Cross-posted from the Google Analytics blog

“With Google, we’re getting actionable insights, whereas before we were just getting a lot of data.”

- Lee Pinnington, Multi-Channel Marketing Director, Matalan

As we announced earlier this week, Google Analytics Premium is now integrated with both DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager. This enhancement is now available for Google Analytics Premium customers.

Today's consumers move easily across many channels and devices on their journey to a purchase. Top marketers rely on the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform to run the sophisticated cross-channel ad campaigns that can reach their customers every step of the way. This new step gives Google Analytics Premium users even better ways to see the full customer journey, so they can adjust and make the most of marketing dollars across all channels and devices. 

The integration is providing a whole new level of visibility for display advertising by reporting on view-through visits in addition to click-through visits.  We're now reporting detailed post-view and post-click engagement and conversion metrics to offer a better view of your strongest opportunities.

1. A clearer view of the customer journey

Display campaigns are typically used in the upper funnel, so they don't get credit in simplistic last-click attribution models. But better attribution models can give full credit to display and other top-of-funnel marketing tools. With the DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration you can link your DoubleClick Campaign Manager campaign information into Google Analytics Premium reports, Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) and/or Data-Driven Attribution (DDA), and as a result, you'll see a much more holistic view of how display works together with other channels to drive site engagement and conversions.  

“This gives us the ability to see the hidden power of different channels. One of the most interesting things about the DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration has been around assisted conversions. It’s really helpful to see how one channel that might not be a heavy hitter in terms of revenue or traffic has an impact in creating a conversion on another channel.”

 - Adam McCann, Online Search & Affiliate Assistant, Matalan

2. Better investment decisions

With a complete view of the customer journey, you can make smarter decisions on how to allocate your marketing spend. This change helps Google Analytics Premium customers analyze campaigns and ROI at the level that matters to them most, even down to specific versions of creative. It's even easier now to act on this data in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, since Google Analytics Premium uses the same campaign hierarchy and dimensions as DoubleClick Campaign Manager. 

3. Greater speed

The integration with DoubleClick Campaign Manager means you can spend less time merging campaign data and more time planning winning strategies.  We've also made this integration easier, starting with new automatic campaign tagging within DoubleClick for Google Analytics Premium. In the past you had to manually tag every single campaign, creative and landing page URL for them to be recognized in Google Analytics Premium. Now, in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, a simple checkbox makes it incredibly easy to accurately track those campaigns in Google Analytics Premium. 

4. Automated and customized marketing

Advertisers are seeing great results with Google Analytics remarketing, for example, Watchfinder revealed a 1300% return on their campaign investment. We’re improving these tools by enabling you to create granular remarketing lists from your Google Analytics Premium account and then share the lists with a DoubleClick Bid Manager advertiser account for real-time remarketing. Plus, Google Analytics Smart Lists feature also works with this integration, allowing you to generate a remarketing list of your best users automatically, based on machine learning from their conversion data. 

We added Google Analytics Premium and DoubleClick Bid Manager integration this year in order to further optimize our strongest lead generating campaigns. 70% of our display leads come from our retargeting campaigns, and the Google Analytics Premium and DoubleClick Bid Manager integration allows us to move beyond optimizing by site and creative, to quickly personalizing creatives - optimizing using our knowledge of distinct visitor segments not just generic visits.  

- Melissa Shusterman, Strategic Engagement Director, MaassMedia

The amazing changes in customer journeys are opening up real opportunities for businesses. Making the most of those opportunities starts with seeing the journey more clearly, then reacting quickly to reach the right customers at the right moments with messages that are designed just for them. This new integration is designed to help Google Analytics Premium customers do all those things. We’re just getting started as we’re planning deeper integrations within DoubleClick Digital Marketing in the coming months so stay tuned!

Learn more today and get started

Find out more about the Google Analytics Premium integrations with DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager.  And download a case study. 

Posted by: Ravi Mruthyunjaya, Product Manager, Google Analytics

DoubleClick’s annual digital advertising summit is just around the corner, streaming live on YouTube on Wednesday, June 4th. (Sign up here to watch.) We caught up with Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, to hear what’s on his mind as we get ready for the event.

Q: What topics should we expect to hear about this year? 
A: I don’t think it will come as a surprise that our team has been very focused on how to make digital work for brands and premium publishers. You can expect to hear a lot more about that. Also, since this event marks Google’s annual conversation on the future of digital advertising, we’ll discuss how digital is redefining consumer behavior, content development, and the ways that advertisers and publishers reach their customers.

Q: Will the live stream include any special guests? 
A: I’ll be joined by Nikesh Arora, our Chief Business Officer at Google, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and Co-Founder of DreamWorks Animation. I’m looking forward to hearing Jeffrey talk about how technology has changed content creation.

Q: What consumer trends are impacting the way brands and publishers think about digital? 
A: When we started this DoubleClick event 14 years ago, going online was a deliberate act that required going to a computer and “logging-in”. The days of going online are coming to an end. Today’s digital experience is one that is always-on and always with us. As a result, digital has become far more personal, and one of the most personal forms of communication - video - is playing a more central role in our online lives. All these factors have major implications for brands and publishers, which we’ll discuss at the event.

Q: So...any scoops you can give us?
A: As I mentioned, video has been very much on my mind lately. Getting video right is something that is essential to our brand, agency, and publisher partners...expect to hear more about what we have planned to help make that happen.

We hope you can join us on Wednesday, June 4th at 9:30 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT. Register to watch the live stream or to receive the recording. -The DoubleClick Team

For the past several weeks, we’ve been explaining how creative agencies should use the audience and environment information from a media buy to improve the creative message.

DoubleClick Dynamic Creative allows you to use the information about who is viewing an ad, to build ad creative that is relevant to every viewer. Research shows that people are twice as likely to click on real-time (dynamic) creative than they are static creative (1) and today’s consumers expect that the ads they see will be tailored and relevant.

To help our agency partners stay up-to-date on the latest DoubleClick Dynamic Creative tools, we’re launching new training resources to teach you how to more efficiently use dynamic formats. If you’ve taken our Fundamentals training for DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Rich Media, these resources will help you build your skills further.

Join our upcoming DoubleClick Rich Media Dynamic Creative webinar series.

See the June schedule and register through the training page in the Rich Media Help Center.

• Introduction to dynamic creative – 6/3
• This webinar will provide an overview of dynamic creative, including explaining the differences between basic and advanced formats, how to set up and make changes, and how to use advanced targeting. Register  

• Advanced dynamic creative workflow – 6/10
• This webinar will focus on the advanced dynamic creative workflow. We’ll cover the pre-launch, launch, and post-launch processes for advanced formats, along with advanced dynamic strategy kits. We'll provide troubleshooting tips and tricks to help you with the more advanced dynamic creatives. Register 

• Dynamic creative best practices – 6/17
• Build your knowledge and learn best practices for designing, developing, and revising dynamic creative. We’ll cover advanced features, like creative dimension filtering, autosizing, and more. Register

These webinars are intended for users who have completed DoubleClick Rich Media Fundamentals training. To get the most out of these sessions, make sure you’ve taken Rich Media Fundamentals and have received your certificate of completion. Please be aware of any regional time differences before enrolling in a live session.

Use our dynamic creative strategy & feed training checklists.
Need to know how to translate an advertiser’s campaign goals into a dynamic creative? If you’re planning a dynamic creative campaign for your client and need guidance on strategy and execution, try our new role-based checklists to build your expertise.

• Media planners: Get an overview of dynamic creative strategies in DoubleClick Rich Media so you can determine the right strategy to meet your advertiser’s goals. Try it now

• Creative developers: Learn to implement a dynamic feed strategy, including all the details of feed structure. Try it now

Need to know the basics? Start with Rich Media Fundamentals eLearning and certification.

If you’re an agency user who’s new to rich media or just need a refresher, take DoubleClick Rich Media Fundamentals to learn the basics at your own pace.

• In Rich Media Fundamentals, you’ll learn how to:
• Build Flash and HTML5 creatives
• Publish to QA
• Use the API 
• Build dynamic creatives and create/edit rules
• Resolve common live issues
• Pass the exam and you'll get a printable certificate of completion you can use to show your proficiency.

Watch a pre-recorded webinar.
We also offer recorded webinars in our Help Center, covering the basics of DoubleClick Studio, and more. While you’re there, be sure to read about our latest release notes.

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

Posted by Ilinka Zaharčeva, DoubleClick Rich Media Product Trainer

(1) Magna Global, Media Economy Report: Better, Smarter, Faster: How Data Is Changing Our Business. Vol. 04. Magna Global USA, Inc., 2014.

It is an exciting time to be a brand marketer. In today’s world of constant connectivity, there has never been a greater opportunity for brands to reach their target audience in meaningful ways. But brand building in a multi-screen age has its challenges, causing brands to search for new solutions to meet their marketing objectives. Leading brands are turning to programmatic to cut through the clutter and make one-to-one connections with consumers, at scale.

In this infographic, “Programmatic: The Brand Era,” we explore 4 ways that programmatic makes it possible for brands to run more effective digital marketing campaigns - connecting them 1:1 with their audiences, helping them embrace cross-screen, engage with rich formats like video, and measuring exactly what matters.

All of these factors are helping brands embrace programmatic buying as the technology evolves from a “nicety” to a “must-have”.

Programmatic helps brands win in the moments that matter.

See the full infographic here.

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




Posted by Kelly Cox, Product Marketing Manager

Last week, the IAB hosted the second webinar in the "Make Mobile Work" Initiative, a program aimed at helping advertisers unlock the full value of mobile advertising. The webinar, entitled "Design with device in mind," focused on strategies for designing ad creative to work properly across screens. 

For those of you who weren't able to watch the webinar, you can view the recording here, but we also thought we'd share the strategies more broadly. 

Five strategies for developing successful cross-screen creative:

Note: "Step Zero" is to build your ads in HTML5, so that they can even show up across screens. We talked more about that in our first webinar. 

1) Design ads differently for mobile phones vs. tablets. 

Too often, advertisers lump mobile phones and tablets together as one and the same. But consumer behavior is very different on these two devices. On a smartphone, consumers are typically on the move and their information gathering is action-oriented -- they are searching for a specific answer or piece of information and want to find it quickly. On these smaller screens, you want to keep things short and provide information easily and quickly to users.

With tablets, on the other hand, consumers tend to be stationary and their information gathering is more entertainment-oriented -- they are browsing for interesting things and are more inclined to spend time flipping through content. On these larger screens, you can provide longer, more engaging experiences that use interactive elements, games, photos or videos. 

2) Make ads feel more like content. 

Consumers now expect engaging and interactive ad units, and they won't tolerate ads that are intrusive or unhelpful. Think of your ad as another opportunity, just like your website, to provide useful information for people to engage with your brand and learn more about your products. This is true for all of your digital creative -- desktop, tablet and smartphone -- but it's especially important for the tablet environment, where consumers are often in the “browsing” mentality. Here, they may be more likely to engage with an ad unit, so it's critical to ensure that your ad grabs their attention.

Cadillac used interactive video and multiple content areas in this ad to provide multiple ways for people to engage with the brand and check out the product, directly within the ad unit.

3) Take advantage of the device form-factor.
Build your ads to mimic the way people already interact with the device. Use the touch screen and the accelerometer within mobile phones and tablets to build in interaction modes like swipe, touch, tilt, and shake, giving people new ways to interact with your content.

The Alka-Seltzer ad unit from Project Re:Brief illustrates how you can build these interaction modes into your ad creative in a way that works seamlessly (and even augments) the creative narrative.

You should also take advantage of the call functionality and geo-targeting capabilities inherent in mobile phones. According to the “Mobile path to purchase” research, 69% of consumers searching on mobile phones expect businesses to be within 5 miles or less of their location. And 55% of users who search for a product on their mobile phone want to purchase within an hour of searching. (83% want to purchase within the day.) Use click-to-call, location extensions, and the maps API to help consumers learn more about your company and reach a purchase faster.

4) Alter your assets to work for mobile.
Your standard 30-second TV commercial may not be the best video format for your digital placements, so you should get creative about the length, frequency and sequencing of your video content. You can try shorter 5-15 second video ads on mobile phones, and longer video units on tablets. (Many of the best YouTube videos from brands today are two- five minutes long!) You should also consider sequencing your video ads to create a linear story for a viewer through subsequent ad units.

Another thing to consider is the speed and cost of people's internet connections on smartphones and tablets. People streaming or downloading video content when they are not on wifi have to pay for those data charges, so you should be smart about the file size of the ads that you show people. Identify whether the person is on a mobile network vs. wifi, and then serve smaller file sizes to the person on the mobile network, and larger file sizes (higher res assets, more interactive elements) to the person on the wifi network. This helps reduce viewers' frustration when they can't download and ensures that your mobile video message gets through with the quality you intended.

5) Create both in-app ad units in addition to mobile web ad units. 
Smartphone users spend up to 5 times more minutes per month on apps than they do using the mobile web. (Nielsen Smartphone Analytics, March 2013) So it’s important to build in-app ad units, in addition to mobile web ad units, that can get in front of that audience. Mobile applications also offer different contexts for you to place your ads, so it provides more variety when considering your creative and targeting strategies. 

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These 5 strategies are just a taste of the content available through the "Make Mobile Work" Webinars. Our next webinar will be in mid-August and will focus on how to target your campaigns and reach the right people across devices. (RSVP here.) We hope you'll join us!

Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick