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.}