There’s no question that yesterday’s ad tech trend, programmatic buying, is here to stay. Programmatic spending is expected to reach $21B worldwide in 2014, according to Magna Global. To understand how the move toward programmatic buying is impacting the advertising industry, DoubleClick recently commissioned a study on the topic with Advertising Age. Here’s what we found.

• More advertisers are demanding it:
• 41.6% of surveyed advertisers (including marketers and agencies) indicated that programmatic is top of mind when designing a media plan. This is a marked shift from previous strategies, where it was primarily considered at the end of the media buying process.
• 2 years from now, marketing departments will be the primary advocates for programmatic buying; currently, the media buying arms of agencies and marketers are responsible for it. 
• Cross-platform reach is believed to be the primary benefit of programmatic buying for advertisers, followed by increased operational efficiency, and better relevance in messaging

• Publishers are adapting for a programmatic world:
• For nearly 25% of the publisher respondents in the survey, programmatic selling is top of mind when responding to RFPs
• 72% of publishers surveyed would sell more inventory programmatically with stronger cross-platform support
• Publishers expect an 11.17% rise in CPM growth rates in the next 2 years

• The growth of programmatic is contingent upon the evolution of the advertising ecosystem:
• Transparency is key to adoption by buyers and sellers
• Inventory quality, ad fraud management and the move to programmatic premium will drive higher-value advertising
• Cross-platform support will help marketers and sellers realize the true potential of one-to-one engagement

Want more information on the study? Here are three things you can do:

• Read the full report, along with perspectives from industry leaders from Vivaki, UM, Fox News, New York Times. 
• Get the high-level picture in the infographic supporting key findings
• Stay tuned for details on a webinar featuring Kellogg’s Aaron Fetters, Director of Analytics and Insights to hear why and how they’re increasing their investment in programmatic technologies.

You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog.

It’s true that mobile devices offer a new canvas for advertisers to connect with consumers, but painting on this canvas has not always been easy. Many marketers started out by shrinking down their existing display ads for mobile, but this didn’t always make for a great consumer experience. They also discovered that frequently their existing display ads were not able to run on mobile devices or on mobile browsers. But now, a new generation of display ads is changing how advertisers engage with consumers on mobile devices.

Today, we’re excited to announce that over the coming months we will launch several mobile display ad formats and tools across the Google Display Network, the AdMob Network and DoubleClick that will make it easier for advertisers to build successful ads that work across screens. 

Display ads built for mobile

The new display ad formats that will be rolling out in the coming months are designed specifically for mobile environments:

• Big brand ads, built for mobile and resized for every screen: Mobile lightbox Engagement Ads use your existing brand assets to automatically create engaging rich media ads in HTML5 that run seamlessly across devices and screens. The ads will dynamically resize to fit any ad size, making them quick-to-create, and you only pay when users engage. We built a demo of this new format for Kate Spade's upcoming holiday campaign. These will soon be available in the AdWords Ad Gallery. 

Invitation State 

Expanded State 

• Video ads for the AdMob network that people can choose to watch: TrueView ads have already been running across gaming apps in the AdMob network. In the coming months, they will roll out broadly across more apps in AdMob. With TrueView, your ads can reach consumers while they engage with their favorite apps. Plus, you only pay when a user chooses not to skip your ad. 

• Ads that stay put even while a person scrolls down the page: The anchor ad format is a mobile web ad unit that sits at the bottom of the screen on a mobile device. As a user scrolls down the page, the ad remains “anchored” to the bottom of the screen. The user can dismiss the ad at any time.

• Magazine glossiness for your existing text ads: The magazine style text ad format (previously launched for mobile websites) has now been extended as an interstitial in-app format for the AdMob network, bringing the glossiness of print magazine ads to the ease and practicality of a text ad. Google Display Network text ads automatically become eligible to serve in this new ad space. 

Tools to help make your existing ads mobile-ready: 

These next generation mobile formats will make it easier for advertisers to build beautiful and engaging mobile ads that work across screens, but we also wanted to make it easier to do more with your existing ads designed for desktop. We've developed three new tools, that will be available in the coming months, to convert your existing ads into versions that will work across screens and devices.  

• Automatic mobile sizes for your image ads: The auto-resizing tool for the Google Display Network will automatically create new sizes of image ads, including mobile-specific ad sizes. 

• Interactive HTML5 backups when Flash isn’t supported: The Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools for the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Campaign Manager will automatically create an HTML5 version of your Flash ads. When these ads are served on a device or browser that doesn’t support Flash, the system can show the interactive HTML5 ad instead of a static image backup. 

• HTML5 and in-app rich media ads built in minutes: There are now 29 HTML5 and in-app formats available in DoubleClick Studio Layouts, a tool that let’s you upload your existing creative assets into a pre-built rich media ad template to quickly create rich ads that work on smartphones and tablets. 

With these new tools and formats, we’re making it easier for advertisers to develop beautiful display ads that just work, regardless of screen or device, ensuring a better experience for both consumers and brands.


Posted by Jonathan Alferness, Director of Product Management for Mobile Display Ads at Google

This is the first customer spotlight in the with DoubleClick series, highlighting stories and perspectives from industry leaders about how they are succeeding with an integrated digital marketing platform.

Brazilian airline Gol Linhas A矇reas had a goal to increase ticket sales by engaging the country’s thriving online market of 100 million people. Along with their agency, AlmapBBDO, they recognized they needed a better understanding of how their digital ads were reaching and influencing potential fliers across channels. Using the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, they were able to integrate workflows, create targeted messages, and measure the overall impact of their campaigns, resulting in a 56% increase in Gol’s sales.

In order to reach more travelers and increase ticket sales for Gol, the team was looking to gain a unified view of its marketing and customers. They began using the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform to bring all of their digital efforts together. "Before the arrival of DoubleClick, we had to implement everything from zero. We never had a single vision of the campaign," says Ana Cester, Almap’s Director of Insights and Analytics. DoubleClick gave them that single vision by integrating their workflows and insights across the creation, execution, and measurement of their campaigns for search, programmatic and reservations display, and rich media.

And with fresh, cross-channel data in one place, Almap and Gol began digging into the powerful DoubleClick attribution tools. With a better understanding of the customer journey, and which channels were driving conversions, the team was able to make more strategic decisions about where to spend its digital marketing dollars.

Since adopting the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, Gol’s sales increased by 56% from the previous year, and the company doubled its ad spend return.

To learn more about the team's approach and results, watch the video below and check out the full case study here.

You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.

The real-time imperative 
Real-time matters in retail search because external events continuously affect demand. Whether planned events like Black Friday, or unplanned ones like the next big snow day, campaigns that were optimized for demand are suddenly altered by new market realities. The speed at which a retailer’s search management tool can “see” the new behavior and adapt to it will help to determine how successful campaigns are over time, and because events can shift quickly, speed is ever-more important for success.

We know how important it is for our retailers to be running profitable campaigns with a minimum of ongoing manual effort. It’s why we’ve consistently invested in tools to be faster. From instant conversion data and intra-day bidding to integration with Google Merchant Center for ad creation and management, we’re committed to developing tools to support speed in search.

Understanding how retailers use real-time 
Today, in partnership with Forrester, we’re launching a study that shows how retailers access and use real-time tools to stay ahead in the digital game.

What we found was… opportunity 
According to Forrester’s survey, only 20% of retail search marketers have access to real-time conversion data, and less than half can see conversions before the next business day.

In addition to response times, we found that, on average, marketers are only able to merchandize about half their inventory in search ads, even though long-tail products can represent a significant revenue opportunity.

Get the full report
For all the results, along with Forrester’s recommendations for retail search success, check out the full report at Think with Google. To get the latest research, communications and case studies from DoubleClick, sign up for one of our newsletters.

Digital has redefined our daily lives - changing how we stay informed, shop, communicate, and stay entertained. The essence of this is captured in the video above, where even high school basketball games will never be the same. 

For marketers, this means new opportunities to reach more consumers in more ways. They must focus on delivering the right message to the right user at the right time on the right screen. To achieve this, many brands and agencies are turning to integrated marketing platforms to help them save time, achieve better campaign performance, and make better decisions. 

To both celebrate and learn from the success advertisers are having, we are launching with DoubleClick, a weekly series where we’ll highlight success stories and perspectives about how advertisers are changing the ways their teams work, seeing better performance, and making better decisions with the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.

Today, we’ll start by shining a light on a recent study, “Adding Data, Boosting Impact”, where the Boston Consulting Group found that advertisers and agencies are leaving opportunity on the table because of inexperience with new capabilities, inconsistent campaign execution, and a fragmented approach to campaign development and delivery.

The good news is, when marketers use advanced data-driven techniques, they are seeing major uplifts in performance and engagement. For example, the brands in the study saw a 32% average decrease in cost per action. To achieve these kinds of results, the study identifies five critical steps marketers should take. 

The first step is adopting a unified technology platform. Marketers need de-duplicated conversions and cross-channel data. They need to be able to buy, execute, and optimize campaigns across screens in order to create the most compelling consumer experience. And more and more we are seeing advertisers and agencies turn to unified platforms, like DoubleClick Digital Marketing, to bring all their digital efforts together, simplify their strategies, and attack the fragmentation that exists today. 

Next week, look out for our first with DoubleClick customer spotlight: AlmapBBDO and what they did to increase sales by 56% for Gol Airlines.

You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Google+ and Twitter.

The World Cup offers a good barometer for how tech is being used by a critical mass of people around the world. Four years ago, we had the first World Cup of the social media era. This summer, the big story was how fans were using mobile devices and tablets to engage with the matches and with each other. And just as audience habits are changing, advertising tactics are evolving to keep up.

Nike’s Phenomenal Shot is a perfect example: A real-time campaign that played off the action in ways that wouldn’t have been possible four years ago. Nike Phenomenal Shot let fans all over the world view, remix and share phenomenal moments from Nike athletes, just seconds after the plays happened. (Play around with one of the ads yourself.)

As part of the latest Google Art Copy & Code collaboration, Nike partnered with Wieden+Kennedy, Mindshare, Grow, and Goo Technologies to create this innovative campaign, providing a new way of tapping into the real-time energy of live sports, all across the web. 

While it’s fun to play around with the ads, if you’re in the advertising industry, it’s even better to learn how they were built. That’s why we asked Drew Ungvarsky, CEO of digital agency Grow, and Mike Glaser, Marketing Manager on the Google Art Copy & Code team, to walk us through the technology and techniques that were used to create this campaign. From DoubleClick Dynamic Creative to robust WebGL experiences, the Nike Phenomenal Shot campaign demonstrates what advertising for today’s modern web can be.

In August, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Add and manage users in DS: DS agency managers can now add users, remove users, and change user permissions right in DoubleClick Search. Learn more.
• Optimize bid strategies that target offline conversions: If you include offline conversions in your bid strategies, you can now improve performance by indicating which Floodlight activities primarily track offline conversions. If no conversions have occurred for a period of time, you can send an availability timestamp to clarify whether the lack of data means that no conversions have occurred or that you haven’t uploaded the data yet. Learn more.
• Use the DS reporting API to download sitelink reports: You can use the reporting API to download reports containing metrics for AdWords sitelinks. For example, you can download a report that shows the number of clicks, impressions, and other data for each sitelink in an ad group or campaign. Learn more.
• Quantity columns from Google Analytics and Floodlight activities: To report on the number of items in transactions recorded by Google Analytics and Floodlight activities, you can now add the GA quantity, Action quantity, and Transaction quantity columns to DS reporting tables. You can also use these columns in formula columns.

Watch the recorded webinar for August features to see these updates in action.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

To lift the lid on what it takes for digital marketers to succeed, today we’re releasing research from the The Boston Consulting Group that provides new evidence of the power of data-driven approaches including search-to-display remarketing, video remarketing and behavioral analytics.

BCG’s study of five large digital advertisers across four industries in the US and Europe found brands that use these advanced techniques can score big gains – a 32% average decrease in cost per action – and enhance both relevance and consumer experience by reaching engaged audiences at scale.

In some cases, advertisers improved cost per action by more than 50 percent. What’s more, the study also showed that advanced targeting can drive increased performance across all major metrics, improving action rates for clicks and view-throughs by as much as 200 percent, and reducing costs per click and per view by as much as 70 percent.

To achieve uplifts like these, the study identifies five critical steps you can put in motion now.

One: Adopt a unified technology platform
Unified technology platforms provide a single user interface and make it possible to source data from a single pool, eliminating the need to reconcile, consolidate and transfer data between multiple sources. Using one set of tools also ensures your teams aren’t cannibalising performance or bidding against themselves. Campaigns can be launched faster, and agencies can drive resource into gaining insights and optimizing campaigns rather than manually downloading and consolidating data.

Two: Implement advanced techniques 
Drive improvements in key metrics by making intelligent use of your own customer data. 

• Search-to-display remarketing – serving display ads to users who have clicked on your paid search link – lets you target an additional group of consumers actively searching for your product or service.
• Video remarketing involves serving an ad to users who have either watched your video or subscribed to your channel. This technique captures users early in the purchase journey when they are just starting to engage with your brand. 
• Behavioral analytics target users that have not only visited your website but also demonstrated particular behaviors – like spending a certain amount of time or visiting a certain number of pages – while there. 

Three: Bring the “math men” (and women) to the table 
Strategy and creativity will always be critical to successful campaigns, but today the ability to mine, manipulate and analyze data is equally essential. Include mathematicians, statisticians and quantitative experts in your team and apply their skills to campaign optimizations.

Four: Test and learn 
The Internet is the best marketing laboratory yet invented. Direct marketers know this, but increasingly brand marketers need to get on board, substituting metrics such as average session duration or interacting with a graphic or downloading information for direct sales.

Five: Overcome fragmentation 
Fragmentation in campaign development and execution, strategy, teams, tools and data can result in conflicts in goals and incentives, lack of transparency in performance and wasted effort. Ways to tackle this include rooting out the causes of fragmentation, connecting your data strategy with overall strategy, getting closer to your data, breaking down organizational silos and using multiple attribution models.

Keen to learn more about the results of the study and the actions you can take to reach engaged audiences at scale? Read the full research report here.

Class is in session! Last week we went back-to-school with a series on the benefits of DoubleClick's unified platform, along with yesterday’s DoubleClick Search Academy announcement. Today, we're launching new DoubleClick eLearnings, a webinar series, and updated recorded webinars to help you learn and take advantage of our integrated platform features.

DoubleClick Digital Marketing gives marketers the ability to create, buy, and manage any type of ad on any device, helping consolidate your digital marketing efforts to more efficiently reach your goals. Now, you can use our new DCM Mobile eLearning, updated DCM Fundamentals course, and new webinar series to further your DoubleClick education and use our features to their fullest.

Try eLearning paths you can work through at your own pace

DCM Mobile eLearning: learn and master mobile display
DoubleClick's mobile solutions give you better ways to create, serve, and track ads. Use our new intermediate-level DCM Mobile eLearning to learn the steps to take for mobile-focused campaigns. Get an overview of digital creative formats, setting goals, trafficking best practices, conversion tracking, and reporting. The eLearning also dives into the differences between mobile, web, and in-app inventory, along with instructions for implementation and reporting. Try it now

Updated DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification: Learn the basics
If you haven’t yet received your DCM Fundamentals Certificate of completion, take DCM Fundamentals today and show that you know your stuff. Take a look at the updated training course, complete with new video and interactive content. Try it now

Make the most of DoubleClick in our new webinar series
When you’re busy developing and executing campaigns, making time to learn the latest product features and best practices can be tough. With that in mind, we've created a simple training program packed with actionable, easy-to-follow training tips and resources.

Join our product experts over the next two months for Make the most of DoubleClick, a webinar series where you’ll learn tips and tricks for better digital creative, better mobile campaigns, better trafficking, and better attribution. See the schedule below and register through the new training page in the DCM Help Center. Set aside 60 minutes for DoubleClick and find new ways to save time.

Make the most of DoubleClick: Better digital creative – 9/11 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
Enhanced Formats in DoubleClick Campaign Manager and Layouts in DoubleClick Studio give you the power to turn static creative assets into engaging, interactive ads – without the hefty creative fees or long turnaround times. Learn how you can use these features for your next campaign. Register 

Make the most of DoubleClick: Better mobile campaigns – 9/25 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
Learn more about how you use new DCM Mobile features to create faster, better, and more efficient mobile campaigns. Register

Make the most of DoubleClick: Better ad trafficking – 10/9 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
Learn tips and tricks for more efficient ad trafficking. Register

Better business decisions through attribution – 10/23 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
Learn how to put attribution data to use in answering important questions about your business. We'll discuss some case studies and help you incorporate attribution into your decision-making. Register

Dig into our library of recorded webinars
If live training isn’t your thing, check out our fresh selection of recorded webinars in the Help Center to learn more best practices, ranging from Fundamentals to ad trafficking to DoubleClick Rich Media, and more. While you’re there, be sure to read our latest release notes.

Get more from your DoubleClick account and reclaim your time by trying the eLearnings, webinars, and recordings to learn new tips and best practices!

Be a star student and stay connected with DoubleClick Training by subscribing to training updates.

Posted by Sarah Payne, DoubleClick Campaign Manager Product Trainer

Last week, we shared some digital marketing flashcards to help you go back to school, DoubleClick style (Take a look at our day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and day 5 flashcards).

Today, we're helping you further your DoubleClick Search education by introducing DoubleClick Search Academy, an easy-to-use, self-paced learning path designed to guide you through core DoubleClick Search online help and training courses -- based on your role and how you use the tool.

We’ve heard from users that they need more customized learning based on how they use DoubleClick products. If you’re a trafficker, you might need a broad understanding ranging from the basics all the way to advanced features to maximize search campaign performance. If you’re an analyst, you might not need to know all the details a planner might be responsible for, but you might still like to know how conversion data is tracked and how to monitor day-to-day performance for reporting insights.

DoubleClick Search Academy includes these checklists:

• Basics for new users: Understand the benefits of a search engine management tool using our core curriculum, including DoubleClick Search Fundamentals eLearning and certification.
• Implementation guide: Learn how to implement a new DS account and launch a basic campaign.
• QA and troubleshooting: It’s not shop class, but you’ll learn all about QA'ing tags, troubleshooting common Floodlight tag issues, and more.
• Advanced topics: Become an expert by learning about advanced DS integrations and topics. Learn about formula columns, shopping campaigns, bid strategies, inventory-aware campaigns, and executive reporting.

Since DoubleClick Search Academy covers a lot of material, we've set it up in checklist format so you can track progress by checking the boxes at the end of each step. Your progress will be saved so if you have to take a break, you can come back anytime and pick up where you left off.

Whether you’re a freshman trafficker adjusting your search marketing beanie, an analyst on the Dean’s list, or a planner feeling like a 5th year student, you can find customized training based on your role to help you ace DoubleClick Search.

Go for extra credit and sign up to receive DoubleClick training updates in your inbox.

Posted by Justine Thomas, DoubleClick Search Product Trainer