In February, we announced that DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and the Google Display Network are going 100% HTML5. Starting June 30th, 2016, display ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, or AdWords.
DoubleClick advertisers who currently use Flash ads in their campaigns have several ways to ensure your creative can continue to show up in your live campaigns. Read more here.
Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
When Netflix launched its new series Narcos1 in August of 2015, it faced a big global marketing challenge.
Narcos is a realistic look at the rise of the Cocaine Highway as told through the lives of legendary kingpin Pablo Escobar and the American DEA agents tracking him. It's a passionate story of crime, drugs, money, honor and politics, set in the late decades of the 20th century, with dialogue half in Spanish and half in English.
Netflix wanted to reach a global audience that included target groups like "thrill seekers" (men 25-34 drawn to the excitement of crime culture) and "conspiracy theorists" (older males fascinated by the political implications of drug trafficking). That meant Netflix and its digital agency, AvatarLabs, needed to bring the Narcos story to countries from Peru to Sweden with targeted messages that would appeal powerfully to different target viewers in each culture ― without overwhelming their budget or their marketing teams.
Ever since Weight Watchers first began as a gathering of friends in 1963, the company has been helping people lose pounds and live healthier lives. Today the Weight Watchers digital marketing team is focused on acquiring new generations of customers for those classic local meetings as well as their online products and services.
The Weight Watchers team has had ample success with search and social media, where they found it easy to test different headlines and calls to action. But they hadn't found a way to do the same kind of vigorous testing on display advertising. Building and managing dozens of creative iterations, and accurately measuring the results, seemed like a major challenge.
To tackle that challenge, Weight Watchers, its agencies, Neo@Ogilvy and OgilvyOne, chose DoubleClick Dynamic Creative.
See how they managed their creative testing to identify the best-performing creative iterations and boost acquisition volume by 56%.
Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer
Year after year we've heard pundits announce that this is "The Year of Mobile," but we don't quite seem to get there. Still, the facts don't lie: eMarketer estimates that mobile will account for 72% of U.S. digital ad spend by 2019 and Google's tech-forward target audience spends more than 74% of its time on mobile.1
Because mobile devices are consumers' always-on, constant companions, Google Marketing wanted to deliver personalized, contextual creative programmatically via ads. To show how the Google app can add value in people’s lives, Google Marketing brought the app’s functionality into the ad units themselves. Combining aggregated search insights, geo-targeting, and dynamic creative, the ads proactively fed users with helpful, relevant information.
The Google Marketing team followed four key steps as it developed the creative for the Google app. To learn more about the approach, check out the full case study.
Posted by Kelly Cox Product Marketing Manager, Google
As the holiday season gets underway, you’re likely focused on reaching holiday shoppers as they browse for gifts for their family and friends. Dynamic creative strategies are key to getting the most relevant messages and products in front of these shoppers. But with consumers’ increased usage of mobile devices, you need to build your dynamic creative in HTML5, and this confluence of technologies can lead to complexity.
Streamlining production of dynamic creative in Google Web Designer
To make it easier for you to build relevant and engaging cross-screen creative, we’re excited to announce the launch of simplified workflows in Google Web Designer that make it even easier to build dynamic creative in HTML5. You can now easily choose which data signals/feed attributes to connect to each dynamic element, pulling directly from the dynamic profile you’ve set up in DoubleClick Studio.
We’ve already seen some teams find success with the new dynamic workflow. Kaymu, one of the largest online retail marketplaces for emerging markets, used Google Web Designer to build an HTML5 dynamic remarketing campaign and show relevant products to shoppers. This strategy drove a 580% increase in CTR compared to their previous, non-HTML5, non-dynamic campaign, and the team’s dynamic creative build time dropped from 3 days to 10 minutes.
CyberAgent, a media agency based in Japan, also used Google Web Designer for a recent dynamic remarketing campaign. To provide the time needed to focus on the creative strategy, the team first automated the bidding and targeting for the campaign. They then could build and test several dynamic templates, using advanced animations and multiple dynamic elements. Ultimately, these advanced creatives led to a 40% higher CTR and a 28% lower CPC compared to the previous dynamic remarketing campaign that didn’t use Google Web Designer.
In addition to the new dynamic support in Google Web Designer, we’re also excited to launch:
Animation improvements, which help you build smooth animations
Updates to our text authoring capabilities, which make editing and manipulating the text in your ad units much easier and more intuitive
Two new components in our components gallery: a Spritesheet component, so you can more easily build out your spritesheets, and a Streetview component, so you can add location-based imagery to your ads. (We’ve kept this component separate from the Google Maps component to help you keep your file sizes smaller.)
Upcoming Google Web Designer Hangout on Air
Want to learn more about the new features? Sign up for one of our Hangouts on Air. Sean Kranzberg, Engineering Manager for Google Web Designer, will walk through the new features and take your questions.
Earlier this summer we held #HTML5Week to introduce you to resources that can help you develop engaging and relevant HTML5 creative. Now that Chrome has rolled out updates to Flash support, we're heading back to the virtual classroom to provide you with the latest information you need to make the transition to HTML5.
In this vein, we’re kicking off an HTML5 Hangout series, where over five weeks we’ll set aside an hour to explore topics ranging from how to QA HTML5 ads to building dynamic creative (See the complete Hangout schedule).
Our first hangout on September 10th (3pm - 4pm EST) will introduce you to HTML5 development tools and best practices. Register here.
Note: If you’re new to HTML5, we recommend walking through our Rich Media Fundamentals training before attending the HTML5 Hangout series.
We hope to see you in the classroom!
Posted by Hemmy Edge DoubleClick Rich Media Product Trainer
Last year we started the Make Mobile Work initiative in partnership with the IAB to foster adoption of HTML5 and cross-screen creative, and it quickly became the IAB Mobile Center’s lynchpin for marketer outreach as interest in the program accelerated.
For 2015, we’re excited to bring back Make Mobile Work for another round of educational and practical conversations for brand marketers, to help them succeed in our increasingly mobile-first world.The importance of HTML5 for digital marketing continues to be at the center of the Make Mobile Work message, building on the success of the HTML5 Week we hosted last week.
Make Mobile Work webinars will address three important topics over the remainder of 2015. These webinars are curated with marketer business decision-makers in mind—they will keep the jargon to a minimum and focus on sharing practical examples and learning.
The IAB’s Tech Lab is also working to update their standard ad units to reflect the file size needs of HTML5-based ads. This is a timely effort as connectivity technologies have changed along with the rise of HTML5 and it’s vital to realign buyer and seller expectations around ad file weights that will enable engaging ads, while not harming webpage or ad-load performance. Make Mobile Work will help to spread the word about this process and its outcomes and implications.
Along with the other members of the Mobile Center, we’re looking forward to continuing to help brands large and small, novice and experienced, get the know-how they need to make mobile work for them.
Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
We dubbed last week #HTML5Week and launched multiple HTML5 resources, hangouts and product updates to help make it easier to build all your ads in HTML5. Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of our Google Web Designer Certification exam and training resources.
Google Web Designer helps you create engaging HTML5 content. Use animations and interactive elements to bring your creative vision to life and enjoy integrations with other Google products, including a shared asset library and one-click-to-publish integration with DoubleClick Studio, compatibility with AdWords, and the ability to collaborate on works-in-progress in Google Drive.
The new Google Web Designer Fundamentals Certification allows new users to demonstrate proficiency and understanding of the Google Web Designer interface and features. The exam will help you learn:
How to use the Google Web Designer interface
How to create templates and animations
How to build interstitial ads
How to build advanced expandable ads
View step-by-step eLearning that takes you through the basics of Google Web Designer and helps you get trained quickly in building HTML5 ads using the tool. Once you finish the eLearning and build a few test ads, you can take a certification exam to test your knowledge and demonstrate your proficiency. If you pass the certification, you can get your name listed on the Certified User list in the Rich Media Gallery.
We hope this new certification exam helps you learn the ins and outs of the Google Web Designer tool, so that you can more easily create your HTML5 ads.
Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
For the past week, we’ve shared best practices and new resources to help you learn how to build HTML5 ads. To cap off #HTML5Week, we're making it even easier for our DoubleClick Campaign Manager clients to run mobile-friendly HTML5 ads by offering unlimited file sizes...for free.
HTML5 ad files are much larger than Flash ads, meaning they need a larger file size (k size) allowance and should utilize a polite load function to be publisher friendly.
We launched Enhanced Formats in DoubleClick Campaign Manager early last year, as an option for media agencies to upload larger creative files to DoubleClick Campaign Manager directly. Now that all ads need to be built in HTML5 to show up properly across screens and browsers, we’ve decided to offer the unlimited file sizes free of charge. Starting August 3rd, we will be automatically upgrading all DoubleClick Campaign Manager accounts to support Enhanced Formats. [No action necessary by clients.]
In addition to unlimited file size, Enhanced Formats offers automatic polite load functionality (which allows main web page content to load before the ad unit finishes loading,) a way to easily add basic engagement metrics to standard banner ads, and the ability to track metrics such as multiple exits, interactions, backup image views, HTML5 views, and display time. You can learn more about Enhanced Formats in the help center.
During the month of August, we’ll also be making some other changes to the way we handle campaigns that contain Flash ads:
In DoubleClick Campaign Manager, our systems will automatically show the HTML5 version of an ad, where available. (Before, the HTML5 version would only show in environments where Flash wasn't supported).
DoubleClick Bid Manager will stop supporting bids for Flash ads in Chrome (which pauses Flash ads automatically). This means advertisers won't end up paying for ads that will be paused by default.
While making the switch to HTML5 may seem daunting, we hope that these product updates, combined with the resources and training provided this week, will help you tackle the challenge. Here is a recap of the resources that are now available:
For the past week, we’ve discussedtheways that advertisers can pair smart creative with their media buying strategies, to produce successful digital campaigns. Today, we’ll talk about our fourth and final creative and media pairing around in-stream video -- advertisers should make sure they have the right video ad creative to run in their video ad placements.
Did you know? In 2014, over a third of mobile phone users streamed or downloaded video on their mobile devices. In 2015, the percent of people watching video on their phones is expected to jump to 40%. (1)
Rather than simply reusing TV commercials for their digital campaigns, advertisers can make their video ads work better for digital by building in interactivity. Interactive in-stream video (VPAID) allows advertisers to add additional layers of information on top of their video assets. This functionality turns a linear video into an experience that resembles a micro-site -- consumers can interact and learn about the brand all within the single ad unit, without having to navigate away from the original page.
Easy, automated in-stream video
Our new VPAID Layout allows advertisers to take an existing video asset, upload it into the Studio Layouts tool, and create an interactive ad unit in minutes. Here’s a demo of the process:
Smart serving technology for mobile video ads
When you build ad units with video in them and then serve them to mobile devices, you have to remember that video files are large, and mobile devices have slower and often fluctuating bandwidth connectivity. DoubleClick Campaign Manager has smart serving technologies to allow you to provide the best quality video to consumers based on their available bandwidth.
DoubleClick will now transcode and segment your videos so they can be served in a file size that will load on the viewer’s mobile connection (3G, 4G or wifi). The video can even be altered on the fly, if the connection changes during playback.
It’s important that advertisers pair smart creative with their media buying strategies. A campaign is only as good as the creative that shows up, so developing creative strategies that align with the media buy from the outset of the campaign is critical to campaign success. Advertisers that do this will benefit from more successful and engaging digital campaigns. Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
Last week, we talked about how creative strategies support the media buy in successful campaigns. Without ad creative that is engaging and relevant to people, a campaign will fall short of its advertising goals. Further, with consumers spending much of their time on smartphones and tablets, these engaging and relevant experiences need to work across screens.
Our third creative and media pairing focuses on creating successful cross-screen advertising: If your media agency is including mobile inventory in the media buy, your creative agency needs to build mobile-compatible creative to be served to those placements. The best way to build those ads is in HTML5, which allows you to provide the same interactive experiences for mobile as you do on desktop.
Did you know? There are more people in HTML5-compatible environments today than in Flash-compatible environments (1) yet 84% of rich media ads are still built in Flash. (2)
Here are four best practices for building cross-screen ads to pair with your mobile media buys:
Build in HTML5
Building mobile-compatible ads in HTML5 is getting much easier, as new tools come onto the scene to help expedite the transition from Flash. With our HTML5 and in-app layouts, advertisers can upload their existing creative assets and create multiple formats in minutes. For more custom HTML5 units, Google Web Designer provides a robust and intuitive suite of design and animation tools to allow for more creative flexibility.
Build for apps
80% of the time that people spend on their smartphones is spent within a mobile application. (3) Mobile web is very different from a mobile app, so what works on a website experience doesn’t necessarily work in a mobile application. Make sure to build ad creative that is designed for the app experience.
Use device form-factor
Desktops, smartphones and tablets all have different form-factors, or device-specific attributes and interaction modes. Smartphones and tablets have touch screens and accelerometers or motion sensors that sense movement and orientation of the device, while a laptop does not. Smartphones have much smaller screens, while tablets and desktops have larger, “lean-back” screens. Smartphones also have calling and texting capabilities. These are all opportunities for incorporating cool things about the device into your ad creative.
For example Burberry took advantage of device form-factor in their Burberry Kisses campaign. This campaign captured the shape of someone’s lips, digitized it and put it onto a digital letter that could be emailed to a loved one. To provide the same experience on different devices, the designers had to be smart about form-factor.
On desktop, they could use the video camera on the computer to capture a person’s lips. But smartphones and tablets don’t have a front-facing video camera that would work. Instead, the developers used the touch screen capabilities of these devices to allow people to kiss their screen. The device was able to understand the size and shape of the person’s lips via the touchscreen and digitize the image. This provided the same overarching brand experience for the user, but utilized a different way of executing it on different devices.
Use geo-location
Smartphones have the unique characteristic of travelling with us wherever we go. When a user opts to share their location information, the advertising they see has the opportunity to become more relevant to the physical world around them. Advertisers can send specific messages about their store or retail outlet to people who are traveling within a specified area around it.
By building HTML5 ads that work for apps, use device form factor, and provide geographically-relevant info, advertisers can ensure their ads reach consumers successfully on every device and environment. Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
As we introduced on Wednesday and explained further yesterday, it’s critical to pair your media buying strategies with smart creative strategies to develop more successful digital campaigns. A media buy is only as good as the creative that goes into it!
Our second creative and media pairing revolves around the idea of programmatic: When you are buying your media programmatically (automatically, in real-time, with granular information about each viewer) you should also be building your creative messages automatically, in real time, for every viewer. Dynamic creative is a technique that advertisers can use to accomplish these real-time messages.
Did you know? Consumers are twice as likely to engage with real-time advertising than they are with generic ads.*
Dynamic creative is a powerful and flexible system that lets marketers create a single ad template and then swap in creative variations to fit each viewer. What's more, it does it in real time: changing headlines, images, copy and calls to action depending on variables like the user's demographic, their location and the device they're using at the moment they see the ad.
People may be familiar with the idea of dynamic creative for direct response campaigns (i.e. showing a product based on what someone already viewed), but there are also clever ways to incorporate dynamic creative for brand awareness campaigns.
For example, Nike used dynamic creative to fuel their real-time “Phenomenal Shot” campaign for the World Cup. Nike wanted to deliver experiences that related to live moments in the soccer matches. They used an HTML5 dynamic template, which allowed them to create and manage one flexible ad—instead of hundreds of custom-built ads—that could run across screens.
To accommodate dozens of ad alternatives localized for 15 different languages, they created a Google Spreadsheet template that served as their dynamic feed to generate ads. Once the dynamic feed was set up, they could generate the ads quickly by updating the spreadsheet, which minimized the effort and speed of releasing ads in real time. The spreadsheet was robust yet simple enough that the ads could be updated without assistance from technical or creative employees.
Nike cleverly used dynamic creative as a way to bring live moments into their ad campaigns in real-time. Knowing that their viewers were on their phones as they were watching the soccer matches, Nike made sure their ads could show up on smartphones and tablets, to grab users’ attention and engagement during commercials or breaks in the game.
As brands buy more reservation-based ads through programmatic channels, using the information about their audiences in their creative is going to become increasingly important. To accomplish these smart creative campaigns, Advertisers must include both the media agency and the creative agency in the room at the outset of the campaign. This will enable the agencies to develop creative and media plans that are aligned.
To learn more about how to pair dynamic creative with your programmatic media buy, visit our dynamic solutions page and select the vertical that is relevant for you.
And come back on Monday for our third pairing: Mobile media buys and HTML5 creative. Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
*source: “Media Economy Report: How Data is Changing our Business,” Jan. 2014, Magna Global
Yesterday, we announced 13 updates to our DoubleClick Creative Solutions and explained how advertisers can develop more successful campaigns by pairing their media buying strategies with smart creative.
Pairing #1 from yesterday’s post centered on scalability: Creative agencies need robust creative management tools to keep up with the scale and complexity of increasingly large media buys. The new Asset Library tab that launched this week in DoubleClick Studio provides just that -- it allows creative agencies to easily scale and manage their assets across their creatives.
With Asset Library, you can host, manage and update all of your creative assets for free, from a single cloud-based location within DoubleClick Studio. Easily manage your assets across all of your DoubleClick campaigns and update live campaigns immediately with new creative.
Six things to know about the new Asset Library tab:
No waiting: You don’t have to wait for a hosted URL from the DoubleClick team, so you can get your ads live faster.
Larger file sizes: Upload individual creative assets up to 60MB, and upload any total file size that you want.
Share assets easily: Advertisers can use Asset Library to share their creative assets directly with their creative shops, all in one place.
Batch Update: Automatically update a batch of creatives with one click in Asset Library. You can also refer to assets uploaded to Asset Library within your dynamic creative feeds.
Automatic video transcoding: Asset Library automatically transcodes videos into all necessary formats when uploaded into the platform.
Update live campaigns immediately: Edit your asset in Asset Library and push it live to the locations you want in your campaign immediately, no 24-hour review cycle or re-trafficking required.
Here’s what some of our beta testers have said about Asset Library:
"We’ve used the asset library to host HTML5 assets and then pull them in dynamically within DoubleClick Studio. This has made file management more efficient and enabled us to change assets quickly when pricing, messaging changes and creative tweaks have been necessary." ~David Morgan, Director, 22Design
"We use DoubleClick Studio to build 99% of our creative and appreciate how Asset Library has simplified video serving. Instead of handing off files, we can manage the serving ourselves through our Asset Library folder." ~Kate Bush, Associate Director of Project Management, Isobar Detroit
"I have been using Asset Library with a dynamic ad campaign for one of our major clients. Having all of the assets accessible in DoubleClick Studio...in one place has saved me so much time and energy. I can keep all my assets in a well documented and simple way. It also makes the data feed that I put into Google Docs a lot smaller and easier to manage when dealing with vast amounts of data in the dynamic ads. It is the most beneficial upgrade to date." ~Darren Stevenson, Head of Digital Display at UK creative agency Partners Andrew Aldridge
Over the next couple quarters, we’ll be integrating Asset Library into Google Web Designer, DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager, so you’ll be able to access your creative assets from every management tool within the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.
Ready to give it a try?
Simply login to your DoubleClick Studio Account and click on the new Asset Library tab in the top navigation bar. You can also check out our Getting Started guide.
Come back tomorrow for creative and media pairing #2 around programmatic.
Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Creative Solutions
Savvy advertisers know they need to pair smart creative with their media buying strategies, to accomplish successful digital campaigns. Today, we're making it easier than ever to do just that with 13 new tools across our DoubleClick Creative Solutions. These updates help advertisers succeed with four key creative + media pairings: 1. Powerful creative management tools support large-scale campaigns 2. Dynamic creative tools support programmatic media buys 3. HTML5 and in-app creative tools support mobile ad targeting 4. In-stream video tools support video ad targeting
Pairing #1: Powerful creative management tools support large-scale campaigns
Display campaigns are getting larger and more complex. To keep up, creative agencies need tools that help them build ads to suit every shape and size required by that campaign, in a fast and seamless way.
Asset Library is a creative management layer launching today in DoubleClick Studio and rolling out across the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform in the next couple quarters. Asset Library allows advertisers to host assets for free in DoubleClick and easily manage and bulk update creative, even in live campaigns, without having to re-traffic them.
“We have cut our development time considerably using Asset Library as part of our daily work flow. It's hard to imagine how we survived without it.” ~ Michael Douglas, Head of Production, SapientNitro
Pairing #2: Dynamic creative tools support programmatic media buys
Advertisers can use the audience information from their media buy to craft relevant ads for every viewer. Our new dynamic tools focus on making the process easier to manage:
A lightweight version of dynamic creative for retail and hotel clients is available in DoubleClick Bid Manager (Premium US users). Use six HTML5 templates to build dynamic ads that are aligned with the programmatic media buy. They work for Facebook right-hand side inventory too!
Advertisers can now pull their Google Merchant Center Feed into a dynamic remarketing creative in both DoubleClick Studio and DoubleClick Bid Manager. This makes it much easier to build complex retail campaigns without having to re-input the data.
Understand which products in your dynamic ad lead to which website conversions, using the new u-reporting feature in DoubleClick Studio.
Pairing #3: HTML5 and in-app creative tools support mobile ad targeting
To show a successful ad unit on mobile and tablet placements, you have to build HTML5 ad creatives in formats that work well on smaller screens.
Build mobile-compatible ads in minutes, with 20 new HTML5 and in-app Studio Layouts.
To build more custom HTML5 ads, agencies can use Google Web Designer and then publish their ads in one click to DoubleClick Studio.
For a dynamic creative campaign, DoubleClick Studio supports HTML5 dynamic creative, so advertisers can ensure their real-time messages reach consumers wherever they are.
Publish with confidence: DoubleClick supports MRAID 2.0 (the IAB’s latest mobile in-app standard) and has certified over 90 of the largest publishers and networks, to make sure their websites will support DoubleClick in-app ads.
Pairing #4: In-stream video tools support video ad targeting
Make your TV commercials work for digital by building in interactivity. Serve your video ads alongside the rest of your digital campaign so that your data and reporting are consolidated. This can lead to better campaign insights.
Our new VPAID Layout lets you easily build interactive in-stream video ads (VPAID). Simply upload your video asset and add interactive elements to create a complex ad unit in minutes.
You can also ensure people have a smooth viewing experience with your mobile video ads. DoubleClick Campaign Manager will transcode and segment your videos so they can be served in a file size that will load on the viewer’s mobile connection (3G, 4G or wifi). The video can even be altered on the fly, if the connection changes during playback.
Digital campaigns are nuanced and complex, so having the right support resources at your disposal is important. We built the Creative Recommendation Toolto help you identify the best product to use based on your project’s resources. We’ve also integrated Chat Supportinto the Studio UI, so you can get in touch with a real person immediately, get your problem solved and get on with your work.
While advertisers may be focused on scaling campaigns across big bets like mobile, video and programmatic, smart creative is a critical element of every successful campaign and can’t be an afterthought. Advertisers will achieve the best results when they combine creative strategies with media strategies from the outset of their campaigns.
Over the next few days, we’ll dive into each of the four creative strategies listed above, to provide best practices for combining creative and media strategies in your campaigns. Stay tuned!
Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Creative Solutions
Yesterday, we provided search marketers with four of our favorite tools to whip their digital strategy into shape. Today, we have five “knead to know” tips for Media Agencies to help you make your holiday promotions a piece of cake. With the right ingredients to scale and streamline your seasonal campaigns, you can find some extra time to sit back and enjoy your perfectly baked holiday pastries — while we take care of the rest.
1. Find the recipe for success with DoubleClick Planning:
During the holidays, it’s easy to spend a lot of money—on food, gifts and decorations. But it can be hard to pull everything together to create that quintessential “holiday cheer.” This year, we have the recipe to ensure you achieve your holiday goals. DoubleClick Planning is a brand new tool that helps you simplify the planning and buying of your campaigns. The tool begins to unify programmatic and reservation inventory management, so you can carry out all of your buys in one place. Faster and more efficient cross-channel planning enables more insightful media strategies, and will ultimately help you get an ROI the size of a holiday feast.
2. Whip up opportunities with real-time bidding and optimization:
We get it. The holidays are busy, and you often find yourself running out of time—both in the kitchen and with your digital marketing. Forget the manual, hand-churned methods of the past that can leave your campaign results as stale as last year’s fruit cake. This year, turbocharge your campaigns with real-time automated bidding in DoubleClick Bid Manager. We’ll dynamically change a line item’s bid, based on the likeliness that an impression will perform well. Then we’ll use that near-instant conversion data to optimize bids throughout the day—helping you achieve specific campaign goals. And the best part? It’s all automatic, so you won’t have to make it from scratch.
3. Delight customers with Google Merchant Center feed integration in dynamic creative:
Knowing which product to show each viewer can be as tough as choosing what to make for Thanksgiving dinner. To ease the decision-making process, we launched support for Google Merchant Center feeds in DoubleClick Dynamic Creative. Use your existing Google Merchant Center feeds to automatically update your DoubleClick Studio or DoubleClick Bid Manager display campaigns — showing the right product to the right customers, when they’re looking to buy. In addition, retail and travel advertisers can now target dynamic campaigns to right-hand side inventory on the Facebook Exchange through DoubleClick Bid Manager. With these dynamic options on the table, the rest is gravy.
4. Handle on-the-go customers with geofence targeting:
As a master cook, you’re moving around non-stop during the holidays—and so are your customers. But as they’re seeking deals and checking them twice across screens, how do you drive conversions - both online and offline? Geofence targeting in DoubleClick Bid Manager will enable you to deliver highly relevant messages to customers based on their proximity to a specified chain store. This means you can maximize performance for mobile by automatically adjusting the geofence, based on privacy and potential reach. Ready to make your holidays a multiscreen event this year? We’ll raise a glass of eggnog to that!
5. Measure beyond a “pinch” with GRP and Viewability data:
A “pinch” of this and a “dash” of that won’t get you to holiday-perfect results, especially during the busy season. With our suite of solutions, we’ll give you the precise measurements you need to cook up an impactful campaign. Ensure your campaigns are actually seen, with ActiveView on DoubleClick. Reach the right audience with comScore and Nielsen GRPs, integrated seamlessly into DoubleClick. Then, optimize your campaigns in real time using audience insights gleaned from comScore vCE in DoubleClick. By accurately measuring and optimizing your campaigns, you won’t need to wait for days or weeks to make sure your holiday dollars are spent on the right audience.
Hopefully with these tips in toe, you’ll get your holiday campaigns up and running in no time, so you can enjoy some R&R with family and friends this season.
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
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.
Last week’s updates to Google Web Designer included cool new features that make it easier for creative designers and developers to build robust HTML5 creative. These features, combined with DoubleClick’s audience and environment information can help advertisers and agencies improve creative messaging for even more successful cross-screen marketing campaigns.
Today’s consumers expect to see tailored and relevant ads, and DoubleClick Dynamic Creative can help you use the information about who is viewing an ad to build smarter and more relevant creatives for every viewer. Learn about DoubleClick Dynamic Creative today by visiting our Dynamic Solutions page on the Rich Media Gallery and joining this week’s training webinar series.
Watch this video:
Find DoubleClick Dynamic Creative solutions by vertical.
Check out our Dynamic Creative Solutions page in the Rich Media Gallery to learn how to get started with DoubleClick Rich Media Dynamic Creative. You’ll find industry-specific information, best practices and creative examples for retail, travel, auto, and telecom verticals.
Join this week’s DoubleClick Dynamic Creative webinar series.
Want to learn more in an interactive environment? Join our product experts for this week’s DoubleClick Dynamic Creative webinar series. See the schedule below and register through the links below.
Introduction to Dynamic Creative – 8/12 at 9 AM PST / 12 PM EST
Learn about the benefits of DoubleClick Dynamic Creative and see how it works. You’ll also learn the differences between basic and advanced formats, how to set up and make changes, and how to use advanced targeting. Register
Advanced Dynamic Creative Workflow – 8/13 at 9 AM PST / 12 PM EST
Learn the advanced dynamic creative workflow. We’ll cover the pre-launch, launch, and post-launch processes for advanced formats, along with advanced dynamic strategy kits. You’ll also learn troubleshooting tips and tricks to help you with the more advanced dynamic creatives. Register
Dynamic Creative Best Practices – 8/14 at 9 AM PST / 12 PM EST
Build your knowledge and learn best practices for designing, developing, and revising dynamic creative. We’ll cover advanced features, like creative dimension filtering, autosizing, and more. Register
If you’ve taken Fundamentals training for DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Rich Media, these resources will help you better understand how to implement dynamic creative. If you haven’t already, be sure to take DoubleClick Campaign Manager Fundamentals and Rich Media Fundamentals and get your certificate of completion.
Watch a pre-recorded webinar.
Can’t make this week’s webinar series? No worries! You can watch a recorded webinar in our Help Center to learn more dynamic creative best practices. While you’re there, be sure to read about our latest release notes.
Marius Veltman’s thought experiment yesterday utilized the Tech Lab’s Full Page Flex and Motion Sensor components to enable viewers to navigate the scenery of the ad in full screen, by tilting their mobile device.
This component is just one example of many that are being developed by Google’s new Tech Lab, a project created by Google’s Creative Technical Consultants to produce new innovations, push the boundaries of rich media and partner with creative agencies to help take these solutions to the next level. Even the best designers and developers need inspiration, and the Tech Lab has been established to help our DoubleClick Studio Certified Partners experiment with the latest, most innovative ad formats and features for their campaigns.
HTML5 is still a bit of a “wild west,” both risky and alluring in that it is unchartered territory. There is space for creative designers and developers to experiment with new executions. As Marius pointed out in his article, “the experimentation process … is crucial to developing new ideas and pushing the creative envelope.”
The Tech Lab helps designers and developers build never-before-seen formats and features into their rich media campaigns. These fresh ideas haven’t been used in many (if any) campaigns before, meaning they are exciting but also untested; but these are the realities of living on the edge of technology.
To date, the Tech Lab has created 15 innovative formats and features, and today the group is launching three new ones for HTML5:
HTML5 Autoplay Video: Start any video within an HTML5 creative automatically, without requiring a user interaction.
HTML5 Shake and Shout: Boost your HTML5 creatives by adding cool interactions: Let people blow or shout onto their device and the mic will pick up the cue; or let them shake the phone and the accelerometer will pick up the cue.
HTML5 Twitter Widget: Boost your HTML5 creative’s social IQ by adding the twitter widget and letting viewers view, tweet, retweet, and follow your twitter account directly from your mobile ads.
If you’re a DoubleClick Studio Certified partner, reach out to your DoubleClick rep to begin working with the Tech Lab. To become a Studio Certified partner, visit our exam page.
Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer
Yesterday, we announced a revamped Google Web Designer, brimming with new features that make it even easier for creative designers and developers to build robust HTML5 creative.
Today, we’d like to introduce you to Marius Veltman, a rich media expert from Holland and a life-long creative technologist. We first met Marius last year when he tested out the alpha version of Google Web Designer and gave us a list of improvements for the product.
For this launch, Marius gave us a peek into his world as an artist and designer and helped us push the limits of HTML5 with a “Google Web Designer Thought Experiment.” We asked him to create an awesome HTML5 ad unit, using only Google Web Designer, that takes advantage of different device form factors and successfully conveys a brand’s message.
We selected the Google Cultural Institute as the brand and used the Street View imagery from their Great Barrier Reef World Wonders Collection as the assets. We then set out on an adventure through Holland to document Marius’s creative process as he worked to develop the ad.
Watch as Marius’s sketches come to life through the medium of HTML5 and the help of Google Web Designer. Marius's ideas develop in parallel to his own story as a designer. Then, check out the actual ad unit and learn more about his process.
Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing, Google Web Designer
