Our team is always looking for ways to improve the DoubleClick for Publishers platform to make Digital Advertising easier for our partners. Whether it’s making ad operations more efficient or providing more data and metrics for your sales strategy, our goal is to continuously innovate and improve upon DFP. Over the last couple of weeks we announced a series of enhancements to the DFP platform (Mobile, Video, and Desktop) to help publishers make the most revenue from their inventory, and today we’d like to let you know about a couple more.

Conversion Reporting
The value of online advertising is often judged by the click-through rate and number of impressions received by an advertiser’s campaign, but those metrics don’t tell the full story. What a lot of advertisers really want to know is, did a user convert; i.e. did they take a specific action such as make a purchase, sign-up for a newsletter, or download a file? That’s where conversion reporting comes in.

Now available in DFP Premium, conversion reporting allows publishers to showcase the value of their inventory while providing advertisers new ways to measure campaign performance. Using this new tool, DFP users can select specific activities to count as conversions and then provide their advertisers customized performance metrics for their campaigns.

Reach out to your account team if you’re interested in learning more about this new opt-in feature.

Custom Fields
Publishers of all sizes use DFP to run their advertising business and we understand that no two publishers are the same. So, to help our partners manage the complexity of trafficking ads on their sites, we provide a wide variety of fields to organize and package inventory for specific orders, line items, and ad creatives. But sometimes, publishers need extra fields to implement innovative solutions for their clients.

The new custom fields feature provides publishers just that, the ability to create custom metadata fields to manage their inventory in new ways. DFP users can simply define a new field on the order, line item, or creative level and then use those fields to save data, create reports, or map them into DART Sales Manager to be used for sales proposals.

To get all the details about his feature, contact your account team or read about it in the DFP help center.

Bulk Edits
Ad operations teams are the hub of a publishers advertising business. They manage and respond to a constant flow of requests, changes, and new orders for their site, and sometimes spend a lot of precious time making edits in their system. We understand that editing line items can be a tedious and time consuming process, so we build two new features to make modifying your setup faster: in-line edit and bulk line item edit.

The in-line edit and bulk line item edit features were designed to reduce the number of clicks and page refreshes needed to make changes. In-line edit allows you to make multiple changes to any line item directly from the orders page and save them all with one click. Also from the orders page, bulk line item edit allows you make the same change to multiple line items quickly and easily. For the full detail of these changes visit the DFP help center.


Posted by
Beah Burger, Florent de Gantes - DFP Product Management Team
Gaurav Kc, Josh Israel, David Plass - Software Engineering Team

The role of technology should be to make things easier, to simplify the complex. Our goal at DoubleClick is to do just that, make digital advertising easier for our partners. With DFP that means helping our publishers maximize the value of every impression regardless of format or screen size. It also means providing a flexible and customizable platform for publishers of all sizes and business models to build their own advertising solution.

Today we’re happy to announce the DoubleClick Third Party Partner Directory available on the DoubleClick site. This directory lists all the DoubleClick approved platform partners who have developed innovative solutions and services for DFP. Publishers can pick and choose from over one hundred preferred partners to extend the functionality of their advertising platforms.

"Joining DFP's partner ecosystem was an easy choice for Brightcove. By plugging into DFP's API's, we can easily offer a turnkey integration with our Video Cloud online video platform to the world's top publishers who use DFP," says Chris Johnston, VP Digital Media Solutions at Brightcove. "Through this partnership, premium publishers can easily monetize their video content with Video Cloud across every platform and device with full IMA3 support for Flash and HTML5."

We understand that Publishers may choose external service providers in addition to DoubleClick to manage their ad operations. So, we built DFP with an open architecture (including our new DFP API, Data Transfer, Mobile API’s and Video SDK’s) to support a vibrant and innovative third party ecosystem and to provide publishers the flexibility to easily extend the functionality of their advertising solutions.

"At Allrecipes.com, we are constantly evolving and perfecting our Ad Operations process. As one of the first publishers to transition to DFP, we were pleased with the functionality the DFP API offered our internal team as well as support for the third party vendors with whom we work. With DFP and the new API, our team was able to automate more internal processes and enhance and extend our capabilities with third party systems." - Adila Esbhani, Director, Ad Operations, Allrecipes.com

“We work with a variety of technology vendors at The Weather Company, but Google DoubleClick truly supports our business with its open infrastructure and access to third-party partners. When we upgraded to DFP, many of our preferred technology vendors were already set up, and we were able to easily find, test and integrate new Mobile and Video applications to create our own customized advertising solution,” says Charlie Stafford, Advertising Technologies Manager for The Weather Company. “We have a lot of vendors with whom we work but Google is one of the few that I can say has truly partnered with us to make our goals their own.”

Last year we launched the DFP partner program to provide publishers choice and it’s great to see how much it has helped our partners (both publishers and third parties) succeed.

To see the full list of approved platform partners visit the DFP Partner Directory. Or, if you are a third party service provider and have an application or service that is ready for DFP, please submit your application here to be included in the DFP Partner Directory.


Posted by John Park, Partner Program Manager

This week we’ve been highlighting new DFP enhancements that are helping publishers tackle the challenges of the rapidly evolving digital advertising landscape. On Monday we announced recent advances in DFP Mobile and yesterday we covered how DFP Video is enabling publishers take advantage of the high-growth video advertising opportunity. Today, we’d like to highlight a bunch of great new features available on DFP and DFP Small Business.

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Our engineering team constantly strives to innovate and improve our platform to make digital advertising easier for all our partners. The following updates are available now to help publishers of all sizes maximize the value of every impression. A complete list changes is always available on the DFP and DFP Small Business Help Centers.

Available in DFP

Master and companion roadblocks for creative sets: This new opt-in feature allows you to create roadblocks where a master creative is always delivered first. Also, master/companion roadblocks give you controls to manage how companion ads are delivered. Set the line item to require all creatives in the set serve together, to always deliver the master with at least one companion, or to serve as many companions as possible when the master is served. Read the full details on the DFP help center.

Available in DFP and DFP Small Business

Google AdMob SDK v6.2 updated for iOS: The new Google AdMob SDK v6.2 has been updaded for iOS and is now available for download on the developers.google.com site. With this release we’ve added compatibility for iOS 6 including adoption of Apple’s new Identifier for Advertising (IDFA). The full list of updates to the SDK can be reviewed on the Google AdMob Ads SDK release notes page.

New Options for Image Creatives: We’ve added two new, optional fields for image creatives.
Alt Text: You can now include Alt Text to better serve your users utilizing screen readers or to show text to users with images disabled on their browser.
3rd-Party Impression URL: Add a 3rd Party impression URL to image creatives delivered by DFP.

Orders Screen Updates: To improve the user experience and improve the load time of the orders screen we’ve made the following changes.

Default Orders screen change: The 'My Orders' filter now reflects orders which you’ve created as well as ones you’ve been assigned to as primary/secondary trafficker or primary/secondary salesperson. In the near future the default Orders screen will become the ‘My Orders’ view and a new ‘All Orders’ filter will be added to reveal all the orders you have permission to view.

Tabbed View for Orders: To increase the visibility of an order’s details, we’ve introduced tabs to the order view. Now, when you navigate to an order you’ll see two tabs: one providing an overview of the order’s line items and another displaying the order’s settings (such as trafficker and salesperson assignments).

Mobile Update: We’ve added a new targeting option for mobile line items. Now you can target mobile ads by specific mobile carrier. Read more about this targeting option on the DFP or DFP Small Business help centers.


Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist

On Monday, we unveiled news on how mobile is evolving in DFP, enabling publishers to execute upon their multi-device strategy. Today we’re focusing on another high-growth area - video advertising - and sharing what’s possible with DFP Video advanced features. Stay tuned for more DFP and DFP Small Business announcements later this week.

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Publishers everywhere are thriving upon the incredible momentum in video advertising. They’re tackling the operational challenges of delivering video campaigns to smart phones, tablets, and connected TVs, as well as pushing the creative envelope with eye-catching interactive ads. A little over a year ago we launched DFP Video, and since then we have seen month-on-month impression growth climb to 65% from non-Google publishers on the platform.

At the recent IAB Ad Operations Summit, we highlighted a few examples of how advertisers and publishers are bringing their A-Game to video. We wanted to share some news about DFP Video that will help publishers bring amazing ads to audiences anywhere.

Amazing ads unlock the value of the engaged viewer
We all know that viewers love to have a choice in what video ads they watch. We just launched a beta for publishers to traffic any video ad as a skippable ad. Why would a publisher want to make advertising skippable? We found that skippable ads on YouTube lower content abandonment rates by 40% as well as deliver more engaged viewers to advertisers.

Audiences want a better ad experience
Advanced Ad Rules and Podding Choices help publishers create a relevant ad experience for various viewer and content scenarios. For example, publishers can lower the number of ads shown to subscribers versus non-subscribers, or choose to show a bumper to promote a new miniseries to audiences watching episodes categorized as “drama”. Publishers have also used Ad Rules to match the commercial break pattern for a new online episode with the ad experience on TV for a set period of time.

Any(where) you want it, that’s the way you need it
We’re indulging in a bit of a Journey moment to share that video ads served to mobile devices in DFP Video have grown 59% month over month from September to November. In a big step towards a more seamless ad experience across all screens, we’re bringing increased sophistication to our HTML5, iOS, and Android Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDKs that show video ads in mobile web and in-app environments. These SDKs will be as comprehensive as our newest version for Flash. For publishers requiring a more plug-and-play approach, many video technology companies have partnered with us to implement these SDKs, so that publishers can work with the provider that best suits their needs.

We’re pumped to roll out our video A-game for DFP. More and more publishers are telling us what they’ve gained from managing their video, mobile, and desktop ads from DFP’s unified platform - so if there’s anything that catches your eye, contact your account representative to find out more.

Posted by
Rany Ng, Group Product Manager, Video Monetization

In our second edition of 'Programmatic in the future', join us tomorrow, 12/6 at 1:30ET/10:30PT as Mario Diez, CEO at Quadrant One, the industry’s premier private exchange marketplace, weighs in on what the potential of this technology is for publishers everywhere. Log into your Google+ account and look for the Hangout on Air in the Think with Google +page stream. Hit the play button to tune in.

Last week, Curt Hecht, Chief Revenue Officer at The Weather Company, shared his views on on the value of transacting through programmatic channels in a conversation with Rob Beeler, Content Czar at AdMonsters.

In case you missed it, here’s what he had to say:



Here are some of the key takeaways from that conversation:

Programmatic may be an enhanced bridge to additional transactions
The direct sales team works with marketers to identify the right balance between sponsorships and programmatic buys, based on the marketers’ objectives. Additional analysis around yield and commission structures also factor into this discussion.

Programmatic helps smooth sales transactions
Setting up additional channels to transact with marketers has enabled The Weather Company smooth out the sales cycle. While a lot of inventory may be directly sold, in the face of a storm, programmatic technologies allow The Weather Company to fill inventory at times of unprecedented demand.

People are important for success
Curt reiterated several times, the importance of people in designing solutions and products that help meet marketers’ needs. His ad operations team is also critical for yield management, optimizing campaigns and ensuring they meet revenue goals.

Data is at the epicenter of success for publishers at scale
Curt says that publishers need to understand their data and the yield they can get from it. They should then analyze what technology can help them unlock the value of that data.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

We're constantly innovating to help publishers of all sizes maximize the value of every impression. We're kicking off the week with exciting mobile developments in DFP. Stay tuned for more DFP, DFP Small Business, and DFP Video announcements later this week.

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Over the course of 2012, we’ve begun to see publishers make a significant transition in how they address mobile in the context of their broader ad operations. Prior to this year, we saw publishers look at mobile through a different lens than the rest of their business, defining a mobile strategy in isolation, and usually without much long term planning.

Increasingly, we're seeing the savviest publishers look at mobile as one piece of a multi-device strategy, rather than a standalone channel.

We've designed DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) from the ground up to enable this very strategy, enabling publishers to serve their display, mobile, and video campaigns all from a single platform. Today, we're rolling out a few new features that we think will make it even easier for publishers to run campaigns using the same features and workflows on desktop AND mobile:

• Internal redirects to DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA): You can use internal redirects when delivering a DFA campaign from DFP, reducing impression loss, improving ad load times and minimizing the administrative overhead of reconciliation.
• Custom creatives: Custom creatives are useful for delivering bespoke creatives developed in-house or provided by advertisers.
• Data transfer: You can now include mobile impressions - with mobile targeting information - in your data transfer files.

At the same time, we're continuing to add features specifically designed to make the mobile experience better for publishers and users:

• Latitude and longitude geo-targeting data: Latitude and longitude data can now be provided to DFP to improve the precision of geo-targeting.
• Device category targeting and reporting: You can target and report on whole categories of devices at once: feature phones, smartphones, tablets.
• Video interstitials for Android: You can now deliver a fullscreen video ad into your mobile applications on Android as well as iOS.
• Auto-close option for video interstitials: The video interstitial creative type now includes the option to auto-close the interstitial after the video has completed.

As your business continues to evolve, and mobile becomes more of an integrated piece of your operations, we want to make sure you’re supported with the tools you need across all devices. Bridging the gap between desktop and mobile in 2012 allows us to focus on a new wave of opportunities to help our publishers win with mobile in the upcoming year. We have some big things planned, such as being able to run a single campaign across all inventory, and new approaches to tagging for responsive design sites. Stay tuned!

Posted by Marcel Gordon, Product Manager