding can factor in millions of signals to determine the optimal bid, and it continually refines models of your conversion performance at different bid levels to help you get more from your marketing budget.

Even when it encounters areas with lower conversion volume, Smart Bidding's learning capabilities quickly maximize the accuracy of your bidding models to improve how you optimize the long-tail. It evaluates patterns in your campaign structure, landing pages, ad text, product information, keyword phrases and many more to identify more relevant similarities across bidding items to effectively borrow learnings between them.

With Smart Bidding improvements, advertisers using Target CPA and Target ROAS in DoubleClick Search saw an average 16% lift in conversions at the same or better ROI.¹

On top of its machine learning capabilities, Smart Bidding is built on three pillars, inspired by feedback we’ve heard from you about what’s important in a bidding solution:

• Precise bid optimization tailored to a user’s context
• Flexible performance controls that factor in your unique business goals
• Transparent reporting that provides clear insight into how your bids are performing

In DoubleClick Search, we have several innovations coming soon across these areas. Get a full overview of DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding here.

New bidding signals that give you a richer view of user context

DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding tailors bids based on a user's context to set the right bid and maximize performance. It factors in a wide range of signals like device, location and remarketing lists to automate bids and bid adjustments across engines. We’re continuously exploring new signals to add to our bidding models that are impactful predictors of performance. These include recent additions like weekday seasonality, and others like sales and promotional calendars that are coming soon, enabling our system to customize bidding models to your business that help you make the most of these important events.

Set multiple performance targets that incorporate your custom data

To help you include more of your own business intelligence in the bidding feedback loop, custom Floodlight variables can now be used as inputs for DoubleClick Search bid strategies. With custom Floodlight variables, you can enrich a conversion event with additional information such as “new customer”, “gold loyalty status”, “device” and more. You can then set unique ROI goals based on this additional information. For example, you can target a $10 CPA for new customers and $5 CPA for existing customers, or aim for a 50% higher ROAS from your most loyal customers.

Identify the most impactful campaign opportunities for Smart Bidding

We’ve also built bid strategy opportunities in DoubleClick Search which identify campaigns with the greatest potential for improved performance. After defining a goal, bid strategy opportunities finds campaigns that are most likely to benefit from Smart Bidding, forecasting how much each campaign's conversion volume could grow if it were managed by a bid strategy.

Once you select the campaigns for automated bidding, the Smart Bidding wizard guides you through the setup, and recommends initial ROI targets (CPA/ROAS) and constraints to ensure a successful transition to Smart Bidding.

Bidding insights that can automatically troubleshoot issues

Coming soon, an enhanced version of bid strategy health will continually analyze your bid strategies for a number of known issues. For example, it will monitor for conversion tracking issues and bid and budget constraints, and alert you if they are adversely impacting your campaigns. It also forecasts the performance impact of resolving these issues and provides a recommendation and one-click solution to quickly implement the fix.

Advertisers like AnadoluJet and eBags are already using DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding to drive better performance.

AnadoluJet is the rapidly growing, low-cost branch of Turkish Airlines. They used Smart Bidding with cross-device conversions to intelligently bid on clicks across devices, ensuring campaign budgets were being allocated most effectively across each device. It drove a 30% incremental lift in clicks and conversions across devices. Read the full case study here.

eBags has been the #1 online bag retailer in the U.S. since 1999 and recently expanded internationally. eBags saw an opportunity to get improved performance by switching from their in-house tool to DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding. It helped the company grow revenue by 38% at a higher ROAS. Read the full case study here.

To learn more about DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding, visit the Help Center and check out our best practices.

Posted by Anthony Chavez
Product Management Director, Search Ads, Google

^{1 Google internal data. August 2015 before and after of adding Google’s machine learning to DoubleClick Search bidding algorithms.}

Delivering a better experience for users has been our top priority since Google was founded, from the products we develop and the ads that we show to how we do business with our partners and clients. This will be on full display at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, our annual gathering of large advertiser, agency and publisher clients beginning today.

This year, our focus is on how we can work together to create better, faster ad experiences across every screen, starting with mobile.

You can watch my opening keynote here, during which I shared updates about new innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

Making ads on the mobile web faster

Our research shows that the average mobile site takes 19 seconds to load. Think about that for a minute. That’s a long time! Not only is this frustrating for users but it’s also a huge missed opportunity for publishers -- we estimate mobile sites that load within 5 seconds can earn up to 2x more revenue than those at the 19 second average.

To help make the mobile web faster for users, Google joined a global community of publishers and other tech companies to launch the open sourced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (also known as AMP). Early analysis shows that mobile web pages that use AMP HTML load four times faster and use 10 times less data on average than non-AMP mobile web pages.

AMP is already making a difference for a variety of publishers such as the Washington Post, which is seeing first-hand how AMP pages deliver great mobile web experiences that build user loyalty.

But just speeding up the content is not enough - slow-loading ads are also a problem. We’re announcing two new features that will make ad experiences better on the mobile web:

• AMP for Ads - With AMP for Ads, we're bringing everything that's good and fast about AMP to ads. Unfortunately, most advertisers’ campaign creative are not fully optimized for mobile experiences. AMP for Ads allows advertisers to build beautifully-designed ads in AMP HTML so that the entire AMP experience, both the publisher’s content and the advertiser’s creative, load simultaneously at AMP-speed.
• AMP Landing Pages - AMP Landing Pages are fast, custom pages, built by advertisers so that when someone clicks on their AMP ad, they continue to have an AMP experience. AMP Landing Pages are also built with AMP HTML so that advertisers or their agencies use the same process to create these pages as they do with AMP content pages.

Building the next generation of ads with DoubleClick

Over the past year, Google has been working with publishers to help them adopt native ads - ads that match the look, feel and style of their surrounding content on a publisher’s website. Users find this type of ad format useful, particularly on mobile. However, in the advertising industry, the process of building and trafficking native ads is still largely manual.

Today, we are announcing significant updates for native ads across our platforms that will help to accelerate adoption of this user-friendly format with programmatic.

• For the first time, advertisers will be able to buy native ads programmatically in DoubleClick Bid Manager, across all screens. Instead of providing fully-designed creatives, advertisers upload the components of the ad - headline, image, text, and so on - and DoubleClick automatically assembles them to fit the context and format of the site or app where they appear.



• For publishers, we’re now offering a complete native ads solution in DoubleClick. Publishers can now make native ad inventory across web and apps available programmatically or through traditional direct sales.

Creating value with programmatic

Programmatic buying delivers results, so it’s no surprise that brands and agencies are continuing to invest. Today, we’re excited to announce a new global partnership with one of the world’s largest entertainment brands, Time Warner Inc.

DoubleClick will work with all of Time Warner’s businesses, networks and brands, such as, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Harry Potter and CNN, among others, as well as Time Warner’s agencies, for programmatic buying, ad serving, and measurement globally.

Time Warner is not alone in growing their investment in programmatic. We’ve seen tremendous momentum on our own platforms. In 2015 alone,

• Programmatic video revenue for TV and media companies increased more than 6x on DoubleClick for Publishers.
• Video spend by advertisers using Programmatic Direct on DoubleClick Bid Manager grew more than 7x.
• The number of Programmatic Direct deals on DoubleClick AdExchange tripled.

Together with our advertiser and publisher partners, we've made huge strides in improving the digital ads experience for users. Digital ads can be lightning fast, engaging and as beautiful as the site and app where they appear.

We've come a long way from ads that just blink text in blocky boxes - and yet we know there is still work to do. Today’s announcements represent our continued commitment to help our clients and partners deliver better and faster ad experiences for users.

Posted by Paul Muret Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics, Google

Visit the DoubleClick website at www.doubleclick.com next week for a series of articles with more details on today’s announcements.

Join me on Tuesday, July 19th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET for a livestream broadcast of my keynote address from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS). I’ll be sharing updates on the latest innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

At Google, one of our enduring principles is to “focus on the user and all else will follow.” This has been an important guidepost throughout our history, and it has never been more relevant than it is today. People are more ‘mobile’ now than ever before. We spend every waking hour connected to our devices. We expect to find what we want, when we want it. But with only a split second to engage and capture attention, user experience matters more than ever.

In my keynote, I’ll share an update on the technologies we’re developing to help advertisers, agencies and publishers create better experiences for people on the go. You can expect to hear more about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Native Ads, as well as new, more immersive experiences like 360 video. I’ll also be unveiling new product features to help our clients and partners more effectively reach, engage, monetize, and measure audiences across screens.

I’m looking forward to the livestream on July 19th. Please register to watch here.

Posted by Paul Muret Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics, Google

In February, we announced that DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and the Google Display Network are going 100% HTML5. Starting June 30th, 2016, display ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, or AdWords.

DoubleClick advertisers who currently use Flash ads in their campaigns have several ways to ensure your creative can continue to show up in your live campaigns. Read more here.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Tune in on July 19^th for the DoubleClick Announcements Livestream. Watch live as Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video Ads and Analytics at Google, shares new product announcements and DoubleClick's vision for the future.

Register and get the link to the livestream in your inbox before the event.

The event will be streamed live on DoubleClick.com on July 19th, 2016 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET.

Posted by The DoubleClick Marketing Team

Programmatic advertising accounts for 67% of all digital display ad sales¹. When you consider that data-driven creative is the creative powerhouse behind programmatic, and that 70% of a media campaign’s performance hinges on the creative², it’s clear that knowing how to build data-driven creative is a must for any agency with an eye toward the future.

As important as data-driven creative is, adopting is easier said than done. That’s why we put together a set of resources to help marketers, media agencies, creative agencies and production teams understand how to connect the dots between data and creative, to build more effective campaigns. We launched our first piece, a guide for marketers, back in March, along with an infographic to illustrate the process.

Today, we’re excited to launch a toolkit for creative and production teams, to help you understand how data can fit into your creative process.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

^{1 eMarketer, 2015
2 Internal data, Google Media campaigns, October 2015}

All eyes will be on Rio de Janeiro from August 5-21 as the world’s top athletes battle for medals in swimming, track and field, gymnastics, basketball, beach volleyball and other popular sports. Millions of sports enthusiasts, families and even non-sports fans across the globe will tap into the excitement of the Summer Olympic Games.

With the whole world watching, advertisers have an opportunity to reach Olympics viewers on every screen they use to follow the games. Informed data can help you win during Rio as thousands of athletes compete and billions of people watch. Knowing where viewers spend their time, which sports they follow and what they’re interested in can give you an edge—and wider reach.

Check out our Olympics guide to learn how DoubleClick Ad Exchange can help you increase your reach during the games.

Digital platforms give brands the tools to reach audiences where they spend their time, at scale and with personalized messaging not possible through other channels—so it’s no surprise that in 2017, total digital ad spending is predicted to surpass TV for the first time.¹ With this milestone approaching, we’ve heard your excitement about the opportunities digital can bring to your organization, but also that you’re looking for help to design and implement a digital strategy that meets your unique business needs.

Today, we’re launching the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner program to help give you the confidence you need to win in digital. Connect with a global network of certified digital marketing experts so you can achieve your goals, from building your brand to driving sales.

Connect with DoubleClick Digital Marketing

Certified Marketing Partners provide a range of technology and service offerings. Whether you’re looking for creative or media management services, data or technology integrations, help with measurement and attribution, or access to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, our partners can help you succeed.

Find a partner

We’re excited to welcome over 40 Certified Marketing Partners into the program, from around the world. And we’re working hard to build out the program to ensure you can reach your marketing goals by teaming up with a Certified Marketing Partner, no matter where you are.

When a partner has the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner badge, it means they’ve been carefully vetted and meet our rigorous qualification standards. Partners who’ve earned the badge are listed on DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner Search, so you can find the right partner for your business.

Many advertisers are already seeing value working with our Certified Marketing Partners:

"In the fast-moving and often chaotic world of programmatic advertising, MightyHive has been a trusted partner that we have come to rely upon. In addition to strong strategic advice, we appreciate their product recommendations, campaign execution and intelligence on the latest trends in the marketplace. MightyHive has consistently delivered."
-Scott Jensen, Senior Vice President of Digital, Partner Fusion

“We needed a partner to assist and lead the transition into the DoubleClick technology stack, and Acceleration has been first-rate. This partnership allowed our agency to reach our goals, and because of Acceleration we continue to exceed them in terms of growth.”
-David Taylor, Digital Director, Accord Group Ltd

“FiveStones brings effective digital strategy and optimization solutions. This partnership has helped us advance our brand marketing strategy and our ability to capitalize on the shift to digital."
-Karen Tsang, Head of Marketing, Openskools Limited

To Find a Partner, visit www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/certified-marketing-partners/

Posted by Chip Hall
Managing Director of Media Platforms, Google


¹eMarketer ‘Digital Ad Spending to Surpass TV Next Year’ 2016

Mobile is where search starts today for many consumers. Last year for the first time, more Google searches took place on smartphones than on desktops and laptops globally¹. Mobile is where consumer micro-moments really thrive: in the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I-want-to-buy moments where decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Brands that help consumers in these intent-rich moments will win.

To help brands be there and be useful, we're pleased to announce that support for three new mobile tools are in the works for DoubleClick Search users: AdWords expanded text ads, call-only ads and call metrics.

Optimized ads for the mobile-first world

Expanded text ads were announced yesterday by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google, during his Google Performance Summit Keynote. They're the biggest change to mobile ad formats since AdWords launched over 15 years ago.

Expanded text ads give advertisers improved control over the longer headline field, increased character limits across all text fields, and a simplified display URL workflow.

Based on early testing, some advertisers reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. Expanded text ads in AdWords provide nearly 50% more ad space, so you can showcase more information about your products and services right on the search results page.

Expanded text ads aren't available widely just yet. We’re working with the AdWords team and we plan to have full support quickly once campaign management for expanded text ads becomes publicly available.

Until then, here's what DoubleClick Search customers who are taking part in the AdWords beta can expect in three key areas:

• Campaign management: Expanded text ads won't appear in the DoubleClick Search interface at this time.
• Bid optimization: Expanded text ads are included in automated bidding for DoubleClick Search for all AdWords beta users.
• Measuring results: Engine and conversion stats for the expanded text ads will be attributed to the correct keyword in DoubleClick Search. Aggregate reporting (at the ad group level and above) will incorporate stats from expanded text ads.

Even if you're not in the AdWords beta, it's a good idea to start planning now for this upgrade. Review Google’s Creatives that Click to learn about best practices.

Connect with calls

While the mobile web and apps continue to grow, calls remain an important way for consumers to connect with your business. In fact, 33% of mobile searchers have called a business after doing a related search on their smartphones in the past three months².

Today we’re announcing full support for AdWords call-only ads and call metrics in DoubleClick Search. Support for these features starts immediately and you should see them in your account now.

Put your business phone number and a "call now" button in your mobile search ads, and more customers will call you directly instead of visiting your web site.

These ads are a great way to connect to consumers in their I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments. In fact, Forrester Research recommended Google solutions in its recent report Capture Customers With Click-to-Call³:

“Google has the longest tenure with click-to-call and provides the greatest reach of all possible media outlets, so we recommend building your click-to-call foundation on it.”
- Forrester Research, February 2016

Until now, call-only ads were created by selecting a checkbox in call extensions. These new call-only ads replace this option.

With call-only ads, you can bid based on the value of a call to your business, and tailor your ads for phone calls to let people know they can reach your business easily without needing to visit your site.

And, with call metrics, you can use a Google forwarding number to see how many calls were generated, how long they lasted, and other details that will help you measure the value of phone calls, right in DoubleClick Search.

Learn how to create call-only ads in DoubleClick Search in our Help Center, or discover new ways to Drive More Calls to Your Business with Google’s best practices.

Looking ahead

These three new features are our latest steps toward helping DoubleClick Search customers stay ahead in a mobile-first world. They join other mobile innovations such as cross-device conversions, cross-device bid strategies, and app-install campaigns that help you put your apps in users' hands. We hope they'll help your brand succeed with search in a mobile-first world.

Posted by Amit Varia
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search


^{1 Google Internal Data, for 10 countries including the US and Japan, April 2015
2 The role of mobile search on store purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015, n=1327 Mobile Searchers 18+, who have conducted a purchase-related search on a smartphone in the past 3 months
3 Capture Customers With Click-To-Call. Forrester Research, February 2016}

Today, we’re excited to introduce an entirely revamped UI for Google Web Designer and responsive design capabilities that help creative developers make true responsive ad units a reality.

New UI lets you customize your workflow

We’ve given the UI a Material Design-inspired makeover, to make it easier and sleeker for you to use.
You can customize the UI so it fits the way that you work best:

• Re-order and move the panes on the right for Color, Library and Components panels as easily as you do for your browser tabs. You can separate them into panels of their own, or combine them onto one panel.
• Choose from ten new color themes for our code editor. (So you can see your code in whatever color doesn’t hurt your eyes!)
• Choose from a number of popular key mappings (keyboard keys mapped to on-screen functions) to make code view even easier to use.
• Set default text styles (font, size, color) and apply them throughout a single document and across documents.
• Save these stylistic preferences for next time. When you log in again, the tool will remember your last-saved customizations.
• Bonus: When you add a component to your stage, you can preview it with the actual asset, instead of as a gray “placeholder” box. This way, you get a better sense for how your creative will actually look.

Media rules for responsive ad units

Media rules help you build a single ad unit that can change its layout based on the height and width of the screen it shows up on. The easy-to-use interface creates color-coded ranges of ad sizes (see the red, yellow and purple bars along the top of the gif below and the blue and green bars along the left). You can build rules into your ad unit around which creative assets and layouts should show up for each size range.

For example, say you want to build an ad that can work in a large full screen space on a mobile phone, in a regular 300x250 space on a desktop, and in a small 300x50 space. You can build a single ad unit, then define the styling and layout the ad unit should use for each size. So when the ad renders on a screen, it recognizes the size and renders the correct styling and layout for that size. Of course, this works on a sliding scale, so all sizes in between the cut-off points will render appropriately as well. Learn more.

Example of the GWD UI for building responsive ads:

The resulting ads for the most popular sizes:
We’re really excited to bring this new and improved Google Web Designer to creative developers. We hope the responsive design capabilities help you create ads for multiple sizes more easily, so you can bring your experiences to life across screens.

Want to learn more?

Our training and engineering teams are hosting a hangout on air on May 26 @ 12pm ET to walk through these features in more details. RSVP here.

As a reminder, if you’ve already downloaded Google Web Designer, it will automatically update to reflect these new features. If you haven’t yet downloaded the tool, you can download it for free here.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

The television industry is in the midst of a massive change. The rise of new content models and connected devices has led to more choice than ever--both for content creators and consumers. But with this choice and opportunity comes new challenges to solve as well.

I spoke to the TV industry at the Closing General Session of the National Association of Broadcasters Show. In the keynote I discussed the rebirth of TV and how we’re helping Broadcasters and Distributors with discovery, monetization and content creation.

Discovery

Announcing new ways to find where and when to watch your favorite shows.

There are now more ways to watch your favorite TV shows than ever before. This shift has some even saying that we’re in the “golden age” of television. And what we're seeing is that more and more, viewers are turning to their phones to find out what to watch, where to watch it and when it’s available -- in fact, searches for TV shows and films on mobile have grown more than 55% in the past year alone.

Last year we launched video actions in Search to help viewers find direct options to watch the shows they are looking for on programmer and distributors mobile apps and sites or stores like Google Play.

Today, I'm excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now if you're looking for a movie or TV show like The Big Bang Theory, we'll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

Monetization

Announcing personalized TV ads with DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion

Viewers no longer expect content personalized to them, they demand it. And that includes ads.

Today we are taking big steps to bring new addressable advertising capabilities to TV Broadcasters and Distributors by announcing DoubleClick’s Dynamic Ad Insertion. This makes ads hyper relevant for viewers across any screen that they watch. By creating individual streams for every viewer using server side ad insertion, we are able to deliver a better, more personalized viewing experience that looks and feels as seamless as TV today.

And not only will this work for both live and on-demand TV but it works across directly sold and programmatic.

We put this technology to the test with two of the highest rated TV events in the last year: the Rugby World Cup Finals on TF1, the leading network in France, and the Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News, a leading news network in the US. Politics and sports are pretty personal topics, so it’s only appropriate that TF1 and Fox News created a fully addressable viewing experience for the millions of viewers that tuned in using Dynamic Ad Insertion.

Announcing smarter TV ad breaks

Today we’re also announcing that DoubleClick for Publisher clients will soon be able to seamlessly enforce the level of control that has been firmly established in TV -- across all inventory, whether it was sold directly or indirectly. That means, we are able to honor competitive separation - so two automotive ads don’t appear in the same commercial break - and other rules like making sure an alcohol and children's cereal ad don’t appear in the same commercial break.

This has been major blocker to enabling programmatic to work for TV. And now you no longer need to turn down attractive opportunities from advertisers interested in transacting programmatically because of compliance concerns.

Announcing New TV Partners

DoubleClick is focused on building advertising solutions that meet the changing needs of the TV ecosystem. We’re proud of our longstanding partnerships with industry leaders like AMC Networks in the US and Globo in South America.

Today we add three more to the list: we’re happy to welcome MCN, Roku and Cablevision as partners. They’ve all signed on to use DoubleClick for Publishers to serve ads and monetize cross-screen TV and video content.

“As the conventional TV and digital video worlds converge, people are watching more content than ever across a variety of screens. At Cablevision, we’re focused on developing innovative solutions that deliver the best experience for our viewers in this new cross-screen world and unlocking new opportunities for our advertisers. We are enthusiastic about using Google's DoubleClick for seamless advertising delivery across our set-top boxes and connected devices. Together, we are enabling more personalized and relevant ads with addressable and dynamic ad insertion.”
- Kristin Dolan, Chief Operating Officer, Cablevision

Content creation

Announcing Autodesk collaboration to enable 10x improvement in rendering efficiency

Autodesk software has been behind the past 21 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects and we’re bringing this capability to Google Cloud Platform. Yesterday we announced (link) that Autodesk, maker of industry-leading 3D animation and modeling software, is collaborating with Google on a new cloud-based rendering solution called Maya^® for Google Cloud Platform ZYNC Render. This allows artists to focus on creating incredible TV & movie content using the tools they already know, while shifting even the largest rendering jobs seamlessly to the cloud.

TV is the midst of a revival. And just like other media types which have been reimagined for the digital age like music, the arrival of this ‘new TV’ was preceded by change and tumult. But TV’s past was built on a rich history of creativity and innovation, and I’m incredibly optimistic that TV’s future will be as well. Our job is to help make that future become the present and we are excited to partner with the TV ecosystem to build it.

Posted by Daniel Alegre President of Global Partnerships, Google

This is part five of a five-part series introducing the creative process for data-driven campaigns as outlined in our new guide: The Creative Process for Programmatic: A Guide for Marketers.

Until quite recently, the launch of an ad campaign marked an end-point for most of the parties who created it. Once the campaign was out in the world, it was time to crack a few celebratory beers and move onto the next thing: whether that meant coming up with new creative executions that built tangentially on the campaign’s success, or scrapping it for something new entirely.

Today, data-driven marketing empowers brand advertisers and agencies to closely monitor not just how successful a campaign is after launch, but which elements are driving that success. Teams can optimize live campaigns mid-way through the flight and make tweaks to improve performance and update assets for future flights, rather than starting from scratch each season.

As data-driven campaigns have become more sophisticated so, too, have the tools for measurement. It’s no longer just about CTR: now, teams can measure elements such as post-view and view-through conversions as well as engagement metrics such as video completes and interaction rates. This paves the way for more specific and nuanced KPIs, allowing teams to consider what success means for individual campaigns and brands as a whole.

The new creative process is significantly more iterative and cyclical than what we saw in the past:

• Teams are now actively involved in the evolution of the campaign, closely monitoring which audiences respond to which elements of data-driven creative and proactively optimizing on the fly.
• There are greater opportunities for learning, as teams work together to analyze why audiences may be responding favorably (or not-so-favorably) to different elements.
• Teams can use these learnings for future campaigns and, at the same time, pull in learnings from other data-driven campaigns to inform the work that’s currently live.

You can learn more about this campaign, as well as get a full picture of best practices for data-driven creative campaigns, in our new guide The Creative Process for Programmatic: A Guide for Marketers.

Join us for a webinar on our creative research, focused on how agencies can bring data-driven creative to life. Thursday, April 21st @ 12pm ET. RSVP here.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Cross-post from the Google Analytics blog.

On the Google Analytics team, we believe a primary goal of analytics is to make your marketing smarter. It should help you understand your customer’s journey, gain and share insights, and create an engaging experience for your audience.

But just as your organization can’t achieve these goals in a silo, neither can your website analytics data. Your customer’s journey includes both their experience with your marketing campaigns as well as their experience on your sites and apps. So you need complete data, connected from marketing through to site experience, to actually gain insight and deliver a great customer experience.

Analytics 360, part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite, is proud to provide this type of end-to-end understanding with our existing AdWords integrations. Beginning today, we are now offering this same capability with the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. In addition to our existing integration with DoubleClick Campaign Manager^*, you can now view user engagement information for users acquired through DoubleClick Bid Manager^* and DoubleClick Search^* campaigns directly within Analytics 360. It’s super easy to connect your Analytics 360 account to DoubleClick Digital Marketing and there’s no implementation work needed (e.g. no site or campaign re-tagging).

With these new capabilities, marketers using Analytics 360 are better able to see the customer journey from when a customer was exposed to their marketing campaigns all the way through to that customer’s eventual purchase on their site (or lack thereof). User engagement with your site can be analyzed for both users who viewed an ad (view-through) and for users who clicked on an ad (click-through). View-through information is especially important for display, video, and mobile because users often view these ads and then visit the website later rather than clicking directly on the ad.

Companies like Panasonic are already using our integrations with marketing media to improve their return on investment (ROI) from digital marketing campaigns. With the Analytics 360 ads integrations, Panasonic was able to aggregate all digital campaign data into one platform to gain insight about their customers. They then shared these insights back to their media tools to better find engaged audiences and provide those audiences with the right experience at the right moment, driving an ROI increase of 30%.

In light of these latest integrations with Google ad technologies, we wanted to take a moment to discuss the two capabilities we enable across all our ads integrations that help you achieve smarter marketing: 1) understanding the customer and their journey and 2) creating relevant experiences for users.

Understanding the customer and their journey

They saw and / or clicked on your ad and arrived on your site. But who are they? What happened next? Did they bounce immediately? Did they research specific products? Did they sign up for your newsletter? What were the users who interacted with your digital marketing doing on your site? Ads integrations with Analytics 360 can help you answer these questions and more, for example:

• You are launching a new product and start running display and search advertising campaigns to attract customers. You find that one campaign has a low conversion rate and you’re considering deprecating it. But you review your site analytics data for this campaign and find that some specific ad exchanges and certain keywords are driving many new users to your site. And some of these exchanges and keywords are driving new users who are highly engaged — they view a lot of product detail pages and spend a lot of time on your site. So, instead of shutting down the campaign, you refine the targeting for the ads in this campaign to focus more on the ad exchanges and the keywords that drive engaged new users to your site. Then, you create a remarketing campaign to bring these engaged new users back to your site for purchase.


• One of your campaigns drives a lot of click and view-throughs, but has a low conversion rate. Analysis in Analytics 360 reveals that most users bounce immediately, but a certain segment who click on or view that ad (e.g. women aged 18-35) have a really high conversion rate. You refine the messaging and creative in your ads, adjust where these ads are served, and bid higher in order to find and attract more of this high-performing audience.

Creating relevant experiences for users

User behavior on your site can tell you a lot about them and what they’re interested in. Shouldn’t you use that information to inform your marketing strategy? Some examples:

• You run a shopping site and have users who spend a lot of time looking at an item or even put that item in their cart, but don’t end up purchasing. At the end of the season, the clothes on your site go on sale. You create remarketing campaigns to these users who showed interest but never purchased letting them know that the item they were interested in is now on sale.


• You are a cable company and you’d like to offer your new online streaming HDTV service to existing customers who subscribe to your high speed Internet plan. You create remarketing ads for customers who have the high speed plan, driving higher lifetime value for these customers.

These are just a few examples of how analytics data can blend with campaign data to create real value for both companies and for their customers. It's a win-win — customers get marketing that is truly relevant to them, and companies put their marketing dollars to work with the customers who are most likely to be interested.

Visit the Google Analytics 360 Suite Help Center to learn more about our new integrations with DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Search. You can also learn about our existing integrations DoubleClick Campaign Manager and with AdWords. Stay tuned for more updates from Analytics 360 as we continue to invest in new and exciting capabilities. Happy analyzing!

Posted by Abhi Aggarwal and Jocelyn Whittenburg
Google Analytics team

^{*Note: Must be a Google Analytics 360 customer to view these links.}