From our vantage point, we see unprecedented opportunity as the digital media world continues to grow and diversify. What does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads online?

Tune in and watch Google's Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, sit down with industry leaders to explore the digital ecosystem's swift evolution, and how advertisers and publishers can work better together to chart a path to capitalize on every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges we face.

The live stream will start on June 5th, 2012, at 9:00am PST, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am - 1:00pm PST
Set event reminder today

Following us on Twitter? Use the #dclkinsights as you're watching the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

We’re always adding new features to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). The list below contains some highlights. For a complete list, please visit the DFP or DFP Small Business Help Centers.

Available in DFP and DFP Small Business:

Improved Custom Targeting Input: We've designed DFP so there are fewer steps, clicks, and screens throughout the trafficking process to help you reduce the time it takes to traffick your campaigns. To help you streamline your workflows even further, you can now select custom targeting criteria when trafficking a campaign with a single key-stroke to help you quickly select and search for the right targeting criteria.

Additional Reporting Combinations: To help you generate precisely the data you're looking for, we've introduced additional reporting combinations to give you a more granular look at your data. A sample of the new combinations available include:

• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Country x Custom Targeting 
• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Country 
• Ad Unit x Line item x Creative/size x Metro 
• Placement x Line Item x Creative 
• Ad unit x Line Item x Creative/size x Hour

Available in DFP Mobile:

MRAID Support: Our latest mobile SDK for DFP and AdMob was launched to fully support the IAB's Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID). For publishers who use DFP to deliver ads to mobile applications, the new Google AdMob SDK gives your advertisers the flexibility to provide creatives that work seamlessly across any application, regardless of the device, platform, or ad technology involved. Learn more.

Available in DFP Video:

Stream Based Frequency Caps: To help give you more delivery options when working with you video advertisers, we've introduced stream-based frequency caps to help control how often an ad appears in the same stream. Learn more.

VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0, and VMAP 1.0 Support: At Google, we've been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We're happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB's Digital Video Marketplace Event. This means that we'll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios. Learn more.

Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist

You probably think of Publisher’s Clearing House (PCH) as a mail-order sweepstakes company that surprised winners with big, over-sized checks. However, PCH has evolved its traditional magazine and merchandise direct marketing business to include several “play and win” properties such as pchlotto.com, pchgames.com and pchsearchandwin.com.

Delivering over 300 million ad impressions per month across these sites, PCH tested multiple strategies for monetizing remnant inventory before turning to DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) in early 2010. Today, AdX’s share of revenue has grown 5X and it now monetizes up to 70% of all remnant inventory. We caught up with Denise Leggio, Director of Ad Operations at PCH, to learn more about what worked for them with AdX.

Won over by strong controls
“With a brand like ours, ad quality is just as important as the RPM. But Ad Exchange is easy to use and allows us a broad range of controls, like blocking competitive or undesirable ads from bidding. It lets us maximize revenue without giving up control of the ads or compromising our brand,” says Denise.

Higher yields with Dynamic Allocation
“One of the biggest benefits of Ad Exchange is Dynamic Allocation with DFP. Ad Exchange will only serve if it can beat the highest-paying ad at that exact time, ensuring optimal revenue.” For PCH, Dynamic Allocation has also informed pricing decisions on direct inventory.

Multiple tools and levers for deeper insights and higher revenue

From reporting features at the individual ad unit level, to the Minimum CPM Recommendation tool to set the minimum auction price, AdX has provided Denise’s team many tools to optimize revenue. “The optimization options have been extremely valuable for our online business. The tools, reports and data provided give us insight into our inventory and buyer habits,” she says. “With those insights, we’re able to make changes extremely quickly.”

Operational efficiencies allow deeper focus on direct sales

The time savings from being on AdX has allowed Denise and her team to better support PCH’s direct sales team, testing and building creative packages involving rich media, takeover ads and site skins. “The operations team can now be a strategic partner on that end, instead of just being on the back end doing yield optimization and trafficking.”

“You have to work with a solution that you trust, and I think that’s why we like Ad Exchange,” Denise says. “For PCH, Ad Exchange is the solution of choice because of its robust technology, insights, control, and ability to offer the highest yield and inventory fill in a highly competitive market.”

Read the full case study here.

This blog post was part of “PubTalk”, a series of conversations with publishers.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Manager

As part of today’s release of the Google AdMob SDK, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and AdMob now fully support the IAB’s Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID) standard for advertising in mobile applications.

MRAID is an initiative from the IAB to define a common API for mobile rich media advertisements, in order to help the mobile marketplace reach new levels of consistency, efficiency and effectiveness. Adopting a common standard for rich media in applications will make building rich media ads simpler and enable advertisers to reach a wider audience with a single creative.

For publishers who use DFP to deliver ads to mobile applications, the new Google AdMob SDK gives your advertisers the flexibility to provide creatives that work seamlessly across any application, regardless of the device, platform, or ad technology involved. Using an MRAID-compliant SDK also enables publishers to:

• Work with a greater range of vendors to produce rich media campaigns 
• Reduce integration and maintenance costs by removing vendor-specific SDKs 
• Develop differentiated ad formats against a stable, vendor-neutral platform 
• Attract large scale advertisers building high value, high reach campaigns 
• Use HTML5 creatives across mobile web and mobile apps

We look forward to actively participating in the future development of MRAID. We believe it will have a significant impact on the mobile advertising industry by lowering costs, increasing scale and providing the foundation for a mature mobile display ecosystem.

Posted by Marcel Gordon, Product Manager

Like many New Yorkers, I can’t imagine life in this city without the subway - it’s essential to how the city operates, creates millions in economic value, and even features great mariachi bands. But the subway wasn’t always this efficient. In the early 1900s, there were multiple subway systems, with different size train cars, running on different track configurations - even one propelled by air! Today, after the unification of these subway systems, everything works seamlessly together.

So what does the subway system have to do with video advertising? Well, the two dominant video advertising guidelines -- VAST and VPAID -- are like the unified transportation system for video advertising. VAST and VPAID define a common language that unifies the diversity of the video advertising industry: Flash and HTML video players, ad networks and exchanges, mobile devices and connected TVs, 30 second spots and interactive overlays.

At Google, we’ve been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We’re happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB’s Digital Video Marketplace Event today. This means that we’ll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios.

What benefits can you expect from VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0? 

• If you’re a publisher, interoperability will improve and you’ll be able to accept a wider set of video ad formats with less technical work. The new error codes will also help with troubleshooting of third party served ads.
• If you’re an advertiser, the Video Suite allows you to create more engaging brand stories that reach a wider audience across all devices. You’ll be able to take greater advantage of skippable ads, which offer new pricing models focused on performance.
• If you’re a vendor, the technical details of these specs really matter, and we’ve provided much more clarity around the compliance requirements for video players and ad servers.

So much has changed in the online video space in just ten years, that we thought we’d take a trip down memory line with this infographic:

Click through for the full infographic

As an industry, we’ve started to take VAST and VPAID for granted, much like New Yorkers and their subway system. That’s a good thing, because it means they’ve become an essential part of powering our economy.

Posted by Payam Shodjai, Product Manager, Video Monetization