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.” 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 Google advertisers – from AdWords basics and the essentials of campaign management to bid strategies, reporting, optimization, and more ways to successfully advertise with Google.


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 AdWords helps prepare you to take the AdWords Certification exam in Google Partners, or try deeper education offerings such as AdWords Academy.
A few example Learning paths:

• Digital concepts: Learn the essentials of online ads, including third-party ad-serving, programmatic buying, remarketing, and more.
• Get started with AdWords: Learn the basics of AdWords and prepare for the AdWords Certification exam offered by Google Partners.
• Get started with AdWords Display: Learn how you can show ads to your online audience via the Google Display Network.
• Get started with Video for Brand: Get an overview of digital video landscape and the benefits of Google’s online video offerings, including Google Preferred. Learn how Google's advertising solutions map to awareness, consideration, and brand lift, along with more detailed steps on implementation and policy.
• 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.

Academy for Ads also offers training for DoubleClick clients, with Learning paths covering Bid Manager and Ad Exchange – and more to come.

Get started
If you already use Google Partners, you can sign in through the Partners 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 more content, 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)

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertiser blog

Last week’s updates to Google Web Designer included cool new features that make it easier for creative designers and developers to build robust HTML5 creative. These features, combined with DoubleClick’s audience and environment information can help advertisers and agencies improve creative messaging for even more successful cross-screen marketing campaigns.

Featuring Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc. and Danny Huynh, Managing Director of Digital and Client Leadership, Mindshare
Hosted by Chip Hall, Director of Media Platforms Sales, Google

Digital ad spend is growing. Programmatic is on the rise. DSPs are gaining traction. But for marketers and media buyers, this often becomes just another channel to add to the many they already manage. So how do we get from simply buying RTB to a seamless, data-driven, multi-channel approach to media management?

Please join DoubleClick on February 19th for a webinar in which we explore the trend of consolidated media buying and management. In this webinar:

Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research will present findings from new commissioned research produced by Forrester on Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform. Forrester interviewed a range of experts including agency and trading desk executives as well as marketers in order to delve into the challenges and opportunities they face in today’s media buying and management landscape. What emerges is a picture of an industry ripe for consolidation but in need of a path to get there.

Danny Huynh, Managing Director of Digital and Client Leadership at Mindshare will share his experiences in consolidating clients on a single platform, including benefits they are seeing, obstacles they faced, and advice for other organizations embarking on the their own journey to consolidation.

Register here for the webinar to be held on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 10:00am PST / 12:00pm CST / 1:00pm EST. The full study conducted by Forrester on the topic will be available for download following the webinar.

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager

This is the fourth in a series of 7 blog posts about the DoubleClick Search bid optimization white paper, Seven Factors to Consider When Choosing a Bid Optimization Platform.

Last week, we explored the importance of using a smart bid optimization tool to choose the right bids for your keywords. But even smart bids can quickly become irrelevant in a dynamic search landscape. That's why "speed" is as important as "smarts" when it comes to effective bid management.

To learn more about the importance of fast search management platforms that execute quickly to make use of every opportunity, follow the full blog post series on the DoubleClick Search Blog.

Posted by Kim Doan, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

‘Tis the season to make our resolutions for 2013. But instead of making ones that you know you won’t keep, how about trying our countdown of 10 resolutions to make your programmatic display campaigns more effective this year? Just think of it—all the satisfaction of accomplishing your goals, and no wasted gym memberships. Here’s to your best year yet!



10. I will be kind to others.
But being truly kind is a big step. So why not start by being kind with your ad placements Use precise, contextual targeting layered with audience data to pinpoint the most relevant moments for your ads. You’ll be surprised by how much the right people appreciate hearing from you at the right times. And remember to say “please” and “thank you”.



9. I will open myself up to new experiences.
Order something new off the menu. Choose somewhere you’ve never been for your next vacation. Or get really crazy and add mobile and video campaigns to all your display buys in order to better reach your audience. After all, studies have shown that cross-screen campaigns are more effective, and let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger.



8. I will discover my true self.
Self-discovery is a lifelong journey. Take the first step by seeking to better understand your ad campaigns. Learn more about where your ads are showing and how they’re performing. Insist on full transparency in reporting and the accurate and actionable insights you need to fully know your campaigns.



7. I will take control of my destiny.
Repeat this phrase: “I am strong. I am smart. And, gosh darn it, I will take control of my display buys!” Give yourself the ability to act on the metrics that matter most in your campaigns. Surround yourself with partners and technologies that give you the control to customize your buys and optimize to meet your unique goals. You deserve it.



6. I will develop deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Step 1: Call your mother. She misses you. Step 2: Deepen your relationships with publishers by using private exchanges and preferred deals to combine the best of programmatic buying with direct publisher contact. This way you get access to the right inventory and the right audiences.



5. I will stop punishing myself.
Are your destructive, subconscious thoughts driving you to compete against yourself and pay more for the same impressions? Stop the cycle by becoming more strategic about buying audiences across platforms and consolidating wherever possible.



4. I will live in the moment.
Breathe deeply. Hold it. Release. Each moment in your ad campaign is unique and precious, so find systems that can generate up-to-date reports and optimize your budgets, and bids in real time. Make buying decisions that are right for your campaign at that particular time. It’s a close second to true inner peace.



3. I will get serious about my future.
401(k)s, your kid’s college fund, that marathon you always say you’ll run? Sure, add those to your list this year, but also include finding technologies that will grow your business. Align yourself with partners who are both effective now and are planning for the future—with technology and infrastructure that will scale with the pace of your business.



2. I will give credit where credit is due.
Being in the limelight may feel good, but it’s important to recognize those who have helped you along the way. The same is true for your ads. Give all your impressions their appropriate credit by moving beyond the last-click attribution model. And don’t forget to thank your family and the academy.




1. I will listen to Thoreau.
Thoreau tells us to simplify. But don’t abandon your possessions just yet. Instead, as the display ecosystem gains in complexity and fragmentation, look for solutions that streamline the buying process and make insights and analysis faster and easier.


Happy New Year from DoubleClick Bid Manager! And be sure to check back with us on Friday for five resolutions for better search management in 2013.

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager (Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog)

This is the second in a series of 7 blog posts about our bid optimization white paper, Seven factors to consider when choosing a bid optimization platform.

At Google, we recognize that the freshness and accuracy of data is paramount to any data-driven system. And since bid optimization platforms are essentially decision engines, data lies at the center of the process, with the engine considering and analyzing data before deciding on the best bid for a given keyword. It’s no surprise, then, that low-quality and stale data going in often means poor results coming out.

To learn about our position on the quality of fresh data in the bid optimization process, and how the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite fits in, follow the full blog post series on the DoubleClick Search Blog.


Posted by Kim Doan, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

Cross-posted; follow the full series on the DoubleClick Search blog

Last week, we kicked off our bid optimization blog post series by inviting you to a ClickZ webinar on how to choose the right bid optimization tool to drive paid search results for your business. Today, we’ll continue the conversation by tackling the first of seven questions you should ask when choosing a bid optimization platform for your business:

Question 1: Can I state my goals to match how my business really works?

We believe that effective search campaigns start with a clearly-defined advertiser goal. A clear definition of your goal affects every aspect of your campaign. For example, on DoubleClick Search, it influences the signals that are evaluated by our bid optimization system, the data analysis we perform, and ultimately, the results you get from the bid optimization system. As such, poorly-defined goals can mean missed opportunities and lackluster results.

The figure below illustrates how a marketer’s goal plays a critical role in influencing every step of the bid optimization process:



That’s why the flexibility to express individual campaign goals is so important -- it helps ensure that all bids work toward and maximize business results that matter to you. So when choosing a bid optimization platform, look for one that’s comprehensive in the goals it supports, offering the option to express basic goals, as well as combine goals, and to optimize against unique business data.

You may find that most tools offer a way of defining a set of basic campaign goals:

• Position - the ad position (rank) you want to achieve on the page, expressed as a whole number (1), a range of numbers (1-3), a decimal (2.5), or any combination.
• Cost Per Action (CPA) - The average cost per action, where action can be a conversion, sale, signup, or other marketer-defined event.
• Effective Revenue Share (ERS) - the total cost of a campaign divided by the total revenue generated by that campaign, expressed as a percentage
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) - The total revenue generated by an SEM campaign divided by the cost, expressed as a percentage
• Spend (Budget) - A precise monthly budget to spend while maximizing results on a specific metric (clicks, impressions, conversions, or other)

However, every campaign has unique objectives, and it’s likely you want flexibility beyond the basics. You may need a way of expressing a combination of goals, based on your unique objectives. To achieve this, look for a solution that offers the flexibility to express bidding goals in a rich language. For example, can you set a CPA goal while still maintaining a top position? Can you achieve a target position while staying within a specified budget? Does the platform support full flexibility to express a unique goal for each different type of conversion -- setting more aggressive goals for those conversion types you value more? Can the tool also optimize off your unique business data, including offline conversions or website data?

These are the types of considerations that inform our investments in the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, where we wanted to put advertiser goals at the center of the bid optimization process. So whether you have a goal that’s based on a CPA, revenue, return on ad spend, budget, or a combination of these, the Performance Bidding Suite lets you easily define and optimize to your precise business objectives, and express a unique bid goal for every conversion type. In addition, the Performance Bidding Suite offers the option to integrate offline data, and have this data expressed in bid decisions to ensure that the entirety of your business is usable for bid optimization consideration.

Of course, defining the goal is just the first step. Once it’s been set, what kind of data does the bid optimization tool analyze to make bid decisions? Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the second question to consider when choosing a bid optimization platform: How fresh is the data that’s used in making bid decisions?

To learn more about the 7 factors to consider, download our white paper here.

Today, agencies are looking for ways to continue running high-performing search campaigns across different search engines, geographies, formats, and devices. To turn this complexity into opportunity, many look to SEM platforms as a single place to manage, optimize and measure all their campaigns - on many search engines across the world.

Choosing a platform to manage all this isn’t easy. There’s lots of advice and suggestions about how to choose one, (such as this and this). But we’ve learned that every client has different needs - some only want to manage search ads, some want a real integration with their display and mobile campaigns, some have dedicated teams, some are more budget conscious. Through our formal and informal customer feedback sessions we‘ve taken onboard marketers and agencies’ key questions and requests, and used that to revamp DoubleClick Search version 3. And through these same sessions over recent years, we see and hear the factors that are important to marketers and agencies in their choices - these are the questions that most commonly come up in RFPs, in our discussions and in our feedback sessions.

We created a guide with the factors that clients consistently tell us are most important. These guide our investment in DoubleClick Search, and we hope they might be a useful summary for you if you are looking for, or testing out, an SEM platform partner. See the entire guide on the DoubleClick Search blog or download it here.

Posted by Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director

Earlier this summer we announced we were bringing together DoubleClick’s advertising technology products into the unified DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) platform for advertisers and agencies.

Over the coming months we’ll be giving you regular updates on this journey as we launch upgrades of the DoubleClick products, implement cross-product integrations, and deliver innovative, new features within the individual products.

We’ve had a busy summer, and are excited to share the following details:

• Platforms upgrades - An important first step to delivering on the vision of DDM is upgrading the individual DoubleClick products to take advantage of Google’s technology. Today we’re highlighting the progress we’ve made upgrading two platforms: DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Studio.
  
  
• DoubleClick Bid Manager -- Google acquired the Invite Media demand-side platform in 2010, and since then we have completely rebuilt the platform to take advantage of Google's technology. We announced during the summer that Bid Manager was going into beta and now, with a notable volume of traffic flowing through the system, we’ll be making this new version available to all customers in October. Customers using the new Bid Manager to target, optimize, and buy display media have seen improved performance, including seeing 16% more inventory due to infrastructure improvements that reduce our latency with exchanges.
  
  
• DoubleClick Studio version 2 -- We have also upgraded our rich media production tool, DoubleClick Studio, which facilitates a streamlined workflow between media and creative agencies for the web’s most engaging ad formats. Almost 80% of creative agencies using DoubleClick Studio have already transitioned to the new version, which delivers a faster and more responsive UI and integrated dynamic content capabilities.
  
  Upgrading the individual platforms also gives us the opportunity to make sure that they work better together to unlock even more opportunities for our customers.
  
  
• Streamlining cross-product interactions: When we asked leading agencies and advertisers how much time their staff could save by working in an integrated ad platform, they estimated they could save about a third of hours spent per week -- or about an extra month every year each team member could invest in other activities -- just by reducing manual processes and working in a single system.
  
  With the DoubleClick Bid Manager upgrade and its integration with DDM, buyers can now access cross-channel opportunities that are only available through a unified system. For example, we’re excited to announce the ability for agencies and marketers using DoubleClick Search to show consumers display ads via DoubleClick Bid Manager based on their interactions with paid search ads. Marketers have struggled to coordinate their search and display marketing efforts, and this new integration makes it easier, with no new site tags and no new products to learn.
  
  Another subtle step toward cross-product interaction is the rollout this week of a new universal navigation bar and application switcher for users of DoubleClick Search, DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Studio. While a simple change, we believe this new UI will facilitate seamless switching between DoubleClick products, saving time for marketers who are using our platform to manage their campaigns across multiple channels.
  
  Innovation across the platform: In addition to integrating our platforms, we are continuing to invest in our existing products. As an example of this, we’re excited to announce the launch later this month of Attribution Modeling in Multi-Channel Funnels in DoubleClick for Advertisers.
  
  Advertisers use a variety of channels, messages and ads to engage customers. Determining which of these efforts is most effective in converting customers can be difficult (see related post here). Attribution analysis can help identify what is driving customers, but until recently it’s only been practical for the most sophisticated advertisers. By the end of September, we’re making attribution modeling available to anyone using DFA -- for free.
  
  Some benefits of this approach include:
  
  1. Ready to use data -- the attribution modeling data will live within DFA, so there’s no delay between when you want to run an analysis, and when you can actually start.
  2. Flexible, customizable, transparent models -- you can take advantage of five standard attribution models in DFA, or build your own custom model tailored to the needs of your business
  3. It’s free -- no need to build your own system for this kind of analysis. We’re giving it to you as part of DFA, with your data loaded and ready to go.

We're rapidly delivering on our vision for a fully integrated experience and common workflows across DoubleClick solutions -- from ad serving to buying and analytics. We’re excited to be on this journey with our customers and believe that by delivering an integrated experience, we can help the industry truly unlock the full potential of digital marketing. Stay tuned for more updates, there’s a lot more to come!

Posted by Jason Miller

As a search marketer, you know that bid optimization is one of the critical aspects of managing search at scale, providing sophisticated technology to meet your unique business goals. Over the past 18 months, the DoubleClick Search team has been focused on enhancing our automated bidding tools -- understanding that this is the engine that drives campaign performance. We've rebuilt our bid optimization platform from the ground up -- no single line of code is the same! -- and our users are already seeing some impressive results: 88% have experienced significant improvements in campaign performance, with 50% doubling their conversions at half the CPA (1).

Our investments in bid optimization span beyond revamped technology and algorithms. We wanted to make it easier for you to state your goals and monitor performance, to better harness and discover the power of automated strategies. The result is our new Performance Bidding Suite, which includes updates to the user interface (UI), new strategy options, and increased transparency into bid engine decisions. With our Performance Bidding Suite, you can:

• Quickly find the right goal with a refreshed user interface. Easily express bid optimization goals that match your business objectives. Whether you’re looking to maximize revenue or target a position, the new UI makes it even easier to find the right strategy for your unique goals. Our updated UI is designed to capture new bid strategies as they are released.
• Easily enter your Target Spend goals. With our new Target Spend strategy, maximize important KPIs like actions, transactions, revenue or clicks within a given monthly spend. Learn more
• Efficiently set default minimum and maximum bids on a strategy. Spend more time managing bid limits for the keywords you care about most, while DoubleClick Search handles the rest through a bid strategy-wide setting.
• Exercise even more advanced controls. The Advanced Configuration tab in the new bid strategy UI is designed for those who want to even further influence bid strategies. The first option we’re releasing gives you control over how a bid strategy handles high-traffic or low-converting keywords in ROI strategies. Stay tuned for more advanced controls. Learn more

In addition to a cleaner interface, new strategies, and advanced controls, the Performance Bidding Suite provides increased transparency into bid decisions and impact. Drive more insights with features that allow you to:

• Chart your Max CPC bids to visualize trends over time. You can now chart keyword bids for a defined date range, alongside any other metric in our UI to easily analyze bidding frequency and bid changes.
• Better understand our decision-making with bid rationale summary. As part of the change history tool, our new bid rationale feature (beta) reveals the reasoning behind any changes to specific bids.
• Preview intended bids. Our bid preview feature shows the target bid DoubleClick Search intends to submit for a particular keyword. This provides insight into the range of bids the system is likely to submit, based on the current bid and performance, to offer guidance in setting bid limits.

With these transparency features from the Performance Bidding Suite, you have powerful insights into how different settings impact campaign performance, and can tweak these settings if needed.

If you'd like to get started exploring the Performance Bidding Suite, you can check out the latest release notes and updated articles in the Help Center, or view our recorded webinar here.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

1. Google internal data, 2012

Today, at the DoubleClick Insights conference, we’re unveiling DoubleClick Digital Marketing: the first modern ad platform built for the modern digital world. The improvements we’re announcing today represent the biggest ever overhaul of our DoubleClick ad platform and are the result of a great deal of hard work over the last few years. This fully integrated, unified platform and its components will be rolling out to partners over the coming months.

You can click here to watch a livestream of the event:



A platform for today
Today’s consumers work, play and share, moving seamlessly between formats and devices. However, for agencies and advertisers, the process of connecting with consumers is anything but seamless. It’s hard to reach the right audience at the right moment with the right message when every channel requires its own system and you’re patching together, and switching, between ad platforms that aren’t in sync. In fact, in a recent survey of 300 clients, marketers and agencies, they told us their team members are spending almost two days a week working across various digital platforms, often on manual workflow tasks. They estimate an integrated digital platform could liberate a third of that time. That’s an extra month every year that each team member can invest in other campaigns and new business.

Based on what we’ve heard from our customers, we challenged ourselves to re-invent ad buying with a unified platform:

• Can we build an ad management platform that’s comprehensive, so that clients can manage all channels in one place, across all formats and devices?
• Can we build a seamless platform, so that clients can easily optimize, tailor, measure and compare all elements of their campaigns, using a common language and interface?
• Can we ensure that it’s customizable, so that marketers can easily plug in their own technology, data and third-party suppliers?
• Can we make ad buying faster, to dramatically speed up data analysis and slash manual campaign management activities?

A platform that works better together
DoubleClick Digital Marketing is our answer. The new platform comprises the following components, which will be fully integrated and work together to enable seamless ad campaign management for agencies and advertisers:

• DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager, our upgraded DoubleClick ad server, used by thousands of marketers and agencies worldwide to manage directly bought ad space.
• DoubleClick Bid Manager, our new demand-side platform, rebuilt on our DoubleClick technology, making it faster and more flexible. Many Invite Media customers are currently in the process of being upgraded to the new DSP. Last year, spending on Invite Media grew by about 50%, and we believe these new investments will create even more momentum for the exchange ecosystem.
• DoubleClick Search, our cross-engine search management platform that was completely rebuilt last year and is natively integrated into the DoubleClick platform. DoubleClick Search is used by 6 of the largest 10 agencies, and is creating efficiency gains of up to 65%.
• DoubleClick Studio, our rich media creative solution, now with Teracent’s dynamic creative technology built in, which powers engaging and intelligent ad units. In 2011, rich media ads accounted for 10% of all display ads, doubling in volume over 12 months.
• Finally, Google Analytics, which will enable attribution modelling, conversion reports and site traffic reporting to be incorporated seamlessly into ad campaigns.

We’ve invested significantly in this area, because we believe that such a system would dramatically improve digital marketing—growing the pie for publishers, funding great online content for users, and helping marketers grow their businesses.

What are we making possible?
With the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, we’re enabling:

• Smarter creative that works with your media buy and that dynamically responds in real-time, with the audience in mind.
• More responsive campaigns that can “learn” the channels where consumers interact and quickly respond with the most appropriate creative, message and offer across all screens (for example, using a single set of frequency capping, remarketing and creative optimization signals across the entire campaign, helping to deliver the right ad as users move through the marketing funnel—from awareness to conversion).
• Creating greater value for your business and campaigns, enabling a better understanding across channels and formats (e.g., how does rich media perform versus video?); and facilitating real-time, smarter optimization decisions to reduce cost and increase campaign performance (for example, should you reduce bids on your search keywords and exchange buying while increasing your bids to run more video ads?).

A big step forward
We’re often asked about the future of digital advertising. We’re passionate about this industry. It’s the fuel that powers the digital world and a powerful engine of growth and employment. Over the last decade, a remarkably successful industry has been built via humble web banners, repurposed pre-roll video ads, desktop computers and a patchwork of ad buying tools. However, for marketers, the combination of re-imagined creative tools, reinvented measurement solutions and re-vamped ad buying platforms can propel digital advertising into a $200 billion industry that funds and supports great content.

In the coming days on this blog, and on the DoubleClick Publishers blog, we’ll provide more details of the new buying platform and discuss other announcements from our DoubleClick Insights event, including new solutions for our DFP and Ad Exchange partners.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

There has been explosive growth in ad technology over the last 20 years. From each of our perspectives -- whether you are an agency, an advertiser, publisher or a technology provider -- we can all still see unprecedented opportunities as the digital world continues to grow and diversify.

We believe that as an industry, we’re on a common digital journey and that the next wave of innovation in ad tech will come from us all working better together.

However, like all great opportunities, there are challenges and questions, such as:

• How do we unlock the next $50 billion of opportunity for digital advertising? 
• How do we deliver those immersive, interactive experiences to today’s empowered consumer demands? 
• What do we, as part of the ad tech ecosystem, need to build to create even more value for our clients and consumers?

On June 5th we’re hosting DoubleClick Insights to start exploring some answers to these questions. Senior leaders from top agencies, advertisers and publishers will help lead the conversation -- and you’re invited to join via the live stream! Register here.

The agenda will include topics such as:

Adapting to the Empowered Consumer:
Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising at Google will be joined by David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies, and James Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group, to discuss how technology is being used to deliver new content and advertising experiences to consumers.

If We Build It, Will They (Consumers) Come?
Terry Kawaja, CEO and Co-Founder, Luma Partners (and creator of the now legendary LUMAscape chart) will lead a conversation about the ad tech ecosystem, and what it needs to do next to add value for agencies, publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers. Terry will be joined onstage by:

• Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai
• Greg Stuart, Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association
• Kurt Unkel, President, VivaKi 
• Shishir Mehrota, Vice President of Product Management, YouTube

Outside the Box: Technology = Creative Friend or Foe?
Technology is supposed to make the life of a marketer easier. For our final conversation, we’re going to focus on the question of: Is this technology exploring resulting in better marketing? Or, is it just resulting in mediocre creative and complexity for both consumers and marketers? Karim Temsamani, Vice President - New Products and Solutions, Google moderates the conversation with leaders from creative agencies, iconic brands and publishers including:

• Brad Ruffkess, Global Connection, Coca-Cola
• Mike Lowenstern, Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA
• Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB 
• John Caldwell, Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. To learn more about our highlighted speakers go to the Speakers page on our site.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am - 1:00pm PST
Set event reminder today

Following us on Google+ or Twitter (@DoubleClick and @DoubleClick_pub)? Use the #dclkinsights tag as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event?

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

In under two years, the industry has witnessed explosive growth in real-time bidding (RTB). Many advertisers and agencies are reporting that they will spend more on digital advertising in 2011 because of its benefits. At Google, we believe that the overall display advertising pie can get even bigger and see real-time bidding as one of the technologies that can help get us there.

To help buyers benefit from it, we’ve published a white paper that shares our view of real-time bidding for online display advertising. Based on research and primary interviews with Google’s RTB experts across our product, sales and services organizations, this paper provides a clear definition of what it is and how buyers can get involved.

Whether you are a large or small advertiser, an agency or a trading desk or a media buying intermediary, Google would like to help you succeed with real-time bidding. We hope that this paper helps.

Download the white paper here (PDF)

Update posted 8/8/2011: Figure 1 in this white paper was missing the demand-side platform LucidMedia. We have now added them.

DoubleClick Search began in 2006, a tool for larger agencies and advertisers running large-scale online advertising campaigns across multiple platforms. It’s designed to manage the execution of paid search campaigns and centralize the measurement of performance across search and display advertising.



Think of search campaign management like an air traffic control system: directing one airplane to take off from a given airport at the right time is relatively simple. Coordinating thousands of airplanes, across many airports is more complex. The same is true of search campaigns: managing a search campaign is easy, but managing multiple campaigns and search engines, and comparing performance of search and display strategies, can be more difficult.

Today at SES New York, we’re giving the first glimpse of the latest version of DoubleClick Search (version 3), designed to make these tasks simpler.

We’ve spent the last 9 months talking to our customers and agency partners about what you want from a search campaign management tool, and we’ve heard you loud and clear: you want a powerful solution that lets you manage millions of keywords, across the leading search engines, from a fast, easy-to-use platform. So we took a look at our existing DoubleClick Search product and decided to rebuild it from scratch, designing it to take the activities you do on a daily basis and make them simpler, faster and more effective.

We are currently beta testing DoubleClick Search v3 with select partners and will be rolling it out to all partners later this year. Here are a few ways we’ve made our DoubleClick Search product better:

Workflow: We’ve simplified navigation with an easy-to-use, AdWords-like interface and enabled you make changes to your campaign directly from DoubleClick Search or directly in the search engines. We’ve also added the ability to upload campaigns in spreadsheets with up to 1 million rows, and manage campaigns globally with many language and currency options.

Reporting: DoubleClick Search now includes powerful filters and labels that allow you to highlight important keywords. Our revamped reporting features also allow you to manage where your ads appear with precise position controls, design your bidding strategy to meet specific ROI goals, and compare how your campaigns are performing across search and display, thanks to seamless integration with DoubleClick’s display platform, DoubleClick for Advertisers.

Optimization: We’ve given you new tools to enhance optimization, including the ability to view performance data across all the major search engines and a customizable reporting view so you can focus on what matters most to your business.

Here is a sneak peek at what the new DoubleClick Search will look like:


(Mock screenshot)

There will be more news in the weeks and months ahead, so please be sure to check back at our DoubleClick Search blog.

Originally posted to the DoubleClick Search Blog

Posted by: Ariel Bardin, Director of Product Management

As we’ve written on our blogs before, new technologies are profoundly improving display advertising. In the last few years, there’s been a technological Big Bang, creating new ways to buy display ads across the web: exchanges involving real time bidding, demand side platforms, improved ad networks and more.

These technologies are enabling marketers to seize the digital moment and run far more effective campaigns, but just as the universe changed dramatically following the Big Bang, the digital buying marketplace has changed forever, requiring some new “laws.”

The three laws of display advertising physics

1. The Theory of Relativity: What’s better, a demand side platform, or an ad network? It depends

Our clients often ask us if they should use our DSP (Invite Media), or our network (the Google Display Network), especially as the distinction between the two platforms blurs. We often answer with an analogy from the world of stock investing (it’s not perfect, but it’s a first step). The first question is whether to buy and sell yourself, or engage someone else to manage your portfolio:

• The online broker model: For buyers looking to manage the details of their ad buying and use their own technology and data, a DSP like Invite Media is often the best option. This is similar to an online broker that lets you log in and closely manage your investments (and, as with Invite Media, get access to special trading features, market intelligence and expert advice).

• The stockbroker model: Some marketers have a desired campaign result (such as a target reach for a new car campaign, or a number of conversions for a sporting tickets campaign). They want to outsource the details and have a customized, transparent media solution designed for their campaign. The Google Display Network most often fits this bill—it’s like having a stock broker manage your portfolio to meet your investment goals.
  

Both platforms enable access to huge pools of ad space, deliver the same types of ad formats and facilitate similar ways of targeting ads. Again, it’s like buying stocks—whether you choose an online broker or stockbroker, you can select from thousands of types of stocks, markets and investment products.

2. Fusion Theory: Why contextual and audience buying release more energy when combined

Some have suggested that audience buying (delivering ads based on users’ interests) and contextual advertising (targeting ads to content) is an either/or proposition. However, we believe it’s the combination of the two that is most powerful.

• With effective contextual advertising, you can get the maximum reach while delivering your message in highly relevant locations—like news articles related to your products—in the precise moment a person indicates interest. Contextual advertising is vital to building brand awareness and reaching new prospects at relevant moments.

• Audience buying—such as remarketing—enables marketers to reach people who have already shown an interest in a particular topic or brand. This is especially effective for re-engaging consumers.

Marketers combining these types of buying can reach a broad range of people, then hone their messages to particularly good prospects to maximize the impact of their campaigns. We’ve seen that this approach drives better campaign performance; third party studies back it up.

3. The Law of Perpetual Motion: Why marketers should embrace a rapidly moving industry

Display advertising is in a state of constant motion, caused by the acceleration of online media consumption and the explosion in new technologies.

• Advances in computer science are driving changes in advertising. To illustrate: creativity has always been at the heart of good display advertising. But look at what’s become widely used by marketers in just the last few years—rich media technology, new mobile and video formats and dynamic creative technology that can take a creative ad concept and automatically bring it to life over millions of websites.

• The industry is literally moving faster as media buyers start to increase their use of real-time bidding (RTB) technology, which allows them to evaluate and bid on ad space on an impression-by-impression basis. We recently undertook an industry study with Digiday, surveying more than 300 digital media buyers, agencies and intermediaries about their thoughts on RTB in the year ahead. Some revealing findings:

• 88% of buyers plan to buy via RTB in 2011, up from 75% last year.
• 47% of media buyers say that the benefits or RTB will increase their overall digital advertising budget this year (16% said it would not, 37% were unsure).
• Spending on RTB is quickly moving out of the "test budget" range: 79% of buyers estimate that more than 10% of their digital display budgets will go to RTB in 2011. 33% estimate that 50% or more of their digital display budget will go to RTB. And 7% estimate 90-100% of their digital display budget will go to RTB.
• 29% of media intermediaries (such as DSPs, ad networks, and exchanges) anticipate their volume of real-time bidding will increase by 100% or more versus last year. 19% believe it will go up by at least 200%.
• More formats are moving to RTB: 34% of buyers say they are extremely or very likely to purchase rich media ads via RTB this year, 32% are extremely or very likely to purchase dynamic creative ads via RTB, 20% are extremely or very likely to purchase mobile display ads via RTB, 18% are extremely or very likely to purchase in-stream video via RTB and 14% are extremely or very likely to purchase mobile rich media via RTB.
• Nearly half (48%) of publishers surveyed say they plan to increase the amount of inventory they will make available via RTB. 28% are still deciding. Only 24% said they were not planning to increase RTB inventory.

We’re seeing this rapid growth and change first-hand. Since we acquired Invite Media in June 2010, the number of advertisers on the platform has doubled; agency spend has grown by almost 300%. And spending on display ads on the Google Display Network is growing more than 100% annually in a large number of countries. Publishers are benefiting from these changes as well (for example, a recent study found that publishers who participated in the DoubleClick Ad Exchange see an average 188% revenue lift when the exchange wins the auction).

In this new era, the most effective campaigns will be driven by marketers who rethink how they connect with people in this rapidly moving industry. Whether it means partnering with technology providers to buy better, or exploring the infinite possibilities of today’s creative units, embracing new media and technology provides a key way for marketers to differentiate and grow their businesses in a new universe.

The future

Unlike the Big Bang, the expansion in our industry is not chaotic or random. We’re moving towards a single platform that seamlessly incorporates the best technologies for planning, buying, serving, creating and measuring display ads; one that will enable marketers to effectively reach and engage people across desktops, tablets, videos, mobile devices and TVs.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

DoubleClick Ad Planner just made it easier to plan media buys for regional ad campaigns through two important upgrades.

First, the product has been localized to support 15 languages. In addition to American English, Ad Planner can now be displayed in British English, Russian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish.

Second, the Ad Planner team has published lists of the top 100 sites in each of 22 regional markets. Named the “Ad Planner 100,” these lists provide a quick reference to identify the most popular sites by country. Check out the Ad Planner 100 lists for the countries you advertise within:

Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China France Germany Hong Kong

Italy Japan Korea Netherlands Poland Russia Spain

Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Kingdom United States

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

[note: this post has been reprinted from the DoubleClick Blog]

We've announced September's list for the Ad Planner 1000, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner. The September edition offers annual fall trends as students across the northern hemisphere have returned to school, TV networks release their new shows, and the NFL season kicks off.

• As the school year got into full swing, homework and school projects influenced usage of reference sites, such as reference.com, thesaurus.com, wiktionary.org, merrian-webster.com and thefreedictionary.com.
• The return to school did not bode as well for online gaming and entertainment sites as we observed a decline in site traffic with many of them, such as Battle.net, 4399.com, duowan.com and pcgames.com.
• Thanks to the new television season, network sites re-entered the Ad Planner 1000: nbc.com at #679, cbs.com at #712 and abc.go.com at #748. Tvguide.com also benefited with enough of an increase to site visitors to crack the list at #820.
• In the U.S., football fervor is underway and the biggest beneficiary is nfl.com with a whopping 61% increase in unique visitors to their site. However, as playoff contenders emerge in the baseball post-season, the narrowing field of teams to follow seems to have affected mlb.com.

For the complete update, visit the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog and the Ad Planner 1000.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team