Author Archives: Stephen Kliff

Announcing the launch of AMP in Search

Speed matters, particularly on mobile devices. People are likely to abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn’t load quickly. This is bad for the user trying to access content, and also for the publisher whose business depends on users engaging with content. That’s why, last October, we joined others across the industry to announce the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible.

Earlier today, Google announced that web pages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page, giving users a lightning-fast experience --- early tests have found that AMP pages load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages.

A key goal of the AMP Project is to ensure that publishers’ existing business models are supported. To that end, AMP in Search will have what could be termed as version one of some new features aimed at helping publishers earn money and understand and engage their audience. Full details are on Github and on the AMPProject.org site, but here are the highlights:

  • Ads: Advertising pays for a lot of the great journalism that we all love to read for free, so it’s essential that publishers can run ads on AMP pages with the ad servers and networks of their choice, in multiple formats (including native ads), and with full control over where they appear on the page. AMP also supports the new viewability metrics advertisers and publishers use to measure how users are engaging with ads. Currently publishers can choose from more than 20 ad tech providers who have developed support for AMP, including DoubleClick and AdSense. You can read more about the ads support in AMP in general here and specifically about DoubleClick for Publisher's support for AMP here.
  • Subscriptions: For many publishers, subscriptions and paywalls are critical to the bottom line. AMP lets publishers retain full control over which readers can access which stories, to ensure that publishers can continue to make money via subscriptions on their AMP pages. Visit Github for more details on subscriptions in AMP.
  • Analytics: Analytics are important to publishers because they help them understand what people like to read and how they read. AMP provides an analytics framework that lets publishers measure data like pageviews, users, time spent, and more. The insights provided by these kinds of metrics can help publishers create appealing stories, build brand loyalty and ultimately make money. Learn more about the analytics support in AMP here and specifically about Google Analytics in AMP here.

While we’re excited to have collaborated with the industry to bring this project forward and improve the mobile web for users, we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible. There’s much work ahead for the open source AMP project and we’re looking forward to the benefits this will bring to users, publishers and advertisers

Posted by Craig DiNatali
Director, Global Partnerships

Nitin Kashyap
Product Manager

Improve your deal workflow with Marketplace in DoubleClick Bid Manager

Last June at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we introduced Marketplace in DoubleClick Bid Manager as a way to help you discover, negotiate and manage premium publisher inventory from a single destination.

Since June, we've seen strong engagement from our testers and have worked to incorporate their feedback and improve the product. We're excited to announce that Marketplace is now available in an open beta, offering all Bid Manager customers an easier way to find and execute deals. Here's what some of our early testers are saying about Marketplace:

“Marketplace has enormously streamlined the process of setting up private inventory deals by providing comprehensive publisher information with splits by audience segment. The efficiency and level of detail it provides simplifies the negotiation process and speeds up getting deals live".
-Liz Rutgersson, the Head of Programmatic, Periscopix

"Marketplace helped out a great deal when we needed to find and manage programmatic deals within multiple markets outside of Germany. The information given in the profile of the publishers has been helpful to evaluate whether or not the inventory would be a good fit for our client. The negotiations and execution are very straightforward and intuitive. It’s been a great experience thus far."
-Kristina Craig, Group Manager Investment & Accountability, Omnicom Media Group Germany

Connecting buyers and sellers

Marketplace is a shoppable storefront where you can browse all kinds of premium inventory from top publishers for your programmatic campaigns. It also helps you save time and overhead because you can negotiate and manage your deals directly from Marketplace.

  • Discover great inventory: Looking for video or mobile inventory on top news sites in Spain or Singapore? Marketplace lets you search for deals by publisher, format, geography, audience, vertical and much more. You can find all Programmatic Direct deals including private auctions, preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed.
  • Streamline negotiations with publishers: With Marketplace, it's easy to contact and transact directly with publishers. Marketplace also keeps track of all deal negotiations, so your communications are organized and easily accessible. You can learn more about the available inventory and complete your media buy without ever having to pick up the phone.
  • Get a single view of all your deals: Once you’ve reached an agreement, your new deal is automatically added to your Marketplace inventory library. Here you’ll get a single view of all your deals transacted in Bid Manager.

Marketplace in Bid Manager is now open to everyone

Today, all Bid Manager accounts are eligible to participate in Marketplace (beta).

We hope you'll find Marketplace just as useful for finding and buying premium inventory as our early testers have.

Reach out to your DoubleClick account team to get started today.

Posted by Roshan Khan
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager

Enable better decisions with Data-Driven Attribution

Consumers see a lot of different ads as they make buying decisions. Some ads have a huge impact on the final purchase, others help the process along, and still others contribute absolutely zero. The trick, of course, is knowing which ad does what.

Today we’re introducing Data-Driven Attribution to all DoubleClick accounts. It's a new tool that helps you give the right credit to each and every advertising touch point ― and shows you the optimal combination for your marketing.

Powered by Adometry, Data-Driven Attribution uses a modeling methodology developed by Google engineers and grounded in advanced statistics and economic principles. It assigns credit accurately and automatically to all your digital media ads served through DoubleClick.

Turbocharge your campaigns

DoubleClick Digital Marketing already has a strong attribution foundation with Multi-Channel Funnels and the Attribution Modeling Tool. Now it's even easier to make decisions about how to best allocate your digital media budget. Data-Driven Attribution is:

  • Actionable: The contribution made by each marketing channel is clear (in both converting and non-converting paths), so you can make better data-driven marketing decisions.
  • Accessible: Just choose your goals (such as e-commerce transaction or email signups) and Data-Driven Attribution will show you the contribution made by each of your digital campaigns.
  • Comprehensive: No need for new tags, just turn on the feature and you’ll see data for your campaigns.

There’s no room for guesswork in attribution ― and when you’re not guessing, you’ll see greater ROIs and better performances.

“Mindshare helps brands get the most of their digital marketing. To do that we need meaningful insights on the consumer path to purchase across both display and search. We have been testing Data Driven Attribution in DoubleClick and we have seen tailored recommendations that allow us to take fast action for greater impact and better ROI. In some campaigns we have been able to improve budget allocation and have seen CPA improve by 25%.”
-Karen Nayler, CEO, Mindshare Canada

How to get started

You'll find the Attribution interface in the Reporting and Attribution section of your DoubleClick account. You can activate Data-Driven Attribution for all your floodlight tags and once you start collecting data, you'll see a new recommended model appear after seven days.

Learn more about Data-Driven Attribution.

Posted by Luke Hedrick
Product Manager, DoubleClick

SDK-less mediation: A more efficient path to greater yield

Today, we're happy to announce SDK-less mediation for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers, now in beta. People spend nearly 37 hours per month in apps, creating a significant revenue opportunity for publishers1. But maximizing revenue from app inventory is challenging. Demand for app inventory is highly fragmented and managing performance across multiple partners while maintaining their 3rd party SDKs is cumbersome.

Simplifying app yield

We developed SDK-less mediation in DoubleClick for Publishers to make it simpler and less time-consuming to manage yield across multiple mobile ad networks, including DoubleClick Ad Exchange. DoubleClick for Publishers automatically updates the CPMs for supported networks by collecting and analyzing reporting data on your behalf, removing the need to constantly monitor and adjust your settings. Also, we’ve made it easier to segment your inventory and control groups of networks that can access that inventory. Then to maximize your yield, our solution dynamically picks the best order to call those networks for every impression.

In the past, adding a new network to your mediation chain meant integrating and maintaining another SDK in your app—an error prone process that could lead to bugs, bloated code, or worse, security issues. Our SDK-less solution removes these hassles and makes it easy for you to add new partners by simply changing a few settings in your DoubleClick for Publishers account. Starting today, Aarki, Drawbridge, MdotM, and Smaato can be included in SDK-less mediation. Support for more networks is coming in the near future.

Publishers like Runtastic, New York Daily News, and Ubisoft have found DoubleClick for Publishers’s app mediation features extremely easy to set up:

"With SDK-less mediation we have a much better overview about our performance and the new UI is extremely user friendly, transparent and easy to use."
- Philipp Durstberger, Head of Advertising, Runtastic

"Mediation is brilliant, one of a kind, first of a kind, turnkey, simple to use and takes only a few minutes to set up. My favorite is the SDK-less feature which never existed but should have. I don’t have to beg product and engineering teams to install multiple SDKs to onboard various demand partners."
- Ilya Utkin, Director, Revenue Platforms and Operations, New York Daily News

“I was impressed by how quick it was to set up DoubleClick for Publishers Mediation with different networks, and how stable and efficient it’s been from day one.”
- Baptiste Chardon, Head of Mobile Monetization, Ubisoft

Maximizing yield for publishers has always been our goal. With the release of SDK-less mediation, we’re making it easier for you to make the most from your app inventory. SDK-less mediation is currently in beta and will be available to all publishers this spring. Talk to your DoubleClick account manager about getting started.

Posted by Gargi Sur
Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/so-many-apps-so-much-more-time-for-entertainment.html

Netflix launches global hit series Narcos with help from DoubleClick and Google Web Designer

When Netflix launched its new series Narcos1 in August of 2015, it faced a big global marketing challenge.

Narcos is a realistic look at the rise of the Cocaine Highway as told through the lives of legendary kingpin Pablo Escobar and the American DEA agents tracking him. It's a passionate story of crime, drugs, money, honor and politics, set in the late decades of the 20th century, with dialogue half in Spanish and half in English.

Netflix wanted to reach a global audience that included target groups like "thrill seekers" (men 25-34 drawn to the excitement of crime culture) and "conspiracy theorists" (older males fascinated by the political implications of drug trafficking). That meant Netflix and its digital agency, AvatarLabs, needed to bring the Narcos story to countries from Peru to Sweden with targeted messages that would appeal powerfully to different target viewers in each culture ― without overwhelming their budget or their marketing teams.


See how they made it happen.

Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer

1 Narcos can been seen exclusively on Netflix.

Booting the bots: New botnet protections across our ads systems

Keeping fake traffic that originates from infected computers (aka “botnets”) out of our ads systems has been a priority since we launched, and over the years we've worked hard to put in place extensive technology checks and filters to safeguard against this type of traffic.

Today we're further reinforcing our existing botnet defenses across our ad systems through a new feature that automates the filtering of traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets, amongst those we are monitoring and defending against. One of the key benefits of this new feature is that it is resilient to possible changes to the malware that generates this botnet traffic.

This move boosts our defenses against invalid traffic generated by some nasty ad fraud malware, including Bedep and two other malware families that we have code-named Beetal and Changthangi. Together these three botnets are comprised of over 500,000 infected user machines.

Today we’d like to take this opportunity to take a deeper look at ad fraud botnets.

Ad fraud botnets: a menace to the advertising ecosystem

Ad fraud botnets are armies of malware-infected computers that are controlled by malicious fraudsters intent on generating large amounts of non-human ad traffic volume, typically for unscrupulous publishers. As a result, ad fraud botnets are a major threat to the budgets of advertisers, the reputation of publishers, and the safety of consumers. And this threat is considerable, given that hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe are infected with malware used specifically for ad fraud.

The Bedep Botnet size over the course of 60 days. Dips in the graph represent weekends, when some infected machines are turned off.

Global distribution and concentration of Bedep Malware.

Botnet traffic is difficult to consistently filter in advertising platforms because malware authors try to make their fraudulent traffic look as human as possible so that it resembles legitimate traffic. For example, botnet traffic has many of the same characteristics as real traffic, including the use of common browsers, and typical user behavior on a web page (e.g., scrolling, clicking, and mouse movement).

Our move to consistently and confidently cut out the traffic from these botnets, despite any changes in the malware on which they’re based, represents a significant milestone in the defense of our advertising ecosystem.

The art and science of protecting against botnets at scale

Identifying ad fraud malware and protecting ad platforms against botnets is a sophisticated effort that requires deep technical knowledge, diligence, and the ability to think several steps ahead. It’s a game of chess against an opponent that is constantly changing the rules.

In addition, it takes robust and extensive infrastructure to properly analyze malware threats at scale. For example, there are millions of malware programs out in the wild, although not all of this malware is associated with ad fraud botnets. This scenario represents a considerable technical challenge, since the malware, along with a vast amount of botnet traffic, needs to be continuously analyzed. To compound the challenge, there are hundreds of thousands of new malware programs produced each day that our systems need to analyze as well.

Our team has expanded its expertise by working to gain a deep understanding of the Bedep, Beetal, and Changthangi malware families. Subsequently, we have expanded the capability to significantly protect our systems against traffic generated by this malware through an automated, scalable, and seamless filter. This filter is already available to all marketers on DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Display Network (GDN).

A bold move, but there’s more to come

We believe in fighting the good fight in order to stop malicious actors in the advertising ecosystem. We also know that our success is not based solely on sophisticated algorithms or robust, highly-scalable infrastructure. Our success also relies on a team of warrior scientists that combines art and science to innovate and cultivate, relying on creativity and collective wisdom to effect change in unique ways.

This is a really exciting start to the year for us, yet we know that our work is not done yet. We will continue to be vigilant, working hard to protect our systems from fraudsters in 2016 and beyond. Stay tuned.

Posted by Andres Ferrate
Chief Advocate, Google Ad Traffic Quality

Google display ads go 100% HTML5

Over the last year, we’ve rolled out tools to encourage advertisers to build in HTML5, so you’re able to reach the widest possible audience across screens. To enhance the browsing experience for more people across more sites, DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google Display Network are now going 100% HTML5*.

  • Starting June 30th, 2016, advertisers will no longer be able to upload Flash ads into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, or AdWords.
  • Starting January 2nd, 2017, Flash ads will no longer be able to run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, or the Google Display Network.

It’s important to update your ads to HTML5 before these dates.

Advertisers who currently use display ads built in Flash in their campaigns have several easy ways to navigate the transition, ensuring your creative continues to reach people successfully. Read more here.

Posted by Karin Hennessy
Product Manager, DoubleClick

*Note: this update applies only to display ads; video ads built in Flash will not be impacted on these dates.

Weight Watchers boosts acquisition volume by 56% using DoubleClick Dynamic Creative

Ever since Weight Watchers first began as a gathering of friends in 1963, the company has been helping people lose pounds and live healthier lives. Today the Weight Watchers digital marketing team is focused on acquiring new generations of customers for those classic local meetings as well as their online products and services.

The Weight Watchers team has had ample success with search and social media, where they found it easy to test different headlines and calls to action. But they hadn't found a way to do the same kind of vigorous testing on display advertising. Building and managing dozens of creative iterations, and accurately measuring the results, seemed like a major challenge.

To tackle that challenge, Weight Watchers, its agencies, Neo@Ogilvy and OgilvyOne, chose DoubleClick Dynamic Creative.

See how they managed their creative testing to identify the best-performing creative iterations and boost acquisition volume by 56%.

Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer

Helping brands get their apps installed

Brands can engage with their customers and drive brand loyalty by building branded apps that offer useful or entertaining information. Examples of branded apps include airline apps that provide check-in functionality, banking apps that provide bill pay and check deposit, and retail loyalty apps that drive in-store purchases. By providing functionality that people need regularly in a convenient way, these brands are able to remind customers of their value proposition and build stronger relationships.

But to get this customer loyalty, you first need to get people to install your app.

App install campaigns help you promote your app to your customers, so they can discover and install it. Having your branded app on your customers’ phones means you can be front-and-center on the screen that people check over 150 times a day, leading to increased brand awareness and mindshare.

Today, we’re excited to announce several new features across our DoubleClick Digital Marketing solutions that help you easily build an app install campaign to promote your branded apps.

Step 1: Set up tracking

Before you launch your app install campaign, make sure your app is setup to track installs (and other in-app actions your customers may take), so that you can understand which ads are most effective.

  • If your app is in the Google Play Store, you can now automatically track installs of your Google Play app as conversions in DoubleClick, without any code changes.
  • If your app is in the Apple App Store or if you work with an app measurement provider, we support integration with popular third party app tracking platforms (initially announced in September), so that you can track installs measured by those systems as conversions for your campaign.

Step 2: Build your ads

Your customers are viewing content across search, display, and video, so your app install campaigns need to reach them in all those places.

  • Use the new templated app install creative formats in DoubleClick Bid Manager to generate your programmatic display ads instantly. These templates pull in info about your app from the Google Play or Apple App Store to create app install banners at the click of a button.
  • Build, traffic and serve one rich media unit that works seamlessly across web and app environments, with universal ads, now available in DoubleClick Campaign Manager.
  • Through DoubleClick Search, you can access some of our highest performing ad formats; app install Search ads, launched last May, promote your app on Google Search results or on Google Play Search (Android only), and our new app extensions allow you to link to your app from your Google Search text ads.

Step 3: Reach your customers

Our app install workflow in DoubleClick Bid Manager makes it easy to get your programmatic app install campaign up and running. In concert with this workflow, several new features make it even simpler and more effective:

  • Create custom lists of apps to ensure that your ads show up in the apps you care about or that drive the best performance -- easily target or exclude lists of apps, giving you control over where your brand shows up.
  • Already have an audience list of customers who’ve visited your mobile website? Use same device targeting to reach those interested customers with your app install campaign.
  • Leverage the audience targeting solutions within DoubleClick Bid Manager (launched in November) for your app install campaigns, to reach your customers using in-market audiences, affinity segments or demographic groups.
  • Drive higher performance and engagement with video ads; we’re launching a new video app install workflow in early March that enables easy campaign setup and targeting of video app inventory across the open exchange.

The new video app install line item workflow in DoubleClick Bid Manager


Running app install campaigns can help drive more customers to your branded apps, paving the way for a deeper connection between your customers and your brand. Talk to your media agency and DoubleClick sales rep about getting started with these campaigns.

Posted by Steve Chang
Product Manager, DoubleClick

A better mobile experience

Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s SVP for Ads and Commerce, spoke today at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, CA. Building on the theme of “The Next $50B,” Sridhar reinforced Google’s commitment to better mobile experiences in order to move the digital advertising industry forward.

A faster mobile experience

Half of all users tell us waiting for slow pages to load is their top frustration with mobile. Let’s face it, your mobile strategy is irrelevant if people don’t stick around waiting for your page to load. That’s the premise behind Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open-source technology we announced last October that any publisher can use to make their pages load instantly - and also integrate with any advertising partner.

Sridhar provided an update on the work we’ve been doing with our partners since then to test a range of monetization solutions, from programmatic ad serving to native ads to paywalls. In this time, we’ve also built an ecosystem of third party providers who will support AMP.

Better mobile ads

With AMP we're excited to bring new, compelling mobile experiences to users. But we are also focusing on preventing bad experiences - and Sridhar shared the latest on those efforts. For example, have you ever been swiping through a slideshow of photos on your mobile device and all of a sudden an ad you didn’t mean to tap takes you to another site? We developed technology to detect and prevent these accidental taps - and we block a significant number of them everyday.

We also have policies in place for sites and apps that show Google ads. In 2015, we stopped showing ads on 25,000 apps that didn't meet our guidelines. Two-thirds of them were for bad practices, like ads that covered up your content. This means users have a better ad experience and it also helps publishers and all of those who depend on a healthy digital ads ecosystem. (Learn how we fought bad ads in 2015.)

Measurement across devices

As we work to create better mobile experiences, we can take advantage of one big upside of mobile: measurement. With mobile, we’re able to tap into more signals, and get more relevant data, from device to location to time of day.

Advertisers and publishers can use this data to make mobile ads better and improve business outcomes. For example, Sridhar shared how Cadreon used cross-device measurement in DoubleClick for an auto client to measure the impact of mobile on each conversion, ultimately realizing a 15% lift in total conversions and developing new insights to feed back into their media planning.

Posted by Jonathan Meltzer
Head of Platforms and Publisher Marketing, Google