Tag Archives: Programmatic

Fighting Fraud: Protecting advertisers from buying hidden ads with DoubleClick Bid Manager

Ad fraud is a serious threat to the advertising ecosystem. It’s one we’ve been deeply committed to solving over the years, investing significantly in technology and expertise to keep bad ads and bad traffic out of our ads systems. Today we’re adding to those investments with a new feature in DoubleClick Bid Manager that automatically prevents advertisers from buying hidden ad slots, built from our spider.io technology.

What is a hidden ad?
Many in the industry are familiar with ad viewability, which is a measure of whether an ad was actually shown on a screen. The vast majority of non-viewable ad impressions are legitimate ads that are intended to be seen by a user, but were not viewed due to various ways people interact with content on the web. Products like Active View help advertisers and publishers address this by giving actionable reporting on ad viewability.

However, some bad actors deliberately hide ads to boost their ad impression numbers, resulting in advertisers paying for ads that have no chance of ever being seen. Below are some of many different methods employed by bad actors who create these “hidden” ads, one type of fraud identified in the IAB’s Anti-Fraud Principles and Proposed Taxonomy:

Bad actors often create sites and stack multiple ads in a single ad slot (like a pile of magazines), where only the top ad is visible. Or, they may adjust the styling of page content to make ads completely invisible. The typical approach, however, is to create a very small iframe to serve ads into that’s impossible for a user to see.


Even worse, some bad actors create adware that can inject hidden ads into a web page, without the publisher even realizing it:


What we’re doing
Practices like these have always been against our policies on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Thanks to the technology we’ve been investing in, we can detect this practice across the web. Our systems proactively blacklist suppliers of hidden ads, filtering them before they’re ever bid on, so advertisers won’t buy hidden ads.

Customers of DoubleClick Bid Manager don't have to make any changes to benefit from these new defenses against hidden ad slots. We currently blacklist 2.6% of the inventory accessed by DoubleClick Bid Manager across exchanges. However, we’ve found this percentage varies widely by provider. Below is a breakdown showing the filtered percentages across some of the largest exchanges:

It doesn’t stop here. Ad fraud is perpetrated by organized groups that constantly change tactics to defraud the industry for their own gains. That’s why we’re always researching and updating our defenses to ensure advertisers are getting the media they intend to purchase. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue refining our tools to promote a healthy, safe advertising ecosystem.


Posted by Payam Shodjai, Group Product Manager

with DoubleClick: The promise of programmatic

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog

You may have seen the research we shared with you last month that looks at how programmatic buying is changing advertising. Today’s with DoubleClick episode takes a personal spin on that study, focusing on a few of the people who are both seeing and driving those changes.

We talked to leaders from Universal McCann, VivaKi, MAGNA Global, and The McClatchy Company to find out how they’re thinking about the shift to programmatic. Reach and relevance were top of mind. With greater efficiency and richer audience insights, they’re achieving both goals across screens and formats. As Deborah Gaudette, SVP and Group Partner at UM, points out, this ultimately helps create advertising that consumers want to be part of. That’s a promise we can all get behind.


For ideas on how to adopt a programmatic strategy, take a look at last week’s webinar with Aaron Fetters, Director at the Kellogg Company.

You can stay on top of updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.

13 new DoubleClick Creative Solutions to make your campaigns more successful


Savvy advertisers know they need to pair smart creative with their media buying strategies, to accomplish successful digital campaigns. Today, we're making it easier than ever to do just that with 13 new tools across our DoubleClick Creative Solutions. These updates help advertisers succeed with four key creative + media pairings:

1. Powerful creative management tools support large-scale campaigns
2. Dynamic creative tools support programmatic media buys
3. HTML5 and in-app creative tools support mobile ad targeting
4. In-stream video tools support video ad targeting


Pairing #1: Powerful creative management tools support large-scale campaigns
Display campaigns are getting larger and more complex. To keep up, creative agencies need tools that help them build ads to suit every shape and size required by that campaign, in a fast and seamless way. 



Asset Library is a creative management layer launching today in DoubleClick Studio and rolling out across the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform in the next couple quarters. Asset Library allows advertisers to host assets for free in DoubleClick and easily manage and bulk update creative, even in live campaigns, without having to re-traffic them. 


“We have cut our development time considerably using Asset Library as part of our daily work flow. It's hard to imagine how we survived without it.” ~ Michael Douglas, Head of Production, SapientNitro

Pairing #2: Dynamic creative tools support programmatic media buys
Advertisers can use the audience information from their media buy to craft relevant ads for every viewer. Our new dynamic tools focus on making the process easier to manage:


  • A lightweight version of dynamic creative for retail and hotel clients is available in DoubleClick Bid Manager (Premium US users). Use six HTML5 templates to build dynamic ads that are aligned with the programmatic media buy. They work for Facebook right-hand side inventory too!
  • Advertisers can now pull their Google Merchant Center Feed into a dynamic remarketing creative in both DoubleClick Studio and DoubleClick Bid Manager. This makes it much easier to build complex retail campaigns without having to re-input the data.
  • Understand which products in your dynamic ad lead to which website conversions, using the new u-reporting feature in DoubleClick Studio. 


Pairing #3: HTML5 and in-app creative tools support mobile ad targeting
To show a successful ad unit on mobile and tablet placements, you have to build HTML5 ad creatives in formats that work well on smaller screens.


  • Build mobile-compatible ads in minutes, with 20 new HTML5 and in-app Studio Layouts. 
  • To build more custom HTML5 ads, agencies can use Google Web Designer and then publish their ads in one click to DoubleClick Studio. 
  • For a dynamic creative campaign, DoubleClick Studio supports HTML5 dynamic creative, so advertisers can ensure their real-time messages reach consumers wherever they are. 
  • Publish with confidence: DoubleClick supports MRAID 2.0 (the IAB’s latest mobile in-app standard) and has certified over 90 of the largest publishers and networks, to make sure their websites will support DoubleClick in-app ads. 

Pairing #4: In-stream video tools support video ad targeting
Make your TV commercials work for digital by building in interactivity. Serve your video ads alongside the rest of your digital campaign so that your data and reporting are consolidated. This can lead to better campaign insights. 


  • Our new VPAID Layout lets you easily build interactive in-stream video ads (VPAID). Simply upload your video asset and add interactive elements to create a complex ad unit in minutes.
  • You can also ensure people have a smooth viewing experience with your mobile video ads. DoubleClick Campaign Manager will transcode and segment your videos so they can be served in a file size that will load on the viewer’s mobile connection (3G, 4G or wifi). The video can even be altered on the fly, if the connection changes during playback. 

Digital campaigns are nuanced and complex, so having the right support resources at your disposal is important. We built the Creative Recommendation Tool to help you identify the best product to use based on your project’s resources. We’ve also integrated Chat Support into the Studio UI, so you can get in touch with a real person immediately, get your problem solved and get on with your work. 

While advertisers may be focused on scaling campaigns across big bets like mobile, video and programmatic, smart creative is a critical element of every successful campaign and can’t be an afterthought. Advertisers will achieve the best results when they combine creative strategies with media strategies from the outset of their campaigns. 

Over the next few days, we’ll dive into each of the four creative strategies listed above, to provide best practices for combining creative and media strategies in your campaigns. Stay tuned!

Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Creative Solutions

The Programmatic Revolution: Join us for a webinar



We’ve all heard it: marketing is at its best with the 3Rs in place -- the right message, to the right person, at the right time. There is no doubt programmatic buying is enabling this by automating marketing across channels for better targeting, relevance, and impact. A recent study Ad Age conducted for DoubleClick shows programmatic is top of mind for more than 40% of agencies and marketers when a media plan is being designed.

But how much of the opportunity is truly being capitalized? Register now to join Aaron Fetters, Director of Insights and Analytics Solutions Center at Kellogg Company, and Emel Mutlu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google, for a discussion on the study's findings, and:
  • Why brands and marketers are incorporating programmatic into their media buys
  • The essentials marketers need to know for success in a programmatic world
  • How the industry must evolve to realize the promise of programmatic
Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

The Programmatic Revolution: Join us for a webinar



We’ve all heard it: marketing is at its best with the 3Rs in place -- the right message, to the right person, at the right time. There is no doubt programmatic buying is enabling this by automating marketing across channels for better targeting, relevance, and impact. A recent study Ad Age conducted for DoubleClick shows programmatic is top of mind for more than 40% of agencies and marketers when a media plan is being designed.

But how much of the opportunity is truly being capitalized? Register now to join Aaron Fetters, Director of Insights and Analytics Solutions Center at Kellogg Company, and Emel Mutlu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google, for a discussion on the study's findings, and:
  • Why brands and marketers are incorporating programmatic into their media buys
  • The essentials marketers need to know for success in a programmatic world
  • How the industry must evolve to realize the promise of programmatic
Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

41.6% of surveyed advertisers say programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan


There’s no question that yesterday’s ad tech trend, programmatic buying, is here to stay. Programmatic spending is expected to reach $21B worldwide in 2014, according to Magna Global. To understand how the move toward programmatic buying is impacting the advertising industry, DoubleClick recently commissioned a study on the topic with Advertising Age. Here’s what we found.
  • More advertisers are demanding it:
    • 41.6% of surveyed advertisers (including marketers and agencies) indicated that programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan. This is a marked shift from previous strategies, where it was primarily considered at the end of the media buying process.
    • 2 years from now, marketing departments will be the primary advocates for programmatic buying; currently, the media buying arms of agencies and marketers are responsible for it. 
    • Cross-platform reach is believed to be the primary benefit of programmatic buying for advertisers, followed by increased operational efficiency, and better relevance in messaging
  • Publishers are adapting for a programmatic world:
    • For nearly 25% of the publisher respondents in the survey, programmatic selling is top of mind when responding to RFPs
    • 72% of publishers surveyed would sell more inventory programmatically with stronger cross-platform support
    • Publishers expect an 11.17% rise in CPM growth rates in the next 2 years
  • The growth of programmatic is contingent upon the evolution of the advertising ecosystem:
    • Transparency is key to adoption by buyers and sellers
    • Inventory quality, ad fraud management and the move to programmatic premium will drive higher-value advertising
    • Cross-platform support will help marketers and sellers realize the true potential of one-to-one engagement
Want more information on the study? Here are three things you can do:
  • Read the full report, along with perspectives from industry leaders from Vivaki, UM, Fox News, New York Times. 
  • Get the high-level picture in the infographic supporting key findings
  • Stay tuned for details on a webinar featuring Kellogg’s Aaron Fetters, Director of Analytics and Insights to hear why and how they’re increasing their investment in programmatic technologies.
You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.


Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

41.6% of surveyed advertisers say programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan


There’s no question that yesterday’s ad tech trend, programmatic buying, is here to stay. Programmatic spending is expected to reach $21B worldwide in 2014, according to Magna Global. To understand how the move toward programmatic buying is impacting the advertising industry, DoubleClick recently commissioned a study on the topic with Advertising Age. Here’s what we found.
  • More advertisers are demanding it:
    • 41.6% of surveyed advertisers (including marketers and agencies) indicated that programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan. This is a marked shift from previous strategies, where it was primarily considered at the end of the media buying process.
    • 2 years from now, marketing departments will be the primary advocates for programmatic buying; currently, the media buying arms of agencies and marketers are responsible for it. 
    • Cross-platform reach is believed to be the primary benefit of programmatic buying for advertisers, followed by increased operational efficiency, and better relevance in messaging
  • Publishers are adapting for a programmatic world:
    • For nearly 25% of the publisher respondents in the survey, programmatic selling is top of mind when responding to RFPs
    • 72% of publishers surveyed would sell more inventory programmatically with stronger cross-platform support
    • Publishers expect an 11.17% rise in CPM growth rates in the next 2 years
  • The growth of programmatic is contingent upon the evolution of the advertising ecosystem:
    • Transparency is key to adoption by buyers and sellers
    • Inventory quality, ad fraud management and the move to programmatic premium will drive higher-value advertising
    • Cross-platform support will help marketers and sellers realize the true potential of one-to-one engagement
Want more information on the study? Here are three things you can do:
  • Read the full report, along with perspectives from industry leaders from Vivaki, UM, Fox News, New York Times. 
  • Get the high-level picture in the infographic supporting key findings
  • Stay tuned for details on a webinar featuring Kellogg’s Aaron Fetters, Director of Analytics and Insights to hear why and how they’re increasing their investment in programmatic technologies.
Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Unlocking the Brand Opportunity

Video is how brands tell stories, how they surprise us, make us laugh or make us cry. No other medium brings together sight, sound and motion, and now with digital, interaction. As I’ve said for a while, our goal is to make digital work for brands. To do that, we have to make online video work for brands and their publisher partners, a topic I’ll be addressing this morning at our annual DoubleClick customer event. 



Introducing Google Partner Select, A Programmatic Premium Video Marketplace

Publishers are investing like never before in compelling, high quality video experiences. Brand marketers are eager to buy against this content -- in fact eMarketer projects video ad spending to grow from $4 billion last year to nearly $6 billion in 2014. One big hurdle to growth remains, though: much of this content is hard to access. 

Our brands and agencies want to buy this premium content programmatically, but have difficulty finding the high quality inventory they want. Our publisher partners also want to take advantage of the ease and efficiency of programmatic to connect with top brands, but with transparency and control over how that happens. In order to grow the marketplace for everyone, we need to invest in the systems that will make it easier for brands and premium publishers to transact at scale. 

As a step towards that goal, today we are introducing Google Partner Select, bringing together the best of brand with the best of programmatic. This new premium programmatic marketplace will connect a select set of publishers investing in top-quality video with the brands that want to buy against it. 

What we’re most pleased about is the reaction to Partner Select that we’re getting from clients:

“As a longtime Google partner, we are excited about what this marketplace has to offer. Video is the fuel for effective brand marketing and having more top quality video content available programmatically is going to open up all sorts of new possibilities for brand clients,” said Josh Jacobs, Global CEO, Accuen & President, Platforms and Partnerships, Omnicom Media Group. “That’s what Google is looking to accomplish with this marketplace and we look forward to working with them as it evolves.”

“Video has become central to our strategy, and being able to sell premium video programmatically to top brand partners is a requirement in this dynamic marketplace,” said J.R. McCabe SVP, Video, Time Inc. “We are looking forward to working with Google to enable this technology and to develop this premium marketplace.” 

Partner Select helping marketers and publishers also requires having the right buying technologies in place. Along with Google Partners Select, we’re introducing a way for marketers and publishers to execute direct, reservation-based sales through the DoubleClick platform. This new option is meant to help streamline what today can be a cumbersome process, involving days of back-and-forth negotiations, dozens of phone calls and sometimes, yes, a fax machine. We hope brands and publishers will be able to spend less time on logistics and more time building partnerships and winning creative and content.

I’m inspired every day by the rich experiences that brands and publishers are creating. Together with our partners, we can make digital a medium where brands, agencies and publishers can flourish. 

To hear more of our thoughts on this, join us for our livestream here. 

-- Posted by, Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, Google

Unlocking the Brand Opportunity

Video is how brands tell stories, how they surprise us, make us laugh or make us cry. No other medium brings together sight, sound and motion, and now with digital, interaction. As I’ve said for a while, our goal is to make digital work for brands. To do that, we have to make online video work for brands and their publisher partners, a topic I’ll be addressing this morning at our annual DoubleClick customer event. 



Introducing Google Partner Select, A Programmatic Premium Video Marketplace

Publishers are investing like never before in compelling, high quality video experiences. Brand marketers are eager to buy against this content -- in fact eMarketer projects video ad spending to grow from $4 billion last year to nearly $6 billion in 2014. One big hurdle to growth remains, though: much of this content is hard to access. 

Our brands and agencies want to buy this premium content programmatically, but have difficulty finding the high quality inventory they want. Our publisher partners also want to take advantage of the ease and efficiency of programmatic to connect with top brands, but with transparency and control over how that happens. In order to grow the marketplace for everyone, we need to invest in the systems that will make it easier for brands and premium publishers to transact at scale. 

As a step towards that goal, today we are introducing Google Partner Select, bringing together the best of brand with the best of programmatic. This new premium programmatic marketplace will connect a select set of publishers investing in top-quality video with the brands that want to buy against it. 

What we’re most pleased about is the reaction to Partner Select that we’re getting from clients:

“As a longtime Google partner, we are excited about what this marketplace has to offer. Video is the fuel for effective brand marketing and having more top quality video content available programmatically is going to open up all sorts of new possibilities for brand clients,” said Josh Jacobs, Global CEO, Accuen & President, Platforms and Partnerships, Omnicom Media Group. “That’s what Google is looking to accomplish with this marketplace and we look forward to working with them as it evolves.”

“Video has become central to our strategy, and being able to sell premium video programmatically to top brand partners is a requirement in this dynamic marketplace,” said J.R. McCabe SVP, Video, Time Inc. “We are looking forward to working with Google to enable this technology and to develop this premium marketplace.” 

Partner Select helping marketers and publishers also requires having the right buying technologies in place. Along with Google Partners Select, we’re introducing a way for marketers and publishers to execute direct, reservation-based sales through the DoubleClick platform. This new option is meant to help streamline what today can be a cumbersome process, involving days of back-and-forth negotiations, dozens of phone calls and sometimes, yes, a fax machine. We hope brands and publishers will be able to spend less time on logistics and more time building partnerships and winning creative and content.

I’m inspired every day by the rich experiences that brands and publishers are creating. Together with our partners, we can make digital a medium where brands, agencies and publishers can flourish. 

To hear more of our thoughts on this, join us for our livestream here. 

-- Posted by, Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, Google

Infographic: 4 Ways Brands Win with Programmatic

Programmatic is changing the way media is being bought and sold, helping brands cut through the clutter to make one-to-one connections with consumers, at scale.
In 2013, as brands took to programmatic, and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleCick Ad Exchange increased. Preferred Deal impressions also grew 250%.

In this infographic, “Programmatic: The Brand Era”, we explore four ways in which programmatic is changing the game for marketers, winning them the moments that matter with the people they care about.

See the full infographic here.

Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 4.50.11 PM.png
Posted by Kelly Cox, Product Marketing Manager