A recent study by eMarketer estimates that more than 25% of US digital display dollars will come through real-time bidding (RTB) by 2016. As brand dollars move to this channel, publishers are left to answer a few key questions.

Over the next few weeks, join us as ad tech experts and leaders in the online publishing business share their views on programmatic buying and its implications for publishers everywhere.

Log in with your Google+ account and tune into the Think with Google +page at 1:30 PM ET tomorrow, November 29. Rob Beeler, VP - Content & Media at AdMonsters, will interview Curt Hecht, Chief Revenue Officer, The Weather Company, about the future of this technology.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

We know your ad ops team is busy. Team members traffic campaigns, handle account relationships, manage reports and billing, and promote yield management -- all while optimizing like mad.

That’s a lot of hats to wear, and a lot to worry about. So when we built DFP, we took the same principles of simplicity and ease-of-use that we build into our consumer-facing products, and applied them to the complex world of ad trafficking. The result is a friendly, easy-to-use interface meant to save time and reduce human error.

We cut the number of workflow clicks, consolidated common views, and made it easier to find critical information. Users can now create orders, enter line items, and target from a single screen -- saving time by using targeting presets, bulk edit and global search. DFP Premium supports 5 levels of hierarchy, so you can group related bits of inventory together easily for targeting and reporting.

The result: more efficiency, fewer human errors, less time needed to traffic a campaign, and more time to focus on advertiser needs. (And to move your own business forward.)

Here's what what some of our customers have to say about how they've saved time and boosted efficiency with DFP:



A few choice quotes, in case you're skipping ahead:

"The biggest benefit of DFP premium has been that it’s incredibly, simply, really easy to use. Our traffickers are delighted to be using the tool, it’s just been a pleasant experience all throughout." - Tutuwa Ahwoi, Ad Ops Manager, National Public Media

"In moving to DFP we have a better UI, we have faster reporting, we have faster data input times, we have access across all devices. Those are things that have led to a 15% increase in operational efficiency our for our business." - Erin Pettigrew, Head of Ad Operations, Gawker Media

"DFP has provided about 10 to 15% more of our time back to my team." - Denise Leggio, Director of Ad Operations, Publisher’s Clearing House
If you're already using DFP, we hope you're seeing improvements to your workflow. And if you're about to start using DFP, we’ll be there to help show you the improvements we’ve made.


Posted by Josh Cohen and Beah Burger, Product Management Team

Announcing the Learn with Google webinar series for publishers

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Learn with Google series to help our publishers make the most from the web.  We’ll be hosting two upcoming webinars as part of our Learn with Google program:

• Google+ for publishers: Grow and engage your audience with Google+

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 12:00pm PT / 3:00pm ET

Join us for a discussion on how social media is impacting online publishers and how Google thinks about social. We'll also cover how you can grow and engage your audience on the web and mobile with Google+ using Google+ pages, the +1 button, Hangouts, and Authorship.

REGISTER HERE

• Navigating Google's Mobile Ads Ecosystem

Wednesday, November 28, at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET

Ever wonder who the buyers are in Google's mobile ads ecosystem and how their ads reach your inventory? Join us to learn the inner workings of Google's mobile ads ecosystem, including an overview of Google demand sources and the different channels advertisers can use buy your mobile inventory.  

REGISTER HERE

Visit the webinar page for more information on these two events and to register. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding the Learn with Google webinar calendar to your own Google calendar.

We look forward to hosting many more Learn with Google webinars for our publishers.  

Posted by: Faith Rosen, Product Marketing Manager

More and more of us are using using two screens at once to interact with media these days: for instance searching the internet from a smartphone while watching TV. A recent study conducted by Ispos and Sterling (and sponsored by Google) found that a whopping 90% of our daily media consumption is now done on 4 screens: smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions.

DoubleClick for Publishers was built with this multi-screen challenge in mind. To better deliver an advertiser’s campaigns, we integrated mobile and video in the same ad server and same user interface. You only deal with one ad server for all formats: desktop, mobile and video. You get one view of all your inventory and one view of your audience, so it's easier than ever to respond to advertiser requests and deliver engaging campaigns across all screens and formats.

Says, Tutuwa Ahwoi, ad operations manager at National Public Media, “One of the greatest benefits of DFP has been consolidation. It’s great to be able to serve mobile, video and display from the same platform. That’s helped us spend less time managing different systems and trying to get avails for our proposals, and helped us get forecasting right and respond with proposals to agencies quicker and faster.”

Better Mobile
DFP Mobile is integrated seamlessly with DoubleClick for Publishers. You can now manage all your ad inventory with one view and one workflow. Features like data transfer, audience targeting, delivery, creative rotation, and frequency capping are all in the same UI. Try using DFP’s powerful forecasting and reporting engine to uncover new mobile sales opportunities. And with the Octagon SDK, your mobile apps can access the extra advertiser demand from Google’s AdMob network.

Better Video
DFP Video gives publishers a powerful platform to manage their user’s video ad experience as they move across screens. By integrating with your video Content Management System (CMS), DFP Video can have full awareness of all your video inventory, so you can package, forecast, sell and report on any combination of data. We’ve extended better controls to DFP Video like competitive exclusions and frequency capping to the stream, pod and content level so you can control your video ad load and sell your inventory in a similar way to TV. Utilizing Google’s resources publishers can access additional demand from AdWords for Video buyers, provide a better user experience with the TrueView^TM ad format, and automatically transcode your videos, using YouTube technology, to ensure videos are delivered in the right format and bitrate regardless of the screen size or connection speed of a device.

Alex Boyce, the GM of Digital says the features have delivered a “significant improvement” over The Hollywood Reporter’s previous ad management solutions and processes. “DFP Video is clearly going to make a significant impact to our overall video advertising revenue by providing a greater level of flexibility and staging efficiency.” After switching to DFP Video, The Hollywood Reporter’s has seen great results with overall video ad operations efficiency improved 25%.

Tomorrow, we'll focus on ad ops -- and how DFP can ease the load. See you then.
Posted by Rany Ng and Marcel Gordon, Product Management Team

Advertisers demand performance from their online ads, whether it comes in the form of generating a more qualified lead or building higher brand awareness. But it can be hard for publishers to deliver better performance manually - especially when you factor in millions of impressions delivered across multiple platforms, formats and devices.

Today’s DFP is helping publishers meet advertiser needs with tools and features that help optimize inventory better than ever, and report on how you’re doing faster.

The result? Happier advertisers, say many of the publishers we spoke to.



“It’s a significant improvement. And our advertisers are happy about it,” says Dmitri Kazanski, Director of Ad Ops for Manta.com. “The switch to DFP has had a positive influence on our sales relationships with advertisers,” echoes Thomas Goldmann, online sales director at German publisher Heise Online.

DFP Optimization: automatically improving campaign performance
In an ideal world, campaigns would self-optimize. That idea was our guide in creating DFP Optimization, an add-on to the core DFP Premium platform.

A more powerful tool than DART Adapt, DFP Optimization leverages Google’s infrastructure and processing capabilities to automatically deliver the best ad, to the best user, at the best time. The system uses advanced modeling and pattern recognition, and harnesses the power of AdWords machine learning and AdSense contextual matching, to deliver ads to users who are more likely to respond to them. “Optimization allows better use of our premium inventory and increases the quality we can make available to our customers,” says Thomas Goldmann from Heise Online.

This drives better campaign performance across desktop, mobile and video, delighting advertisers. How much better? Heise Online saw a 52% improvement in average daily performance of optimized ad campaigns, and Manta.com realized a 70% to 90% lift.

Faster reporting = more timely optimization
Another feature of DFP that’s making publishers and advertisers happy is our faster reporting. DFP now makes performance data available 20-30 minutes after ad delivery (compared with 24 hours on DART). Data is shown in easy-to-interpret charts and graphs, so ad ops teams can flag issues, optimize on the fly and make quicker pacing and delivery decisions.

“I can optimize with data from 20 minutes ago instead of from yesterday," says Kirsten Hardy, ad operations manager for Inside Out Media. That speed improves client relationships, says Erin Pettigrew, Gawker Media’s head of ad operations: “Being able to confirm correct delivery for a client just hours after launch has given much needed confidence to our sales and account teams”.

Tune in tomorrow to see how DFP equips you sell more effectively and meet advertiser demands across platforms and formats.

Posted by Max Loubser, Product Management Team