Today, the majority of the internet is supported by digital advertising. But bad ad experiences—the ones that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you get to the page—are hurting publishers who make the content, apps and services we use everyday. When people encounter annoying ads, and then decide to block all ads, it cuts off revenue for the sites you actually find useful. Many of these people don't intend to defund the sites they love when they install an ad blocker, but when they do, they block all ads on every site they visit.

Last year we announced Funding Choices to help publishers with good ad experiences recover lost revenue due to ad blocking. While Funding Choices is still in beta, millions of ad blocking users every month are now choosing to see ads on publisher websites, or “whitelisting” that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message. In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.

Over the coming weeks, we’re expanding Funding Choices to 31 additional countries, giving publishers the ability to ask visitors from those countries to choose between allowing ads on a site, or purchasing an ad removal pass through Google Contributor. Also, we’ve started a test that allows publishers to use their own proprietary subscription services within Funding Choices.

How Funding Choices works

Funding Choice gives publishers a way to have a conversation with their site visitors through custom messages they can use to express how ad blocking impacts their business and content. When a visitor arrives at a site using an ad blocker, Funding Choices allows the site to display one of three message types to that user:

A dismissible message that doesn’t restrict access to content.

A dismissible message that counts and limits the number of page views that person is allowed per month, as determined by the site owner, before the content is blocked.

Or, a message that blocks access to content until the visitor chooses to allow ads on the site, or to pay to access the content with either the site’s proprietary subscription service or a pass that removes all ads on that site through Google Contributor.

On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent.

Ad blockers designed to remove all ads from all sites are making it difficult for publishers with good ad experiences to maintain sustainable businesses. Our goal for Funding Choices is to help publishers get paid for their work by reducing the impact of ad blocking on them, and we look forward to continuing to expand the product availability.

Posted by Varun Chirravuri
Product Manager

It’s not uncommon for a single TV episode to cost millions, if not tens of millions of dollars to produce. Everyday, teams of studio executives, producers, writers, and actors, all set out to do one thing–create the next big TV moment. But what about the moments in between the content? Commercial break experiences can play a big role in whether someone keeps watching your shows. By bringing the best parts of digital advertising like addressability to broadcast TV, we’re helping our partners keep their audiences captivated during ad breaks and watching longer.

Today, we’re sharing the momentum partners are seeing on our platforms and some of the ways in which we’re working with the industry to bring the performance of digital advertising to traditional linear broadcasts.

Delivering better ad experiences on Connected TVs for more partners

Our continued investments in products such as Dynamic Ad Insertion and Smarter TV ad breaks have delivered better ad experiences for people watching on Connected TVs and over-the-top devices; and created more value for our partners. In fact, across our platform, ad impressions served on living room screens have more than doubled in the past year.¹ And we expect this growth to continue as more broadcasters like Major League Baseball and Cheddar partner with DoubleClick to monetize their media.

Since Opening Day, Google has been working with Major League Baseball to monetize the live streams of their games on the MLB.TV app across Connected TVs and other OTT devices. Similarly, Cheddar is partnering with us to ensure no matter where people are accessing news, they’re getting seamless ad experiences.

Bringing addressability to traditional TV

We believe addressable TV ads provide a better experience for the viewer. On our path to enable addressability across the TV ecosystem, we’ve partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters and technology providers such as Unisoft, ATEME, S&T, OpenZNet, and Vewd in a new experiment, now on display at the NABShow.

This demo brings addressable ads into over-the-air broadcast streams via Smart TVs that support the ATSC 3.0 standard. It will feature two TV sets meant to simulate different personas or household types. While tuned to the same broadcast, DoubleClick will serve different ads to each of the TV sets.

In addition to being more relevant, the ads will also feature an interactive element. We’re looking forward to exploring more in this space as this technology evolves to make advertising experiences better for people, wherever they’re watching.

Connect with Google at the 2018 NABShow

To learn all the ways Google is working to improve the advanced TV audience experience, connect with us at the 2018 NABShow. For a full listing of our speaker sessions, visit our Google at NABShow event website here. Or stop by our booth in South Upper Hall #SU218.

Justin Bradbury Product Marketing Manager

¹ DoubleClick Internal Data, Sep 2016 - Aug 2017

The first ad server was created in 1995 with the goal of helping websites deliver ads online. Over the next twenty years, what was once a simple technology with limited capabilities would evolve into one of the most fundamental and advanced aspects of a media organization’s business.

Through that time, DoubleClick’s mission has remained the same: to help publishers maximize revenue and create sustainable businesses. It’s why we’ve been focused on providing our partners with deeper insights into their businesses with initiatives like the Insights Engine Project, and collaborating with the industry on products like Exchange Bidding.

When we first announced Exchange Bidding, we hoped that it would help publishers earn more money from their ad partners without sacrificing user experience across their properties. Exchange Bidding is now a significant revenue driver for hundreds of publishers who have grown their programmatic revenue by an average of double-digit percentage points.¹

Today, we’re excited to announce that Exchange Bidding is available with new features to all customers using DoubleClick for Publishers* globally.

Greater revenue, greater transparency

With Exchange Bidding, publishers can increase revenue by allowing multiple exchanges to compete with each other -- and with DoubleClick Ad Exchange -- in a unified auction. In addition to boosting CPM’s, Exchange Bidding provides publishers with a holistic view of each ad partner’s performance and a streamlined billing and payment process. Today we are rolling out new reporting capabilities to provide publishers with greater insights and transparency into each ad partner’s performance.

For example, Exchange Bidding customers can now generate reports across several new dimensions including demand channel, exchange partner, yield group or advertiser on a per-impression level. With these new insights, publishers can make smarter and faster decisions to ensure they’re getting the greatest value from every impression.

“Consolidated reporting through Exchange Bidding means that we can accurately track performance and trends for our demand partners in respect of our full ad stack. We're excited about Google's further developments in this area and look forward to utilising these new capabilities.”

- Alex Payne, VP Ad Platforms, VICE Media

Read how VICE Media boosted revenue across 500+ websites with Exchange Bidding. 

A growing network of global partners

As publisher adoption of Exchange Bidding has grown, so has our network of exchange partners. Publishers can now access real-time demand from more than 10 exchanges including new partners like Triplelift and Aerserv directly in DoubleClick.

Not only are publishers benefitting from Exchange Bidding, but our exchange partners are also seeing a positive impact on their business. RhythmOne, for example, has seen a 40% increase in programmatic revenue among their customers using Exchange Bidding. They’ve also benefited from access to higher quality inventory with cookie match rates exceeding 80%. Index Exchange also cites a 40% increase in total Exchange Bidding revenue attributed to mobile apps.

“Index Exchange’s partnership with Google provides new points of entry to publishers across the globe and allows us to rapidly grow our quality app supply. We’re excited more publishers now have access to these additional tools that will bolster revenue and drive demand for their business.”

- Alex Gardner, SVP Partner Development, Index Exchange

Paving the path for greater innovation

These results for our customers and exchange partners are just the beginning. To ensure publishers continue getting the greatest value for all their ad inventory, we’re expanding Exchange Bidding to more ad formats like video ads and transaction types such as programmatic deals. Both of these products are currently in closed alpha and will be released to beta in the upcoming months.

If you are interested in using Exchange Bidding on DoubleClick, please reach out to your account manager or sign up here.

*Exchange Bidding is currently available in closed beta to publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business

¹Google Internal Data, May 2017

Posted by Jonathan Bellack Director of Product Management, Publisher Platforms