Are you a new publisher to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and/or DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and are wondering where to find engaging, publisher-facing training materials?

Do you regularly review Google help centers but want more tailored content?

Or are you already a seasoned publisher who has been waiting for new training materials that would help you drive growth to your business?

No matter your publisher expertise, you can access valuable training materials at Publisher University, a website created specifically for DFP and Ad Exchange users. With Publisher University, you can learn about the product areas that are most valuable to you through tailored, self-study training modules.

Since its launch in 2014, Publisher University has become a one-stop training destination for DoubleClick publishers. There are solutions suited to your needs:

• Courses: Start with a level 1 course for a well-rounded understanding of how DFP and Ad Exchange work, and then demonstrate your knowledge by passing an exam. The goal is to provide a clear learning path for both products. You’ll even receive a printable certificate, the perfect accessory for bragging to your co-workers.
• Video Library: If you’re looking to find training on a specific topic, you’ll find all of the publisher training materials conveniently located in one place. With the Video Library, you can go ahead and pick the topics that are most relevant for you.
• What’s New: The What’s New video series is a great tool to help keep track of the latest feature releases on DFP and Ad Exchange, and see how they work.

Publisher University is constantly improving to help you learn, and has made numerous improvements to serve our publishers better. Highlights include:

• International language support: All Publisher University content is available in 11 languages, including: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional).
• Search: No need to click from page to page to find the video you’re looking for. Instead, you can search in the language of your choice for the topic you need to learn.
• Site responsiveness: Looking to learn on the go? Open Publisher University on your tablet or smartphone to let the learning continue when you’re away from your desk.

Access this high-quality content from the convenience of your own computer, phone or tablet. Especially with our latest updates to our learning resources, there’s never been a better time to learn.

Visit g.co/PublisherU today.

Posted by Danielle Chang
Ad Traffic Quality

Publishers create the stories, memes, shows and games that entertain and inform us everyday - and most of that content is funded by ads. Our goal at DoubleClick is to help these publishers thrive by delivering great user experiences on every screen, so they can keep us users happy and grow their revenue. That’s why we believe it’s important to share insights when we can, and partner closely with publishers to help them apply learnings from our research to support their businesses.

Calculating the cost of mobile speed

People expect great experiences wherever they’re consuming content, especially on mobile. But slow loading mobile sites are more than a user experience issue; they can cost publishers revenue. Our recent research, The Need for Mobile Speed, shows that mobile websites that load in 5 seconds can earn up to 2X more revenue than sites that load in 19 seconds, the industry average¹. To help publishers understand how much more revenue they could earn, we’ve published an interactive revenue calculator on DoubleClick.com showing how mobile page speed relates to ad revenue.

While there are many factors that can impact publisher revenue, the results provided by the calculator are based on analysis of thousands of mobile web domains combined with real revenue and site performance data from DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Google Analytics. By entering just a few data points from their current site, publishers can find out how much money they could earn with a faster site.

Partnering to solve mobile speed

Using lessons and insights from our mobile research, our teams work closely with publishers like Everyday Health and Sinclair Digital to help them improve their mobile experiences and deliver real business results.

After consulting and working together with our team, Everyday Health, Inc. took steps to accelerate their What to Expect mobile web pages.

“We were able to improve the time it takes to load the first part of the page by 33%, and we were able to improve the full page load by 78%, so that’s going to be miles better for a mom who’s impatient, or nervous, or anxious. She’s going to trust us more.”
-Diane Otter, Editor in Chief, Everyday Health

Sinclair Digital contacted various mobile experts to see what metrics they should use and how best to measure them. The DoubleClick team was able to give the Sinclair team a second opinion and specific advice on ways to reduce load times and increase engagement. After implementing changes, Sinclair’s was able to improve their average page speed by 500%.

Read more about how Everyday Health and Sinclair Digital improved their mobile web experiences and then see how much more you could earn with a faster mobile website.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager

^{1 DoubleClick, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, September 2016}

Google believes in the value of the open web, an ecosystem where users get access to information, and publishers are able to create and earn money from their content. And at DoubleClick, our product roadmap is focused on a simple premise: to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising. That commitment isn’t just for today, tomorrow or next quarter - we invest in solutions for the long-term, that will help publishers succeed for many years to come.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the smartphone, when we talk about the open web we are really talking about mobile: more than half of all ad queries on DoubleClick’s publisher platform are on mobile¹. At the same time, the fastest-growing form of content across all digital channels is video². Today, we’re launching three new betas, all designed to help publishers thrive in a mobile and video world.

Putting users first and delivering better ads

People expect great experiences wherever they’re consuming content. That’s why we built a flexible, component-based native advertising solution to help publishers deliver better ads that fit a user’s context. We’re excited to announce that we are bringing video to Native Ads on DoubleClick in a new beta offering.

Since May 2016, native ad impressions served through DoubleClick have more than doubled³ with publishers including The New York Times, Aller Media, Vogue, Zillow Group, Slate, Epicurious and eBay adopting our solution. With the addition of video to our native ads solution, publishers can now capture premium video advertising budgets on their non-video content.

According to Chris Quinn, Head of Commercial Operations at Kijiji, a subsidiary of eBay and an early tester of this solution:

“The [DoubleClick] native video templates — content and app-install — enable Kijiji to give our advertisers an alternative to banner and static native. We were excited about the ability to run assets seamlessly without embedded video players, which will hopefully give us a jumpstart in the video space. Testing has just begun across our iOS app, and we look forward to seeing positive results and potentially incorporating into our greater offering in 2017.”

Maximizing revenue while delivering the best user experience

Our research shows that people will not wait for slow content on mobile: over half of visits are abandoned when mobile web pages take longer than 3 seconds to load⁴. In this environment, publishers only have a split second to deliver the most relevant and highest paying ads to maximize their overall revenue without increasing latency and losing users.

At DoubleClick, we’ve consistently delivered server-side solutions that create the most revenue possible across all of a publisher’s inventory without sacrificing speed. For example, Dynamic Allocation has helped publishers earn up to a 24% lift in their programmatic revenue⁵ and publishers like Gannett have seen 15% greater lift in eCPMs for revenue from programmatic channels with new products like DoubleClick for Publishers First Look.

When speed matters, the fastest solutions yield the best results. That’s why we’re excited about our latest offering, Exchange Bidding. Exchange Bidding helps publishers maximize demand for every impression by letting them put multiple exchanges into competition in real time without adding any new client-side code. Since we announced it earlier this year, the number of participating publishers has grown 4x, the number of exchange partners has doubled, and we’ve moved the product from alpha into closed beta in the US.

Continuing this momentum, we’re happy to announce that we are expanding the beta of Exchange Bidding to include mobile apps, with Smaato as one of our first mobile app exchange partners.

“By integrating directly with DoubleClick for Publishers, Smaato can compete in real time for ad impressions based on price and priority, in parallel with other exchanges. We’re delighted to be an early participant in Exchange Bidding and look forward to expanding this solution to all of our partners.”
-Christian Sieweke, Senior Product Manager at Smaato.

Engaging users with personalized video experiences on every screen

Mobile and connected streaming devices are the new destination for digital video. Last year, ad impressions served to Connected TVs via DoubleClick Bid Manager grew over 225%⁶. Across all these screens, people expect personalized experiences no matter what they’re watching.

Earlier this year, we launched Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) for live TV on DoubleClick as a way to bring addressable advertising capabilities to broadcasters. Whether for live sporting events in France or the Presidential debates in the United States, partners like TF1 and Fox News have used DAI to deliver seamless, personalized ad experiences to all screens. In fact, for some of our biggest partners, DAI represents about a third of all their digital ad impressions, and the majority of their Connected TV impressions are being served via DAI.

Today, we’re excited to announce a beta offering to extend Dynamic Ad Insertion to video on demand (VOD). Publishers like A+E Networks are now inserting relevant, highly targeted ads into both long- and short-form VOD content across all devices, and delivering personalized ads while eliminating common pain points like buffering. This feature will be capable of serving both direct-sold and programmatic campaigns - in both cases delivering smarter, data-driven ads that perform better.

At Google, we know we’re only successful when our partners are successful. Today, building for sustainability means thoughtfully innovating to deliver mobile and video solutions that help publishers earn the most from their content while respecting user desires for better experiences.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack
Director of Product Management, Publisher Platforms

^{1 DoubleClick internal data, Oct - Nov 2016
2 eMarketer, “Growth of Average Time Spent per Day with Major Media by US Adults, 2013-2018 (% change)”, October 1, 2016
3 DoubleClick internal data, May - Oct 2016
4 DoubleClick, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, September 2016
5 Boston Consulting Group, “The Publisher’s Path to Profitability”, July 2015
6 DoubleClickThe State of Play”, July 2016}

In the coming quarters, all major browsers, including Chrome, are phasing out the use of Flash technologies in favor of HTML5. HTML5 is not only available on more devices, but also offers improved security, reduced power consumption and faster page load times for users.

We began our transition to HTML5 with display ads across Google and DoubleClick back in 2015. We are now continuing that transition by shifting video ads in DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google Display Network to HTML5 over the next few quarters as follows:

• Starting April 3rd, 2017, new Flash video ads will no longer be able to be uploaded into DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords.
• Starting July 3rd, 2017, Flash video ads will no longer be able to run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords. Additionally, our Active View and Verification tools for video will no longer use Flash.

Transition timeline for HTML5 Video

It’s important to begin updating your ads and websites to HTML5 technologies in preparation for these dates. We fully support HTML5 Video across DoubleClick and AdWords and provide the tools to ensure advertisers and publishers can easily migrate all video ads to HTML5.

For guidance and best practices to help your team with this transition, see Chrome one-sheeter, visit the DoubleClick help center or contact your DoubleClick sales representative.

Posted by Peentoo Patel and Sunil Gupta

Cross-posted from the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Blog

Over a year has passed since the AMP Project first launched with the vision of making mobile web experiences faster and better for everybody. From the very beginning, we’ve maintained that the AMP project would support publishers’ existing business models while creating new monetization opportunities. With regards to advertising, this meant giving publishers the flexibility to use the current technology and systems they’re used to, and evolving user-first mobile web initiatives like AMP for Ads (A4A).

With a growing number of publishers embracing the speed of AMP, today we’re addressing some of the ways in which we’re helping you do more with ads on AMP.

Serve ads from more than 70+ ad tech providers

Keeping with the open source nature of the project, more than 70+ advertising technology providers have already integrated with AMP. And that list is only growing. Existing tags that are delivered via a supported ad server also work in AMP. So, you can serve ads from both directly-sold campaigns as well as third-party ad networks and exchanges so long as they have support for AMP.

Keep 100% of the ad revenue

AMP is an open source project. It does not take a revenue share. AMP is not an advertising service provider or intermediary, and publishers can monetize AMP pages the same way you monetize HTML pages, keeping 100% of the revenue you earn based on negotiated rates with ad providers.

Choose the advertising experience on your pages

You can choose to serve any number of ads per page to serve in locations that works best for your content, including the first viewport. Just remember that regular ads in AMP load after the primary content. So, unless you’re loading the lightning fast A4A ads, we recommend placing the first ad below the first viewpoint to optimize for viewability and user experience.

Take advantage of video ad support

AMP currently supports 13 different video players, ranging from Brightcove to Teads, all of which can serve video ads. If you want to use a video player that is not currently supported in AMP, place the video player inside amp-iframe. Learn more.

Differentiate yourself with rich and custom ad formats

AMP accommodates a large variety of ad formats by default, ranging from publisher custom ad units to IAB standard outstream video and in-feed native ads. We value publisher choice and support efforts to create proprietary ad formats. For example, with responsive layouts in AMP, you can offer advertisers custom ads that can dynamically span the entire width of the mobile device. Learn more about how you can adapt your ads strategy for AMP.

Maximize revenue with interchangeable ad slots

In September 2016, both YieldMo and DoubleClick announced support for multi-size ad requests on AMP pages. With this launch, you can optimize yield by allowing multiple ad creative sizes to compete for each ad slot, capturing the most advertiser demand possible on AMP pages while still protecting the user’s experience.

Plan ahead with a view into AMP’s roadmap

Transparency is important to the success of any open source project and is a key value for AMP. Accordingly, we started publishing the AMP roadmap publicly nearly 6 months ago, including milestones for ads. These roadmaps are accompanied with bi-quarterly status updates and you can also see all AMP releases .

Over 700,000 domains have published AMP pages and a good many are monetizing them with ads. Early studies suggest that ads on AMP are more viewable and engaging than ads on non-AMP mobile pages. That’s because with AMP, you don’t have to choose between good user experiences and monetization opportunities. When balanced and optimized, you can have both.

Reach out — we’re eager to hear your suggestions and feedback to make sure that AMP pays off for everyone.

Posted by Vamsee Jasti
Product Manager, AMP Project

Last month we released a new study, "The need for mobile speed", highlighting the impact of mobile latency on publisher revenue. Simply having your site load on a mobile device is no longer enough: Mobile sites have to be fast and relevant. The study analyzed 10,000+ mobile web domains, and from the results we gained several insights about the impact of mobile latency on user experience.

Critically, the study also revealed strong correlations between page speed and the following key performance indicators:

• Revenue
• Bounce rate
• Session duration
• Viewability

It’s clear mobile speed matters to the success of publisher sites, but making mobile load times a priority doesn’t always make achieving speed easy. To help you build a faster mobile web experience, we’ve created a mobile web speed toolkit. It outlines a 4-step process to diagnose and fix mobile speed issues:

1. Measure your site’s performance.
2. Assess the different components impacting speed.
3. Prioritize the order your site loads.
4. Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed.

The mobile web speed toolkit offers tactical recommendations to begin achieving mobile speed.

The relationship between page speed and publisher revenue is clearer than ever before. Small improvements to your mobile site may yield big gains for your mobile revenue, so get your copy of the mobile web speed toolkit and start making changes today.

#SpeedMatters

Posted by Jay Castro
AdSense team

Today, we’re excited to share insights from a new study on how mobile speed can impact user engagement and publisher revenue. As people’s expectations for mobile experiences have grown, simply loading on a mobile device is no longer enough. Mobile sites must be fast and relevant.

Unfortunately, based on our analysis of 10,000+ mobile web domains, we found that most mobile sites don’t meet this bar: the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections.¹ That’s about as long as it takes to sing the entire alphabet song!²

Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. While there are several factors that impact revenue, our model projects that publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.³ The study also observed 25% higher ad viewability⁴ and 70% longer average sessions⁵ for sites that load in 5 seconds vs 19 seconds.

That’s why we’ve been so focused on mobile-first solutions to help publishers succeed — from our participation in the nearly year old AMP project, to our launch of a scalable native advertising solution, to our investment in products that help publishers increase revenue while minimizing latency.

Never before has mobile speed been more important.

3...2...1… gone

Slow page load times are a big blocker:

• 53% of visits are likely to be abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load⁶
• One out of two people expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds⁷
• 46% of people say that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most when browsing the web on mobile devices⁸

We all know this first hand — if you’re looking for something on your phone, how long will you wait if the page takes more than a few seconds to load?

The three major factors that slow down mobile sites are file size, the number of server requests, and the order in which the different elements of the page are loaded. We found:

• The average size of the content on mobile sites is 1.49 MB, which takes 7 seconds to load over 3G connections⁹
• Mobile pages make an average of 214 server requests, and nearly half of all server requests are ad-related¹⁰

Getting up to speed

There are many tools out there to help diagnose the problem and fix it. We recommend a 3-step process to speed up mobile sites:

• Assess the current performance of the site using tools like PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test, and Web Page Test.
• Execute changes that eliminate bulky content, reduce the number of server requests, and consolidate data and analytics tags. Switch up the element order and select the minimum number of pieces to show above the fold first — styling, javascript logic, and images accessed after the tap, scroll or swipe can be loaded later.
• Monitor performance after making changes and run A/B tests to regularly audit the setup of your site, flagging and removing anything that adds latency.

You should also investigate open source solutions like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps.

To learn more about our study and the steps you can take to improve the experience on your mobile site, check out our guide, “The Need for Mobile Speed” [g.co/MobileSpeed]

Posted by Alex Shellhammer & Juliette Neel
Publisher Marketing

^{1 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016
2 NPR, “Keep Flu At Bay With A Song”, April 2009
3 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics and DoubleClick AdExchange data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=4.5K, Global, June 2015 - May 2016
4 DoubleClick for Publishers, Google Active View ad viewability for 10.7K mWeb homepage domains with >70% measurable ad viewability, Global, February 2016
5 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.5K, Global, March 2016
6 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.7K, Global, March 2016
7 Akamai Technologies - 2014 Consumer Web Performance Expectations Survey
8 Google Webmaster Central Blog, "#MobileMadness: a campaign to help you go mobile-friendly", April, 2015
9 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016
10 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016}

A few weeks back, Paul Muret, Google’s VP of Display, Video and Analytics, made several announcements about enhancements to the DoubleClick platform to support Programmatic Direct deals. Paul also shared that the number of Programmatic Direct deals transacted on DoubleClick Ad Exchange tripled in 2015¹ alone.

Everyone knows that programmatic is growing and is increasingly becoming the way we transact digital advertising. But what’s the deal with programmatic deals, or as we say, Programmatic Direct?

To answer that question, we dug into the data to analyze the key drivers of Programmatic Direct growth on our platforms. You can explore some of the data for yourself, with our interactive report: The State of Programmatic Direct.

Looking through Ad Exchange data from October 2014 to December 2015, one thing became incredibly clear: In every region, across every platform and publisher category, there are fascinating trends of adoption to be found.

Programmatic Direct has gone mainstream...

Depending on whom you ask, the history of programmatic exchanges can be traced back nearly a decade. However, it was only a few years ago that some of the world’s largest global spenders started making big commitments to programmatic and “programmatic” became ANA’s Marketing Word of the Year.

It hasn’t taken as long for advertisers and publishers to use programmatic technologies to transact the deals they’d traditionally buy and sell directly. In reviewing the data from DoubleClick AdExchange, we found that:

• 90+ marketers on the Ad Age Top 100 Global Marketers list made Programmatic Direct deals in 2015².
• More than half of the publishers in the US comScore top 50 list from December 2015 offered their inventory through Programmatic Direct deals³.

… On every screen

Programmatic may have been born on the desktop, but Programmatic Direct is taking off on mobile — probably not a surprise if you’re reading this article on your phone. Programmatic Direct impressions served on mobile and tablet grew 4x faster than desktop in the period surveyed⁴.

… In every region

The growth of Programmatic Direct isn’t limited to any specific country or region. So, where is it well adopted and where is it growing fast?

• Programmatic Direct impressions in Ukraine, Turkey and Spain each more than doubled in just 12 months⁵.
• Japan was the strongest adopter in APAC but Taiwan and Indonesia saw Programmatic Direct impressions grow more than 20% monthly⁶.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we dig through the data to share more insights. You can also explore our interactive research report to find additional trends, like how quickly Programmatic Direct impressions on mobile apps grew for game publishers in Japan. To get started, take a look at the infographic below.

Posted by Carlo Acenas
Associate Product Marketing Manager
Yamini Gupta
Sr. Product Marketing Manager ^{1 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, year end 2014 to year end 2015.
2 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014-Dec 2015. Minimum $1K spend.
3 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014-Dec 2015. Cross-referenced with comScore 50 US list, December 2015.
4 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.
5 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.
6 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Oct 2014 - Dec 2015.}

Delivering a better experience for users has been our top priority since Google was founded, from the products we develop and the ads that we show to how we do business with our partners and clients. This will be on full display at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, our annual gathering of large advertiser, agency and publisher clients beginning today.

This year, our focus is on how we can work together to create better, faster ad experiences across every screen, starting with mobile.

You can watch my opening keynote here, during which I shared updates about new innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

Making ads on the mobile web faster

Our research shows that the average mobile site takes 19 seconds to load. Think about that for a minute. That’s a long time! Not only is this frustrating for users but it’s also a huge missed opportunity for publishers -- we estimate mobile sites that load within 5 seconds can earn up to 2x more revenue than those at the 19 second average.

To help make the mobile web faster for users, Google joined a global community of publishers and other tech companies to launch the open sourced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (also known as AMP). Early analysis shows that mobile web pages that use AMP HTML load four times faster and use 10 times less data on average than non-AMP mobile web pages.

AMP is already making a difference for a variety of publishers such as the Washington Post, which is seeing first-hand how AMP pages deliver great mobile web experiences that build user loyalty.

But just speeding up the content is not enough - slow-loading ads are also a problem. We’re announcing two new features that will make ad experiences better on the mobile web:

• AMP for Ads - With AMP for Ads, we're bringing everything that's good and fast about AMP to ads. Unfortunately, most advertisers’ campaign creative are not fully optimized for mobile experiences. AMP for Ads allows advertisers to build beautifully-designed ads in AMP HTML so that the entire AMP experience, both the publisher’s content and the advertiser’s creative, load simultaneously at AMP-speed.
• AMP Landing Pages - AMP Landing Pages are fast, custom pages, built by advertisers so that when someone clicks on their AMP ad, they continue to have an AMP experience. AMP Landing Pages are also built with AMP HTML so that advertisers or their agencies use the same process to create these pages as they do with AMP content pages.

Building the next generation of ads with DoubleClick

Over the past year, Google has been working with publishers to help them adopt native ads - ads that match the look, feel and style of their surrounding content on a publisher’s website. Users find this type of ad format useful, particularly on mobile. However, in the advertising industry, the process of building and trafficking native ads is still largely manual.

Today, we are announcing significant updates for native ads across our platforms that will help to accelerate adoption of this user-friendly format with programmatic.

• For the first time, advertisers will be able to buy native ads programmatically in DoubleClick Bid Manager, across all screens. Instead of providing fully-designed creatives, advertisers upload the components of the ad - headline, image, text, and so on - and DoubleClick automatically assembles them to fit the context and format of the site or app where they appear.



• For publishers, we’re now offering a complete native ads solution in DoubleClick. Publishers can now make native ad inventory across web and apps available programmatically or through traditional direct sales.

Creating value with programmatic

Programmatic buying delivers results, so it’s no surprise that brands and agencies are continuing to invest. Today, we’re excited to announce a new global partnership with one of the world’s largest entertainment brands, Time Warner Inc.

DoubleClick will work with all of Time Warner’s businesses, networks and brands, such as, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Harry Potter and CNN, among others, as well as Time Warner’s agencies, for programmatic buying, ad serving, and measurement globally.

Time Warner is not alone in growing their investment in programmatic. We’ve seen tremendous momentum on our own platforms. In 2015 alone,

• Programmatic video revenue for TV and media companies increased more than 6x on DoubleClick for Publishers.
• Video spend by advertisers using Programmatic Direct on DoubleClick Bid Manager grew more than 7x.
• The number of Programmatic Direct deals on DoubleClick AdExchange tripled.

Together with our advertiser and publisher partners, we've made huge strides in improving the digital ads experience for users. Digital ads can be lightning fast, engaging and as beautiful as the site and app where they appear.

We've come a long way from ads that just blink text in blocky boxes - and yet we know there is still work to do. Today’s announcements represent our continued commitment to help our clients and partners deliver better and faster ad experiences for users.

Posted by Paul Muret Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics, Google

Visit the DoubleClick website at www.doubleclick.com next week for a series of articles with more details on today’s announcements.

Join me on Tuesday, July 19th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET for a livestream broadcast of my keynote address from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS). I’ll be sharing updates on the latest innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

At Google, one of our enduring principles is to “focus on the user and all else will follow.” This has been an important guidepost throughout our history, and it has never been more relevant than it is today. People are more ‘mobile’ now than ever before. We spend every waking hour connected to our devices. We expect to find what we want, when we want it. But with only a split second to engage and capture attention, user experience matters more than ever.

In my keynote, I’ll share an update on the technologies we’re developing to help advertisers, agencies and publishers create better experiences for people on the go. You can expect to hear more about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Native Ads, as well as new, more immersive experiences like 360 video. I’ll also be unveiling new product features to help our clients and partners more effectively reach, engage, monetize and measure audiences across screens.

I’m looking forward to the livestream on July 19th. Please register to watch here.

Posted by Paul Muret Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics, Google

Tune in on July 19^th for the DoubleClick Announcements Livestream. Watch live as Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video Ads and Analytics at Google, shares new product announcements and DoubleClick's vision for the future.

Register and get the link to the livestream in your inbox before the event.

The event will be streamed live on DoubleClick.com on July 19th, 2016 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET.

Posted by The DoubleClick Marketing Team

Native advertising is an increasingly popular ad monetization strategy for publishers. The New York Times is an early adopter, and recently we caught up with their Managing Director of Ad Innovation, Nicholas Van Amburg, on what they’ve learned from running native ads. Here’s what he shared.

The New York Times’ first issue was printed in 1851 as a penny paper, and now, we share news with over one million digital-only subscribers every day. In our 164-year history, we’ve seen our readers shift from print, to computers, to mobile. Despite all of this change, however, we’ve remained committed to delivering the highest-quality content to our readers—whether it’s news, features, opinions or ads. First and foremost, it makes our readers happy. But, it also serves as an important foundation for a sustainable monetization strategy. Whether readers are interacting with our articles, videos, podcasts, or apps, our ads needs to be just as engaging as our own content.

To create a strong user experience wherever people are reading news, we’ve experimented a lot with our native advertising strategy. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Create effective ad formats that scale

One of our early experimentations with native advertising was a solution we called ‘Flex Frames.’ To offer the best user experience possible, we ensured Flex Frame ads behaved like organic content by matching the look and feel of surrounding contexts, both in terms of editorial content and across different platforms and devices.

While Flex Frames successfully adapted to the look and feel of our content, we faced roadblocks when attempting to scale -- our team was dedicating countless hours to coding and compiling ads for review by advertisers. To overcome this challenge, we partnered with DoubleClick and have realized significant efficiencies since.

Use data to make smart decisions

The ability to leverage our first party audience data proved crucial to our native advertising strategy, allowing us to place the right ad in front of the right person at the right time, both in terms of content and format. For example, we will serve a video ad rather than a photo story if we know a reader is more likely to view video content than view photos in a carousel. These highly-relevant ads produce excellent results with 6X higher CTRs with 4X more viewable impressions.

Launch and iterate

Metrics are important, and you have to know what to measure in order to decide whether ads are working for you and your users. It’s important to identify KPIs at the start of a project, and measure them regularly. These KPIs may differ based on the company, but for us, after running a variety of focus groups through our Consumer Insights Group, we found user engagement to be one of our most important KPIs. We want to know the ad experience is a positive one for our users—that our ads aren’t just tolerated, but that people actually opt to spend time with them. We’re constantly testing ads to understand what’s working and what’s not.

Educate sales and advertisers to see the value of native ads

We’ve been working with native ads for over a year now, but for many people, these ads are still relatively new. Even a year in, the hardest thing about my job continues to be educating sales teams about native formats. And the same goes for advertisers—it’s our job at The New York Times to demystify component-based ads and explain why they're better for the whole ecosystem. With more education, sales teams can better sell native ads, and advertisers will start opting for more native formats.

The next generation of native ads

Taking what we’ve learned so far, I believe the next big leap for native ads is to deliver more meaningful, contextually-relevant experiences across an ever-broader spectrum of media formats and devices. This is important because The New York Times isn’t just a paper or a website anymore. It's a website. It's an app. It's a host of touchpoints and experiences where the user sits at the core. We're headed for a world that lives on an incredibly fractured series of screens and touch points -- and our challenge is to make sure that we are meeting and exceeding users’ expectations across all them.

We recently released Native Ads on DoubleClick across all screens — on the web and in apps — to all our partners. Watch the video below to learn more about The New York Times’ strategy and approach to native advertising or continue to DoubleClick.com to read the case study.

Posted by Nicholas Van Amburg Managing Director of Ad Innovation, The New York Times

Cross-posted from the AMP Project blog

When the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) team set out to help make mobile experiences great for everybody, the objective wasn’t just to improve a user’s engagement with content. We knew the experience people had with ads was equally important to help publishers fund the great content we all love to read.

The AMP team laid out four core principles that would guide the innovation on the AMP ads roadmap and get us to a world where ads are as fast and engaging as the content we value.

• Faster is better
• ‘Beautiful’ matters
• Security is a must
• We’re better together

We recently took a moment to review the progress made and see how ads on AMP are doing. We compared ad performance on AMP and non-AMP mobile pages across 150 publishers (large corporations and small businesses in different geographic regions) on our programmatic platforms. The preliminary results are encouraging.

Compared to non-AMP pages, ads on AMP have led to:

• 80%+ of the publishers realizing higher viewability rates
• 90%+ of the publishers driving greater engagement with higher CTRs
• The majority of the publishers seeing higher eCPMs (Impact and proportion of lift varies by region and how optimized the non-AMP sites are)

We have also received positive feedback from a number of publishers with varying mobile web advertising business models:

"So far, AMP has performed well against a number of metrics for advertising effectiveness and revenue. One encouraging stat is that we have seen an increase in viewability of ads within the AMP environment. As the industry moves more towards this as a measurement tool it is important we focus on optimizing for this metric. We are encouraged by the open approach to both publishers and our tech partners and look forward to what’s to come."
— Noah Szubski, Chief Product Officer, DailyMail and EliteDaily

"It is still very early days, but AMP has performed well to date from both direct and indirect monetization sources. We've been able to extend all of our custom ad products to AMP and have enabled it within our premium ad marketplace, Concert. We see AMP as a perfect intersection of two core tenets of Vox Media - fast mobile web experiences and ads that perform. We are encouraged by all of the metrics and are looking forward to continuing to grow this important channel."
— Joe Alicata, Vice President of Revenue Products & Operations, Vox Media

“We’ve seen a 90% decrease in page latency, 96% decrease in unfilled impressions, 65% increase in ad engagement and 32% increase in eCPM. Perceived load time improved from approximately 17 seconds to 2-3 seconds.”
—Conor Beck, Director of political news network TownHall Media

While this makes for a promising start, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with ads in AMP. There’s much work ahead for us and the rest of the industry — including our third party ad tech partners — to make advertising experiences on the mobile web as great as content experiences with AMP. We’re both committed to and excited by that.

If you’re curious about what lies ahead for the broader AMP project, check out the AMP roadmap. Here’s a brief snapshot of what we are expecting to launch with ads this quarter and next:

• “Beautiful” matters: Two new formats that are as beautiful as they are engaging.
• Sticky Ads — greater viewability without sacrificing user experience
• Flying Carpet Ad — a large canvas for immersive, fast ad experiences
• AMP ads for AMP pages: Ads that load as fast as the content on AMP

Stay tuned for more details on some of these ads initiatives in coming weeks.

Posted by Craig DiNatali
Director, Global Partnerships Google

Posted by Nitin Kashyap
Product Manager, Google

Our goal has always been to help publishers and advertisers thrive and create sustainable businesses. For many years Google has used optimization and machine learning techniques to improve the performance of our ads products, and now we’re happy to share that we’ve been extending those techniques to DoubleClick Ad Exchange customers. Today we are introducing Optimized Private Auctions and optimized pricing in the Open Auction to help our publisher partners grow their revenue and give programmatic buyers greater access to premium inventory.

More control of Private Auctions

Private Auctions were developed to help publishers negotiate higher prices by creating special segments of inventory for preferred buyers. As deal volume has grown, we discovered an additional opportunity for publishers to make even more money with Private Auctions. On average, 5% of Private Auction impressions on our platform have an Open Auction buyer willing to pay more than the Private Auction deal price. If all of these bids from Open Auction buyers were able to win their auctions, publishers would see a significant lift to their programmatic revenue.

Optimized Private Auctions, now available to all publishers using DoubleClick Ad Exchange globally, give publishers the ability to allow high-value Open Auction bids to compete against Private Auctions. Full transparency is available to buyers, who can see in the DoubleClick Ad Exchange UI which of their Private Auctions are being optimized.

Greater accuracy with optimized pricing in the Open Auction

In addition to helping publishers maximize revenue from Private Auctions, we’ve been experimenting with optimized pricing to help publishers set price floors in the Open Auction that more closely reflect the value of their inventory.

The Open Auction tends to have a large price gap between what a buyer bids and what they pay. We’ve observed more than a 50%¹ price gap between bid and closing prices in many cases. Publishers see this gap as a revenue opportunity and try to close the gap by applying manually-calculated price floors. This is difficult to do well and can lead to lost revenue, or to complex implementations such as offering the same query repeatedly at different price floors that can increase user latency and hurt advertiser performance. We think there’s a better way.

Optimized pricing in the Open Auction uses historical data to automate the post-auction analysis and updating of floor prices that publishers already do, and takes it a step further. Not only does our technology use signals like ad unit and device, it also calculates audience-based floors, so publishers can fully benefit from building valuable audiences. And as we’ve always done, if there is a floor applied to an impression, whether publisher or algorithmically set, we share it with buyers in our bid requests.

In our experiments to date, we have applied optimized pricing to about 15% of transactions, creating over 5% lift in revenue for publishers using the Open Auction. As we expand our experiments with optimized pricing, we will monitor its performance to ensure advertisers continue to get great ROI.

Increasing price transparency

While Optimized Private Auctions and optimized pricing in the Open Auction help publishers get more value for their inventory, they raise important questions. In our conversations, programmatic buyers and sellers have expressed a strong desire for greater transparency and openness in how advertising is valued and prices are set. As the programmatic ecosystem continues to grow, we look forward to partnering with buyers and sellers in an open discussion on price transparency in the industry.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack Director, Product Management

^{1 Google internal data, desktop and mobile web impressions in North America}

Publisher digitally recreates the experience of reading a glossy print magazine and attracts more brand advertisers with component-based native ad formats.

Aller Media is a leading, Scandinavian publisher that owns a variety of media outlets including KK.no, a landmark fashion and lifestyle magazine. With more of its users on mobile devices, KK.no invested in a responsive website to deliver contextually relevant experiences. But its ads, particularly the custom native formats, didn’t respond to the user's context in the same way as its content.

In late 2015, KK.no partnered with DoubleClick to build fully responsive, component-based native ads. The result: beautiful and seamless user experiences across mobile and desktop, increased ad viewability and greater impact for advertisers.

"With Native Ads on DoubleClick, KK.no saw over 85% growth in ad viewability on mobile without compromising user experiences. They actually love it. It’s a part of how they consume the content on the site."
Kirsti Engedal Alfheim, Head of Ad Operation, Aller Media

Visit DoubleClick.com to learn more and watch the video.

Posted by Nataliya Kozak
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Danielle Landress
Associate Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

People want great experiences wherever they’re consuming content – on the web, in apps, on every screen. Savvy publishers have responded by building smart, responsive websites and new app interaction models. But improving the content experience alone is not enough. Publishers need to evolve their advertising as well, from boxy banners to flexible and contextually relevant native ads that scale. To help them do that, we’re extending our native ads for apps solution to work across all screens – on the web and in apps – making it easier for publishers to set up, deliver, and measure directly-sold native ads everywhere.

Reducing complexity to scale beautiful native ads across screens

Running native ads across all of a publisher’s digital inventory has, until now, been an operationally complex process requiring hours spent manually coding and compiling individual ad creatives from advertiser-provided assets.

Now, DoubleClick for Publishers supports native creatives that easily scale and adapt to different content layouts on different screens. Instead of providing rigid, pre-defined ad creatives, advertisers can give publishers components that make up their ads – image, headline, copy, etc. Publishers set up a central library of native styles suited to their content and DoubleClick automatically compiles the creative from the components, applying the right style based on where users are consuming content.

These native creatives can run both in traditional banner slots and a new, responsive fluid ad slot in Google Publisher Tag and the Google Mobile Ads SDK. And ActiveView and third-party measurement are fully supported.

Flexing The New York Times’ native advertising strategy

Last year, The New York Times launched “Flex Frames”, a new suite of natively styled ads developed in-house. The goal was to extend innovative storytelling and beautiful user experiences to ads across all of their content platforms.

“We think better designed ads that play off the functionality and user experience of our site will allow us to grow our business.”
-Sebastian Tomich, Senior Vice President of Advertising & Innovation, The New York Times

.

Flex Frames was a hit with users and advertisers alike: CTRs were up 4-5X compared to regular 300x250 in-line units, and advertisers jumped at the chance to take advantage of new in-line video inventory.

Scaling Flex Frames, however, proved challenging. The team was dedicating too many hours to coding and compiling ads for review by advertisers.

The New York Times turned to DoubleClick’s new solution to serve these native ads more efficiently wherever their users may be – in apps, on the web, or even on AMP pages. By overlaying audience data, the team is able to optimize the creative presentation to match the editorial experiences that individual readers respond to the most, delivering compelling user experiences and great results.

“Performance on mobile is surpassing desktop, and that’s a big opportunity. We see our partnership with Google and DoubleClick as the answer to scale and that’s been the biggest challenge for advertisers trying to innovate today,” says Tomich.

The New York Times isn’t the only publisher benefitting from this technology. Today, more than 200 publishers globally, including Aller Media in Norway and Grupo Expansion in Mexico, are using DoubleClick to deliver fully responsive native ads across all their web and app properties.

DoubleClick’s goal has always been to help publishers thrive and deliver great advertising experiences with the least complexity. With our growing investment in native solutions for publishers, we’re excited to power ad experiences that are more engaging and seamless for users everywhere, unlocking brand spend in a way that’s sustainable and scalable.

Learn more about Native Ads on DoubleClick in our Help Center and experience their responsiveness in this interactive demo.

Posted by Tom Bender Product Manager, DoubleClick

As Jonathan said a few weeks ago, our goal has always been to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising. First Look was developed to help publishers maximize the revenue from all of their inventory by enabling them to give trusted programmatic buyers the opportunity to bid on 100% of their inventory -- even ahead of sponsorships and reservations. It’s simple to set up with no required code changes, zero added latency, and it works across all channels and formats. Since its preview in October 2015, 300+ publishers have leveraged First Look to grow programmatic revenue.

“First Look has been a great compliment to our monetization [strategy] and our ad stack. Since implementing it, Gannett has seen a 15% lift in eCPM of our programmatic channel.”
-Tim Wolfe, VP of Revenue Operations, Gannett

Publishers like About Inc. and Frankly Inc have also seen significant results with First Look.

“Given the appetite for First Look inventory, we have realized a material lift in programmatic revenue since the product was made available.”
-Scott Mulqueen, Vice President of Programmatic & Audience monetization, About, Inc.

“By leveraging First Look, we have been able to expose more inventory and maximize yield on premium users and content through a seamless & easy implementation. As our programmatic stack continues to mature, we see great potential for higher cpms and greater volume.”
-William Ammerman, Head of Advertising, Frankly Inc.

It’s been almost a month since we released First Look to all publishers and we’re happy to help them achieve higher yield for every impression while maintaining their user experience. If you want to learn more about Gannett’s strategy and approach to using First Look read more on DoubleClick.com.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

The television industry is in the midst of a massive change. The rise of new content models and connected devices has led to more choice than ever--both for content creators and consumers. But with this choice and opportunity comes new challenges to solve as well.

I spoke to the TV industry at the Closing General Session of the National Association of Broadcasters Show. In the keynote I discussed the rebirth of TV and how we’re helping Broadcasters and Distributors with discovery, monetization and content creation.

Discovery

Announcing new ways to find where and when to watch your favorite shows.

There are now more ways to watch your favorite TV shows than ever before. This shift has some even saying that we’re in the “golden age” of television. And what we're seeing is that more and more, viewers are turning to their phones to find out what to watch, where to watch it and when it’s available -- in fact, searches for TV shows and films on mobile have grown more than 55% in the past year alone.

Last year we launched video actions in Search to help viewers find direct options to watch the shows they are looking for on programmer and distributors mobile apps and sites or stores like Google Play.

Today, I'm excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now if you're looking for a movie or TV show like The Big Bang Theory, we'll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

Monetization

Announcing personalized TV ads with DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion

Viewers no longer expect content personalized to them, they demand it. And that includes ads.

Today we are taking big steps to bring new addressable advertising capabilities to TV Broadcasters and Distributors by announcing DoubleClick’s Dynamic Ad Insertion. This makes ads hyper relevant for viewers across any screen that they watch. By creating individual streams for every viewer using server side ad insertion, we are able to deliver a better, more personalized viewing experience that looks and feels as seamless as TV today.

And not only will this work for both live and on-demand TV but it works across directly sold and programmatic.

We put this technology to the test with two of the highest rated TV events in the last year: the Rugby World Cup Finals on TF1, the leading network in France, and the Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News, a leading news network in the US. Politics and sports are pretty personal topics, so it’s only appropriate that TF1 and Fox News created a fully addressable viewing experience for the millions of viewers that tuned in using Dynamic Ad Insertion.

Announcing smarter TV ad breaks

Today we’re also announcing that DoubleClick for Publisher clients will soon be able to seamlessly enforce the level of control that has been firmly established in TV -- across all inventory, whether it was sold directly or indirectly. That means, we are able to honor competitive separation - so two automotive ads don’t appear in the same commercial break - and other rules like making sure an alcohol and children's cereal ad don’t appear in the same commercial break.

This has been major blocker to enabling programmatic to work for TV. And now you no longer need to turn down attractive opportunities from advertisers interested in transacting programmatically because of compliance concerns.

Announcing New TV Partners

DoubleClick is focused on building advertising solutions that meet the changing needs of the TV ecosystem. We’re proud of our longstanding partnerships with industry leaders like AMC Networks in the US and Globo in South America.

Today we add three more to the list: we’re happy to welcome MCN, Roku and Cablevision as partners. They’ve all signed on to use DoubleClick for Publishers to serve ads and monetize cross-screen TV and video content.

“As the conventional TV and digital video worlds converge, people are watching more content than ever across a variety of screens. At Cablevision, we’re focused on developing innovative solutions that deliver the best experience for our viewers in this new cross-screen world and unlocking new opportunities for our advertisers. We are enthusiastic about using Google's DoubleClick for seamless advertising delivery across our set-top boxes and connected devices. Together, we are enabling more personalized and relevant ads with addressable and dynamic ad insertion.”
- Kristin Dolan, Chief Operating Officer, Cablevision

Content creation

Announcing Autodesk collaboration to enable 10x improvement in rendering efficiency

Autodesk software has been behind the past 21 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects and we’re bringing this capability to Google Cloud Platform. Yesterday we announced (link) that Autodesk, maker of industry-leading 3D animation and modeling software, is collaborating with Google on a new cloud-based rendering solution called Maya^® for Google Cloud Platform ZYNC Render. This allows artists to focus on creating incredible TV & movie content using the tools they already know, while shifting even the largest rendering jobs seamlessly to the cloud.

TV is the midst of a revival. And just like other media types which have been reimagined for the digital age like music, the arrival of this ‘new TV’ was preceded by change and tumult. But TV’s past was built on a rich history of creativity and innovation, and I’m incredibly optimistic that TV’s future will be as well. Our job is to help make that future become the present and we are excited to partner with the TV ecosystem to build it.

Posted by Daniel Alegre President of Global Partnerships, Google

Today, Daniel Alegre, Google’s President of Global Partnerships, will share an update on new partnerships for DoubleClick’s video business and announce two new features for broadcasters in DoubleClick for Publishers in his keynote at the NAB Show. The new features are Dynamic Ad Insertion, enabling ads to be personalized for each unique viewer watching live or on-demand TV programming; and smarter ad breaks that give broadcasters and distributors greater control.

Personalized TV ads with DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion

Addressable TV advertising, with ads tailored for individual viewers, has long been on the wish list for broadcasters, distributors and advertisers. Tailored ads tend to perform better for advertisers, since they reach the right audience with the right message. They also mean more relevant and useful ads for viewers.

Dynamic Ad Insertion in DoubleClick is a big step towards bringing addressable advertising to TV broadcasters and distributors. Rather than a “one-size-fits-all” approach, this feature lets broadcasters create individual streams using server-side ad insertion, which can then seamlessly deliver tailored ads, across both online screens and set-top box video on demand. This builds on our experiments with dynamic ad insertion into live linear TV through the Google Fiber set-top-box that we announced at last year’s NAB Show.

Some of our partners have already put this new feature to the test, with Dynamic Ad Insertion supporting two of the highest profile TV events in the last year: the Rugby World Cup Finals on TF1, the leading network in France, and the Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News, a leading news network in the US. For the millions of viewers that tuned in, TF1 and Fox News were able to deliver a fully addressable viewing experience using Dynamic Ad Insertion.

Smarter TV ad breaks

Daniel will also announce new capabilities for DoubleClick clients that will give them more control over what ads run together during ad breaks, a long-time standard for television. This could mean being able to separate competitors’ ads, like making sure that two automotive ads don’t appear together. It could also help broadcasters comply with other rules, like ensuring an alcohol ad and children's cereal ad don’t run in the same break. This new capability will be available across all of a broadcaster’s ad inventory, direct sold and programmatic.

New partnerships

DoubleClick is focused on building advertising solutions that meet the changing needs of the TV ecosystem. We’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the leading brands in TV like AMC in the US and Globo is South America on advertising technology tailored for TV. Today we add three more to the list: we’re happy to welcome MCN, Roku and Cablevision as partners. They’ve all signed on to use DoubleClick for Publishers to serve ads and monetize cross-screen TV and video content.

“As the conventional TV and digital video worlds converge, people are watching more content than ever across a variety of screens. At Cablevision, we’re focused on developing innovative solutions that deliver the best experience for our viewers in this new cross-screen world and unlocking new opportunities for our advertisers. We are enthusiastic about using Google's DoubleClick for seamless advertising delivery across our set-top boxes and connected devices. Together, we are enabling more personalized and relevant ads with addressable and dynamic ad insertion.”
- Kristin Dolan, Chief Operating Officer, Cablevision

You can watch the live stream of Daniel’s keynote at 9 AM PT here.

Posted by Rany Ng Director of Product Management, Video & TV Advertising, Google

Today we’re announcing that First Look is available to all DoubleClick for Publishers clients globally and that we’ve begun testing exchange bidding in Dynamic Allocation.

Our goal is to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising. With the transition to mobile, publishers only have a split second to deliver the most relevant and highest paying ads to maximize their overall yield. Research shows that an extra 1 second of load time on mobile can result in 58% higher bounce rates.¹ That’s why we’ve been working on two new features that use the power of real-time bidding and the efficiency of server-side connections to generate greater revenue for publishers without compromising user experience.

Higher revenue with no client side code or added waiting

A few months ago, we announced the Beta of DoubleClick for Publishers First Look. Since then, we’ve had over 200 partners test the feature and the results have been great. Publishers like Gannett, Grupo Zeta, Gumtree, Sankei Digital, Scripps, Time Inc., and Zoopla have seen their programmatic revenue increase by double-digit percentages. Today, we’re happy to open this feature to all our DoubleClick partners.

“We want to monetize all of our inventory and all of our audiences to the greatest extent that we can. Since implementing First Look, we’ve seen a 15 percent lift in eCPMs of our programmatic channel.”
-Tim Wolfe, VP of Revenue Operations, Gannett

Testing server-side connections for more accurate pricing

While First Look makes it easy for publishers to capture new revenue from high-paying buyers, we are also testing a new technology to help publishers manage yield between multiple exchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs).

Exchange bidding in Dynamic Allocation will allow publishers to invite trusted third-party exchanges and SSPs to submit real-time prices using industry-standard RTB calls. These prices will be considered along with bids from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the publisher’s reservation campaigns to pick the highest-paying ad. Exchange bidding also empowers publishers with unified and accurate reporting on the revenue they are earning from each exchange/SSP. And just like First Look, exchange bidding works with no additional client-side code.

We are working on this new technology with exchanges like Index Exchange and Rubicon Project, along with a select group of publishers including About.com, Hearst, Meredith Corporation, and Zillow. Before we scale exchange bidding to more partners, we will evaluate the results from our pilot testing and consult with participating buyers, sellers, and exchanges/SSPs to ensure that this solution helps the programmatic marketplace continue to grow and thrive.

With First Look and exchange bidding in Dynamic Allocation, we are continuing to help publishers get the highest yield for every impression without sacrificing user experience.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack Director, Product Management

^{1.Soata Case study: Mobile pages that are 1 second faster experience up to 27% increase in conversion rate”}

When we launched Publisher University two years ago, our goal was to create a destination to help you get the most from DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange so you could spend more time focusing on what you do best: creating great content.

Over the past two years we’ve listened to your feedback to ensure Publisher University has the right information you need, when you need it, so you can feel confident in your decisions. The new Publisher University offers training courses, videos, and updates to do just that. In addition, the new Publisher University helps you:

• Feel confident in your decisions, with beginner through advanced content.
• Track course progress over time so you never miss a step.
• Access course content and trainings from any device.
• Learn in the language most comfortable to you; choose from 11 languages.

Visit the new Publisher University today to begin getting the most from DoubleClick for Publishers and Ad Exchange, and be on the lookout for new training content to be continually added in the future.

Posted by Katelyn Zaleski
Technical Trainer, DoubleClick


^{Note: Publisher University is designed for publishes using DoubleClick Ad Exchange or DoubleClick for Publishers. If you’re currently using the Small Business edition of DoubleClick for Publishers, please visit the help center.}

Over the last few years, the adoption of programmatic has significantly grown across the industry. Demand Media is an early adopter and recently, we caught up with their Senior Director of Media Sales and Operations, Angela Kinsella, on the lessons they’ve learned since increasing their investment in programmatic. Here’s what she shared.

Programmatic has evolved significantly over the past few years. It’s no longer just a real-time bidding (RTB) system for remnant inventory, nor is it restricted to standard IAB units. Today, programmatic is a sophisticated technology that can be used to sell virtually all your media through direct deals—including branded executions, custom content, re-skins and more.

The true value of programmatic lies in two key areas. The first is access to rich, granular data on buyer needs and campaign performance, which leads to better sales optimization. The second is gains in operational efficiency for the entire advertising ecosystem—from the creative agency down to the publisher.

By 2012, Demand Media had seen consistent positive results with the open exchange and we felt ready to deepen our programmatic investment. However, we knew we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) make massive changes to our business overnight. Before we increased our stake in programmatic, we wanted to use our learnings to date to optimize our technological, operational and sales infrastructure. For anyone that’s making this transition now, this is what we’ve learned.

Identify technology partners that meet your needs—today and in the future

In terms of technology, we carefully evaluated our partners to find those best serving our current needs and those who might be best equipped to work with us in the future.

Accordingly, we carried out an exhaustive request for information (RFI) with a number of supply-side providers (SSPs). We considered a variety of factors during the process, including each partner’s ability to execute programmatic direct deals, including private marketplaces. We wanted to make sure we chose a partner with access to first-rate advertiser networks, who was committed to keeping up with industry changes.

Empower sales teams with programmatic knowledge

There’s a belief out there that programmatic can replace people. We knew that wasn’t true for us. But we also knew that the way our sales teams worked needed to change.

While sales teams are still responsible with building stronger relationships with advertisers, the “sellers of the future” need to be able to speak a new language, one that’s far more metrics-driven than that of the past. Our teams built competency in programmatic concepts and key performance indicators (KPIs) like audience targeting, backend conversions, and more, to ensure informed and productive conversations with buyers.

Enable advertisers in their programmatic transition

Our sales teams also needed to educate buyers who were slow to shift budgets to programmatic. We had two ways of doing this: programmatic direct and hybrid deals.

With programmatic direct, we’re able to give buyers the comfort of knowing what they're buying while setting our own deal terms. Ultimately, this strategy has proved to be a great way for both parties to maintain control of pricing and inventory quality. Programmatic direct has also enabled us to structure additional elements into the deal such as data sharing and “first look,” which has driven up CPMs.

Another strategy we’ve used is to offer buyers hybrid deals with both direct and programmatic components. With hybrid deals, we can negotiate a direct sponsorship and then layer on audience and contextual targeting. When buyers see their results, they’re often more open to increasing their programmatic investment.

Communication is key during transitional times

It’s easy to get excited about the potential of programmatic, but it is important to keep in mind that increasing your programmatic investment often results in some level of uncertainty in the short term. Change can be uncomfortable, but can also result in positive results for your business. During transitional times, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open both internally and with buyers to ensure your programmatic strategies evolve and succeed.

Posted by Angela Kinsella Senior Director, Media Sales and Operations, Demand Media

Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog

An enterprise-class solution for a multi-screen world

Our lives are filled with micro-moments: intent-rich moments when we turn to the nearest device to find a store, buy a product or look for answers to all kinds of wants and needs. In these moments, today's consumers decide what to do, where to go, and what to buy.

If you're in marketing or analytics, you know this consumer behavior brings new opportunities to reach your customer in the right moment with the right message. At the same time, it's harder than ever to get a complete view of the consumer journey and then make sense of it all.

That’s why we’re introducing the Google Analytics 360 Suite, a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers. It all starts with understanding consumer behavior in the moment — getting the right insights, and then making your brand useful to consumers.

“The Google Analytics 360 Suite gave us the really big ah-­ha moment. When we launched our mobile app, it provided insurance quotes. But after looking at the data, we saw people were attempting to buy insurance. So, we shifted our mobile strategy to offer ecommerce. Google gave us that insight.”
-Pawan Divakarla, Analytics Leader, Progressive

Modern measurement tools that are simple to use

Sophisticated marketers who use analytics platforms are three times more likely to outperform their peers¹ in achieving revenue goals. It’s no wonder enterprise-class marketers have been telling us they need more from their marketing analytics tools. Many toolsets can't cope: They're too hard to use, lack sufficient collaboration capabilities, are poorly integrated, and require hard-to-find expertise.

Several years ago, Google engineers set out to simplify marketing analytics in the same way we simplified web search with Google.com. With infrastructure that allows us to handle billions and billions of daily search queries — generating answers before users even finish typing — we set out to give enterprise marketers the same utility.

As we built the system, enterprise marketers shared what they needed with us:

• See the complete customer journey: Marketers require full visibility and context to see what’s really happening across all customer touchpoints, devices, and channels.
• Useful insights, not just more data: Marketers need enormous computing power, data science and smart algorithms, all working together to quickly make sense of data for them. In other words, built-in intelligence to do the heavy lifting for marketers and make insights easy to see.
• Enable better sharing within your organization: Marketers seek to put insights into everyone’s hands and get the whole company on the same page — resulting in stronger cross-functional goals and smarter decision-making.
• Deliver engaging experiences to the right people: Marketers want to make their brand immediately useful to consumers. With integrations across multiple Google technologies, the suite products not only work well together, but also with other products, including AdWords, DoubleClick, and 3rd-party platforms — enabling marketers to take immediate action and drive business impact.

The Google Analytics 360 Suite is built to address these needs. Its powerful set products are unified, providing a consistent user experience and cross product data integrations, plus services. Simply put: it’s a complete measurement platform.

“Using the integrations in the Google Analytics 360 Suite, we are able to manage everything in one seamless platform.”
-Khoi Truong, Director of Analytics and Media, L'Oréal Canada

Loaded with six products, four of which are brand-new, the Google Analytics 360 Suite offers easy-to-use tools that enable sharing of data and insights throughout an organization.

• Google Audience Center 360 (beta): This powerful data management platform (DMP) helps marketers understand their customers and find more like them across channels, devices, and campaigns. It offers native integration with Google and DoubleClick, plus it's open to third party data providers, DSPs and more.
• Google Optimize 360 (beta): This website testing and personalization product helps marketers deliver better experiences. Marketers can show consumers multiple variations of their site and then choose the version that works best for each audience.
• Google Data Studio 360 (beta): A new data analysis and visualization product that integrates data across all suite products and other data sources ― turning it into beautiful, interactive reports and dashboards. Built-in real-time collaboration and sharing is based on Google Docs technology.
• Google Tag Manager 360: Built from our industry-leading tag management product, it empowers enterprise marketers to move faster and make decisions with confidence. It offers a simplified way to gather site information (all those tiny bits of code) and powerful APIs to increase data accuracy and streamline workflows.
• Google Analytics 360 (formerly known as GA Premium): will roll out exciting new capabilities throughout the next couple of months as investments continue to grow. It will serve as the measurement centerpiece by analyzing customer data from all touch-points and integrating with our ad products to drive marketing effectiveness.
• Google Attribution 360 (formerly known as Adometry): has been rebuilt from the ground up to help advertisers value marketing investments and allocate budgets with confidence. Marketers can analyze performance across all channels, devices, and systems to achieve their most effective marketing mix.

Achieve more with your Google media

The Google Analytics 360 Suite offers integrations with many third party data providers and platforms. It also plugs right into Google AdWords and DoubleClick Digital Marketing, our core ad technology. That means marketers can turn analytics into action by combining their own data from multiple sources ― website data, audience data, and customer data (e.g. CRM) and more ― and using it to make ads more relevant for people.

“The Google Analytics 360 Suite has a native integration with DoubleClick — that’s a game-changer. Now I can personalize my media based on website user behaviors, such as what they purchase.”
-Khoi Truong, Director of Analytics and Media, L'Oréal Canada

When will the Google Analytics 360 Suite launch?

The new products -- Audience Center 360, Optimize 360, Data Studio 360, and Tag Manager 360 -- are available today in limited BETA. If you're a Google Analytics Premium or Adometry customer, you will see the products renamed in the coming months, and we'll let you know when you're eligible to join the new betas.

This is just the beginning of our ongoing innovation in enterprise marketing analytics -- we can’t wait to share more. In the meantime, visit our website for more details or hear from directly from our customers below.

Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the capabilities and benefits of all the new products on the newly refreshed and renamed Google Analytics Solutions blog, and on our Google+ and Twitter pages. We’d love your feedback.

Posted by Paul Muret Vice President of Analytics, Display, and Video Products, Google

^{1: Forrester Research, Inc. Discover How Marketing Analytics Increases Business Results
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