There has been explosive growth in ad technology over the last 20 years. From each of our perspectives -- whether you are an agency, an advertiser, publisher or a technology provider -- we can all still see unprecedented opportunities as the digital world continues to grow and diversify.

We believe that as an industry, we’re on a common digital journey and that the next wave of innovation in ad tech will come from us all working better together. 

However, like all great opportunities, there are challenges and questions, such as:

• How do we unlock the next $50 billion of opportunity for digital advertising? 
• How do we deliver those immersive, interactive experiences to today’s empowered consumer demands? 
• What do we, as part of the ad tech ecosystem, need to build to create even more value for our clients and consumers?

On June 5th we’re hosting DoubleClick Insights to start exploring some answers to these questions. Senior leaders from top agencies, advertisers and publishers will help lead the conversation -- and you’re invited to join via the live stream! Register here.

The agenda will include topics such as:

Adapting to the Empowered Consumer:
Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising at Google will be joined by David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies, and James Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group, to discuss how technology is being used to deliver new content and advertising experiences to consumers.

If We Build It, Will They (Consumers) Come? 
Terry Kawaja, CEO and Co-Founder, Luma Partners (and creator of the now legendary LUMAscape chart) will lead a conversation about the ad tech ecosystem, and what it needs to do next to add value for agencies, publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers. Terry will be joined onstage by:

• Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai
• Greg Stuart, Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association
• Kurt Unkel, President, VivaKi 
• Shishir Mehrota, Vice President of Product Management, YouTube

Outside the Box: Technology = Creative Friend or Foe?

Technology is supposed to make the life of a marketer easier. For our final conversation, we’re going to focus on the question of: Is this technology exploring resulting in better marketing? Or, is it just resulting in mediocre creative and complexity for both consumers and marketers? Karim Temsamani, Vice President - New Products and Solutions, Google moderates the conversation with leaders from creative agencies, iconic brands and publishers including:

• Brad Ruffkess, Global Connection, Coca-Cola
• Mike Lowenstern, Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA
• Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB 
• John Caldwell, Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. To learn more about our highlighted speakers go to the Speakers page on our site.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am - 1:00pm PST
Set event reminder today

Following us on Google+ or Twitter (@DoubleClick and @DoubleClick_pub)? Use the #dclkinsights tag as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event?

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

As the display industry evolves, we're collectively discovering and analyzing trends that point towards promising opportunities and paths to growth. This is the year where we’re doubling down on publishers, giving you the tools you need to make the most from today’s digital media landscape. One of the ways we’re helping publishers navigate their way to success is by providing new sources of industry knowledge and benchmark data. So today we’re introducing a new report, “Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition”.

The Publisher Edition will be the first in a series of publications looking at aggregated global data from across our display advertising solutions. We’re doing this to generate metrics that will answer a few of of the most common questions we hear from our partners, and put some data behind long-held industry assumptions. For example:

• Is the banner really dead? If you mean the 468x60 banner, then it might be time to hold a wake. This ad size dropped down to 3% of all impressions. Brand-friendly “premium” units are gaining share and we’re seeing that smaller ad units are dropping in popularity. However nearly 80% of all impressions are the ad unit “three musketeers”: the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper still comprise the vast majority of ads served.
• What types of sites are showing strong impression growth?  In 2011, we found that Shopping, Sports, and Auto & Vehicle sites were some of  the fastest year-on-year growth verticals on the Ad Exchange and AdSense. We saw impressive figures across the board, with 15 out of 25 publisher verticals displaying double-digit growth.
• Are your sell-through rates getting a 17% holiday bonus? Anecdotally we’ve heard that publishers’ sell-through rates increase at the end of the year, thanks to higher advertiser holiday spending. We’re now able to quantify this end-of-year shift, and we found that the global publisher sell-through rate increases from 36% to 42% in the fourth quarter. Comparing the regions in 2011, European publishers experienced the greatest sell-through boost, increasing to 47%.
• How fast is the growth in mobile and video? Growth in mobile usage has exploded, with mobile web impressions on the Ad Exchange and AdSense platforms increasing by 250% from the third to fourth quarter in 2011. Over the same period, video ad impressions increased nearly 70% across the DFP Video platform.

• Where in the world are you? All over, as it turns out. Of a possible estimated 245 different countries and territories, we saw publisher ad impressions from 235 of them. These included the island country of Palau - one of the world’s newest sovereign states - and the middle-African nation of Equatorial Guinea, with astounding growth rates of 1106% and 4635% respectively. And while the United States still accounts for the highest percentage of impressions overall, we’re seeing a significant representation from China and Japan, coming in at 11% and 6% respectively.

These metrics are a beginning: they give a snapshot of what’s happening in an ever-changing industry. We hope this sparks conversations across the marketplace about the trends driving these metrics, and how publishers can best capitalize on them to grow their businesses bigger, faster.

For our part, we’ll be continuing the conversation at DoubleClick Insights on June 5th, where we’ll be live-streaming our discussion on the future of buying and selling ads online. We hope you’ll join us there!

Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management, Display Advertising.

From our vantage point, we see unprecedented opportunity as the digital media world continues to grow and diversify. What does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads online?

Tune in and watch Google's Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, sit down with industry leaders to explore the digital ecosystem's swift evolution, and how advertisers and publishers can work better together to chart a path to capitalize on every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges we face.

The live stream will start on June 5th, 2012, at 9:00am PST, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am - 1:00pm PST
Set event reminder today

Following us on Twitter? Use the #dclkinsights as you're watching the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick 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:

Improved Custom Targeting Input: We've designed DFP so there are fewer steps, clicks, and screens throughout the trafficking process to help you reduce the time it takes to traffick your campaigns. To help you streamline your workflows even further, you can now select custom targeting criteria when trafficking a campaign with a single key-stroke to help you quickly select and search for the right targeting criteria.

Additional Reporting Combinations: To help you generate precisely the data you're looking for, we've introduced additional reporting combinations to give you a more granular look at your data. A sample of the new combinations available include:

• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Country x Custom Targeting 
• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Country 
• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Metro 
• Placement x Line Item x Creative 
• Ad unit x Line Item x Creative/size x Hour

Available in DFP Mobile:

MRAID Support: Our latest mobile SDK for DFP and AdMob was launched to fully support the IAB's Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID). For publishers who use DFP to deliver ads to mobile applications, the new Google AdMob SDK gives your advertisers the flexibility to provide creatives that work seamlessly across any application, regardless of the device, platform, or ad technology involved. Learn more.

Available in DFP Video:

Stream Based Frequency Caps: To help give you more delivery options when working with you video advertisers, we've introduced stream-based frequency caps to help control how often an ad appears in the same stream. Learn more.

VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0, and VMAP 1.0 Support: At Google, we've been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We're happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB's Digital Video Marketplace Event. This means that we'll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios. Learn more.

Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist