Author Archives: Nicole Burgan

Scale your Shopping campaigns with bulk uploads and AdWords Editor

Cross-posted from the Inside Adwords blog

With less than eight weeks left until regular Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns retire, we're excited that the majority of PLA advertisers have already started taking advantage of Shopping campaigns, and 85% of these have already fully upgraded. Advertisers who’ve upgraded like Farfetch, US Mattress, LiBoutique and ValuePetSupplies are seeing great success thanks to the retail-centric interface, item-level reporting and competitive benchmark data.

For those of you who’ve upgraded, we’re excited to introduce two new tools to make campaign management, specifically bid optimization, easier.



  • Bulk Uploads: You now have the ability to download a product group report, edit your bids and destination URLs, and import your changes using bulk uploads.
  • AdWords Editor: We’ve heard your feedback, and with the latest version of AdWords Editor, you can edit your bids and destination URLs for individual product groups at scale. At this time, AdWords Editor doesn’t support the creation of Shopping campaigns or product groups, so please plan time to create your campaigns and subdivide your product groups directly in AdWords.

If you haven’t upgraded to Shopping campaigns, we strongly encourage you to start as all regular Product Listing Ad campaigns will retire at the end of August.

Many third-party agencies and platforms are upgrading advertisers to Shopping campaigns, so if you work with one, reach out and see how they can help. Here are a few resources to answer questions and get you started:

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Introducing Active View reporting in DoubleClick: A foundation for brand measurement

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertiser blog

In an important step toward making brand measurement as actionable as the click, customers of our DoubleClick platform globally now have access to Active View reporting. Advertisers, agencies and publishers now have access to a common, integrated metric to evaluate and compare the viewability of impressions across the web.

Digital advertising can provide brand marketers better measurement for their campaigns, but to do so, we must transition to a market where viewable impressions are a standard currency. On March 31, the Media Rating Council took the first step toward making viewable impressions a standard by lifting its advisory to refrain from transacting on viewable impressions as a digital advertising currency. We’ve always been a strong supporter of the viewability standard and we’re excited to roll out our MRC-certified viewability solution Active View to our DoubleClick partners.

DoubleClick clients globally now have access to Active View viewability reporting by default in:
  • DoubleClick for Publishers, for publishers using Google Publisher Tags 
  • DoubleClick Ad Exchange, in the new Query Tool
  • DoubleClick Digital Marketing
    • DoubleClick Campaign Manager, including reach and frequency
    • DoubleClick Bid Manager

From measurement to currency, the future of Viewability
Moving from served impressions to viewable impressions as the standard unit of measurement in the advertising ecosystem will be a huge shift but, leaders in the industry see opportunity ahead.
“The shift toward viewability will bring more brand spend to digital, ultimately benefiting premium publishers,” says David Payne, Chief Digital Officer at Gannett. “Viewability provides us another proof point that shows how our premium content creates highly engaged audiences perfect for branding campaigns.”
"At VivaKi, we’re passionate about viewability because an ad served that is not viewable is an inefficient use of our clients’ resources,” says VP Audience Media Strategy Phil Shih. “In the future, viewable premium inventory will demand a higher CPM than unviewed impressions; but it’s worth it for the sake of growing your brand.”

Providing a common measurement metric is the foundation for a world where we can transact on viewable impressions. But measurement alone does not make viewable impressions a currency. For this, we need to develop technology that allows advertisers and publishers to not only measure, but also transact viewable impressions. We already enable this on the Google Display Network and, we’re also investing in tools on the DoubleClick platform to allow advertisers and publishers to value, buy, sell, serve and optimize to viewable impressions. 

The transition to viewable impressions will not happen overnight, but as more brands, agencies and publishers adopt the viewable standard, we can create a more transparent and actionable display ecosystem for brand advertisers. We look forward to working with our clients and industry bodies to turn viewability into a new currency for the web.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager, Brand Metrics


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Kicking Off the Latest Art, Copy & Code Campaign: Nike’s “Phenomenal Shot”

Last year, we launched our Art, Copy & Code project to partner with iconic brands, such as Volkswagen and Burberry, to reimagine how technology and creativity come together in advertising. In our latest collaboration, we’ve teamed up with Nike, Wieden + Kennedy, Mindshare and Grow for a new take on watching live sports.

Today, watching live TV is a much more active experience because our devices are always within reach—on the coffee table, in our pockets or on our laps. Nearly 80% of consumers watch TV with a laptop, tablet or mobile phone nearby. After major events, these screens come to life -- searches spike, and the “Did you see that?” moments become the must-have, real-time currency of the web.

This behavior creates a massive opportunity for brands to be hyper-relevant, in an instant.

Together with Nike, we developed a real-time campaign that lets global fans participate, remix and share in pivotal moments, just seconds after they happen on live TV.

"Nike is always looking for new ways to innovate, not just through our athletes, products and stories but also in the way we connect with our consumers,” said Davide Grasso, Chief Marketing Officer, Nike. “We're focused on interesting and innovative ways to inspire and enable athletes, and the innovation that Google is able to deliver is something that excites us. The technology is an exciting way for us to scale our interaction with athletes in real time and deliver to them content that will help fuel their conversations. It's a very powerful way to engage with Nike during some amazing moments in sport.”

The campaign is built on two key technologies:

Real-time, reimagined: Through a specially designed, real-time ad delivery tool, display ads were shown across the web on sites and apps in the Google Display Network, within seconds of a Nike athlete's phenomenal play happening on TV.

For example, when Brazil’s Neymar Jr. scored two goals in the first half of the Cameroon match and when USA’s Tim Howard had a series of incredible saves versus Portugal, Google technology allowed Nike to deliver ads celebrating the moment within 10 seconds of those events happening live.

The cross-screen experience...now in 3D: Using modern browser technologies like HTML5 and WebGL, Nike’s athletes came to life in 3D across screens. On mobile phones and tablets, the campaign made particular use of the unique capabilities of mobile devices. Fans could span 360-degrees around the character by tilting and panning their phone, capturing their own perfect shot.

 

Over the last few weeks, we’ve run eight ads celebrating real-time moments. And consumers are engaging. Over two million fans from 200 different countries have engaged with the Phenomenal Shot experience, creating over 500 thousand remixed moments to share with their friends.

To see the ads and learn more about the campaign, visit ArtCopyCode.com.

This project is the first in a series of projects to reimagine real-time marketing. While Nike is the first to use the new capability, there’s potential in all kinds of live events - from sporting events to award shows to reality TV. It’s an exciting step for brands looking to meaningfully connect with people, in real time, across the entire web. Watch this space for more updates later this year.

-- posted by Mike Glaser, Marketing Manager, Creative Partnerships

Driving Brand Campaigns with Search Advertising

Search ads typically aren’t part of the brand marketer’s toolkit, but thanks to a few leading advertisers, they may be soon. A recent Google/Ipsos MediaCT meta-study showed that search ads drove an average increase of 6.6 percentage points in top-of-mind awareness, from 8.2% to 14.8%—a lift of 80%. Marketers are starting to turn to search advertising as a way to learn more about their brands and connect with consumers.


For example, in 2012 L'Oréal Paris used search to reach a broad audience looking for information about the popular “ombre” hairstyle. This hair treatment was only done in salons at the time, but L'Oréal Paris saw the trend’s potential and developed a home market product in just a few months. In addition to the home product, L’Oreal Paris created YouTube content devoted to the topic, got widespread press coverage, and owned the search for the term—all of which established brand awareness. In the end, the very people who had alerted L'Oréal Paris to the trend were shown search ads that linked to helpful marketing, right at the moment of interest.

Think with Google took a look at how brand marketers are understanding, reaching and influencing audiences using search, and how they’re measuring the impact. Check out the full collection for more details on the research, case studies and a guide for marketers on how to use search for brand marketing.

Introducing Video Advertising advanced certification on Google Partners

We’re excited to announce that the new Video Advertising advanced certification is now available to all members of Google Partners globally.  

In October 2013 we launched Google Partners – a program that provides agencies with the resources, training and support to help businesses succeed online. Over the last few months, we’ve been looking for more ways to recognize agencies’ specialized knowledge in certain areas of digital advertising.

This new certification is designed to recognize users with expertise in video advertising on YouTube and the Google Display Network and help them share that knowledge with their clients.

Starting today, AdWords certified members of Google Partners can take the Video Advertising exam to earn advanced certification.

To learn more about this advanced certification, please visit the Partners Help Center.

Posted by the Google Partners team


Win the Digital Shelf with Our New Guide to Shopping Campaigns

Cross-posted from the Inside Adwords blog

We introduced Shopping campaigns in February to make it easier for you to manage your Product Listing Ads (PLAs). In late August, Shopping campaigns will be the default
campaign type for all PLA advertisers.

To help retailers make the most of their Shopping campaigns, we’re excited to introduce a new best practices guide, “Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns.” It addresses important questions like:
  • How should you structure your campaigns: by product line, performance, or both? 
  • Which feed attributes have the best chance of improving CTR?
  • Are you adjusting bids quickly enough during peak seasons?
Download the “Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns” guide now to ensure you’re making the most of your PLAs and data feeds.

 For additional help, here are a few resources:
Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

New tools to help advertisers embrace cross-screen campaigns

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertiser blog

Today, we're excited to shine a light on several new features of the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform that help advertisers more seamlessly embrace cross- screen advertising.

Mobile advertising is, without question, top of mind for marketers; but according to the latest "Internet Trends 2014" report from Mary Meeker, it's also the biggest opportunity gap of all forms of media spend. Although 20% of time spent on media is within a mobile environment, only 4% of US advertising spend is on mobile. (1) Marketers still struggle to get up to speed on the new technologies and strategies that cross­screen campaigns require.

That's why we're excited to bring new tools that make it easier to build, buy, target, execute and measure your campaigns across screens:

Google Web Designer integration:
  • Build HTML5 ads easily in Google Web Designer and publish them into DoubleClick Campaign Manager. This allows you to quickly get your HTML5 ads live and serving to any device.
Mobile inventory growth:
  • Buy more mobile inventory ­­ Programmatic mobile inventory on DoubleClick Bid Manager has grown 130% since Q4 2013 across 12 exchanges and includes both display and video formats. Adding mobile inventory on DoubleClick Bid Manager allows you to incorporate mobile into the rest of your media strategy and optimize across all of your media buys.
In­app remarketing:
  • (Re)target your customers using audience lists within mobile app environments, so that you can drive and measure re­engagement with your existing mobile app users. 
Publisher Certification program for in­app creative formats:
  • Execute your mobile campaigns with the confidence. While mobile rich media standards are widely accepted across the industry, publishers still vary in their implementation, resulting in discrepancies and inconsistent behavior of in­app creative. We are certifying publishers and networks to ensure their mobile apps can accept and run standard mobile in­app ad units (59 certifications completed to date.) 
In­app conversion tracking:
  • Measure in­app view­through and click­through conversions with Floodlight to report on mobile app downloads or any other in­app activities. Whether you are running an app install campaign or driving in­app purchases, you can now attribute these activities to your in­app media and better measure app campaign effectiveness.
TalkTalk drives 12% decrease in eCPA with HTML5 creative and mobile programmatic.
TalkTalk, a Telecom company based in the UK, has embraced cross­screen strategies for their campaigns and drove a 12% decrease in their eCPA using DoubleClick and Google Web Designer. Their creative agency, 22Design, used Google Web Designer to quickly learn and build HTML5 into TalkTalk’s campaign, getting the campaign live in a third of the expected time. 

   

Not only was the learning process much easier than anticipated, the HTML5 ads actually performed better than the Flash ads, indicating that TalkTalk’s audience was more receptive to the brand message on mobile devices than on desktops. Equipped with their new HTML5 creative and audience insights, TalkTalk was able to add mobile inventory to their programmatic media buy for the first time. 

Rather than waiting on the sidelines, TalkTalk has taken a proactive approach to trying new mobile strategies and techniques with DoubleClick. They started slow, tested what worked, and iterated on their findings, to get their campaigns running successfully across screens. 


We are excited about these new tools and will continue to improve our technology to help marketers and agencies more seamlessly build, execute and measure cross­screen campaigns.

Posted by the DoubleClick Marketing Team

(1) Mary Meeker’s “Internet Trends 2014” ­ http://www.kpcb.com/internet­trends 

Introducing personalized certificates and public profiles on Google Partners

Google Partners is a program that offers agencies the resources, training and support they need to help their clients succeed on the web. One core benefit of the Partners program is the ability to take product certification exams for free. Many of our users have requested certificates to show potentials clients that they’re AdWords certified. Today, we’re pleased to announce that there are two new ways to share your certification status on Google Partners.

First, anyone who’s AdWords certified can get a personalized HTML certificate on Partners. Second, you now have a publicly sharable profile page, which includes your certifications and information like your name, Google+ profile photo and company affiliation.

Here’s how it works:

To view the HTML version of your certificate:
  1. Sign in to your Google Partners account at www.google.com/partners
  2. Click the ‘My profile’ link in the ‘Overview’ section. 
  3. If you’re AdWords certified, click the ‘AdWords Certified’ link to open a printable, HTML version of your certificate.
  4. You can print the certificate or save it to your desktop to share with potential clients.
To share your Google Partners public profile:
  1. Select the ‘My Profile’ page link from the menu.
  2. Visit the ‘Public Profile’ section of this page. By default, your public profile page is visible only to you. 
  3. To make your profile visible to others, click the ‘Share with’ drop-down menu and select ‘Public.’ 
  4. You can now click the ‘View Profile’ link and begin sharing your page with anyone. 
  5. If you’re signed in to your Partners account, your profile's visibility status will appear at the top of the page. You may always change it from public back to private. 
To learn more information about Google Partners certifications, visit the Help Center.

See you online,
The Google Partners Team 


Q&A with Neal Mohan: A Sneak Peek at the DoubleClick Live Stream

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

The 2014 World Cup: What a Difference 4 Years Makes

With the World Cup kicking off soon, Think with Google looked at some related search data and trends around this global event. We found that this year, there are more searches for the tournament than the Super Bowl, Olympics and Tour de France combined.

Armed with more and smarter devices, fans interact with the sport differently than they did four years ago—and brands have a chance to reach them in new ways. Read about the insights every marketer should know for the game on Think with Google.