Tag Archives: Advertisers

Dynamic creative comes to Google Web Designer

As the holiday season gets underway, you’re likely focused on reaching holiday shoppers as they browse for gifts for their family and friends. Dynamic creative strategies are key to getting the most relevant messages and products in front of these shoppers. But with consumers’ increased usage of mobile devices, you need to build your dynamic creative in HTML5, and this confluence of technologies can lead to complexity.

Streamlining production of dynamic creative in Google Web Designer

To make it easier for you to build relevant and engaging cross-screen creative, we’re excited to announce the launch of simplified workflows in Google Web Designer that make it even easier to build dynamic creative in HTML5. You can now easily choose which data signals/feed attributes to connect to each dynamic element, pulling directly from the dynamic profile you’ve set up in DoubleClick Studio.

We’ve already seen some teams find success with the new dynamic workflow. Kaymu, one of the largest online retail marketplaces for emerging markets, used Google Web Designer to build an HTML5 dynamic remarketing campaign and show relevant products to shoppers. This strategy drove a 580% increase in CTR compared to their previous, non-HTML5, non-dynamic campaign, and the team’s dynamic creative build time dropped from 3 days to 10 minutes.

CyberAgent, a media agency based in Japan, also used Google Web Designer for a recent dynamic remarketing campaign. To provide the time needed to focus on the creative strategy, the team first automated the bidding and targeting for the campaign. They then could build and test several dynamic templates, using advanced animations and multiple dynamic elements. Ultimately, these advanced creatives led to a 40% higher CTR and a 28% lower CPC compared to the previous dynamic remarketing campaign that didn’t use Google Web Designer.

In addition to the new dynamic support in Google Web Designer, we’re also excited to launch:

  • Animation improvements, which help you build smooth animations
  • Updates to our text authoring capabilities, which make editing and manipulating the text in your ad units much easier and more intuitive
  • Two new components in our components gallery: a Spritesheet component, so you can more easily build out your spritesheets, and a Streetview component, so you can add location-based imagery to your ads. (We’ve kept this component separate from the Google Maps component to help you keep your file sizes smaller.)

Upcoming Google Web Designer Hangout on Air

Want to learn more about the new features? Sign up for one of our Hangouts on Air. Sean Kranzberg, Engineering Manager for Google Web Designer, will walk through the new features and take your questions.

  • Wednesday, Dec. 9th @ 12pm ET / 9am PT. RSVP here
  • Thursday, Dec. 10th @ 5pm PT / Friday, Dec. 11th @ 12pm Sydney time (APAC Friendly time) RSVP here
Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer

Active View updates: Improved cross-screen options for brands and publishers

When advertisers pay for an ad, the chance for it to be seen is a basic expectation. Advertisers shouldn’t have to pay extra to measure and ensure that it was viewable. These expectations drove the launch of Active View back in 2013, an effort to establish a neutral and common set of viewability metrics used by both advertisers and publishers. Since then we've continued to invest in this technology across DoubleClick, YouTube and the Google Display Network, and today we're happy to share two new updates that will help advertisers and publishers run more effective cross-screen campaigns.

Announcing Active View optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager - A better way to programmatically buy viewable impressions

Today, we're introducing Active View bid optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager for clients globally. This new bid optimization feature uses the collective intelligence from many signals (e.g. URL, time of day, page category) to predict, impression by impression, the probability that it will be viewable. It then dynamically adjusts bids higher or lower based on that probability to deliver the viewable CPM target that advertisers set for their video and display campaigns. Active View optimization delivers what advertisers actually care about - the total volume of viewable impressions - and doesn’t fixate on a viewable percentage.

This will help solve a common problem: when marketers buy viewable impressions programmatically using current viewability targeting, the decision to bid on a single impression is very basic. Buyers choose a target viewable percentage (e.g. 50%) and their programmatic buying system bids the same amount for any impressions with a likelihood of being viewed above that target - or nothing at all for impressions with a likelihood of being viewed below that target. This means that buyers are missing out on wide swaths of inventory that may actually be viewable and are driving up competition (and CPMs) for the inventory they are buying.

Announcing Active View for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange - Bringing holistic viewability measurement to publishers

We believe that viewability metrics should be a standard currency between buyers and sellers. To enable this, we've been investing in features that allow publishers to see and report on a holistic picture of viewability across their channels and content. We're continuing that momentum today by announcing Active View reporting for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. With the consumer shift to mobile reshaping how publishers engage with their audience and those interactions increasingly happening on mobile apps, this new measurement solution completes the picture for publishers helping them see how viewability plays out across all of their properties.

At Google, we remain committed to investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands and publishers through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions and partnerships with leading third parties. These announcements are two big steps in our ongoing effort to help our clients measure every moment that matters.

Posted by:

Ari Feldman
Product Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers Reporting and Active View
Deepti Bhatnagar
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager Brand Measurement and Optimization

Jellyfish drives more online university students with DoubleClick Search

Since its beginnings in 1999, digital marketing agency Jellyfish has been at the forefront of digital advertising, helping clients of all shapes and sizes succeed in digital.

Most recently, Jellyfish partnered with a leading international online university who wanted to attract prospective students using online search. To meet the challenge, Jellyfish turned to DoubleClick Search and its ability to respond in real-time to optimize performance as the best tool for the job.

Goals

  • Hit regional lead volume and cost-per-lead goals.
  • Maximize quality of leads.

Approach

  • Tailor bid strategies by region with the Performance Bidding Suite.
  • Use bid strategies to respond to real-time, data-driven feedback including online and offline conversions.
  • Deploy best practices with bid strategies.

Results

  • Increased lead volume by 29%.
  • Decreased cost per lead by 84%.
  • Effectively generated quality leads for the university's search program internationally.

To learn more about Jellyfish’s approach, read the full case study.

Posted by Nick Macrae
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

Payment IDs now available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Last week, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced the “Verified by TAG” initiative to help increase transparency of digital advertising transactions across the industry. We’re fully supportive of both programs outlined in TAG’s announcement and we’re currently in the process of applying for TAG Registration. To support the adoption of Payment IDs across the ecosystem, starting today our version of Payment IDs is available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to all buyers globally.

Currently, if a programmatic buyer finds they’ve bought fraudulent inventory, there is no way to directly identify the supply source responsible for the fraud. The Payment ID system we proposed to the TAG Anti-Fraud working group fixes this problem by asking all supply sources (e.g. ad exchanges, ad networks, supply side platforms) of advertising inventory to create and provide unique and persistent anonymous identifiers that link every impression to who is paid in their accounting systems. If a buyer finds invalid activity from any source in their supply chain, these Payment IDs will help the buyer to identify who is responsible and blacklist those suppliers from their campaigns.

We’ve always invested heavily to keep DoubleClick Ad Exchange free of invalid activity and ensure that money spent on our platform only goes to support legitimate publishers, app developers, and content creators. To show our commitment to a better ads ecosystem, accelerate the adoption of Payment IDs, and help DSPs start integrating them, we’ve implemented the standard as it exists today, and we’ll continue to work closely with TAG and others in the industry to formalize an industry-wide Payment ID program. When the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group has finalized the broader industry standard, we’ll happily make any changes to ensure we are compliant with TAG’s efforts.

"Google has been at the forefront of the fight against digital ad fraud, and this announcement advances our work together to develop an industry-wide Payment ID system. We look forward to continued collaboration with Google and other programmatic leaders through the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group to create a fully transparent digital ad supply chain that will expose the bad actors and cut off their financial support."
Mike Zaneis, CEO, TAG

Leading programmatic buyers, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Dstillery, Magnetic, MediaMath, Rocket Fuel, The Trade Desk, and Turn have all committed to integrating Payment IDs into their systems in the coming months.

Posted by:

Vegard Johnsen
Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality
Chetna Bindra
Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Investing in choice: New Viewability options on YouTube

Cross-posted from the Google Agency Blog
If you can’t measure it, how do you know it worked? With this simple principle in mind, we’ve been investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions like Brand Lift and Active View and partnerships with leading third parties like comScore and Nielsen on GRPs.

Viewability has long been a focus for us. Built on the foundation of our Active View technology, we launched the ability to buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network back in December 2013 and recently completed moving over the last advertiser campaigns from CPMs to viewable CPMs. We’ve worked to ensure viewability rates on YouTube are amongst the industry’s highest. And Active View now works seamlessly across video, display, mobile web and mobile apps (on YouTube and for publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers), and has been adopted by over 80% of advertisers using the DoubleClick platform.

With the MRC-defined industry standard as a base-line for viewability, we are also helping advertisers and agencies go beyond transacting on the industry standard to also measure individual viewability objectives. In order to support this we have begun launching supplementary metrics in Active View, like the ability to see average viewable time and soon when an ad is 100% in view for any length in time. These are the first few in a lineup of supplementary metrics that will provide advertisers with additional data points relevant to their specific campaigns and needs.

Announcing 3rd party viewability reporting on YouTube - bringing you more choice

Today, we're continuing our approach of driving product innovation and supporting choice by announcing that we're broadening the options for advertisers measuring viewability on YouTube. Along with Active View, advertisers will also be able to choose from third party vendors.

Moat, Integral AdScience, comScore and DoubleVerify are a select set of third party vendors that have been approved to report ad viewability on YouTube, beginning with Moat in early 2016. Through these partnerships, we’ll continue to expand measurement options for marketers on YouTube, while maintaining the highest levels of security and privacy for users, advertisers and creators.
“Independent 3rd party verification is extremely important to ensuring that our clients’ media is running as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a long-time partner, IPG Mediabrands is pleased to see Google continue its work to move the industry forward on viewability by allowing independent verification of YouTube, and applaud this recent decision.”
Mitchell Weinstein, SVP Ad Operations, IPG Mediabrands

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Unilever added:
"Having partners like Google address these challenges helps to push the entire industry forward. This move will generate better industry-wide standards across viewability and third party verification practices and continues the momentum in the right direction."
Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever
Stay tuned for continued investments in the viewability space, including ongoing product innovation updates to Active View as well as additional partnerships. Together with our partners, our goal is to help our clients measure every moment that matters.
Posted by Sanaz Ahari
Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

Bing Shopping Campaigns are now part of the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite

The holidays are a critical time of year for search marketers, as consumers increasingly research and complete their holiday shopping online. To help you win the moments that matter this holiday season, we recently announced several new features and the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Today, we’ve got another special gift to continue the holiday spirit: Bing Shopping Campaigns are now part of the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite.

Bing Shopping Campaigns for Bing Ads make it easier and faster to advertise your products from your Bing Merchant Center store online. This streamlined way of getting Product Ads up and running on Bing is also driving meaningful impact for advertisers.

“According to a recent report, Merkle/RKG clients saw Bing Product Ads’ click volume increase by 332% year-on-year.”1
Brian Utter, General Manager of Network and Demand Management, Microsoft

With the addition of Bing Shopping Campaigns to the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, you can easily extend the reach of your product-focused advertising. You’ll be able to manage, automate, and measure Bing Shopping Campaigns using the full range of DoubleClick Search tools, the Performance Bidding Suite, Adaptive Shopping campaigns, and Purchase Detail reports.

Learn how to get started with Bing Shopping Campaigns in DoubleClick Search today.

Posted by Henry Tappen
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

1 Merkle/RKG Digital Marketing Report for Q3 2015

DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays Series: Plan to get ready for next year

This is the fifth and final post of the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. Today, we cover planning ahead, the last of five steps outlined in our new DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays. Your performance in 2015 should propel your performance next year. Here’s how to get ready for 2016.

  • Use executive reports: A DoubleClick Search executive report displays your metrics for revenue, costs, trends, and other high-level concepts, all presented in understandable charts and tables. Create your report once, or schedule a daily update throughout the holiday season.
  • Review your purchase details. For holiday planning, you want to be strategic about which items you highlight from your sales. So, look at your purchase detail reports to see which similar items were top sellers this year, and use that as a guide for where to put your effort in 2016.
  • Leave bid strategies running, but adjust for any changes to your goals: If your return on ad spend or cost-per-action requirements change, adjust your bid strategy goals and DoubleClick Search will bring your bids back into line.
  • Save your budget pacing reports: You can go back and see how you paced to get ready for 2016.

That’s it, the last of the five steps to holiday campaign success. We hope these posts will help you during the busy 2015 holiday period. To recap, here are all the steps again:

  1. Prepare: Unify your data for insights and action, add more data to maximize conversions, use labels to track your promotions, and integrate offline data.
  2. Automate: Use bulksheets, automated rules, and inventory-aware campaigns to make your life easier.
  3. Measure: Gain valuable insights by setting up scheduled reports, budget pacing reports, formula columns, and Floodlight activity columns, then analyze and monitor your performance.
  4. Optimize: Use real-time data to make adjustments with the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, Adaptive Shopping campaigns, and remarketing.
  5. Plan ahead: Create executive reports, review purchase details to see how well you did this year, and save your budget pacing reports.

Be sure to read the entire DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Don’t forget to register now for tomorrow’s webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Happy Holidays!

Nick Macrae
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

Cross-device conversion estimates in DoubleClick Search bid strategies

In today's multi-device world, consumers increasingly move across screens when researching and shopping for goods and services. In a recent study conducted by Google and Ipsos Media CT, it was found that nearly 40% of online shoppers start their research on a smartphone and make their final purchase on a computer or tablet1.

Earlier this year, we introduced cross-device measurement across DoubleClick Digital Marketing, including DoubleClick Search, to help you see the total number of conversions influenced by a specific keyword, regardless of the device where the conversion occurred. For example, if a user who clicks on a search ad on one device goes on to complete a purchase on another device, we can measure that, enabling you to more accurately report on the full value of your search ads.

Now, bid strategies in the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can use cross-device conversion estimates to automatically calculate the mobile bid adjustment that will help you achieve your campaign goals and maximize the impact of your mobile ads.

Using cross-device conversion estimates in the Performance Bidding Suite

If you enable a bid strategy in the Performance Bidding Suite to use cross-device conversion estimates, it can consider these cross-device conversions to determine how much to bid for your mobile ads. The bid strategy can then recommend or automatically apply the optimal mobile bid adjustment based on your conversion or revenue goals.

You can use this feature with a one-step opt in: when configuring the target of a bid strategy, check the box to use cross-device conversion estimates when setting the mobile bid adjustment.

Note: Currently, bid strategies use cross-device estimates only for mobile bid adjustments. Other enhancements, such as adjusting bids based on membership in an AdWords remarketing target, will follow in future updates.

Learn how to use cross-device estimates in bid strategies today.

Tris Southey
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search
1 The Role of Mobile Search on Store Purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015. Purchases were made within the past 3 months.

DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays Series: Optimize to get the most from the holidays

Today, we cover optimization in post four of the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. It’s one of the five steps outlined in our DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite

The DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can automatically optimize bids to help you reach your goals.

During the busy shopping season, DoubleClick Search’s real-time conversion data and intra-day bidding factor current trends into your bids—things like special holiday promotions, sudden spikes in demand due to winter weather, and more. Our machine-learning-powered bid strategies will respond quickly to adjust bids that deliver results. Plus, cross-device conversion tracking helps the bid optimization system make the most of your mobile traffic.

Adaptive Shopping campaigns

Adaptive Shopping campaigns optimize the structure of your shopping campaigns in order to improve their performance. Outlier products are automatically separated into their own product group, giving them a bid tuned specially to that product ad's performance.

We've also improved the algorithm just in time for holidays. Adaptive Shopping campaigns can now take into account your performance goals and your customers' unique behavior. Adaptive Shopping campaigns will also automatically cleanup product groups that stop receiving clicks. All in all, these features help you improve returns by bidding higher on high-performing products, and save money by bidding lower on poor performers.

Remarketing

If you aren't already doing so, use remarketing to turn your site visitors into buyers. Engage those people who’ve left your site or clicked your ads without buying anything by showing them relevant ads on search or display. Here are two ways to remarket:

  • Reach high-value customers with remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) — Modify your keyword bids, target search ads, or prevent ads from displaying based on inclusion in your AdWords remarketing list. You can track the performance of each remarketing list in any associated campaign.
  • Re-engage shoppers with display remarketing from search ads — remarket to users instantly with display ads on the Google Display Network or across exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager.

We want you to achieve the best possible results from your marketing efforts during this busy season. In our next post, we’ll talk about how to take your efforts this time round to plan ahead for your next peak period. Learn more about all five steps to success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Remember to register now for this weeks webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

DoubleClick Search Holiday Series: Measure your holiday success

In this third post in the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series, we cover measurement, the third step in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays to help you reach the right customers in the right moments this holiday season.

Automated reports

We’ve launched speed improvements to most reports in 2015. Have a last-minute shopping list? No problem—DoubleClick Search reports on Shopping campaigns activity much faster! But why wait—you can set up a scheduled report to receive your data whenever you want it. See how you’re trending year over year by adding “Compare to past” to the date range.

Budget pacing reports

These reports feature columns such as percentage of time elapsed, percentage of budget spent, days and budget remaining.

  • Easily visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends and changes.
  • See how each campaign contributes to your budget and KPIs.
  • Set up reports just for Black Friday through Cyber Monday, to make sure you’re hitting all your spend and efficiency targets.

Formula columns

Quickly create custom columns based on calculations you apply to metrics. Spend less time in spreadsheets, report only on what matters, and calculate using the freshest data. Calculate key statistics for the last 7, 14, and 30 days, or even special treatment for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers. Create a countdown using rules+formula columns: "3 days left for free shipping!"

Floodlight segmentation and activity columns

You can use Floodlight columns to compare different conversions—phone calls versus online, or signups versus transactions, for example. DoubleClick Search Action groups contain Floodlight activities that count how many times users visit a webpage after seeing or clicking one of your ads. Transaction groups track the number of sales made or the number of items purchased. And, with cross-device conversion tracking, you can understand the true impact of your ads across multiple devices!

In our next post, we’ll talk about optimizing for success. Learn more about all five steps to holiday success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search