The evolution of technology is creating new opportunities in online advertising, in some cases helping improve publishers’ returns; in other cases, allowing them to manage their inventory more efficiently across multiple formats. And this past December, we announced our acquisition of Admeld, and made a commitment to work towards building the next generation of tools to help publishers make more informed decisions about their ad space and grow their businesses.

But there is still much to do, as the industry works together to grow display from the $25-30 billion industry it is today, to the $200 billion industry we believe it could be. Today, at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Google Vice President Karim Temsamani played a game of truth and dare with the audience and shared some thoughts on how we might get there, as well as how publishers and advertisers can get the most out of the evolving online marketplace.

Truth #1: It’s a Connected World...for Users. There are now more mobile devices than people in the US, and some predict that devices will exceed the global population by end of year.

Dare: It’s not enough that people are mobile, we, as an industry, also need to get the websites, ads, and operations mobilized too. We think, collectively, we can work to mobilize 80% of the largest 2000 websites by end of this year. This means ensuring that content is optimized for mobile, ditto for ads, and that ad transactions are seamlessly connected to the rest of the plumbing. Towards this end, we are launching GoMo for Publishers, where publishers can test their mobile site performance, get a personalized report with recommended actions, and find vendors to assist with implementations.  Publishers who’ve optimized their sites are already seeing substantial increases in mobile ad revenue and mobile page visits.  

Truth #2: Technology is fundamental. As an industry, we’ve made great strides in using technology to create operational efficiencies.

Dare: Let’s pair high-tech with high-touch. Karim announced that in April we’ll launch the Ad Exchange Direct Deals Marketplace--an interface that enables publishers and buyers to solicit direct deal offers, negotiate, and execute them without sending an email or picking up the phone.  However, to complement this automation we’re bringing high-touch consulting expertise through our integration of the Admeld team.  Admeld supports private exchanges to complement automation, giving clients a model as a more holistic, customized, and technically savvy vision for their display business.

Truth #3: This industry traditionally thinks of ‘audience’ as bits and bytes.

Dare: Let’s think of audience as people, looking to engage and interact. We can do more to give people what they want. For example, TrueView ads on YouTube let viewers choose which ads they watch. Advertisers only pay for engaged views, meaning their campaigns are more effective. And we’ve found that nine out of ten viewers prefer TrueView ads.

In putting these principles into practice, we believe we can further a growing and thriving online ecosystem, where publishers see improved returns, advertisers reach an engaged audience, and people get the ads and content they want, in the way they want it. Now that’s a dare worth taking on.

Posted by Maureen Bradford, Head of Publisher Marketing

We’re always adding new features to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). The list below contains some highlights. For a complete list, please visit the DFP or DFP Small Business Help Centers.

Available in DFP and DFP Small Business:

• Alerts: Preventing delivery issues before they happen can be a time consuming and manual process. To make this process easier for publishers, and to help ensure you know when something happens that involves one of your orders or line items, such as if a line item is not meeting its delivery goal, we're excited to introduce account alerts to help bring this information to your attention so you can quickly resolve the issue. Read more.
• Dimension reporting filters: To help you generate precisely the data you’re looking for, we’ve introduced the ability to filter your reports by advertiser, order, line item, and line item type directly within the reporting interface. 
• Platform reporting filters: If you deliver campaigns across multiple platforms (web/mobile), you can now easily segment your reports by platform type to quickly view how your cross-platform campaigns are performing by platform type. 
• Mobile creative preview: We know that publishers like to test their creatives to ensure everything is working properly prior to pushing a campaign to their live site. We’ve expanded the creative preview tool to support mobile creatives targeted to mobile devices using QR code previews. Simply scan the QR code with your mobile device to view the mobile create exactly as it will appear before it’s live. 
• Mobile application tags: We have expanded the formats of the ad tag generator so now you can generate tags for mobile applications in addition to your web and mobile sites. 

Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist

Preventing delivery issues before they happen can be a time consuming and manual process.

To make this process easier for publishers, and to help ensure you know when something happens that involves one of your orders or line items, we're excited to introduce account alerts in DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

Alerts will notify you when any of your line items:

• is starting soon and missing creatives
• is not meeting its delivery goal 
• contains creatives that have been disabled because malware was detected

The alerts area in the top-right of your account will contain a summary of your recent alerts, and you can take action on each alert right from the notifications menu so you can quickly resolve the issue.

Alerts complement the order and line item tables which provide a complete overview of your ad operations, including order readiness, delivery status, and inventory revenue performance. You can easily sort line items by delivery status as well as show line items that are starting soon. The color coded delivery bars can help you easily identify line item pacing information, including line items that are at risk of over or under delivering.

With these tools in-hand, we hope we can help you catch and fix any delivery issues before they happen.

Posted by Alex Anikul and Jeff Drost, Software Engineers

With thousands of publishers using the DFP and DFP Small Business ad serving platforms, we know first-hand that no publisher is identical. Publishers may use in-house billing systems, have unique approval workflows, or use third-party tools to handle their ad operations.

To give publishers the flexibility to easily integrate their unique processes and systems with their ad server, DFP offers publishers an open API to easily create tools that complement their ad operations.

We’ve seen hundreds of developers build new ad serving innovations using the API, including applications to manage inventory, create orders, pull reports, and more. The API has created a new ecosystem of partner innovations, giving publishers access to new ad serving tools and applications. Two such applications come from isocket and Shiny Ads who have used the DFP API to build applications that help publishers manage and sell their ad space.

isocket uses the API to create tools that streamlines sales

Seeing the need to streamline the manual steps involved with buying and selling inventory, isocket engineered a direct and self-service ad sales tool to simplify sales workflows. By leveraging the DFP API, isocket was able to build an application to automate sales processes and save money. “We were interested in using the API because it allowed us to eliminate the hassle of manually coordinating campaigns, while still keeping the important parts like publisher control and approval. Integrating with the DFP API has allowed us to make things a lot simpler for publishers,” said Ben Trenda, VP of Sales at isocket.

Read more about how isocket integrated with the DFP API.

Shiny Ads builds application to help publishers save time

To help facilitate publishers’ direct ad campaign management, Shiny Ads began using
the DFP API to integrate its self-serve advertising platform with DFP in order to help publishers streamline their sales processes. This integration has helped save publishers time since they no longer need to manually book sales orders. “Our solution needs to support DFP - our customers demand it”  said CEO and founder Roy Pereira. “The API made integrating with DFP easy for us, and most importantly, easy for our clients. Without the DFP API, Shiny Ads would not have the fully functional solution we have today.”  

Read more about how Shiny Ads integrated with the DFP API.

Over the coming months, we’ll share more stories on how our partners are using the DFP API to deliver exciting ad serving innovations. For a complete list of partners who have built applications using the DFP API, please visit our partner directory.

Posted by John Park, Partner Programs Manager, and Adam Rogal, Developer Relations

Exchange-based buying has experienced huge growth over the past several years as advertisers focused on improving the targeting and effectiveness of their buys. Most large agencies have set-up dedicated “trading desks” to focus on this method of buying and in tandem, many publishers have aligned their strategies to profit from these trends.

Since the launch of the Ad Exchange, we’ve heard inspiring stories from our European publishers about the revenue uplift they’ve experienced when using the product. Today we’re pleased to share exciting research results which shows the impact of the Ad Exchange on European publishers’ revenue.

The results published in this whitepaper show that when publishers make ad space available in the Ad Exchange, and the Ad Exchange wins the auction, the revenue is 73% higher than if the Ad Exchange hadn't been used. This takes into account competing sales channels such as direct sales teams, other networks and backfills.

And what about inventory that would have gone unsold? The DoubleClick Ad Exchange demonstrated significant success in monetizing these ads. For inventory for which there was no other demand, it delivered a fill rate of greater than 90%.

Many of the tools we roll out are designed to help publishers maximize revenue across their multiple channels. Most recently we introduced minimum CPMs and pricing recommendations. These followed the introduction of private ad-slots and direct deals. We believe that these new tools will continue to help our Ad Exchange publishers make the most out of their inventory.

Posted by Scott Spencer, Product Management Director