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You can watch the conversation when it goes live here or join from the Think with Google +page with your Google account and leave questions for Liz with the hashtag, #videointhefuture.


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Continuing our thought leadership series "Video in the Future", this week, Lucas Watson, Vice President - Global Sales & Industry Marketing at Google, speaks with Liz Schimel, Executive Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, Meredith Corporation, on how the magazine publisher is leveraging digital video to drive engagement and revenue.

Join the conversation on Thursday, 6/27, at 11:30 AM PT/ 2:30 PM ET.

Register here.

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Video is the rising star of digital advertising. As we discussed in last week’s post, our new research “Video Advertising Momentum” found that brand advertisers are upping their video campaigns to reach their audiences across the web. In this installment, we uncover another rising trend: advertisers are increasing their video budgets in programmatic channels.



We've seen quite an uptick in video ads across the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, with volume tripling in the first quarter 2012 - 2013. The stars of programmatic video are Automotive and Retail advertisers. They were the top two video advertiser categories overall, and both of them quadrupled programmatic video spend in Jan - March compared to last year. But growth seems across the board - nearly every advertiser category posted double-digit growth in spend and impressions. Take a look at the full research New ways of buying and selling video ads: the programmatic channel in “Video Advertising Momentum”. 

Why would an advertiser or publisher consider video advertising on the Ad Exchange? The reasons are numerous, but we've distilled it down to four:
  • Efficiencies: The Ad Exchange streamlines workflow between advertisers and publishers, with campaigns running across multiple sites and viewing devices.
  • Emerging technology: Advertisers can now optimize their buys across destinations using advanced bid controls and analytics. The Ad Exchange brings new formats such as skippable video ads and comprehensive methods of measuring campaign performance to more advertisers and publishers.
  • Expanding audiences and revenue: Programmatic video buying through AdX helps advertisers extend their reach and gain frequency to new audiences. Publishers can expand their demand sources and gain increased revenue for their video inventory.
  • Evolving video advertising: As digital video gains even more momentum, publishers and advertisers are forging new ways to create shared value, including private exchanges and preferred deals.
For a discussion about programmatic video in from both advertiser and publisher perspectives, check out the Q&A between TubeMogul and Silver Chalice “What’s the value in programmatic video?”. Next week, we’ll take a look at how choice is changing the way we think about video advertising.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan, Product Marketing

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Join the live Hangout on Air with Susan Wojcicki, SVP of Advertising and Commerce, and three AdSense publishers to celebrate our 10th anniversary today, at 10 AM PDT/ 1 PM ET. We'll share stories from the early days of AdSense and discuss the future for publishers and online advertising.

You can watch the hangout live below and submit a question to Susan with the hashtag #adsense10onair on Google+. Please note that she won't be able to address individual account questions.



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How is Disney.com leveraging online video to deliver engaging user experiences?

That's the question Xavier Kochhar, CEO, Structured Data Intelligence, is going to explore in our hangout on air with Mark Walker, SVP, Disney.com.

You can view the conversation right here at 10:30PT/ 1:30 ET. If you'd like to leave comments or questions for Mark, please look for the Hangout in the Think with Google +page stream.


Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

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How can large publishers create digital video content strategies that drive user engagement? That's the question Xavier Kochhar, CEO , Structured Data Intelligence, will ask of Mark Walker, Senior Vice President, Disney.com, in the next edition of our Video in the Future hangouts on air series.

Join the conversation live on Thursday, June 13th, 10:30 AM PT/ 1:30 PM ET. Questions and comments welcome!
Did you miss our last couple of conversations featuring AOL's SVP of Video, Ran Harnevo, Silver Chalice's EVP Rich Routman and TubeMogul's Chief Strategy Officer Jason Lopatecki? Watch them now.

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[Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertisers blog]

When we think about the multi-billion dollar future of digital advertising, we believe that much of that growth will be driven by video. Video advertising is a very compelling way to connect and grow an audience, especially when we layer on technology’s creative possibilities. What’s driving its astronomic growth?

We took a look at video ads across DoubleClick’s advertising platforms to identify areas of opportunity for advertisers and publishers, and shared these areas of growth in a three-part research collection: “Video Advertising Momentum”. We exclusively analyzed in-stream video ads that played against video content, and focused on ads served on sites globally, excluding Google owned and operated sites like YouTube. We're going to unpack the findings over the next two weeks, kicking it off with this infographic.




Digital video advertising is essential for brand campaigns.
  • Advertisers are getting into digital video in a big way: two out of five video ads on the DoubleClick advertising platforms came from advertisers new to digital video in 2013 - and many of them were large brand advertisers.
  • 68% of video ads in the last 12 months came from four advertiser categories dominated by large brand advertisers. The top video advertiser categories were Automotive and Retail, with Consumer Packaged Goods and Technology advertisers rounding out the top four.


Publishers are growing audiences and revenue with more video.
  • News publishers are redefining the way they deliver the news. As they increase their focus on video news content, they're running 3 times more video ads this year than last.
  • Video content is coming from all across the web - not just from TV or entertainment publishers. Sites that have benefit from increased video spending include Automotive & Vehicle, Sports, Computers & Electronics, and Shopping sites.

For video, the opportunity is clear: brand advertisers are using video to reach their audiences across the web, and publishers are powering their content strategy with more video. We can't wait to see how video rockets digital advertising to new heights.
Stay tuned for next week’s post as we dive into how programmatic video has hit its prime-time. And if you can’t wait that long, check out the full Video Advertising Momentum collection to explore them on your own. 

Posted by Mel Ann Chan, Product Marketing

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This morning, I’ll be kicking off thinkDoubleClick, our annual industry event where we discuss the future of digital media. At this same event last year, we unveiled DoubleClick Digital Marketing, the unified platform we’re building to help advertisers and agencies manage the entire breadth of their digital marketing efforts.

Our goal with this year’s event is to take a deeper look at how digital helps us forge deeper connections within organizations, with our partners and with consumers. We also have several exciting pieces of news to share about investments that will help our advertiser and publisher partners make the most of these connections.



Connect your business
At the core of of digital media is its ability to build connections, and we’ve seen that it can be incredibly valuable in helping our partners connect across their business, offering a holistic picture of how all their marketing efforts work together. This was the vision behind DoubleClick Digital Marketing, and today we’re making two key improvements:
  • A new DFA: DoubleClick Campaign Manager. We’re excited to announce a brand new version of DFA, which we are calling DoubleClick Campaign Manager. In the biggest upgrade to our core ad server in the 15 years since its inception, DoubleClick Campaign Manager completely re-imagines the ad management and ad serving process. DoubleClick Campaign Manager will be available to all advertisers globally in the coming months. 
  • DoubleClick goes social. Today’s digital platforms play a critical role in helping marketers adapt to constantly evolving formats and channels. Today, social is a good example of that; it has changed the way we communicate, share and interact. And not just with our loved ones -- 80% of consumers say social interactions with brands influence their purchase decisions. It’s why we acquired Wildfire last year, and today, we’re happy to announce that we’re taking steps to integrate Wildfire into the DoubleClick platform. Now, marketers can address a critical part of the customer journey, and do it alongside search, display, rich media, video and mobile as part of the broader DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. This is just the beginning of how we’re incorporating Wildfire’s technology. There are more exciting things to come in this area.

Connect with your partners
Technology is also about connecting you with your partners - bringing buyers and sellers together at scale. We’re introducing a few new ways to make this happen as well:
  • Shared sales with YouTube in DoubleClick for Publishers. For our publisher partners, we’re hearing that video, and YouTube in particular, is becoming an increasingly important part of your selling strategy. But when you have a partner like YouTube that is also selling this inventory, we’ve heard that the process of booking these shared sales was incredibly cumbersome. So I have some news: in the coming months, we're introducing a new feature called Cross-Sell in DoubleClick for Publishers, to automatically and easily manage joint sales for our YouTube partners. Our goal is to let your sales team work hand-in-hand with ours to maximize every sales opportunity and to give you extra time to focus on your advertiser relationships. 
  • Making native native... to DoubleClick. Recently, “native formats” have emerged as an important new model. They provide new types of brand experiences, like sponsored stories, that are unique to each publisher. We want to support formats like this that connect advertisers and publishers in a meaningful way, while also creating real value for users. We're already testing this capabilities with a handful of publishers and will be looking to expand in the coming months. Our goal is to make this technology seamless for publishers who want to have flexibility in implementing native formats and making the most of them on their properties.
  • Making a viewable standard a reality with Active View. To help publishers tap into the accelerating brand opportunity, we’re focused on unlocking new ways of measurement with the rollout of Active View in our core publisher products: DoubleClick for Publishers, AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Publishers using these products will be able to measure what inventory is viewable. In early tests, we’ve found that Active View can help uncover “gold below the fold.” Click-through rates double for viewable inventory below the fold - in other words, users that are engaged with the content are also engaging with the ads. Active View complements our other investments in making digital an effective medium for brand marketers and their awareness-building campaigns, like Lightbox ads and TrueView in AdMob and games. These efforts appear to be paying off for brand advertisers: we saw a 65 percent increase last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools. We think these investments will be mutually beneficial for publishers, their advertiser partners, as well as users. 
Connect with consumers
The third (and in my mind most important) type of connection that digital helps create, though, is with consumers. As you all know, we are now living in a multi-screen world. Consumers are effortlessly shifting from screen to screen. In fact research has found that 90% of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete tasks. We’re investing in helping advertisers and publishers connect with them across screens as well:
  • Google Web Designer. To help advertisers and publishers more seamlessly unlock the potential of cross-device programs, we are investing in a new HTML5 creative development tool - Google Web Designer. Available in the coming months, Google Web Designer will empower creative professionals to create cutting-edge advertising as well as engaging web content like sites and applications - for free. Google Web Designer will be seamlessly integrated with DoubleClick Studio and AdMob, greatly simplifying the process of building HTML5 creative that can be served through Google platforms.


No other medium builds connections like digital - it’s one of the reasons I remain so bullish on this industry. But digital is not just a medium. It’s the bedrock which enables connections between advertisers and publishers, within our own organizations, as well as brands and consumers. That’s why we’ll continue to invest in helping build these connections - between re-imagined creative tools, reinvented measurement solutions, and revamped ad buying platforms - that will accelerate and propel digital advertising into a $200 billion industry that funds and supports great content.

And this is just some of what we’ll be discussing today at thinkDoubleClick, I encourage you to tune in to our live stream to check out the entire program running from 9 am to 12:30 PDT today.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising