This post is part of the Evolution of TV series. In this series we identify the risks and opportunities around 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape as TV programming shifts to delivery over the Internet.

Viewers increasingly want to watch their favorite TV shows anytime, anywhere, and on any screen. There's lots of TV content online, but hitting all three of those checkboxes isn't yet possible for every piece of programming. To do so requires a greater shift to delivering TV programming over the Internet rather than just over the air, satellite, or cable. Sounds simple, right? It's not. It is a massive shift that has game-changing implications for everyone involved.

This shift isn’t just impacting TV programmers and distributors, but also the viewers watching their favorite TV shows and sports teams across every screen, and the advertisers telling their brand stories against that content.

Today we are introducing the first part in a series called the Evolution of TV. In this series, DoubleClick and Google have identified 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape as TV programming shifts to delivery over the Internet. These 7 dynamics fall into three key areas:

• Viewer engagement 
• Delivery over the Internet and cloud 
• Advertising 

Download the first part of the series now to learn the risks and opportunities associated with each of the 7 dynamics transforming the TV landscape and driving the shift of the $68 billion TV advertising industry.

-
Anish Kattukaran
Marketing, DoubleClick Video

With 2014 drawing to a close, we’re getting excited about what’s ahead in the new year. We’ll be ringing in 2015 at the International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) the first week of January. If you’re planning to go too, we’d like to invite you to come by C Space, the new destination at CES for publishers, advertisers, agencies, and content creators.

On the first day of the event (Tuesday, January 6th), Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of Display and Video Advertising Products, will be headlining C Space. In his keynote he’ll talk about how brands can make the most of video in a climate where consumers are easier to reach but harder to influence. He’ll discuss not only how to drive engagement but also how to measure the impact that it has on brand metrics.

Following his keynote, Neal will join Meredith Levien, EVP Advertising at The New York Times, in a fireside chat.

Learn more about C Space and check out the full agenda here.

Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, January 6th 2015
1 - 2 PM PT

2014: IAB’s “Open Letter to Marketers” advocated for the universal adoption of HTML5. “Programmatic” became the ANA’s marketing word of the year. The MRC lifted its advisory on transacting on viewability. 

These are just some of the moments that moved our industry forward in 2014. “Digital Advertising in 2014: An Industry in Motion” recaps the ideas we congregated around as an industry, the technology we evolved to realize them, and the impact we saw from executing on them. Together with you, we:

• Told stories through big, beautiful canvases everywhere
• Evolved media buying 
• Measured what matters with new metrics
• Made digital easier for all of us

As we raise a toast to the year that was and look forward to 2015, we thank you for partnering with us and ensuring that we never stay still, that as an industry, we’re always in motion.

Get DoubleClick’s full 2014 recap here.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing team

With the advancement of new technologies we now know that many display ads that are served never actually have the opportunity to be seen by a user. In fact in a recent study of Active View data by Google, we found that 56.1% of all ads served were not measured viewable. Yet, the average publisher’s viewability is 50.2%. This means a small number of publishers are serving the majority of non-viewable impressions and dragging down the served impression viewability average by almost 6%.

As advertisers shift to paying for viewable, rather than served impressions, it’s more important than ever to understand what drives the viewability of ads. To see all “5 factors of viewability” check out the full infographic and study at thinkwithgoogle.com.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager

DoubleClick for Publishers experienced an outage this morning impacting publishers globally, across their video, display, native and mobile formats. Our team has worked quickly to fix the software bug and it's now back up and running, so our publisher partners can return to funding their content.

1/2 - Tks for all the emails. First global DFP outage in many, many years. Our large engineering team jumped on it as soon as we found out.

— Neal Mohan (@nealmohan) November 12, 2014

2/2 - Engineers had it back up in <2 hours. Now finding cause and making sure it doesn't happen again. Sorry to all our partners.

— Neal Mohan (@nealmohan) November 12, 2014

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog

You may have seen the research we shared with you last month that looks at how programmatic buying is changing advertising. Today’s with DoubleClick episode takes a personal spin on that study, focusing on a few of the people who are both seeing and driving those changes.

We talked to leaders from Universal McCann, VivaKi, MAGNA Global, and The McClatchy Company to find out how they’re thinking about the shift to programmatic. Reach and relevance were top of mind. With greater efficiency and richer audience insights, they’re achieving both goals across screens and formats. As Deborah Gaudette, SVP and Group Partner at UM, points out, this ultimately helps create advertising that consumers want to be part of. That’s a promise we can all get behind.

Check out this short video to hear more.

For ideas on how to adopt a programmatic strategy, take a look at last week’s webinar with Aaron Fetters, Director at the Kellogg Company.

You can stay on top of updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.

We’ve all heard it: marketing is at its best with the 3Rs in place -- the right message, to the right person, at the right time. There is no doubt programmatic buying is enabling this by automating marketing across channels for better targeting, relevance, and impact. A recent study Ad Age conducted for DoubleClick shows programmatic is top of mind for more than 40% of agencies and marketers when a media plan is being designed.

But how much of the opportunity is truly being capitalized? Register now to join Aaron Fetters, Director of Insights and Analytics Solutions Center at Kellogg Company, and Emel Mutlu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google, for a discussion on the study's findings, and:

• Why brands and marketers are incorporating programmatic into their media buys
• The essentials marketers need to know for success in a programmatic world
• How the industry must evolve to realize the promise of programmatic

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

There’s no question that yesterday’s ad tech trend, programmatic buying, is here to stay. Programmatic spending is expected to reach $21B worldwide in 2014, according to Magna Global. To understand how the move toward programmatic buying is impacting the advertising industry, DoubleClick recently commissioned a study on the topic with Advertising Age. Here’s what we found.

• More advertisers are demanding it:
• 41.6% of surveyed advertisers (including marketers and agencies) indicated that programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan. This is a marked shift from previous strategies, where it was primarily considered at the end of the media buying process.
• 2 years from now, marketing departments will be the primary advocates for programmatic buying; currently, the media buying arms of agencies and marketers are responsible for it. 
• Cross-platform reach is believed to be the primary benefit of programmatic buying for advertisers, followed by increased operational efficiency, and better relevance in messaging

• Publishers are adapting for a programmatic world:
• For nearly 25% of the publisher respondents in the survey, programmatic selling is top of mind when responding to RFPs
• 72% of publishers surveyed would sell more inventory programmatically with stronger cross-platform support
• Publishers expect an 11.17% rise in CPM growth rates in the next 2 years

• The growth of programmatic is contingent upon the evolution of the advertising ecosystem:
• Transparency is key to adoption by buyers and sellers
• Inventory quality, ad fraud management and the move to programmatic premium will drive higher-value advertising
• Cross-platform support will help marketers and sellers realize the true potential of one-to-one engagement

Want more information on the study? Here are three things you can do:

• Read the full report, along with perspectives from industry leaders from Vivaki, UM, Fox News, New York Times. 
• Get the high-level picture in the infographic supporting key findings
• Stay tuned for details on a webinar featuring Kellogg’s Aaron Fetters, Director of Analytics and Insights to hear why and how they’re increasing their investment in programmatic technologies.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Two years ago, Felix Baumgartner’s attempt to skydive from the edge of space became the highest viewed live event online. The Red Bull Stratos mission, live-streamed by YouTube, delivered 8 million concurrent viewers.

In 2014, we have become even more comfortable streaming live sports and events. It is no longer uncommon to start watching a football game on the TV in your living room and switch to watching it on your smartphone as you hop in a cab to get to a viewing party.

We are in the midst of a major transition, where traditional TV is shifting to IP delivery over a highly fragmented landscape of connected devices. Consumers shifting between these devices and screens makes it increasingly complex to deliver the same reliable viewing experience as traditional TV -- all while honoring the same business rules as TV, serving relevant ads and avoiding that dreaded buffering wheel.

In June we announced the launch of Google Partner Select, a programmatic marketplace built for premium publishers. We followed up this launch with the acquisition of mDialog, a company working with leading media companies to manage, deliver and measure video advertising across live, linear and VOD streams at TV scale. These efforts are part of a broader aim to unlock value for our TV Broadcast and Cable partners.

This morning we had the pleasure of speaking at the AdMonsters Publisher Forum. As we talked about there, we’re focused on building DoubleClick’s video solutions around four key areas to empower our TV partners:

Engage audiences everywhere
Viewers have become accustomed to a high-quality viewing experience on TV and demand the same across their smartphones, tablets, smart-TVs, laptops and other devices. The opportunity here isn’t simply in replicating TV quality in streams delivered to audiences but also in layering abilities unique to digital like true 1:1 addressability for live streaming at TV scale.

Enhance value to brands
Bringing TV-style audience measurement to the DoubleClick Video platform is just the beginning. The vision is ensuring that every impression you deliver is viewed by the right person, in real-time and without wasting impressions in order to deliver guarantees. Brands reach their audiences, the value of your content increases and everyone wins.

Unlock new revenue potential
As viewing extends beyond the living room, we are committed to ensuring that you can replicate the same business rules and deals from TV across video. Beyond this, with premium initiatives like Google Partner Select, we are unlocking untapped revenue sources for Broadcasters.

Simplify publishing
When the technology gets out of the way, you can focus on building content that your audiences love and brands want to buy. This is why we are committed to building an end-to-end video solution that is a part of an integrated cross-format publishing platform.

-Rany Ng, Product Management Director, Video


Sign up for Google Publisher Connection to receive industry updates from DoubleClick and Google: Sign up here

In an important step toward making brand measurement as actionable as the click, customers of our DoubleClick platform globally now have access to Active View reporting. Advertisers, agencies and publishers now have access to a common, integrated metric to evaluate and compare the viewability of impressions across the web.

Digital advertising can provide brand marketers better measurement for their campaigns, but to do so, we must transition to a market where viewable impressions are a standard currency. On March 31, the Media Rating Council took the first step toward making viewable impressions a standard by lifting its advisory to refrain from transacting on viewable impressions as a digital advertising currency. We’ve always been a strong supporter of the viewability standard and we’re excited to roll out our MRC-certified viewability solution Active View to our DoubleClick partners.

DoubleClick clients globally now have access to Active View viewability reporting by default in:

• DoubleClick for Publishers, for publishers using Google Publisher Tags 
• DoubleClick Ad Exchange, in the new Query Tool
• DoubleClick Digital Marketing
• DoubleClick Campaign Manager, including reach and frequency
• DoubleClick Bid Manager

From measurement to currency, the future of Viewability
Moving from served impressions to viewable impressions as the standard unit of measurement in the advertising ecosystem will be a huge shift but, leaders in the industry see opportunity ahead.

“The shift toward viewability will bring more brand spend to digital, ultimately benefiting premium publishers,” says David Payne, Chief Digital Officer at Gannett. “Viewability provides us another proof point that shows how our premium content creates highly engaged audiences perfect for branding campaigns.”

"At VivaKi, we’re passionate about viewability because an ad served that is not viewable is an inefficient use of our clients’ resources,” says VP Audience Media Strategy Phil Shih. “In the future, viewable premium inventory will demand a higher CPM than unviewed impressions; but it’s worth it for the sake of growing your brand.”

Providing a common measurement metric is the foundation for a world where we can transact on viewable impressions. But measurement alone does not make viewable impressions a currency. For this, we need to develop technology that allows advertisers and publishers to not only measure, but also transact viewable impressions. We already enable this on the Google Display Network and, we’re also investing in tools on the DoubleClick platform to allow advertisers and publishers to value, buy, sell, serve and optimize to viewable impressions. 

The transition to viewable impressions will not happen overnight, but as more brands, agencies and publishers adopt the viewable standard, we can create a more transparent and actionable display ecosystem for brand advertisers. We look forward to working with our clients and industry bodies to turn viewability into a new currency for the web.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager, Brand Metrics

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At Google, we’re constantly updating our publisher products to improve user experience and push the boundaries of innovation in the digital advertising space. We know it can be difficult to stay current with these ongoing updates when you have an online business to manage, which is why we’re excited to introduce Google's brand new online training center, Publisher University!

This new offering allows you to deep dive into the product areas that are most valuable to you through tailorable, self-study training solutions for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdSense.



As your one-stop training destination for all publisher-facing products, the materials have been designed to suit a variety of roles and skill levels. Whether you’re starting out as a trafficker or you’re a seasoned manager, there’s a training solution suited to your needs:

• Certification: Review one of our engaging online courses and demonstrate your knowledge of Google publisher products by taking an online exam. Once you’ve passed you’ll obtain a printable certificate of completion.
• Mix and Match: Here you’ll find all of the publisher training materials conveniently located in one place. Go ahead and pick the topics that are most relevant for you.
• Labs: Practice what you’ve learned through in-product exercises and activities. For example, you can practice your trafficking skills in a real DFP network!
• What’s New: Check out the latest feature releases and how to use them.
• Learning Paths (Coming soon): If you’re simply not sure where to start, we can suggest a learning path for you and help you to explore the training options available! 

Access the same high-quality content delivered at our in-person classroom trainings from the convenience of your own computer. With a huge variety of regularly updated learning resources, there’s never been a better time to brush up on your skills.

Visit g.co/PublisherU and kick-start your training today!

Posted by Marcus Jacobs, Technical Trainer

Video is how brands tell stories, how they surprise us, make us laugh or make us cry. No other medium brings together sight, sound and motion, and now with digital, interaction. As I’ve said for a while, our goal is to make digital work for brands. To do that, we have to make online video work for brands and their publisher partners, a topic I’ll be addressing this morning at our annual DoubleClick customer event. 

Introducing Google Partner Select, A Programmatic Premium Video Marketplace

Publishers are investing like never before in compelling, high quality video experiences. Brand marketers are eager to buy against this content -- in fact eMarketer projects video ad spending to grow from $4 billion last year to nearly $6 billion in 2014. One big hurdle to growth remains, though: much of this content is hard to access. 

Our brands and agencies want to buy this premium content programmatically, but have difficulty finding the high quality inventory they want. Our publisher partners also want to take advantage of the ease and efficiency of programmatic to connect with top brands, but with transparency and control over how that happens. In order to grow the marketplace for everyone, we need to invest in the systems that will make it easier for brands and premium publishers to transact at scale. 

As a step towards that goal, today we are introducing Google Partner Select, bringing together the best of brand with the best of programmatic. This new premium programmatic marketplace will connect a select set of publishers investing in top-quality video with the brands that want to buy against it. 

What we’re most pleased about is the reaction to Partner Select that we’re getting from clients:

“As a longtime Google partner, we are excited about what this marketplace has to offer. Video is the fuel for effective brand marketing and having more top quality video content available programmatically is going to open up all sorts of new possibilities for brand clients,” said Josh Jacobs, Global CEO, Accuen & President, Platforms and Partnerships, Omnicom Media Group. “That’s what Google is looking to accomplish with this marketplace and we look forward to working with them as it evolves.”

“Video has become central to our strategy, and being able to sell premium video programmatically to top brand partners is a requirement in this dynamic marketplace,” said J.R. McCabe SVP, Video, Time Inc. “We are looking forward to working with Google to enable this technology and to develop this premium marketplace.” 

Partner Select helping marketers and publishers also requires having the right buying technologies in place. Along with Google Partners Select, we’re introducing a way for marketers and publishers to execute direct, reservation-based sales through the DoubleClick platform. This new option is meant to help streamline what today can be a cumbersome process, involving days of back-and-forth negotiations, dozens of phone calls and sometimes, yes, a fax machine. We hope brands and publishers will be able to spend less time on logistics and more time building partnerships and winning creative and content.

I’m inspired every day by the rich experiences that brands and publishers are creating. Together with our partners, we can make digital a medium where brands, agencies and publishers can flourish. 

To hear more of our thoughts on this, join us for our livestream here. 

-- Posted by, Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, Google

DoubleClick’s annual digital advertising summit is just around the corner, streaming live on YouTube on Wednesday, June 4th. (Sign up here to watch.) We caught up with Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, to hear what’s on his mind as we get ready for the event.

Q: What topics should we expect to hear about this year? 
A: I don’t think it will come as a surprise that our team has been very focused on how to make digital work for brands and premium publishers. You can expect to hear a lot more about that. Also, since this event marks Google’s annual conversation on the future of digital advertising, we’ll discuss how digital is redefining consumer behavior, content development, and the ways that advertisers and publishers reach their customers.

Q: Will the live stream include any special guests? 
A: I’ll be joined by Nikesh Arora, our Chief Business Officer at Google, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and Co-Founder of DreamWorks Animation. I’m looking forward to hearing Jeffrey talk about how technology has changed content creation.

Q: What consumer trends are impacting the way brands and publishers think about digital? 
A: When we started this DoubleClick event 14 years ago, going online was a deliberate act that required going to a computer and “logging-in”. The days of going online are coming to an end. Today’s digital experience is one that is always-on and always with us. As a result, digital has become far more personal, and one of the most personal forms of communication - video - is playing a more central role in our online lives. All these factors have major implications for brands and publishers, which we’ll discuss at the event.

Q: So...any scoops you can give us?
A: As I mentioned, video has been very much on my mind lately. Getting video right is something that is essential to our brand, agency, and publisher partners...expect to hear more about what we have planned to help make that happen.

We hope you can join us on Wednesday, June 4th at 9:30 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT. Register to watch the live stream or to receive the recording.

-The DoubleClick Team

Programmatic is changing the way media is being bought and sold, helping brands cut through the clutter to make one-to-one connections with consumers, at scale.

In 2013, as brands took to programmatic, and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleCick Ad Exchange increased. Preferred Deal impressions also grew 250%.

In this infographic, “Programmatic: The Brand Era”, we explore four ways in which programmatic is changing the game for marketers, winning them the moments that matter with the people they care about.

See the full infographic here.

Posted by Kelly Cox, Product Marketing Manager

Digital is no longer just another marketing channel. It’s a medium that’s changing the art of storytelling and reinventing the way companies connect with consumers.

How will digital advertising evolve next? You’re invited to tune in live as industry leaders tackle the question at DoubleClick’s annual event on digital trends.

Speakers include:
Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer at Google
Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising at Google

Register now for the live stream

Wednesday, June 4
9:30 am PDT - 10:45 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT - 1:45 pm EDT

Time not convenient? When you register you’ll receive a link to watch the recording on demand.

Here’s footage from last year’s event to give you a taste of the 2014 live stream:



We hope you can join!

Posted by Jane Brinkley, Product Marketing Manager

Native advertising is a becoming a dominant force in the online 

advertising industry and at DoubleClick, we’re building tools to power publishers’ native solutions. Today, we’re shining a light on BuzzFeed, who is using DFP to succeed in this space. 

BuzzFeed is a leading social news and entertainment company whose popular website curates viral and shareable online content to over 100 million unique monthly users worldwide. Their mantra is “great advertising is content” and they’ve applied this across their entire monetization strategy. Eric Harris, BuzzFeed’s Executive Vice President of Business Operations explains that the site exclusively uses ‘social advertising’, a form of native advertising, to ‘communicate the aspirations and attributes of the brands we’re working with...and promote it on our site in a way that’s clearly marked as advertising, but similar to how we promote our other content.” Scaling this burgeoning format to a large user base is no small feat. So, we caught up with Eric to learn how DFP is helping BuzzFeed execute against this strategy.

Scaling for success

BuzzFeed needed a customized and robust infrastructure that could keep up with its growth and reliably serve ads across different platforms. The team turned to DFP for it’s scalability, enabling them to “focus on what we do best, and giving us the credibility that comes with working with the industry leader.” Using DFP for ad serving and inventory management has been critical for BuzzFeed’s success. “We haven’t had to worry about anything with DFP – it just works.” Eric emphasizes.

Integrating the best of BuzzFeed with DFP
In addition to ad serving, BuzzFeed leverages the openness and flexibility of the DFP API to integrate its proprietary technologies- which help determine the content to promote- with DFP’s ad targeting and delivering capabilities to serve the ads.

When it comes to tracking, DFP also enables BuzzFeed to accurately measure its social advertising: “The fact that DFP easily integrates with other third-party tracking solutions and our custom analytics – with low discrepancies – is a big benefit for us,” says Eric.

Taking engagement cross-device
Moreover, with over half of its traffic (and growing) coming from mobile devices, BuzzFeed deeply values the ability to work fluidly and consistently across platforms with DFP. “It is hugely important for us that we can work with just one vendor – DoubleClick – to serve ads seamlessly across desktop, mobile web and mobile apps,” notes Eric.

Powering long-term growth
As it examines the future of its native advertising program, BuzzFeed has three clear goals: leadership in social, content-driven advertising, continued growth in mobile, and international expansion. Eric notes, “with the flexibility, scale and robust infrastructure that it offers, DFP plays an important role in all three of these goals.”

To get the full scoop on BuzzFeed’s success with native advertising, download the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick for Publishers blog for even more customer success stories.

Posted by Jane Brinkley, Product Marketing Manager

Yesterday, the Media Rating Council (MRC) announced that it is lifting its advisory on transacting on viewability for display advertising, originally issued in November 2012. In taking this step, the MRC is signaling that great strides have been made toward the goal of transacting display advertising using viewable impressions, and the industry is ready to begin the process of adopting viewable impressions as a standard metric. We applaud this move and are thrilled to see the industry move closer to the reality of a true viewability currency.

Google has been a longtime supporter of this effort and we’ve partnered with the industry, the Media Rating Council and the IAB, as part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, to help guide the definition and adoption of a viewable impression standard. Last April our viewability measurement solution Active View received accreditation by the Media Rating Council and, in the coming months, we’ll be making Active View reporting available to all DoubleClick customers across our platform. We believe that giving marketers, agencies and publishers access to a common, integrated viewable impression metric will set the foundation for viewable impressions to become an actionable currency.

But measurement alone will not make viewable impressions a currency. To become a currency we need technology that allows advertisers and publishers to not only measure, but also transact on viewable impressions. In December, we took our first step toward making viewable impressions a true currency by giving advertisers the ability to target and buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network. We’ve seen a strong positive response as thousands of advertisers and brands have adopted viewable impression buying on our network, but we’re not stopping there. We’re investing heavily in Active View and working quickly to enable our DoubleClick platform clients to value, buy, sell, serve and optimize to viewable impressions across the web. 

The MRC announcement represents an important milestone in the journey towards a viewable currency. As marketers and agencies adopt the viewable standard we can start to build a new display market that is more transparent and actionable for brand marketers.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Senior Product Manager

Publishers are the lifeblood of the web. Local news providers in particular play vital role in our society, helping us stay in touch with our communities and keep up to date on the news and issues that most closely affect our lives.

We’ve had the good fortune to work with many local news publishers over the years to help power their ads businesses. Today, we’re thrilled to further that commitment with a landmark deal with the Local Media Consortium, an industry body comprising more than 800 daily newspapers and 200 local broadcast stations. Together, we’ll provide the consortium’s membership with a suite of Google advertising products for publishers:

• A Powerful Private Exchange -- The Local Media Consortium will launch a new private ad exchange, powered by DoubleClick Ad Exchange technology. Programmatic buying is attracting growing budgets (analysts predict 75% growth in 2014). With 10 billion monthly impressions of top quality video and display inventory, this new exchange will enable the consortium to engage with the growing number of national advertisers and agencies investing in programmatic channels and looking to reach audiences at scale.
• The DoubleClick Platform -- Members will also have access to DoubleClick for Publishers, our widely used ad management platform that lets publishers easily and efficiently manage their digital ads business, across desktop, video and mobile inventory. 
• AdSense Contextual Ads -- Through AdSense, all members will also have the option to run contextually matched ads on their sites and search results (powered by Google Custom Search). 

The Local Media Consortium represents the best of what the web has to offer in terms of content and engaged local audiences. We’re looking forward to working with their leadership and members to build on this partnership and help grow the businesses of valued newspapers and news stations from across the country. 

Posted by Laurent Cordier, Managing Director, Americas Partnerships - News & Magazines

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest. And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.


Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

The world’s major brands are now building their marketing campaigns for the digital world, from Dove's Real Beauty Sketches, to Toyota's Car Collaborator, to Kate Spade’s holiday ads.

Brands and their agencies want to better measure their digital campaigns, but they don’t want one-off science experiments or fuzzy numbers; they want metrics that are as meaningful and actionable as the click has become for performance advertising:

As we invest to improve brand measurement for the entire industry in all these areas, we are keeping a few things in mind. First, measurement should be actionable - real time insights to improve campaigns as they run, not after-the-fact reports that can only improve future ad buys. Second, we know our clients want measurement that is open and transparent so we’re partnering with the industry to create metrics that serve as a true currency between buyers and sellers, and offer flexibility and choice to marketers.

Today at the IAB Leadership Summit, I gave an update on a few of our brand measurement products:

Active View

Last year, comScore estimated that 54% of ads running on the web aren’t seen by the user. Maybe the reader scrolled past your ad; maybe she never got to it.

We’re supporting industry initiatives, like the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) to establish new standards. And late last year, we made it possible to buy based on viewability on the Google Display Network. This capability is based on our MRC-accredited Active View technology, a transparent and actionable viewability metric that we’re gradually rolling out to both marketers and publishers. It’s early days, but we’ve already seen more than 1,500 brands buying impressions based on viewability, across more than 100,000 sites on our network.

comScore vCE

In TV, marketers use the concept of a Gross Rating Point (GRP), by which they measure the reach and frequency of their campaigns among different demographics. For digital campaigns, there are a number of options for marketers wanting a digital GRP across screens. For example, last year, we started testing comScore vCE (validated Campaign Essentials) and Nielsen OCR (Online Campaign Ratings) for campaigns on YouTube and across our network.

While we’re excited by the efforts in the industry to introduce GRPs to the digital market, we believe we haven’t yet reached the full potential of this metric. And so today, we’re excited to announce that we’re taking another step forward by partnering with comScore to turn vCE into a digitally actionable metric.

By working closely with comScore and the industry, we believe we can make a GRP metric that will be completely actionable: both advertisers and publishers will be able to see if a campaign is reaching the right audience in real time and make adjustments if it isn’t. No more waiting days or weeks for reports, no more wasted media, no more missed opportunities. This objective, third-party vCE metric is being built directly into our DoubleClick ad serving products, where it can serve as a transparent currency for both marketers and publishers to buy, sell and measure ad space across sites, formats and screens.

Brand Lift

At the top of the pyramid, brands want to measure the impact of advertising on core brand metrics like awareness, favorability, purchase consideration and, ultimately, sales. We're developing a suite of Brand Lift products to help here. Last year, we began a small test of surveys to measure the impact of a brand's campaign.

Measuring ad effectiveness by conducting surveys is not new. But generally they’re slow to provide results, and get very low response rates.

In our early tests, we’re seeing 20-30% user response rates (significantly higher than traditional surveys), coming through in near real time. This enables brands to turn the results into immediate action: brands that are using Survey Lift have seen an 82% lift in ad recall, along with a 64% lift in brand awareness. For example MasterCard was able to double brand recall for one of their holiday campaigns based on insights gleaned from surveys. Based on this early promising feedback, we’ll be rolling these surveys out more broadly, for more types of campaigns, in coming months.


Going forward

There’s lots more to come, and we're working on ways to help brands at all stages of the measurement pyramid. More actionable, open and transparent measurement will help bring more great campaigns and brands online, which in turn helps to fund web services and content. We’re looking forward to working with the industry and partners to help make this a reality.

Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Today, almost 50% of the US population has a smartphone* and one in five webpage views now occur on mobile devices.** Even though consumers have quickly incorporated these devices into their daily routines, advertisers haven’t necessarily followed suit. While a few of the savviest advertisers are taking advantage of the multiscreen opportunity, it’s time that the entire industry think critically about how to make mobile a first class citizen in their campaigns.

One key aspect of “making mobile work” is using mobile-compatible ad creative; HTML5 creative works on smartphones, tablets and desktops, allowing advertisers to build a single ad unit that can run across all screens. By using HTML5, advertisers open the door to cross-screen branding opportunities, as well as enable publishers to monetize their highly-trafficked mobile properties.

To call out this need, the IAB today published an open letter, signed by Google, 16 US publishers and six UK publishers, asking marketers to use HTML5 for their ad creative so that their campaigns can show up properly across screens.

This plea to marketers is the first step in a larger “Make Mobile Work” Initiative, in which the IAB, supported by Google and the other publishers, will provide additional resources to marketers to educate them on how to implement successful mobile campaigns.

By fostering the conversation and educating marketers, we hope the “Make Mobile Work” Initiative will invigorate the production of mobile-compatible campaigns, enable marketers to take advantage of the mobile opportunity, and provide publishers with the inventory they need to monetize their mobile properties.

Posted by Bonita Stewart, VP Americas Partner Business Solutions, Google *source: eMarketer “US Mobile Phone Internet Users and Penetration, 2012-2017.”
**source: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201012-201312

Advance Auto Parts (AAP) is a leading retailer of automotive parts, accessories, batteries and maintenance items with over 3,900 physical stores as well as a thriving e-commerce business.

In late 2012 AAP began testing DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) in order to offer ad placements on its e-commerce site. The aim was to derive additional revenue from non-converting traffic, and AdX proved a perfect fit:

More revenue, more conversions
AAP’s goal was to gain incremental revenue from the ads, but they were worried that existing conversion rates might be negatively affected. Fortunately, these fears were quickly overcome, as implementing ad units on the site in fact saw conversions increase.

Great tools equal happy customers
AAP was concerned about preserving brand safety as well a positive site experience for its users. Thanks to the robust set of tools and controls provided in AdX, AAP was able ensure ads from major competitors didn’t appear and that bounce rates remained unaffected.

E-commerce and ads: an ideal balance
“Working with AdX has taught us that online ads and e-commerce can certainly work together gracefully,” says Howard Blumenthal, AAP’s director of eBusiness platform solutions. “If you can get this balance right, you end up with the ideal situation.”

So what’s next? Howard reveals AAP has plans in place to use AdX to monetize the company’s mobile site, too. “We are always looking for ways to increase incremental revenue by optimizing AdX as much as possible.”

Read the full Advance Auto Parts story >>

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro, Product Marketing Team

A top name in weight loss and healthy living for 50 years, Weight Watchers serves over 140 million ad impressions a month at WeightWatchers.com.

Weight Watchers began using the Google Publisher Tag (GPT) in 2012 once they upgraded to the DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad server. They were hoping for better targeting, but they got much more.

Higher ROI, happier advertisers
With up to five levels of targeting hierarchy, GPT let Weight Watchers improve its targeting and end manual re-tagging. The results have been strong with Click Through Rates across all standard display ad units are up 13%, and for leaderboards up 76%. Advertisers are loving the performance and Weight Watchers now runs four times more monthly campaigns with advanced targeting than with basic demographic and geo-targeting.

100% boost in operational efficiency from DFP

"I would actually say we've had a 100% increase in efficiency," says Jordan Tuck of Weight Watchers. Campaign setup is faster, and new features like the ability to update multiple line items on the same page save even more time later.

30% rise in indirect inventory earnings

With the move to DFP, Weight Watchers benefited from Dynamic Allocation with DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) to monetize indirect inventory. Their indirect inventory rates are up 30% year-over-year, and the clickthrough rate is 2.5 times higher than it was before AdX. AdX now has 70% share of their indirectly sold inventory.

Weight Watchers helps its customers "move the needle," and DFP and AdX have helped them do the same with their own online properties.

Read the full Weight Watchers story »

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team