Tag Archives: Programmatic

Smarter optimizations to support a healthier programmatic market

Our goal has always been to help publishers and advertisers thrive and create sustainable businesses. For many years Google has used optimization and machine learning techniques to improve the performance of our ads products, and now we’re happy to share that we’ve been extending those techniques to DoubleClick Ad Exchange customers. Today we are introducing Optimized Private Auctions and optimized pricing in the Open Auction to help our publisher partners grow their revenue and give programmatic buyers greater access to premium inventory.

More control of Private Auctions

Private Auctions were developed to help publishers negotiate higher prices by creating special segments of inventory for preferred buyers. As deal volume has grown, we discovered an additional opportunity for publishers to make even more money with Private Auctions. On average, 5% of Private Auction impressions on our platform have an Open Auction buyer willing to pay more than the Private Auction deal price. If all of these bids from Open Auction buyers were able to win their auctions, publishers would see a significant lift to their programmatic revenue.

Optimized Private Auctions, now available to all publishers using DoubleClick Ad Exchange globally, give publishers the ability to allow high-value Open Auction bids to compete against Private Auctions. Full transparency is available to buyers, who can see in the DoubleClick Ad Exchange UI which of their Private Auctions are being optimized.

Greater accuracy with optimized pricing in the Open Auction

In addition to helping publishers maximize revenue from Private Auctions, we’ve been experimenting with optimized pricing to help publishers set price floors in the Open Auction that more closely reflect the value of their inventory.

The Open Auction tends to have a large price gap between what a buyer bids and what they pay. We’ve observed more than a 50%1 price gap between bid and closing prices in many cases. Publishers see this gap as a revenue opportunity and try to close the gap by applying manually-calculated price floors. This is difficult to do well and can lead to lost revenue, or to complex implementations such as offering the same query repeatedly at different price floors that can increase user latency and hurt advertiser performance. We think there’s a better way.

Optimized pricing in the Open Auction uses historical data to automate the post-auction analysis and updating of floor prices that publishers already do, and takes it a step further. Not only does our technology use signals like ad unit and device, it also calculates audience-based floors, so publishers can fully benefit from building valuable audiences. And as we’ve always done, if there is a floor applied to an impression, whether publisher or algorithmically set, we share it with buyers in our bid requests.

In our experiments to date, we have applied optimized pricing to about 15% of transactions, creating over 5% lift in revenue for publishers using the Open Auction. As we expand our experiments with optimized pricing, we will monitor its performance to ensure advertisers continue to get great ROI.

Increasing price transparency

While Optimized Private Auctions and optimized pricing in the Open Auction help publishers get more value for their inventory, they raise important questions. In our conversations, programmatic buyers and sellers have expressed a strong desire for greater transparency and openness in how advertising is valued and prices are set. As the programmatic ecosystem continues to grow, we look forward to partnering with buyers and sellers in an open discussion on price transparency in the industry.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack
Director, Product Management
1 Google internal data, desktop and mobile web impressions in North America

Growing programmatic revenue with First Look

As Jonathan said a few weeks ago, our goal has always been to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising. First Look was developed to help publishers maximize the revenue from all of their inventory by enabling them to give trusted programmatic buyers the opportunity to bid on 100% of their inventory -- even ahead of sponsorships and reservations. It’s simple to set up with no required code changes, zero added latency, and it works across all channels and formats. Since its preview in October 2015, 300+ publishers have leveraged First Look to grow programmatic revenue.

“First Look has been a great compliment to our monetization [strategy] and our ad stack. Since implementing it, Gannett has seen a 15% lift in eCPM of our programmatic channel.”
-Tim Wolfe, VP of Revenue Operations, Gannett

Publishers like About Inc. and Frankly Inc have also seen significant results with First Look.

“Given the appetite for First Look inventory, we have realized a material lift in programmatic revenue since the product was made available.”
-Scott Mulqueen, Vice President of Programmatic & Audience monetization, About, Inc.

“By leveraging First Look, we have been able to expose more inventory and maximize yield on premium users and content through a seamless & easy implementation. As our programmatic stack continues to mature, we see great potential for higher cpms and greater volume.”
-William Ammerman, Head of Advertising, Frankly Inc.

It’s been almost a month since we released First Look to all publishers and we’re happy to help them achieve higher yield for every impression while maintaining their user experience. If you want to learn more about Gannett’s strategy and approach to using First Look read more on DoubleClick.com.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Planning for a programmatic future: What we’ve learned

Over the last few years, the adoption of programmatic has significantly grown across the industry. Demand Media is an early adopter and recently, we caught up with their Senior Director of Media Sales and Operations, Angela Kinsella, on the lessons they’ve learned since increasing their investment in programmatic. Here’s what she shared.

Programmatic has evolved significantly over the past few years. It’s no longer just a real-time bidding (RTB) system for remnant inventory, nor is it restricted to standard IAB units. Today, programmatic is a sophisticated technology that can be used to sell virtually all your media through direct deals—including branded executions, custom content, re-skins and more.

The true value of programmatic lies in two key areas. The first is access to rich, granular data on buyer needs and campaign performance, which leads to better sales optimization. The second is gains in operational efficiency for the entire advertising ecosystem—from the creative agency down to the publisher.

By 2012, Demand Media had seen consistent positive results with the open exchange and we felt ready to deepen our programmatic investment. However, we knew we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) make massive changes to our business overnight. Before we increased our stake in programmatic, we wanted to use our learnings to date to optimize our technological, operational and sales infrastructure. For anyone that’s making this transition now, this is what we’ve learned.

Identify technology partners that meet your needs—today and in the future

In terms of technology, we carefully evaluated our partners to find those best serving our current needs and those who might be best equipped to work with us in the future.

Accordingly, we carried out an exhaustive request for information (RFI) with a number of supply-side providers (SSPs). We considered a variety of factors during the process, including each partner’s ability to execute programmatic direct deals, including private marketplaces. We wanted to make sure we chose a partner with access to first-rate advertiser networks, who was committed to keeping up with industry changes.

Empower sales teams with programmatic knowledge

There’s a belief out there that programmatic can replace people. We knew that wasn’t true for us. But we also knew that the way our sales teams worked needed to change.

While sales teams are still responsible with building stronger relationships with advertisers, the “sellers of the future” need to be able to speak a new language, one that’s far more metrics-driven than that of the past. Our teams built competency in programmatic concepts and key performance indicators (KPIs) like audience targeting, backend conversions, and more, to ensure informed and productive conversations with buyers.

Enable advertisers in their programmatic transition

Our sales teams also needed to educate buyers who were slow to shift budgets to programmatic. We had two ways of doing this: programmatic direct and hybrid deals.

With programmatic direct, we’re able to give buyers the comfort of knowing what they're buying while setting our own deal terms. Ultimately, this strategy has proved to be a great way for both parties to maintain control of pricing and inventory quality. Programmatic direct has also enabled us to structure additional elements into the deal such as data sharing and “first look,” which has driven up CPMs.

Another strategy we’ve used is to offer buyers hybrid deals with both direct and programmatic components. With hybrid deals, we can negotiate a direct sponsorship and then layer on audience and contextual targeting. When buyers see their results, they’re often more open to increasing their programmatic investment.

Communication is key during transitional times

It’s easy to get excited about the potential of programmatic, but it is important to keep in mind that increasing your programmatic investment often results in some level of uncertainty in the short term. Change can be uncomfortable, but can also result in positive results for your business. During transitional times, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open both internally and with buyers to ensure your programmatic strategies evolve and succeed.

Posted by Angela Kinsella
Senior Director, Media Sales and Operations, Demand Media

Three changes marketers can make today to prepare for data-driven creative

As 2016 marketing strategies kick into high gear, there’s one word on everyone’s mind: programmatic. Global programmatic ad spend is expected to reach $21.6B in 2016, and account for 67% of all digital display ad sales(1).

Programmatic advertising allows brands to reach more valuable audiences with messages tailored to their interests and mindsets in the crucial moments when decisions are made. As such, it’s not just changing how we buy and sell media—it’s also transforming the way we strategize, design, and develop creative.

At DoubleClick, we saw a need to define best practices for developing and implementing creative strategies for programmatic campaigns. In partnership with the digital creative studio, Fancy Pants Group, and the management consulting company, Accenture, we tested several approaches with three global brands: Gilt Groupe, L’Oreal Vichy, and RBC Royal Bank of Canada.

Over the course of these tests, we identified a new creative process for programmatic campaigns. Today, we’re debuting that process and the research behind it in a comprehensive guide for marketers.



Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Creative Solutions
1. eMarketer, 2015

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

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

Programmatic Guaranteed: Now available to advertisers, publishers globally

Six months ago at the US DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we announced the start of testing for Programmatic Guaranteed, a new way to use programmatic pipes to execute direct deals. In this time, over 300 advertisers and 200 publishers have tested this capability, and we’ve seen impression volumes double every quarter. Based on your feedback, we’ve made several changes and significantly improved the product. So today, we’re announcing the public beta of Programmatic Guaranteed and opening it to any advertiser using DoubleClick Bid Manager or publisher using DoubleClick for Publishers*.

Programmatic direct spending was expected to reach $8 Billion in 2015 in the US alone - more than 50% of total programmatic display ad spend1. Initial steps to bring the benefits of programmatic to direct deals have been focused on automating the deal booking process. While that’s a good start, it only scratches the surface of what programmatic technology can do. The true value of programmatic direct will be achieved when the power of real-time, data-driven decisions is combined with access to brand safe, reserved publisher inventory currently available through direct sales. This will not only shorten the time it takes to book and execute high value reservations type deals, but also improve advertising performance.

That was our goal when developing Programmatic Guaranteed. It’s the only product available today that uses real-time bidding infrastructure to bring the power of programmatic to direct sales. Advertisers and agencies get access to premium guaranteed inventory with cross-campaign / advertiser optimization and frequency management across programmatic and reservation inventory. Publishers can lock in revenue through reservations, forecast against programmatic deals, and enjoy the ease of automated billing and collections. All that without the need to email tags, worry about creative controls, resolve discrepancies, or fax I/Os back and forth.

Finally, we’ve found that Programmatic Guaranteed is creating new opportunities for advertisers and publishers to connect. Here’s what some of our partners are saying about Programmatic Guaranteed:

“The way we stay ahead is by constantly experimenting and pushing technology to work for us. With Programmatic Guaranteed we can lock in revenue by selling a guaranteed number of impressions at pre-negotiated rates. We’ve seen great success with an initial batch of advertisers so far. Programmatic Guaranteed is simple and effective, and it’s ideally suited to the direct sales environment because clients really understand it.”
-Joe Alicata, VP Revenue Product and Operations, VOX Media

"As a premium publisher we will automate what today is manual. Programmatic Guaranteed is definitely an end to end solution. It is exactly what a publisher like Conde Nast needs to do more in a digital environment that is constantly changing and becoming more demanding."
-Elia Blei, Commercial Director Digital and Large Markets, Condé Nast

“At Generator Media we aim to provide a holistic solution for our clients. Including Programmatic Guaranteed in our offering allows us to manage valuable reserved buys alongside our open exchange and private marketplace activity. Doing so provides a level of frequency and messaging control previously unattainable across large scale digital media buys.”
-Russell Wagner, Director of Platform Integrations, Generator Media

"Programmatic Guaranteed helps the publisher deliver very high quality inventory to the advertiser. When we start a campaign, we always have to start with the publisher: we then fix the price with the publisher, define the placement, the timeline and then we define the volume. Through this, if you compare direct sales with Programmatic Guaranteed, we are returning better results."
-Andrea Di Fonzo, Managing Director, MediaCom Italy

Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all marketers and buyers using DoubleClick Bid Manager, and all publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers. If you have a reservation deal that would benefit from the efficiencies of programmatic, reach out to your DoubleClick account team today to get started. We’re excited to bring this innovative advertising tool to the market and we look forward to your feedback on how we can best improve Programmatic Guaranteed during the public beta.

Posted by Kurt Spoerer
Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 eMarketer, Oct 2015
* Programmatic Guaranteed is not currently available to publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business

Programmatic Guaranteed: Now available to advertisers, publishers globally

Six months ago at the US DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we announced the start of testing for Programmatic Guaranteed, a new way to use programmatic pipes to execute direct deals. In this time, over 300 advertisers and 200 publishers have tested this capability, and we’ve seen impression volumes double every quarter. Based on your feedback, we’ve made several changes and significantly improved the product. So today, we’re announcing the public beta of Programmatic Guaranteed and opening it to any advertiser using DoubleClick Bid Manager or publisher using DoubleClick for Publishers*.

Programmatic direct spending was expected to reach $8 Billion in 2015 in the US alone - more than 50% of total programmatic display ad spend1. Initial steps to bring the benefits of programmatic to direct deals have been focused on automating the deal booking process. While that’s a good start, it only scratches the surface of what programmatic technology can do. The true value of programmatic direct will be achieved when the power of real-time, data-driven decisions is combined with access to brand safe, reserved publisher inventory currently available through direct sales. This will not only shorten the time it takes to book and execute high value reservations type deals, but also improve advertising performance.

That was our goal when developing Programmatic Guaranteed. It’s the only product available today that uses real-time bidding infrastructure to bring the power of programmatic to direct sales. Advertisers and agencies get access to premium guaranteed inventory with cross-campaign / advertiser optimization and frequency management across programmatic and reservation inventory. Publishers can lock in revenue through reservations, forecast against programmatic deals, and enjoy the ease of automated billing and collections. All that without the need to email tags, worry about creative controls, resolve discrepancies, or fax I/Os back and forth.

Finally, we’ve found that Programmatic Guaranteed is creating new opportunities for advertisers and publishers to connect. Here’s what some of our partners are saying about Programmatic Guaranteed:

“The way we stay ahead is by constantly experimenting and pushing technology to work for us. With Programmatic Guaranteed we can lock in revenue by selling a guaranteed number of impressions at pre-negotiated rates. We’ve seen great success with an initial batch of advertisers so far. Programmatic Guaranteed is simple and effective, and it’s ideally suited to the direct sales environment because clients really understand it.”
-Joe Alicata, VP Revenue Product and Operations, VOX Media

"As a premium publisher we will automate what today is manual. Programmatic Guaranteed is definitely an end to end solution. It is exactly what a publisher like Conde Nast needs to do more in a digital environment that is constantly changing and becoming more demanding."
-Elia Blei, Commercial Director Digital and Large Markets, Condé Nast

“At Generator Media we aim to provide a holistic solution for our clients. Including Programmatic Guaranteed in our offering allows us to manage valuable reserved buys alongside our open exchange and private marketplace activity. Doing so provides a level of frequency and messaging control previously unattainable across large scale digital media buys.”
-Russell Wagner, Director of Platform Integrations, Generator Media

"Programmatic Guaranteed helps the publisher deliver very high quality inventory to the advertiser. When we start a campaign, we always have to start with the publisher: we then fix the price with the publisher, define the placement, the timeline and then we define the volume. Through this, if you compare direct sales with Programmatic Guaranteed, we are returning better results."
-Andrea Di Fonzo, Managing Director, MediaCom Italy

Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all marketers and buyers using DoubleClick Bid Manager, and all publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers. If you have a reservation deal that would benefit from the efficiencies of programmatic, reach out to your DoubleClick account team today to get started. We’re excited to bring this innovative advertising tool to the market and we look forward to your feedback on how we can best improve Programmatic Guaranteed during the public beta.

Posted by Kurt Spoerer
Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 eMarketer, Oct 2015
* Programmatic Guaranteed is not currently available to publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business

A Programmatic New Year: What’s your resolution for 2016?

In 2015, 15 billion dollars was spent programmatically1. As consumers move to mobile, more marketers and publishers are embracing programmatic as a way of connecting with people in micro-moments.

“Programmatic” may have been ANA’s Marketing Word of the Year in 2014, but it was even more popular in 2015 — Google searches for “programmatic” were 46% more popular this year vs. last year, and more than twice as popular from just two years ago2.

What New Year’s resolutions could you make to capture this growing programmatic advertiser demand in 2016?

Take DoubleClick’s Programmatic New Year interactive quiz to find out your 2016 “programmatic resolutions”. Whether you’re already using programmatic or just starting out, these resolutions will serve as a starting point for building your expertise, recognizing opportunities and helping your business grow next year.

Take the quiz and find out your Programmatic New Year’s resolution. Consider sharing your resolution with friends and colleagues—it might just help you stick to it.

Posted by Carlo Acenas
Associate Product Marketing Manager


1 AdAge, June 2015
2 Google Trends data

A Programmatic New Year: What’s your resolution for 2016?

At this time last year, we suggested three resolutions for 2015 to help you achieve more success with your programmatic campaigns.

Since then, the landscape has continued to evolve for marketers. There are more devices, more micro-moments, more ways to reach consumers. Not surprisingly, more people want to know about programmatic, too: Google searches for “programmatic” were 46% more popular this year vs. last year, and more than twice as popular from just two years ago1.

For 2016, we’re sharing some new resolutions — and want to help you find the one that is just right for you.

Programmatic New Year is an interactive quiz that recommends personalized “programmatic resolutions”. These are ways you can further develop your brand’s programmatic strategy for 2016. Whether you’re experienced in programmatic or just getting started, the resolutions serve as a starting point for building your expertise, identifying opportunities and helping your brand succeed.

Take the quiz to find out your Programmatic New Year’s resolution. Consider sharing your resolution with friends and colleagues—it might just help you stick to it.

Posted by Carlo Acenas
Associate Product Marketing Manager


1 Google Trends data