Users continue to move across platforms and screens. Today, more than half the queries on our platform come from mobile devices, both on mobile web and apps. The balance between monetizing your app and providing a good user experience remains tricky yet essential.

Yesterday, we focused on ways to create a high quality app for your users. Continue reading to gather app monetization recommendations from Mark Wolly, Head of Mobile Publisher Solutions at Google, and find a happy medium between effective monetization and good user experience.

1. Create ads that respect your UX: Good ad placements ensure reliable revenue without sacrificing user experience. Examine the flow of user engagement within your app to place ads in undisruptive places, such as the transition points in a reading app. You can experiment with the frequency and placements of your ads to ensure you’re delivering the right experience in the right context for the user. Try to avoid sandwiching them between your interactive app content and navigation/menu buttons.


2. Choose the best ad formats for your app’s content structure: It’s easy for users to get distracted by ads given the limited screen size, especially when they don’t match the look and feel of your app.
   
   Try using Native ads to create a consistent look and feel across your content and ads. Formatted to fit mobile apps’ content and visual design, Native ads are more likely to be viewed and clicked by users. eBay recently started using our Native Ads on DoubleClick and experienced a 3.6X increase in ad engagement on average, with some campaigns delivering click-through rates up to 5%.
   
   Mark believes “Native presents an opportunity to reset on building premium quality mobile placements and creatives. Many publishers have already built custom formats for direct sales, but haven’t yet extended their advertiser reach by offering them via programmatic channels.”


3. Build your programmatic direct strategy: Allowing you high quality creative formats from premium advertisers, programmatic direct introduces your app to new advertiser budgets and makes ad operations easier. As explained by Mark, “Many publishers have built incredible custom mobile formats that command high CPMs from high-quality advertisers. They can massively extend their advertiser reach, while retaining the same cpms and control, by offering these formats to new advertisers via programmatic channels.”

There is a fundamental shift amongst consumers in their use of mobile, making it indisputable that apps play a significant role in a consumer’s mobile experience. In the time that desktop audiences have grown 1%, mobile audiences have grown a staggering 41%¹.

Focusing on ways to increase app discoverability, understand user engagement, optimize app quality, and effectively monetize your app, our mobile bootcamp outlines key steps for enhancing your mobile offerings in time for the holiday season of mobile frenzy.

Posted by Danielle Landress Associate Product Marketing Manager, Publisher Marketing

^{1 comScore. The 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report.}

At this point, you’ve read our recommendations for growing your app’s audience and keeping users engaged. But there are technical aspects, too, that can make or break your app’s success. Speed, for example, is crucial -- users expect apps to respond in under one second.

Yesterday, we gave recommendations for attracting, engaging, and retaining your users. Continue reading today to learn tips from Dev Gogate, Mobile Solutions Consulting Manager at Google, on providing your users with a high quality app.

1. The smaller the app size, the better: Users have limited bandwidth and data storage, so a large app runs the risk of losing an install. App stores impose size limits and will only deliver apps under a certain size over cellular connections; Google has a 50MB limit for each APK (but allows 2GB expansion files for supporting media) and Apple limits app size at 100MB. Use the ProGuard tool to optimize your Android code and enable Resource Shrinking to remove unused and unneeded resources from dependency libraries. App Thinning offers a similar solution for decreasing app size on iOS.


2. Build apps that use device resources optimally: Building apps without taking into account how display interacts with hardware components can drain precious resources, such as battery life. According to Dev, "App performance is critical! A badly designed app can drastically and negatively impact the the user's perception of the app's usability and will surely lead to an uninstall." Dev recommends compiling a list of metrics for your apps to perform against and then running tests. This YouTube Android performance channel and Google+ community offer excellent tips on building high performing apps.


3. Ensure your app works across devices: Failing to catch a bug or crash that only impacts some devices quickly leads to angry customer feedback and low ratings. Dev recommends using Cloud Test Lab to simultaneously test your app on nearly every brand and model of Android devices and across multiple languages, screen orientations, and Android API versions. Dev’s expert tip: Even if you have not written any instrumentation tests for your app, you can use Robo tests to exercise your app by simulating user actions.


4. Use A/B testing to get real user feedback: Dogfooding your app provides early insight into how users interact with your app and how it behaves beyond the test lab. Beta testing, on the other hand, gathers feedback from an enthusiastic audience. Since this testing is customer-facing, ensure the process is simple to ensure high user participation. Both of these tests gives you early feedback from users before widely releasing your app.


5. Launch new app versions in phases and closely monitor: Don’t underestimate the number of users who may adopt a new version of your app and their levels of usage. Dev recommends using staged rollouts, which allow you to beta test different app versions and gradually release app updates with a chosen user group. The Cloud Test Lab provides access to virtual devices that give rapid feedback during development, as well as physical devices that pinpoint issues found on real, physical devices.

Creating a high quality app is essential for building and maintaining a loyal user base. Follow Dev’s recommendations to optimize your app quality and stay posted for our post tomorrow on ways to effectively monetize.

Posted by Danielle Landress Associate Product Marketing Manager, Publisher Marketing

Did you know that 52% of all apps lose at least half of their most valuable users after three months?¹ In this environment, how can you ensure your app effectively attracts, engages, and retains users?

Yesterday, we kicked off our mobile bootcamp to help get your app in shape for increased traffic and monetization opportunities during the holiday season. Building on mobile expert Cheney Tsai’s recommendations for growing your app’s audience, Jason Rosenblum, Mobile Solutions Consultant at Google, shares tips for effectively engaging users.

1. Optimize your on-boarding experience: The first-run of your app is critical in selling its value and utility. Jason suggests using A/B testing to experiment with different features, such as adding an app tutorial or custom discount code.


2. Measure user engagement and understand how it connects to your business: Knowing whether, when, and how frequently users return to your site allows you to strategically send notifications, identify pain points, and launch features. Cohort analysis indicates patterns in user behavior by aligning all metrics by the different days of user experience, regardless of the specific day a user starts using your app.
   
   While Google Analytics offers standard measurement options -- average session duration, active users, loyalty, recency, audience overview -- consider the nature of your business to pinpoint significant custom metrics. Jason explains, "You need your analytics to make sense for your business. For example, if you're running a hotel booking site, you want to know the number of hotel searches being run and the number of hotel rooms being booked. Customize your analytics for your business so you can drive the right KPIs."


3. Remind users of your app’s value: 34% of app abandonment is fueled by a loss of interest, so create rich, contextual notifications like latest news, weather, or reminders to re-engage and increase your daily/monthly users. Google Cloud Messaging, for example, allows you to implement and manage notifications across Android and iOS. Jason advises using rich notifications to add quick actions, such as the ability to Archive an email via gMail notifications, and allowing users to control whether and how often they receive notifications.

The total time spent in apps per smartphone user is increasing, yet the total number of apps used has not changed. Users, therefore, are consolidating their time in certain favored apps. Incorporate Jason’s recommendations to keep your users engaged and come back tomorrow to hear from Dev Gogate, Mobile Solutions Consulting Manager at Google, to maximize your app quality.

Posted by Danielle Landress Associate Product Marketing Manager, Publisher Marketing

^{Danova, Tom. BI Intelligence: The App Store Marketing Report: User Behavior Trends, And Getting Apps To Stand Out. Business Insider, 2015.}

Users read, watch, listen, and connect with content across multiple screens throughout the day. With every interaction, they expect fast, safe, and relevant experiences regardless of where they are or what device they’re using. In this environment, publishers only have a split second to deliver the most relevant and highest paying ads to maximize their overall yield without increasing latency and potentially losing users.

A few weeks ago at the IAB Ad Operations Summit, I spoke about a new feature we are testing to deliver yield, speed, and control, called DoubleClick for Publishers First Look. Today, I’d like to give you some more details about it.

One of the fastest-growing segments of programmatic advertising has been from high-CPM, low-match-rate buyers, such as remarketers. These buyers are willing to pay a substantial premium to publishers in exchange for a ‘first look’ at all of a publisher’s inventory, but they need to see a lot of impressions to find the ones they value. The standard implementation of this first look has been through a header bidding tag to indicate interest. While this works, unfortunately it has drawbacks. It adds latency to every pageview, gives one buyer preferential access, and gives up the control and protection of an ad exchange. A better solution would reduce or eliminate latency, enable any selected buyer to compete, and allow publishers to manage demand just as they do with other private or open marketplaces.

First Look does just that. It allows publishers to give trusted programmatic buyers the opportunity to bid on 100% of their inventory -- even ahead of sponsorships and reservations. By allowing these buyers to see more inventory, and by putting them in real-time competition with each other, publishers in our Beta test have seen an average 10% lift in revenue. First Look is simple to set up (no added line items), creates zero added latency (no additional ad requests), and works across all channels and formats. And since First Look is part of the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, you don’t lose any of the controls and protections you already rely on like creative review, category blocking, or malware protection.

“First Look has shown strong performance, increasing our revenue by a double digit percentage across all of our properties. There were no added tags and no need to change our page setup. Best of all, there has been no impact to what our users experience when they visit our properties, regardless of the device they’re using."
Jeremy Hlavacek, Vice President, Programmatic, The Weather Company.

We believe that First Look is good for buyers, too. According to Sam Cox, Vice President at MediaMath:

“First Look is an exciting step towards having all demand compete, simultaneously. Access to more users who are typically consumed by guarantees will drive higher ROI, and the high prices of the inventory should dispel any myth that programmatic is not premium."
Sam Cox, Vice President, OPEN Global Media Management, MediaMath

As I mentioned at the IAB Ad Ops Summit, DoubleClick’s mission is to help our publisher partners grow their ad revenues in a healthy long-term market. With First Look we are striving to create a solution that delivers lift for publishers without sacrificing consumer experience or publisher controls.

We’re excited to launch DoubleClick for Publishers First Look to all publishers early in 2016. Space in our beta is limited, but if you’re interested in getting set-up before the holiday rush, contact your account manager today. And in the coming weeks, stay tuned for more tips on how to maximize your overall yield.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack Director, Product Management

During the 37 hours per month typically spent in apps, people look to their mobile devices for information and entertainment.

This comes as no surprise, however, to our DoubleClick customers. You already see most of your audience is mobile: more than half the queries on our platform today come from mobile devices, across mobile web and apps. This holiday season will bring increased traffic and even greater potential to grow revenue, peaking in January. Mobile app installs are expected to increase by 150% on Christmas Day compared to an average day in December.

To help you take advantage of the surge in user activity on mobile, and particularly in apps, we’ve gathered our most actionable research and best practices. Make the most of the holiday app frenzy with this four-day mobile bootcamp on reaching, engaging, and monetizing your app audiences.

Grow your app’s audience

Of the five hours per day that US consumers spend on smartphones, 54% of digital media time is spent in apps. How can you ensure your app is one of those? Cheney Tsai, our Mobile Solutions Consultant at Google, recommends five steps to help you connect with your audience everywhere.

1. Get people talking about your app: 52% of users learn about an app from friends, family, or colleagues, proving yet again word-of-mouth is a reliable promotion method. Cheney suggests using App Invites, a beta feature for iOS and Android, which allows users to invite Google contacts to your app via email and SMS. As explained by Cheney, "First impressions matter! App Invites allow you to reach new users with a warm welcome, which could be game-changing for the long term value of your user. You can even reward the sender/receiver with a custom deal just for them."


2. Make it easy for your existing users to find you, everywhere: By expanding your house ad campaigns to cross-promote on existing properties, you can target desktop users in addition to those on Android and iOS. Use App Indexing to redirect your SEO based traffic to your app; users who have the app are redirected into it while those without the app are prompted to install. Also, make sure your Google Play Store badge is prominently displayed on your website. Users are 47% more likely to trust and download apps upon seeing the Google Play badge!


3. Optimize your creatives to pique users’ interests in stores: Your app’s presentation in app stores directly impacts downloads. Since the icon is the first impression, make it polished and descriptive with a featured image demonstrative of your app’s uniqueness. Experiment with the Play Store’s A/B testing features for different versions of graphic assets, titles, and descriptions. Cheney recommends playing up keywords with which users are most likely to find your app!


4. Identify high performing channels and optimize with better analytics: Pinpoint your most successful app install campaigns and creatives to create an effective promotion strategy. For both iOS and Android, you can use Google Analytics to understand your user drop off points. Dive even deeper with app install tracking and custom campaigns to identify your top app referrers!


5. Listen to your users and address their concerns: User comments may offer constructive feedback, so it’s integral to have a plan in place to respond and make changes. In Google Play Developer Console, you can reply to reviews to help users overcome a problem or communicate relevant information. According to developers like James Jerlecki at Text Plus, “The Reply to Reviews feature has essentially given me that direct line [to users] that I didn’t have before.”Just remember your reply is publicly visible, so ensure you have the right person in your organization replying.

With over 3.1 million apps across the Google Play and Apple stores, your app needs to be present whenever users are looking to discover new apps and stand out from the crowd when they find your app. Check out this blog tomorrow for recommendations from Jason Rosenblum, Mobile Solutions Consultant at Google, for engaging your users.

Posted by Danielle Landress Associate Product Marketing Manager, Publisher Marketing

Mobile is changing the way people experience content - including advertising. Every time they reach for their devices, they expect to find what they are looking for and be engaged, and they quickly look elsewhere if their experience is poor. In this environment, publishers must take new approaches to advertising to grow revenue. More than ever before, advertising experiences need to be relevant and respectful of the user’s context in the moment.

At DoubleClick, we’ve been investing heavily to help publishers address this challenge. With DoubleClick Ad Exchange, we’ve built programmatic technologies that scale advertising to wherever users are, in the moments that they’re most likely to respond. We’ve also developed mobile-first, immersive ad formats to keep users engaged and ensure advertiser goals are met. Today we’re excited to bring these two areas of investment together for our DoubleClick customers with programmatic support for native and video formats on mobile.

Enabling publishers to sell native ads programmatically

Earlier this year, we announced support for native formats in DoubleClick for Publishers. Now we’re also enabling publishers to sell native ads programmatically, both in the open auction and in private marketplaces, on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This is available now in apps and will roll out for cross-screen native ads over the next few months. Beta testers of these features, including eBay, have already experienced strong results.

As a pioneer in the programmatic space, eBay recently rolled out its Native Mobile Programmatic solutions, which have revolutionized the way brands deliver their message to the right person, at the right time. Since the launch of its new native ad unit, eBay is seeing a 3.6x increase in ad engagement on average, with some campaigns delivering click-through rates up to 5%.

“We’re focused on leveraging DoubleClick’s technical footprint to bring scalability to our native mobile programmatic offering,” says Brian Brownie, Director of U.S. Display Operations & Programmatic Advertising at eBay. “Our success with desktop private marketplaces, backed by eBay insights, has unlocked massive client adoption and this next phase of mobile delivery is a continuation of the effort.”

"The eBay Native in-app offering has a very powerful combination of attributes — high quality inventory, programmatic access and a cross-channel audience at a scale few can match,” says Michael Collins, CEO of Adelphic, a leading mobile and cross-channel DSP. “These attributes combine to give brands a unique and high-impact opportunity for their advertising investment, especially in the upcoming holiday season.”

Introducing programmatic support for mobile video interstitials in apps

Along with native ads, we’re also introducing programmatic support for mobile video interstitials in apps on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Video is key to driving brand impact in the moments that matter, no matter where they occur. With these new immersive, full-screen video ads available programmatically, again in both the open auction and in private marketplaces, publishers can offer their advertising partners a new way to bring engaging brand experiences to users seamlessly, driving advertiser performance and growing publisher revenue. During beta tests, publishers realized gains as high as 30% CPM in interstitial video compared to regular interstitial performance.^*

Together, these innovations help address a strong demand from ad buyers for native and mobile video formats that can be bought programmatically.

"We've been a longtime supporter of DoubleClick’s programmatic solutions for mobile,” says Adam Foroughi, CEO and Co-Founder of AppLovin Corporation. "The Native and Mobile App Video ads on AdX are in high demand among our buyers and have shown strong performance both for advertisers and publishers. We're happy launch partners with DoubleClick on these new initiatives."

As the digital world around us continues to shift, these innovations are just some of the ways we’re helping publishers and advertisers adapt to changing consumer preferences and thrive.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack Director, Product Management

^{Source: eBay Ad Serving Reports, in-app home screen placements, FY 2015.
*There are many factors that impact video demand on a publisher's app and experiences may vary.}

When advertisers pay for an ad, the chance for it to be seen is a basic expectation. Advertisers shouldn’t have to pay extra to measure and ensure that it was viewable. These expectations drove the launch of Active View back in 2013, an effort to establish a neutral and common set of viewability metrics used by both advertisers and publishers. Since then we've continued to invest in this technology across DoubleClick, YouTube and the Google Display Network, and today we're happy to share two new updates that will help advertisers and publishers run more effective cross-screen campaigns.

Announcing Active View optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager - A better way to programmatically buy viewable impressions

Today, we're introducing Active View bid optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager for clients globally. This new bid optimization feature uses the collective intelligence from many signals (e.g. URL, time of day, page category) to predict, impression by impression, the probability that it will be viewable. It then dynamically adjusts bids higher or lower based on that probability to deliver the viewable CPM target that advertisers set for their video and display campaigns. Active View optimization delivers what advertisers actually care about - the total volume of viewable impressions - and doesn’t fixate on a viewable percentage.

This will help solve a common problem: when marketers buy viewable impressions programmatically using current viewability targeting, the decision to bid on a single impression is very basic. Buyers choose a target viewable percentage (e.g. 50%) and their programmatic buying system bids the same amount for any impressions with a likelihood of being viewed above that target - or nothing at all for impressions with a likelihood of being viewed below that target. This means that buyers are missing out on wide swaths of inventory that may actually be viewable and are driving up competition (and CPMs) for the inventory they are buying.

Announcing Active View for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange - Bringing holistic viewability measurement to publishers

We believe that viewability metrics should be a standard currency between buyers and sellers. To enable this, we've been investing in features that allow publishers to see and report on a holistic picture of viewability across their channels and content. We're continuing that momentum today by announcing Active View reporting for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. With the consumer shift to mobile reshaping how publishers engage with their audience and those interactions increasingly happening on mobile apps, this new measurement solution completes the picture for publishers helping them see how viewability plays out across all of their properties.

At Google, we remain committed to investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands and publishers through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions and partnerships with leading third parties. These announcements are two big steps in our ongoing effort to help our clients measure every moment that matters.

Posted by:

Ari Feldman
Product Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers Reporting and Active View
Deepti Bhatnagar
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager Brand Measurement and Optimization

Last week, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced the “Verified by TAG” initiative to help increase transparency of digital advertising transactions across the industry. We’re fully supportive of both programs outlined in TAG’s announcement and we’re currently in the process of applying for TAG Registration. To support the adoption of Payment IDs across the ecosystem, starting today our version of Payment IDs is available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to all buyers globally.

Currently, if a programmatic buyer finds they’ve bought fraudulent inventory, there is no way to directly identify the supply source responsible for the fraud. The Payment ID system we proposed to the TAG Anti-Fraud working group fixes this problem by asking all supply sources (e.g. ad exchanges, ad networks, supply side platforms) of advertising inventory to create and provide unique and persistent anonymous identifiers that link every impression to who is paid in their accounting systems. If a buyer finds invalid activity from any source in their supply chain, these Payment IDs will help the buyer to identify who is responsible and blacklist those suppliers from their campaigns.

We’ve always invested heavily to keep DoubleClick Ad Exchange free of invalid activity and ensure that money spent on our platform only goes to support legitimate publishers, app developers, and content creators. To show our commitment to a better ads ecosystem, accelerate the adoption of Payment IDs, and help DSPs start integrating them, we’ve implemented the standard as it exists today, and we’ll continue to work closely with TAG and others in the industry to formalize an industry-wide Payment ID program. When the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group has finalized the broader industry standard, we’ll happily make any changes to ensure we are compliant with TAG’s efforts.

"Google has been at the forefront of the fight against digital ad fraud, and this announcement advances our work together to develop an industry-wide Payment ID system. We look forward to continued collaboration with Google and other programmatic leaders through the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group to create a fully transparent digital ad supply chain that will expose the bad actors and cut off their financial support."
Mike Zaneis, CEO, TAG

Leading programmatic buyers, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Dstillery, Magnetic, MediaMath, Rocket Fuel, The Trade Desk, and Turn have all committed to integrating Payment IDs into their systems in the coming months.

Posted by:

Vegard Johnsen
Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality
Chetna Bindra
Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

As consumers spend more and more time on their mobile phones, providing ad experiences that respect their context is more important than ever before. Accordingly, publishers are increasingly embracing native ads -- highly customized advertising units that seamlessly integrate in a user’s content experience without being disruptive. However, creating and delivering these ads can be a challenge. That is why earlier this year we launched Native Ads on DoubleClick, and publishers like Trovit are beginning to see the results.

European publisher Trovit, a classified search engine for property, jobs, cars, products and holiday rentals, had over 50% of its total traffic in some countries coming from mobile devices. To grow mobile revenue while delivering better ad experiences to users, Trovit tested native ads on their apps, powered by DoubleClick, in two of their markets. Based on the promising tests, they expanded their native ads strategy to six more markets. The results: net revenue grew significantly with CPM growth up to 120% in certain markets.

Learn more about Trovit’s strategy and how DoubleClick helped here.

Posted by Nataliya Kozak
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Earlier this year, research from Google showed that nearly half of all display and video ads were not viewable. This has helped move forward the ongoing industry discussions around shifting digital ad buys from served impressions to viewable impressions. Simultaneously, advertiser demand for 100% viewable impressions, where advertisers only pay publishers for impressions that are viewable based on the current industry standard as defined by the MRC, has continued to grow.

To help publishers tackle this complex issue, we partnered with experts from The Washington Post and Forbes along with the DoubleClick for Publishers and Active View teams at Google to create an educational case study that surfaces key issues publishers should consider as they respond to RFPs for 100% viewable impressions.

The illustrative scenario in the case study walks through how a sales director at the fictional publisher, The Hourly Report, responds to a RFP from the fictional advertiser, Eh-Okay, for a commitment to provide 100% viewable impressions. The case study references two fictional viewability measurement technologies, Ad Chemist and Bridge, along with Google’s Active View solution, to represent the fact that there’s more than one way for advertisers and publishers to measure viewability.

“At Forbes, we’ve been preparing to transact on viewable impressions for about three years. Done right, viewability will be good for the advertiser, consumer and the ecosystem. Partnering with Google on initiatives like this are a great way to analyze the best approach to deliver a viewable campaign. From technology choices and ad placements to client relationships and overall sell-through rates, each element of a viewable campaign carries significant weight, and the case study we put together demonstrates that.” -Alyson M. Papalia, VP Digital Advertising Strategy & Operations, Forbes Media

"The potential for an ad to be seen is an extremely reasonable expectation for a marketer and their agency...especially from a premium publisher such as The Washington Post. As the concept is still relatively new, challenges exist with making it an absolute reality. It is key that we are on the forefront of helping to aggressively move the conversation and process forward, and partnering with Google and DoubleClick on efforts like this case study to help educate the industry is a key step in the right direction." -Jed Hartman, Chief Revenue Officer, The Washington Post

We’re strong believers that the viewability discussion should be just a starting point for publishers and advertisers: understanding whether an ad had a chance to be seen is the first step on the path to ultimately being able to measure whether it had impact. Adopting a single industry standard for viewability - like the MRC defined standard that Google supports - is a critical first step along the path to transacting media exclusively based on viewable impressions.

^{Read the full case study on DoubleClick.com}

	Lauren Ashcraft Strategic Account Manager, Revenue Solutions
	Justin Pang Strategic Partnerships Lead

Cross-posted from The Official Google Blog

Smartphones and tablets have revolutionized the way we access information, and today people consume a tremendous amount of news on their phones. Publishers around the world use the mobile web to reach these readers, but the experience can often leave a lot to be desired. Every time a webpage takes too long to load, they lose a reader—and the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions. That's because advertisers on these websites have a hard time getting consumers to pay attention to their ads when the pages load so slowly that people abandon them entirely.

Today, after discussions with publishers and technology companies around the world, we’re announcing a new open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. We want webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics to work alongside smart ads, and to load instantaneously. We also want the same code to work across multiple platforms and devices so that content can appear everywhere in an instant—no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device you’re using.

The project relies on AMP HTML, a new open framework built entirely out of existing web technologies, which allows websites to build light-weight webpages. To give you a sense of what a faster mobile web might look like, we’ve developed this demo on Google Search:

Over time we anticipate that other Google products such as Google News will also integrate AMP HTML pages. And today we’re announcing that nearly 30 publishers from around the world are taking part too.

This is the start of an exciting collaboration with publishers and technology companies, who have all come together to make the mobile web work better for everyone. Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress.com, Chartbeat, Parse.ly and LinkedIn are among the first group of technology partners planning to integrate AMP HTML pages.

In the coming months we’ll work with other participants in the project to build more features and functionality focused on some key areas:

• Content: Publishers increasingly rely on rich content like image carousels, maps, social plug-ins, data visualizations, and videos to make their stories more interactive and stand out. They also need to implement ads and analytics in order to monetize the content and to understand what their readers like and dislike. The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project provides an open source approach, allowing publishers to focus on producing great content, while relying on the shared components for high performance and great user experience. The initial technical specification—developed with input and code from our partners in the publishing and technology sectors—is being released today on GitHub.
• Distribution: Publishers want people to enjoy the great journalism they create anywhere and everywhere, so stories or content produced in Spain can be served in an instant across the globe in, say, Chile. That means distribution across all kinds of devices and platforms is crucial. So, as part of this effort, we’ve designed a new approach to caching that allows the publisher to continue to host their content while allowing for efficient distribution through Google's high performance global cache. We intend to open our cache servers to be used by anyone free of charge.
• Advertising: Ads help fund free services and content on the web. With Accelerated Mobile Pages, we want to support a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies. Any sites using AMP HTML will retain their choice of ad networks, as well as any formats that don’t detract from the user experience. It’s also a core goal of the project to support subscriptions and paywalls. We’ll work with publishers and those in the industry to help define the parameters of an ad experience that still provides the speed we’re striving for with AMP.

We hope the open nature of Accelerated Mobile Pages will protect the free flow of information by ensuring the mobile web works better and faster for everyone, everywhere.

Posted by David Besbris
Vice President Engineering, Search

Today we’re excited to launch our new Certified Publishing Partner program.

Certified Publishing Partners are trained experts on AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick Ad Exchange who could help you earn more from your sites while also saving you time. Whether you’re just starting out with ads, fine-tuning your existing ad setup or looking for brand new revenue sources, Certified Publishing Partners are ready to help you achieve your goals. They know how to make online ads work harder for you so you can spend more time creating and publishing your great content.

Get superior account management

Certified Publishing Partners are experts at account management services such as:

Full-service ad operations, implementation and testing

Mobile, web, app and responsive design and development

Content moderation

Video integration

Monetization

Ad customization

Feel confident

When you see the Certified Publishing Partner badge it means that a partner has been carefully vetted and meets Google's rigorous qualification standards. They have received high rankings in client satisfaction. They are, in short, a trusted business partner.

The Certified Partner Program is officially open for business today. Learn more about the program and see a list of our partners. Then let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Posted by Sahar Golestani
SMB Publishing Marketing Manager

Over the years, we’ve found that maximizing competition for every impression produces the best results for you. That’s why we’ve developed new Custom and Flexible Ad Size controls in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to bring you even more competition for every impression so you can sell any ad size programmatically.

Maximum demand for all ad sizes

Region-specific ad sizes have always been difficult to monetize programmatically because they typically do not match IAB standard ad sizes. Now with Custom Size controls on DoubleClick Ad Exchange publishers can easily create and sell ads of any size programmatically. For example, in Northern Europe where the 800x250 ad size is popular, publishers can now benefit from the programmatic demand of Ad Exchange with all the controls and reporting they’re familiar with.

In addition to making it easier to implement Custom Sizes, we’re making it possible to increase the demand available to every ad with Flexible Size controls. Publishers can now allow any ad slot to accept bids from multiple ad creative sizes. For example, a custom size slot like 320x300 can now be filled with popular sizes like 300x250 and 250x250 in addition to exact 320x300 matches. Flexible Ad Sizes is now live on all ad slots for publishers globally and publishers can control the range of sizes their slots accept with the Flexible Size rule type.

With Custom and Flexible Ad Size controls publishers globally can sell ads of any size and maximize yield for them with programmatic demand. During testing, we observed a revenue increase across all Ad Exchange inventory with some publishers seeing CPM gains as high as 30% for affected ad slots.

"Custom Ad Sizes has enabled us to move the bulk of our programmatic deal making to DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which has simplified things a lot. The Finnish market is very much dominated by market-specific ad sizes, especially 980x400 and 300x300."
Ville Holopainen, Sr. Operations and Development Manager, Fonecta

Posted by Zutao Zhu
Software Engineer, DoubleClick

Since its launch in 2008, HTML5 has quickly gained widespread adoption and is now becoming the standard for developing digital creatives. The advertising industry is responding, and increasing numbers of advertisers and agencies are building HTML5 creatives.

If you’re a publisher, this means you’ll want to make your site HTML5-ready and help advertisers get up to speed on developing these new creatives. We know the transition from Flash to HTML5 will require some short-term work on your part, but we’re here to help you and advertisers with the process.

What’s so great about HTML5?

HTML5 has seen high adoption rates for a number of reasons.

One key to its popularity is that HTML5 offers strong cross-device support—the language works well on a variety of browsers and mobile devices. This is hugely important now that more people are searching on mobile devices than on desktops.

HTML5 also plays higher-quality video faster—with an average bandwidth reduction of 35 percent. YouTube notably began defaulting users to its HTML5 player this January.

Browsers have taken note of HTML5’s speed and other benefits and have begun introducing power-saving plugins and reducing support for Flash. To increase page-load times, Chrome recently began auto-pausing Flash content that is not a primary part of a page. Safari had already done this and Firefox blocked Flash from auto-loading in July.

Getting ready for HTML5

With the web moving quickly in the direction of HTML5, here some steps that you, as a publisher, can take to prepare for this transition:

1. Update your creative specifications: Explicitly include HTML5 as a supported technology and increase associated file-size limits to support large HTML5 creatives.
2. Educate advertisers: Share the benefits of HTML5 and provide HTML5 creative specifications to your advertisers so they can build creatives that work on your site.
3. Train your teams: Educate your team about HTML creative specifications and let them know what to do when they receive HTML5 ads from advertisers.
4. Assist advertisers: Share free HTML5 ad conversion and creation tools with advertisers to ease their transition to HTML5.

All of this and is covered in our new guide to help publishers move to HTML5. If you’re looking for more information as you’re transitioning to HTML5, check out the HTML5 resources and HTML5 Toolkit on the Rich Media Gallery.

Also, our Doubleclick Rich Media team is kicking off an HTML5 Hangout series, where over five weeks we’ll set aside an hour to explore topics ranging from how to QA HTML5 ads to building dynamic creative (See the complete Hangout schedule). The first hangout is on September 10th (3pm - 4pm EST) and will introduce you to HTML5 development tools and best practices. Register here.

We know that change can be hard, so we want to make your move to the future of digital advertising a bit easier.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Nearly 60% of smartphone users expect their favorite apps to look visually appealing¹. We’ve always believed that in-app ads can enhance an app’s overall experience by being well designed. So today we’re announcing a completely new look for our interstitial in-app ad formats - also known as full-screen ads - that run on apps in the AdMob network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Inspired by Material Design, the new app install interstitial comes with a beautiful cover photo, a round install button, and matching color schemes. Technology called “color extraction” makes the ads more consistent with the brand's look and feel -- we extract a dominant color either from the cover photo or app icon and apply it to the footer and install button. We found that having a greater variety of designs and colors can improve conversion rate.

Other features include the app’s rating, and a screenshot gallery which appears when a user taps ‘More images’, so users can learn more about the app without leaving the ad.

The previous design for our app install ads on the left, and our new version on the right.
Different examples of color matching.
Our app install formats have driven more than a billion downloads across Android and iOS. You can use these new designs automatically when you run a mobile app install campaign on the AdMob network in AdWords. That’s right, no extra work required!

Next, our new text-based ads are easier to read, and contain a larger headline and a round call-to-action button that clicks through to a website.

On the left, the previous text ad interstitial design, and the new version on the right.
As with other ad format innovations, our ads UI team test multiple designs - ten in this case over the course of a year - to find final versions that increase clicks and conversions for advertisers, and a positive experience for users. Both app install and text ad formats appear within the app and can be closed easily, so users can return to what they were doing with a single tap.

As we announced at Google I/O this year, the volume of interstitial impressions has more than doubled across AdMob since last July, so now’s a great time to get your business in front of more app users.

If you’re a developer looking to learn more about earning with in-app interstitial ads in your app, visit AdMob now. These new designs will also be available to developers monetizing their apps with DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Posted by Pasha Nahass
Product Manager

^{1. Mobile App Marketing Insights: How Consumers Really Find and Use Your Apps, Google & Ipsos Media CT, May 2015}

As a brand trying to reach consumers in today’s increasingly fragmented media landscape, it is critical that you understand the impact of your ads on brand metrics such as awareness and consideration.

Viewability is the starting point, an initial understanding of whether the ad had a chance to be seen. We have talked before about why measuring the viewability of advertising matters.

In December 2014, we shared insights on the state of display ad viewability across the web. As a continuation of that effort, in May we released new insights from our video ad platforms, including YouTube, to start the discussion about the state of video ad viewability.

We wanted to take this research a step further, by analyzing the relationship between viewability and brand metrics.

To do so, we took our Brand Lift solution, which gives you insights into what impact your ads have on the consumer journey - from awareness, to ad recall, to brand interest - and tied the data to viewability metrics from our Active View technology for a set of YouTube TrueView ads. By connecting these two solutions, we were able to draw out some insights about the relationship between viewability and brand metrics.

Sight, sound and motion combined drive higher lift

When it comes to brand metrics, ad recall is a foundation for measuring the impact of your ad. As a brand advertiser, knowing if your ad breaks through with users is a key first step to understanding the overall impact of an ad on a suite of brand metrics. In this analysis, we were able to analyze how being able to hear and see your ad affected a user’s ability to recall your ad.

Our data shows that users exposed to even one aspect of your video ad (audio or video only), exhibit significant lift in ad recall. However, the full immersive experience of sight, sound and motion delivers more ad recall than either audio or video alone. In fact, the impact on ad recall was 23% higher when users were exposed to ads with audio and video together versus ads with just audio alone.

The longer in view, the better you do (on brand metrics)

Time in view also plays a large role when it comes to moving the needle on brand awareness and consideration. We recently introduced the ability for Active View users to measure average viewable time - the average time, in seconds, a given ad appeared on screen - in Doubleclick Bid Manager. By connecting these measurements, we can see the relationship between viewable time and brand metrics.

We found that there is a consistent relationship between how long an ad is viewable and increases in brand awareness and consideration. The longer a user views your ad, the higher the lift in these two important brand metrics:

What the results mean for your brand

These results prompt you to think about your brand advertising in a few important ways:

• Are users viewing your creative for longer periods of time? Brand metrics continue to get higher the longer a user views your ad.
• Are you buying the right media to have an impact on brand metrics? YouTube’s opt-in TrueView ads are uniquely suited to deliver long-form video content at scale for brand advertisers.
• Finally, are you thinking beyond viewability to capture effectiveness metrics? You want your ads to move consumers at the moments that matter, and measuring the impact on brand metrics will make for more effective ad spend.

This is just the beginning of understanding what impacts brand metrics for video ads. As brands look to measure the effectiveness of their digital video advertising, a continued understanding of what factors drive brand metrics will be crucial to more effective brand spend.

Read further research on the impact of online video.

To read all of our research on viewability, check out thinkwithgoogle.com/viewability.

To see how viewability is measured, visit our interactive Active View demo.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

Over the past few years we’ve been committed to investing in a suite of new metrics that would be as actionable for brand marketers as the click has become for performance advertising. In that spirit, today we are announcing a new GRP solution, comScore vCE in DoubleClick, and updates to our Active View viewability solution.

Our goal is to enable brand marketers to answer some essential questions about the success of their campaigns:

Announcing an update to Active View - Ensuring your ads are seen

If a human being never has a chance to see your ad, then nothing else matters - the campaign will not succeed. That’s why we’ve been steadily introducing Active View technology across our product suite: the ability to buy based on viewability in AdWords, and reporting on viewability in our DoubleClick advertiser and publisher platforms. In a recent study that we published we found that 46% of all video ads on the web did not even have a chance to be seen. This contextualized the importance of video viewability and the launch of Active View for Video a few months ago.

We are firm believers in the IAB / MRC standard as the minimum viable definition for a viewable impression. We also recognize that there is a need for secondary metrics that complement the single standard and support individual advertisers’ objectives. In light of this, we are announcing that starting today, Active View users will be able to measure average viewable time - the average time, in seconds, a given ad appeared on screen - in DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Since introducing Active View, we’ve seen tremendous momentum with over 80% of clients having adopted our viewability technology. These advertiser and publisher clients have told us time and again that they would like to use Active View to measure viewability across all their media buys. So we are working with these clients to expand Active View beyond Google’s media and platforms.

Announcing comScore vCE in DoubleClick: Ensuring you reach the right audience faster

Last year we announced our partnership with comScore to bring to market a completely tagless and digitally actionable metric that would make real-time GRP measurement a reality for advertisers and publishers. Today we are announcing the culmination of that partnership: comScore vCE in DoubleClick.

comScore vCE in DoubleClick is the first independent, completely tagless, audience delivery measurement service to be directly integrated into an ad server and will give advertisers and publishers a trusted comScore audience measurement solution for both video and display that is effortless to set up and actionable.

This new GRP measurement solution is now widely available for all of our DoubleClick customers across DoubleClick Digital Marketing and DoubleClick for Publishers. This means advertisers can now see if they’re reaching their target audience as it happens. And publishers will be able to make adjustments during the course of a campaign to meet their advertisers’ needs -- no more after the fact reporting and make-goods.

With this tagless and single-click workflow, advertiser and publisher clients will have 100% coverage. Publishers will have the ability to forecast their audience availability to ensure they meet advertiser commitments. For advertisers, in addition to scheduled reports we are introducing new audience cards that surface reports with simple and easy to read visuals.

Measurement Matters

We will continue to look for opportunities to raise the bar on measurement through a combination of product innovation and partnership with industry leaders.

We’re excited about the progress we’ve made in enabling advertisers to ensure that their ads reached the right audience and were actually seen. But our biggest investments in measurement still lie ahead as we work to help advertisers understand what their audiences thought and ultimately did as a result of seeing their ads.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

As more brand dollars move to digital, and the technology supporting digital advertising evolves, publishers have a tremendous opportunity to boost their revenues and profits. However, capitalizing on this opportunity requires publishers to evolve their sales strategies, fast.

As programmatic buying continues to grow, one of the first steps publishers must take is to adopt a holistic cross-channel ad sales strategy.

A new op-ed by Paul Zwillenberg, Global Leader of The Boston Consulting Group’s Media Sector, explores this idea and shares the strategies and tactics employed by today’s most successful digital publishers.

Head on over to DoubleClick.com to read the full article.

Posted by Yamini Gupta
Product Marketing, DoubleClick

Today the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced a new pilot blacklist to protect advertisers across the industry. This blacklist comprises data-center IP addresses associated with non-human ad requests. We're happy to support this effort along with other industry leaders—Dstillery, Facebook, MediaMath, Quantcast, Rubicon Project, The Trade Desk, TubeMogul and Yahoo—and contribute our own data-center blacklist. As mentioned to Ad Age and in our recent call to action, we believe that if we work together we can raise the fraud-fighting bar for the whole industry.

Data-center traffic is one of many types of non-human or illegitimate ad traffic. The newly shared blacklist identifies web robots or “bots” that are being run in data centers but that avoid detection by the IAB/ABC International Spiders & Bots List. Well-behaved bots announce that they're bots as they surf the web by including a bot identifier in their declared User-Agent strings. The bots filtered by this new blacklist are different. They masquerade as human visitors by using User-Agent strings that are indistinguishable from those of typical web browsers.

In this post, we take a closer look at a few examples of data-center traffic to show why it’s so important to filter this traffic across the industry.

Impact of the data-center blacklist

When observing the traffic generated by the IP addresses in the newly shared blacklist, we found significantly distorted click metrics. In May of 2015 on DoubleClick Campaign Manager alone, we found the blacklist filtered 8.9% of all clicks. Without filtering these clicks from campaign metrics, advertiser click-through rates would have been incorrect and for some advertisers this error would have been very large.

Below is a plot that shows how much click-through rates in May would have been inflated across the most impacted of DoubleClick Campaign Manager’s larger advertisers.

hidden ad slots -- meaning that not only was the traffic fake, but the ads couldn’t have been seen even if they had been legitimate human visitors.

http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html is illustrative of these nine webpages with hidden ad slots. The webpage has no visible content other than a single 300×250px ad. This visible ad is actually in a 300×250px iframe that includes two ads, the second of which is hidden. Additionally, there are also twenty-seven 0×0px hidden iframes on this page with each hidden iframe including two ad slots. In total there are fifty-five hidden ads on this page and one visible ad. Finally, the ads served on http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html appear to advertisers as though they have been served on legitimate websites like indiatimes.com, scotsman.com, autotrader.co.uk, allrecipes.com, dictionary.com and nypost.com, because the tags used on http://vedgre.com/7/gg.html to request the ad creatives have been deliberately spoofed.

An example of collateral damage

Unlike the traffic described above, there is also automated data-center traffic that impacts advertising campaigns but that hasn’t been generated for malicious purposes. An interesting example of this is an advertising competitive intelligence company that is generating a large volume of undeclared non-human traffic.

This company uses bots to scrape the web to find out which ad creatives are being served on which websites and at what scale. The company’s scrapers also click ad creatives to analyze the landing page destinations. To provide its clients with the most accurate possible intelligence, this company’s scrapers operate at extraordinary scale and they also do so without including bot identifiers in their User-Agent strings.

While the aim of this company is not to cause advertisers to pay for fake traffic, the company’s scrapers do waste advertiser spend. They not only generate non-human impressions; they also distort the metrics that advertisers use to evaluate campaign performance—in particular, click metrics. Looking at the data across DoubleClick Campaign Manager this company’s scrapers were responsible for 65% of the automated data-center clicks recorded in the month of May.

Going forward

Google has always invested to prevent this and other types of invalid traffic from entering our ad platforms. By contributing our data-center blacklist to TAG, we hope to help others in the industry protect themselves.

We’re excited by the collaborative spirit we’ve seen working with other industry leaders on this initiative. This is an important, early step toward tackling fraudulent and illegitimate inventory across the industry and we look forward to sharing more in the future. By pooling our collective efforts and working with industry bodies, we can create strong defenses against those looking to take advantage of our ecosystem. We look forward to working with the TAG Anti-fraud working group to turn this pilot program into an industry-wide tool.

Vegard Johnsen Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality

Publishers’ growth in programmatic revenue is outpacing traditional direct sales for desktop and mobile across display and video advertising. New technologies like “programmatic guaranteed” are further blurring the lines between direct and programmatic channels.

A new study by The Boston Consulting Group, commissioned by Google, found that despite this trend, many publishers are failing to appropriately capitalize on the programmatic opportunity. For example, the study found that less than 25 percent of programmatic team time is spent on value-creating activities, causing publishers to miss out on significant revenues.

The study also closely analyzed the operations of those publishers that consistently outperform their peers in terms of value creation and efficiency, and arrived at best practices and approaches other publishers can follow to achieve similar success. Using simpler ad tech stack configurations, best in class publishers were on average 30% more efficient, had up to 24% higher CPMs, and delivered 10% more impressions otherwise lost to discrepancies.

Head over to DoubleClick.com to read the full study.

Posted by Yamini Gupta
Product Marketing, DoubleClick

At the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we discussed the implications for brands, broadcasters and publishers of the shift from Primetime to All-the-time.

As part of our presentation, we focussed on four ways for brands to break through the noise and cut through the cross-screen complexity to drive more effective video advertising:

• Be on the best screen for the moment
• Connect and engage with every interaction
• Buy smarter across every screen
• Focus on impact not views

Read the article on the new DoubleClick.com to learn what each of these mean for advertisers, broadcasters and publishers?

	Posted by Rany Ng Director of Product Management, Video & TV Advertising, Google
	Anish Kattukaran Product Marketing, Video Platforms & Brand Measurement, Google

Last week at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we announced the availability of Native Ads for Apps on our DoubleClick platforms. In this post, we’ll dive into the details of this new ad format and what it means for our clients.

The mobile revolution has changed the way we engage with content. We check our phones literally hundreds of times a day: to catch up with friends and family, read an article, or watch a video while waiting in line. In these moments, we believe ads have the best chance to be effective when they are placed with respect to a user’s context.

Imagine an ad that pops up in the middle of your game; it would be incredibly disruptive. But, one that appears between levels would feel more natural. Or, an ad that blocks your feed as you scroll through; that would be annoying. But, one that’s stitched within the feed would be almost expected. What’s necessary in today’s environment is native advertising—advertising that’s clearly marked and complements the user experience.

Introducing Native Ads on DoubleClick

Native ads fit in with the look and feel of publisher content, enabling better, more effective ad experiences for users. Context is incredibly important on mobile, and that’s why over the next few weeks we’re rolling out our native ad solution for apps to DoubleClick for Publishers clients globally.

Native ads for apps in DFP provides publishers with the full flexibility needed to create seamless ad experiences for their users. Instead of serving a static banner ad, DFP delivers ad components (headline, image, links, etc) to a publisher’s app where they’re rendered into a native ad defined by the developer’s code. By providing the building blocks of an ad, our native solution allows a publisher to create ads that are seamless with content, can take advantage of mobile features like swipe gestures and 3D animation, and can be adjusted to create beautiful ads for any device or screen size.

Setting up native ads for apps in DoubleClick for Publishers is easy. Publishers can choose from two of the most popular mobile formats, app install ads or content ads, or create fully custom native ads by including any additional fields for DFP to send to their app. In addition, publishers using our standard native ad formats can maximize revenue by accessing demand from our native ads beta in DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Of course, it’s essential that publishers clearly mark native ads as advertising. Ads that trick users into clicking or are indistinguishable from content are bad for the whole ecosystem, including users, advertisers, and publishers.

Native experiences are essential on mobile

When users pick up their phones, it’s critical that they’re presented with a seamless ad experience. With native ads in DFP, publishers can maintain a beautiful user experience in their apps while providing brands an opportunity to reach their audience on mobile. Advertisers should reach out to their publisher partners to find out how they can use native ads to connect with their customers and reach them when they’re most receptive.

To learn more about native ads in DoubleClick, check out our help center or, reach out to your account manager today. Also, visit the mobile solutions section of our website to see how DoubleClick can help you engage your audience on every screen.

Posted by Josh Cohen Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick

As Neal Mohan announced last week at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, Marketplace in DoubleClick Ad Exchange is now available to all customers globally, and we’re working to bring Programmatic Guaranteed to more publishers as soon as possible.

Today, the biggest brands and agencies are increasingly running premium digital campaigns across apps, videos, and native formats using programmatic technology, and we’re seeing this shift reflected across our platforms. Over the last year, the overall volume of programmatic transactions on our systems has grown 59%, while programmatic direct deals have jumped 2X. Today, eight of our top 25 publishers are selling at least 10% of their ad inventory through direct programmatic deals.

The growth of programmatic is just part of the story. Programmatic Direct deals, the channel of choice for many premium publishers, are also driving higher inventory prices. Preferred Deals and Private Auctions are generating CPMs that are double or triple what publishers see in the open auction. 

Introducing Marketplace in DoubleClick Ad Exchange

We see tremendous value in Programmatic Direct but, finding and connecting with all potential advertisers looking for premium offers is a challenge. That’s why we developed Marketplace, an easy to use interface for Ad Exchange buyers to discover, negotiate, and manage deals with the world’s best apps, sites, and properties. For publishers, Marketplace is where their brand is showcased through a customizable publisher profile, and where their programmatic direct offers are discoverable by programmatic buyers globally. 

Marketplace in DoubleClick Ad Exchange is just the beginning of how we see Programmatic sales evolving in the future. The programmatic buying trend shows no sign of slowing and, we believe even more premium deals will happen through programmatic channels. That’s why, over the rest of this year we’ll be rolling out a brand new way to transact through DoubleClick: Programmatic Guaranteed.

Blending Direct with Programmatic Sales

Programmatic Guaranteed allows publishers to offer their reserved, premium inventory via a new programmatic channel in DoubleClick for Publishers, and provide brands an opportunity to buy reservations in a more efficient way. Publishers can lock in revenue, while giving advertisers guaranteed access to premium inventory with programmatic targeting and frequency management. It simplifies the workflow of a guaranteed deal, cutting down the steps it takes to implement, from 40 steps to 4. And the best part, it does this all through our Real-Time Bidding infrastructure.

In our pilot testing with DoubleClick Bid Manager, Programmatic Guaranteed deals have been creating tremendous value. We’ve seen CPMs at 15-times open auction prices - on par with upfront or reserved campaigns. But in the future, we see incredible new opportunities for Programmatic Guaranteed. Since our solution utilizes Real-Time Bidding, instead of just automating line item booking in the ad server, we can open up innovative new deal types to give publishers enhanced flexibility that truly blends direct and programmatic capabilities.

We’re excited about the future of programmatic buying and selling and the possibilities it will bring for all of our partners. If you’re interested in learning more about Marketplace in DoubleClick Ad Exchange reach out to your account manager today, and stay tuned as we look to expand our pilot of Programmatic Guaranteed to more buyers. 

This is the first announcement in our post-DLS series. Join us over the next week as we release more details of all our recent product announcements. Next up, Native Ads in DoubleClick

Posted by Scott Spencer, Director of Product Management

This morning, we’re hosting the DoubleClick Leadership Summit in Key Biscayne, Florida. This marks the 15th year that we’ve been bringing together our large advertiser, agency and publisher partners to discuss the future of digital marketing. And we have a lot to discuss. As we convene today, we’re in the midst of one of the largest shifts in consumer behavior ever, thanks to the rise of mobile devices.

We no longer “go online” but instead, engage in many small moments throughout the day, reflexively turning to the nearest device to solve an immediate need. In these moments, we expect the right answer and we expect it right away. In these I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, I-want-to-buy moments decisions are made and preferences shaped. Brands that are there and relevant for consumers in these moments that matter win. 

Today, we’re announcing improvements to our DoubleClick products for advertisers and publishers designed to help them thrive in this moments-driven world. Here is a preview of what we’ll be announcing; you can also join us for the live stream, starting at 9 a.m. ET. 

View the live stream recording here.

Cross-device measurement, across the web

Today, the decision to make a purchase rarely starts and ends on the same device. For example you may first see an ad for a pair of running shoes while scrolling through the news at work, then actually decide to buy them a few days later when you realize your old ones need replacing. 

For almost two years, we’ve been investing in solutions that help marketers measure these cross-device conversions in AdWords. And the results have been amazing: marketers are finding that they see up to 16% more conversions from search when they look across devices and take the cross-screen journey into account. Check out our AdWords blog for some in-depth research on that front. 

Now, cross-device measurement is coming to all of our DoubleClick advertiser products, so marketers can measure conversions that start as a click on one device and end with a conversion on another for all their campaigns across the web, not just with the ads they buy from Google.

Cross-device measurement is already generating important insights for our clients. Here is what we heard from John Gray, SVP of Platforms & Partnerships at Team Detroit, a WPP agency:

“Cross-device measurement is a big step towards having metrics better represent what's actually happening with consumers in today's mobile-first world. This is essential insight for marketers. It not only allows us to achieve our clients' goals more efficiently, but helps us better understand the consumer journey, and reach them with the right messages as they take that path. In our early cross-device measurement tests, we're already seeing a material increase in conversions attributable to mobile, and making changes as a result.”

Support for native ads across DoubleClick

As consumers spend more and more time on their mobile phones, providing ad experiences that respect their context are more important than ever--for example an ad that shows up between levels of a mobile game, rather than disrupting the game itself. Publishers are embracing this change and introducing different types of “native” ad units that are designed to work within their environment, but it’s been a challenge for marketers and publishers to create and deliver these ads at scale. So we’re announcing support for native ads in DoubleClick. 

With this new solution, publishers can create their own clearly labeled custom native formats, and decide what ads on their apps should look like. DoubleClick then automatically generates the ads, serves them at scale, and provides metrics to fine tune those native ad campaigns. We will also provide standardized native templates that work across publishers at scale to make native ad buying easy for advertisers. 

Introducing Programmatic Guaranteed

In the early days of programmatic, it was all about direct response advertisers, buying and selling banner ads in an open auction. Today, however, programmatic is relied upon by major brands and premium publishers, across apps, mobile web, video and now native formats. 

Along with this expansion, we’re seeing that direct deals, those favored by brands and large publishers for premium inventory, are fast on the rise. Just across our own platforms, the volume of programmatic direct transactions has jumped 2x in the past year and eight of our top 25 publishers are now selling at least 10 percent of their impressions via programmatic direct.

To reflect this new reality, we’re introducing a new way of buying: Programmatic Guaranteed--guaranteed inventory, sold programmatically at pre-negotiated rates.

The early numbers show that this is truly premium inventory, on par with reservations--with CPMs 15x the open market rate.

And finally, we’re refreshing the DoubleClick brand (www.doubleclick.com) to better represent our focus on helping marketers and publishers succeed in today’s hyper-connected world. 

After all, connection is what we’re all about: connecting advertisers and publishers, brands and consumers, messages and moments. We’re excited about the updates announced today and can’t wait to see how marketers and publishers use these new tools to own THEIR moment.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Video & Display Advertising

Check back next week for our post-DLS blog series where we’ll dive deeper into each of these announcements.