The digital landscape has changed the way people shop for the holidays. With the ability to instantly discover, research and purchase, people around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before — transforming into supershoppers, seemingly overnight.

Supershoppers are a new breed of buyers, keeping their options open and relying heavily on mobile for inspiration, research and e-commerce. They learn the latest brands and the top gifts of the season, and they know where to find the best deals. Where do they gather their knowledge? From you, if you know how to reach them.

DoubleClick Ad Exchange offers access to the broadest reach of premium, clean and brand-safe inventory across screens. We've created a new guide to help you get the right message to these supershoppers and to provide some tips to help set your campaigns up for success this holiday season.

Today we’re introducing a new API that allows you to securely connect offline conversion events to your digital advertising programs, allowing you to measure the full impact of your digital spend. In addition to gaining a more comprehensive view on campaign performance, you’ll also be able to use these insights to better refine your audience lists.

Take the auto industry, for example. Consumers in the market looking to buy a new sedan might start by watching video reviews of popular models. When they’ve narrowed down a few options that fit their needs, they’re likely to search for local dealers and make calls to schedule test drives. Finally, after all of this research, they’ll make their decision and buy directly from one dealer.

If you’re a car maker trying to reach consumers in this journey, you’re probably looking at proxy metrics (i.e. lead forms, time on site, video completion rates, etc.) to measure the success of your digital campaigns, leaving you with a partial understanding of their impact. With the Conversions API you’re able to measure offline activities as well — such as calls, visits or transactions happening in the dealership — giving you a complete view of the customer journey.

Some industry-specific examples

Enabling better decisions

By considering offline actions such as store visits, call activities and in-store transactions you can gain insights that will allow you to make your ads more relevant for consumers and perform better. For example:

• Exclude existing customers from your new acquisition program and focus on retention and loyalty
• Re-market to consumers who have called your call center but didn’t purchase
• Cross-sell new products to frequent visitors of your stores

Getting started with the Conversions API

You can use one of the approved partners to securely integrate with DoubleClick. Approved partners span various use cases including CRM onboarding, call tracking and foot traffic attribution:

                               

      

Conversions API is now available to all DoubleClick accounts. To get started, review the technical documentation in our Help Center, talk to your sales representative or contact one of the partners directly.

Posted by Luke Hedrick
Product Manager, DoubleClick

Tune in on July 19^th for the DoubleClick Announcements Livestream. Watch live as Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video Ads and Analytics at Google, shares new product announcements and DoubleClick's vision for the future.

Register and get the link to the livestream in your inbox before the event.

The event will be streamed live on DoubleClick.com on July 19th, 2016 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET.

Posted by The DoubleClick Marketing Team

Programmatic advertising accounts for 67% of all digital display ad sales¹. When you consider that data-driven creative is the creative powerhouse behind programmatic, and that 70% of a media campaign’s performance hinges on the creative², it’s clear that knowing how to build data-driven creative is a must for any agency with an eye toward the future.

As important as data-driven creative is, adopting is easier said than done. That’s why we put together a set of resources to help marketers, media agencies, creative agencies and production teams understand how to connect the dots between data and creative, to build more effective campaigns. We launched our first piece, a guide for marketers, back in March, along with an infographic to illustrate the process.

Today, we’re excited to launch a toolkit for creative and production teams, to help you understand how data can fit into your creative process.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

^{1 eMarketer, 2015
2 Internal data, Google Media campaigns, October 2015}

All eyes will be on Rio de Janeiro from August 5-21 as the world’s top athletes battle for medals in swimming, track and field, gymnastics, basketball, beach volleyball and other popular sports. Millions of sports enthusiasts, families and even non-sports fans across the globe will tap into the excitement of the Summer Olympic Games.

With the whole world watching, advertisers have an opportunity to reach Olympics viewers on every screen they use to follow the games. Informed data can help you win during Rio as thousands of athletes compete and billions of people watch. Knowing where viewers spend their time, which sports they follow and what they’re interested in can give you an edge—and wider reach.

Check out our Olympics guide to learn how DoubleClick Ad Exchange can help you increase your reach during the games.

Digital platforms give brands the tools to reach audiences where they spend their time, at scale and with personalized messaging not possible through other channels—so it’s no surprise that in 2017, total digital ad spending is predicted to surpass TV for the first time.¹ With this milestone approaching, we’ve heard your excitement about the opportunities digital can bring to your organization, but also that you’re looking for help to design and implement a digital strategy that meets your unique business needs.

Today, we’re launching the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner program to help give you the confidence you need to win in digital. Connect with a global network of certified digital marketing experts so you can achieve your goals, from building your brand to driving sales.

Connect with DoubleClick Digital Marketing

Certified Marketing Partners provide a range of technology and service offerings. Whether you’re looking for creative or media management services, data or technology integrations, help with measurement and attribution, or access to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, our partners can help you succeed.

Find a partner

We’re excited to welcome over 40 Certified Marketing Partners into the program, from around the world. And we’re working hard to build out the program to ensure you can reach your marketing goals by teaming up with a Certified Marketing Partner, no matter where you are.

When a partner has the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner badge, it means they’ve been carefully vetted and meet our rigorous qualification standards. Partners who’ve earned the badge are listed on DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner Search, so you can find the right partner for your business.

Many advertisers are already seeing value working with our Certified Marketing Partners:

"In the fast-moving and often chaotic world of programmatic advertising, MightyHive has been a trusted partner that we have come to rely upon. In addition to strong strategic advice, we appreciate their product recommendations, campaign execution and intelligence on the latest trends in the marketplace. MightyHive has consistently delivered."
-Scott Jensen, Senior Vice President of Digital, Partner Fusion

“We needed a partner to assist and lead the transition into the DoubleClick technology stack, and Acceleration has been first-rate. This partnership allowed our agency to reach our goals, and because of Acceleration we continue to exceed them in terms of growth.”
-David Taylor, Digital Director, Accord Group Ltd

“FiveStones brings effective digital strategy and optimization solutions. This partnership has helped us advance our brand marketing strategy and our ability to capitalize on the shift to digital."
-Karen Tsang, Head of Marketing, Openskools Limited

To Find a Partner, visit www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/certified-marketing-partners/

Posted by Chip Hall
Managing Director of Media Platforms, Google


¹eMarketer ‘Digital Ad Spending to Surpass TV Next Year’ 2016

Cross-post from the Google Analytics blog.

On the Google Analytics team, we believe a primary goal of analytics is to make your marketing smarter. It should help you understand your customer’s journey, gain and share insights, and create an engaging experience for your audience.

But just as your organization can’t achieve these goals in a silo, neither can your website analytics data. Your customer’s journey includes both their experience with your marketing campaigns as well as their experience on your sites and apps. So you need complete data, connected from marketing through to site experience, to actually gain insight and deliver a great customer experience.

Analytics 360, part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite, is proud to provide this type of end-to-end understanding with our existing AdWords integrations. Beginning today, we are now offering this same capability with the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. In addition to our existing integration with DoubleClick Campaign Manager^*, you can now view user engagement information for users acquired through DoubleClick Bid Manager^* and DoubleClick Search^* campaigns directly within Analytics 360. It’s super easy to connect your Analytics 360 account to DoubleClick Digital Marketing and there’s no implementation work needed (e.g. no site or campaign re-tagging).

With these new capabilities, marketers using Analytics 360 are better able to see the customer journey from when a customer was exposed to their marketing campaigns all the way through to that customer’s eventual purchase on their site (or lack thereof). User engagement with your site can be analyzed for both users who viewed an ad (view-through) and for users who clicked on an ad (click-through). View-through information is especially important for display, video, and mobile because users often view these ads and then visit the website later rather than clicking directly on the ad.

Companies like Panasonic are already using our integrations with marketing media to improve their return on investment (ROI) from digital marketing campaigns. With the Analytics 360 ads integrations, Panasonic was able to aggregate all digital campaign data into one platform to gain insight about their customers. They then shared these insights back to their media tools to better find engaged audiences and provide those audiences with the right experience at the right moment, driving an ROI increase of 30%.

In light of these latest integrations with Google ad technologies, we wanted to take a moment to discuss the two capabilities we enable across all our ads integrations that help you achieve smarter marketing: 1) understanding the customer and their journey and 2) creating relevant experiences for users.

Understanding the customer and their journey

They saw and / or clicked on your ad and arrived on your site. But who are they? What happened next? Did they bounce immediately? Did they research specific products? Did they sign up for your newsletter? What were the users who interacted with your digital marketing doing on your site? Ads integrations with Analytics 360 can help you answer these questions and more, for example:

• You are launching a new product and start running display and search advertising campaigns to attract customers. You find that one campaign has a low conversion rate and you’re considering deprecating it. But you review your site analytics data for this campaign and find that some specific ad exchanges and certain keywords are driving many new users to your site. And some of these exchanges and keywords are driving new users who are highly engaged — they view a lot of product detail pages and spend a lot of time on your site. So, instead of shutting down the campaign, you refine the targeting for the ads in this campaign to focus more on the ad exchanges and the keywords that drive engaged new users to your site. Then, you create a remarketing campaign to bring these engaged new users back to your site for purchase.


• One of your campaigns drives a lot of click and view-throughs, but has a low conversion rate. Analysis in Analytics 360 reveals that most users bounce immediately, but a certain segment who click on or view that ad (e.g. women aged 18-35) have a really high conversion rate. You refine the messaging and creative in your ads, adjust where these ads are served, and bid higher in order to find and attract more of this high-performing audience.

Creating relevant experiences for users

User behavior on your site can tell you a lot about them and what they’re interested in. Shouldn’t you use that information to inform your marketing strategy? Some examples:

• You run a shopping site and have users who spend a lot of time looking at an item or even put that item in their cart, but don’t end up purchasing. At the end of the season, the clothes on your site go on sale. You create remarketing campaigns to these users who showed interest but never purchased letting them know that the item they were interested in is now on sale.


• You are a cable company and you’d like to offer your new online streaming HDTV service to existing customers who subscribe to your high speed Internet plan. You create remarketing ads for customers who have the high speed plan, driving higher lifetime value for these customers.

These are just a few examples of how analytics data can blend with campaign data to create real value for both companies and for their customers. It's a win-win — customers get marketing that is truly relevant to them, and companies put their marketing dollars to work with the customers who are most likely to be interested.

Visit the Google Analytics 360 Suite Help Center to learn more about our new integrations with DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Search. You can also learn about our existing integrations DoubleClick Campaign Manager and with AdWords. Stay tuned for more updates from Analytics 360 as we continue to invest in new and exciting capabilities. Happy analyzing!

Posted by Abhi Aggarwal and Jocelyn Whittenburg
Google Analytics team

^{*Note: Must be a Google Analytics 360 customer to view these links.}

E-commerce in Brazil has grown 20+% year over year for the last five years¹. In this highly competitive environment, choosing the right advertising partner is a critical strategic decision for a retail brand to ensure their message breaks through.

Netshoes is the world's largest sports retailer, selling everything from basketball shoes to fitness gear across all of Latin America. Historically they have been deeply focused on performance advertising, and at times have used up to 8 different advertising platforms and retargeters at once in search of the best results.

But recently, Netshoes decided this approach wasn't giving them the best results. They found they were competing against themselves by bidding for the same audience with multiple ad providers, driving costs up and ROI down. When they consolidated their media buys across display and video with DoubleClick Bid Manager, the results speak for themselves:

• 400% better conversion rate than with other channels.
• 30% view rate on TrueView video ads, with CPVs lower than the market average.
• 15% time savings across the Netshoes media buying team.

"The results we get from DoubleClick are simply much better than those from other partners in our past"
—Danilo Mangini, Marketing Manager, Netshoes

Learn more about Netshoes’ approach in the full case study.

Posted by Kelly Cox Product Marketing Manager, Google

^{1 Source: e-bit Webshoppers}

Mobile has forever changed the way we live, and it’s forever changed what we expect of brands. It’s fractured the consumer journey into hundreds of real-time, intent-driven micro-moments. Each one is a critical opportunity for brands to shape our decisions and preferences. In these I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go consumer moments, people are turning to mobile apps, in addition to websites, to find what they need.

Given this consumer shift, companies from industries as diverse as Finance, Retail and Travel have jumped into the game, building branded app experiences to engage with their customers. So it’s important that marketers be able to measure and attribute their app-related activities, whether installs, engagement, or purchases, back to their advertising campaigns.

That’s why, today, we’re excited to announce the ability to integrate app install and event data from key third party measurement partners into DoubleClick. Working with third parties (starting with TUNE) we are able to increase the measurement accuracy between different app attribution trackers and DoubleClick, ensuring your data is accurate and reliable.

With this launch, marketers can now use supported third party measurement partners to attribute in-app activities back to the in-app ads they have run through DoubleClick, enabling them to reach their performance goals as they acquire new app customers.

This launch provides customers with:

• Choice: Use one of several (supported*) app tracking tools, while still accurately attributing installs to your DoubleClick ad campaigns.
• Accuracy: Get reliable and accurate metrics so you can report on your results with confidence, while getting the benefits of a unified view of all your programmatic or reservation app attribution data inside DoubleClick reporting.
• Better performance: Minimize cost-per-acquisition to get the best performance for your budget. You can optimize your bids in DoubleClick Bid Manager against your post-view and post-click conversions. You can also create targetable audience lists based on these in-app activities (e.g. customers who’ve installed your app or customers who’ve logged in).

By allowing more choice to advertisers using their preferred third party app measurement tools, we are able to provide more robust and actionable metrics for marketers running mobile app install campaigns on DoubleClick.

To get started with this feature, please follow the directions here for DoubleClick Bid Manager, and here for DoubleClick Campaign Manager (accessible by customers only.)

Posted by Steve Chang
Product Manager, DoubleClick Digital Marketing

*At launch, this feature supports a verified integration with TUNE. Verified support for other third party app trackers is expected to launch later this year.

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.

Posted by the DoubleClick Marketing Team

This post is part of the with DoubleClick series, highlighting stories and perspectives from industry leaders about how they are succeeding with an integrated digital marketing platform.

Net Media Planet - traditionally an SEM agency with a proven record in paid search marketing - was looking to expand its services and grow its business. They adopted the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, starting with DoubleClick Search. The tool allowed the agency to work more efficiently and increase search performance for its clients. Building on this, they then expanded to display using programmatic buying on the platform to access new revenue streams and boost performance.

Chain Reaction Cycle - the world’s largest online bike retailer - is a key client who benefited from streamlining its operations. With all their data in one place, the team was able to really focus on identifying strategic opportunities. As a result, they increased revenue by 20%, and increased the number of clicks per month by 35%.

“Growing a search management agency can be challenging, being a very saturated sector, standing out is hard”, notes Luke Judge, Sales and Marketing Director for Net Media Planet. Not only did the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform allow the agency to work more efficiently and improve performance, but the tool also allowed the agency to unlock new opportunities for its clients.

Display now accounts for 20% of Net Media Planet’s revenues, and projections for future growth are more than positive: “We expect this to grow 70% year on year for the next 2-3 years”, says Luke.

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

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

Need to beat the heat? Set aside time this summer to catch up on DoubleClick Campaign Manager training. We offer cool ways to learn like DCM Academy, a role-based learning path to help you learn based on how you use the product. We also offer Fundamentals eLearning and live webinars covering Reporting, Event Tags, Attribution, and more. And don’t miss our New Features Webinar to learn about the latest product releases.

Register today and find upcoming webinars via the Training page in the DCM or DFA Help Centers (sign-in required).

Start with DCM Fundamentals eLearning

Are you an ad trafficker, analyst, or media planner who needs to learn the basics? Try DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification to learn key DoubleClick Campaign Manager concepts. If you need an introduction to the fundamentals and want to learn best practices, this is the place to begin.

Pass the exam and get a certificate of completion demonstrating your knowledge of DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Register

Join a DoubleClick Campaign Manager webinar

If you want to learn about DoubleClick Campaign Manager in a live setting, register for an upcoming training webinar.

DFA6 to DCM for Existing Users – 7/2, 7/9, 7/22, 8/13, 9/17
Upgrading to DoubleClick campaign Manager? Learn about the latest features and key functionality and workflow differences compared to DFA6. 

DCM Fundamentals – 8/12 (North America), 7/9, 8/13 and 9/10 (Asia-Pacific)
If you want a live webinar experience to support the DCM Fundamentals eLearning, join this 2.5 hour session to learn how third-party ad serving works along with the steps for setting up Floodlight and trafficking your first campaign. This session also touches on remarketing. 

Campaign Trafficking Demo – 7/16, 8/6, and 9/3
Join our product trainer for a walkthrough of how to create a campaign and assign campaign elements. 

Prerequisites: This session is a companion to DCM Fundamentals, and assumes that you’ve taken the DCM eLearning and Certification (or attended the DCM Fundamentals webinar). Before attending, make sure you know how DoubleClick Campaign Manager defines a campaign, placement, ad, and creative. 

DCM New Features Webinar – 7/8
Join our product trainer for a walkthrough of the latest product features.

Advanced webinars
In these webinars, we’ll discuss featured topics to help you more effectively manage your campaigns. Before attending, make sure you’re familiar with basic reporting and DFA6/DoubleClick Campaign Manager concepts.

Reporting Basics – 7/10, 8/14, and 9/11
Learn how to run reports in Report Builder, and slice and dice data in the Summary tab (dashboard view). Get a demo of Reporting as well as how to pull common reports, including Standard/Performance, Reach, and Floodlight.

Understanding Event Tags – 8/7
Learn about the Event Tags, a DCM feature that helps you to apply 4th party impression and click pixels to your creatives. This webinar will cover Event Tag creation, application and site whitelist/blacklisting.

Reporting: Attribution – 8/28
In this session, you’ll learn about the attribution options available in Reporting, and uses for Multi-channel funnels, Attribution, and Modeling. This session is also helpful if you’re upgrading from DFA to DCM and want to expand your knowledge of what the Reporting tool offers.

Prerequisites: Make sure you’re familiar with ad trafficking in DFA6 or DoubleClick Campaign Manager before attending these sessions. If you’re not, attend the Fundamentals webinar first.

DFA webinars
Still using DFA6? That’s okay, we still offer webinar training! Get trained online with DFA Fundamentals eLearning and Certification (eLearnings and exams available in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian, and more). We also offer webinars for DFA6 Fundamentals and MediaVisor.

DFA Fundamentals – 7/30 and 9/10
Join this webinar if you're using DFA6 and are new to third-party ad serving. This webinar mainly focuses on the basics of ad trafficking, but also touches briefly on Floodlight tags and DFA Reporting. 

MediaVisor Fundamentals – 8/5
Learn the most common uses of MediaVisor, including how to plan and create campaigns, advertisers, and site placements. You’ll also learn how to send RFPs and IOs, as well as how to traffic placements from MediaVisor to DFA.

Running into a scheduling conflict? Check out the pre-recorded webinars and training videos in the DCM Help Center, and DFA Help Centers – you might find a pre-recorded session ready to watch.

Don’t forget to sign up for the DoubleClick Digest to get the latest DoubleClick news, research, events, and product updates!

Posted by Sarah Payne, DoubleClick Campaign Manager Product Trainer

Today we are excited to announce Insights, a brand new, beautiful reporting tool that provides marketers and agencies with auto-generated insights about campaign performance across channels to help optimize future campaigns.

To ensure their messages are seen by the right users, today, advertisers spend hours analyzing data, or digging through spreadsheets to find meaningful campaign insights. It shouldn’t be this way. In today’s constantly connected world, where we reach consumers across many screens and channels, real-time, actionable insights are more critical than ever. However, fragmented tools and reporting are major pain points that prevent this, according to a study conducted with the Boston Consulting Group.

Actionable insights at a glance

The Insights tool allows advertisers to view campaign performance at a glance, without having to dig through data or build complex reports manually. You can learn about campaign factors that you undervalued, or ones you may have overlooked. This new tool helps you answer questions like:

• Which publisher had the lowest cost-per-action (CPA) in previous campaigns for the same advertiser?
• What time of day generates the highest cost-per-click (CPC)?
• How does campaign performance vary by mobile platform?
• Do certain creatives perform better on certain browsers?
• Am I maximizing exposure on high-performing placements?

Interactive design for faster and more efficient media planning 

Real-time visualizations and graphs replace manual spreadsheets, showing you detailed information faster. The new Insights tool in reporting is highly interactive, with the ability to drill down based on the following:

• Dimensions
• Publisher; Placement; Creative; Geo; Platform type; Browser
• Goals
• Click-through rate; Cost per click; Conversions per impression; Conversions per click; Cost per activity; Rich media interaction rate; Rich media click rate; Video completion rate

Over the coming weeks and months, you will see more and more dimensions added into the tool that will help you surface key insights for smarter campaign management.

Insights across channels

This new tool includes data across both reservations and programmatic buys. Today, the data is presented together across channels, and in the coming months, we will provide data that is broken out between your reservations and programmatic buys.

Matthew McIntyre, Senior Media Manager at Unique Digital, told us about the benefits they are seeing with the new tool:

“The new Insights tool is really exciting for us as an agency because it lets us see where and how we can make improvements in our campaigns almost immediately. The customizable goals and visualizations allow us to tailor the dashboard for every campaign and instantly make decisions which will drive better results for our clients. The insight provided on performance gives our planners more time and clearer data to make future media plans faster and with more clarity on how to drive the best performance.”

Our goal with DoubleClick Digital Marketing is to integrate your digital marketing efforts seamlessly, so your teams can effectively manage your cross-channel campaigns. With data that is fresh, de-duplicated, and auto-generated, the Insights tool takes us a step closer to this goal. 

Insights is available to all DoubleClick Campaign Manager customers, globally, so if you’re still using DoubleClick for Advertisers, ask your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager.

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

Posted by Oren Mor, Product Manager, DoubleClick

Spring is in bloom in most places, trees and flowers are growing (or at least the snow is melting), and more agencies and marketers are upgrading! It’s the perfect season to learn and master DoubleClick Campaign Manager based on your role and how you use the product. We offer multiple learning options, from the basics to more advanced topics like In-Stream Video, Attribution, and more – so come check us out!

Register for the eLearning and see upcoming webinars via the Training page in the DCM or DFA Help Centers (sign-in required).

Start with DCM Academy and Fundamentals eLearning

Are you an ad trafficker, analyst, or media planner just getting started? Try DCM Academy for easy-to-use learning paths that guide you through core Help Center articles and online training material, including the recently-launched DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification. 

Pass the exam and get a printable certificate of completion demonstrating your knowledge of DoubleClick Campaign Manager.

Join a DoubleClick Campaign Manager webinar

Whether you’re starting to upgrade to DCM or you’ve already made the move, attend these webinars to better understand and use the product.

DCM Fundamentals – 4/29 and 6/10
Similar to the eLearning, this 2.5 hour webinar will teach you everything from how third-party ad serving works to the steps needed to set up Floodlight tags and traffic your first campaign. This session also touches on Remarketing. Attend this webinar if you need an introduction to the fundamentals and want to learn best practices.

DFA6 to DCM for Existing Users – 4/2, 4/16, 4/30, 5/14, 5/28, 6/11, 6/25
Learn what's changed in DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Get a demo of the key differences compared to DFA6. Attend this webinar if you’ve been using DFA6 and want to know about functionality and workflow differences between DFA and DoubleClick Campaign Manager before you upgrade.  

Campaign Trafficking Demo – 4/9, 5/7, and 6/4
Join our product trainer for a live walk through of how to create a campaign and assign campaign elements.

Prerequisites: This session is a companion to the DCM Fundamentals eLearning, and assumes that attendees have taken the DCM eLearning and Certification or attended the DCM Fundamentals webinar. Before attending, you should already know how DoubleClick Campaign Manager defines a campaign, placement, ad, and creative.

Advanced webinars

In these webinars, we’ll discuss featured topics to help you more effectively manage your campaigns. Before attending, make sure you’re familiar with basic reporting and DFA6/DoubleClick Campaign Manager concepts.

Understanding In-Stream Video – 4/17
In this session, you'll learn the basics of trafficking In-Stream Video creatives in DCM.

Reporting: Report Builder – 4/3, 5/1, and 6/5
Learn how to run reports in Report Builder, and slice and dice data in the Summary tab (dashboard view). Get a demo of Reporting along with how to pull common reports, including Standard/Performance, Reach, and Floodlight.

Reporting: Attribution – 5/15
In this session, you’ll learn about the attribution options available in Reporting, and uses for Multi-channel funnels, Attribution, and Modeling. This session is also helpful if you’re upgrading from DFA to DCM and want to expand your knowledge of what the Reporting tool offers.

Prerequisites: Users should have familiarity with ad trafficking in DFA6 or DoubleClick Campaign Manager before attending these sessions. If you’re not familiar with DoubleClick Campaign Manager or DFA6, attend the Fundamentals webinar session first.

DFA webinars

Still using DFA6? That’s okay, we still offer plenty of training! Get trained online with DFA Fundamentals eLearning and Certification (eLearnings available in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian, and more). We also offer webinars for DFA6 Fundamentals and MediaVisor.

DFA Fundamentals – 4/23 and 6/4
DFA Fundamentals is the first step if you’re new to third-party ad serving and DFA6. This webinar mainly focuses on the basics of ad trafficking, but also touches briefly on Floodlight tags and DFA Reporting.

MediaVisor Fundamentals – 4/22 and 6/17
Learn the most common uses of MediaVisor, including how to plan and create campaigns, advertisers, and site placements. You’ll also learn how to send RFPs and IOs, as well as how to traffic placements from MediaVisor to DFA.

Some sessions mention prerequisites where we recommend background knowledge. Be sure to note these to get the most out of each session. Lastly, be aware of any regional time differences before enrolling in any live sessions.

Running into a scheduling conflict? Check out the pre-recorded webinars in the DCM Help Center, and the DFA Help Center – you might find a pre-recorded session ready to watch.

Don’t forget to sign up for the DoubleClick Digest to get the latest DoubleClick news, research, events, and product updates!

Posted by Sarah Payne, DoubleClick Campaign Manager Product Trainer

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest. And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.


Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of two exciting DoubleClick Campaign Manager training offerings: DCM Academy & DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification.

Get started with DCM Academy

DCM Academy is an easy-to-use, self-paced learning path designed to guide DoubleClick Campaign Manager users by role through core Help Center articles and online training material.

DCM Academy is for ad traffickers, analysts, and media planners – guiding them through curated help content and online training, so that you can learn and master DoubleClick Campaign Manager based on how you use the product.

DCM Academy covers:

• Basic information for new users: Just getting started? With the DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification, this is your first step toward mastering DoubleClick Campaign Manager.
• Implementation guide: Learn how to structure your new account or advertiser.
• QA and troubleshooting: Find out how to address and resolve common issues.
• Advanced topics: Learn about advanced tracking, Google Tag Manager integration, and more.
• Rich Media: Get tips and best practices for trafficking DoubleClick Rich Media in your DoubleClick Campaign Manager account.

Since DCM Academy covers a lot of material, we’ve set it up so you can track your progress.

The core curriculum: DCM Fundamentals eLearning and Certification

DCM Fundamentals covers key concepts, including:

• Ad serving basics
• How to use the DoubleClick Campaign Manager interface
• Account structure and administration
• Step-by-step ad trafficking instructions
• Creating Floodlight tags for conversion tracking
• Best practices for managing ads, placements, & creative
• An overview of reporting

Access DCM Fundamentals through the Training page in the Help Center.

If you're an existing DFA customer, you can continue to use DFA Academy and Fundamentals eLearning for online training. Contact your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today.

Stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on our Google+ page.

Posted by Sarah Payne, Product Trainer

With the new year, now is the perfect time to learn the DCM interface and dive into the new workflow. Whether you're upgrading or haven't yet used DCM, we offer multiple ways for you to learn the basics, and learn about advanced training topics.

Take a look at our upcoming DCM and DFA webinars and enroll through the Training page in the DCM or DFA Help Centers (sign-in required).

DCM webinars
Whether you’re upgrading to DCM or have already upgraded, attend these webinars to better understand and use DCM.

DCM Fundamentals – 2/12, 2/26 and 3/12
Designed for new DCM users, this webinar will teach you everything from how 3rd party ad-serving works to how to set up Floodlight tags and traffic your first campaign. This session also touches on Remarketing. Attend this webinar if you need an introduction to the fundamentals of DCM and want to learn best practices.

DFA6 to DCM for Existing Users – 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, and 3/19
Learn what's changed in DCM. Get a demo of the key differences in DCM compared to DFA6. Attend this webinar if you’ve been using DFA6 and want to know about functionality and workflow differences between DFA and DCM before you upgrade. 

Reporting: Report Builder – 2/6 and 3/6
Learn how to run reports in Report Builder, and slice and dice data in the Summary tab (dashboard view). Get a demo of Report Builder (Reporting) as well as how to pull common reports (Standard/Performance, Reach, and Floodlight). This training also covers the differences between Report Builder and ReportCentral.

This session is designed for users with a basic knowledge of DFA6 or DCM. If you’re not familiar with DCM or DFA, attend the Fundamentals webinar session first.

Advanced webinars
In these webinars, experts will discuss featured topics to help you more effectively manage your campaigns in DCM. Before attending, users should be familiar with basic reporting and DFA6/DCM concepts.

Understanding Ads and Creatives: Properties – 1/23
In this session, you'll learn about the properties of your ads, including priority, delivery goals, creative rotation, and targeting. This will also cover creative labeling, which can be used to isolate and view the performance of similar creative messages in reporting.

Understanding Event Tags – 2/27, 3/20
This session addresses the new Event Tags feature in DCM, which helps you to apply 4th party impression and click pixels to your creatives in DCM. Learn about Event Tag creation, application and site whitelist/blacklisting.

Understanding Remarketing – 3/13
This session will cover the use of remarketing in DCM, including the creation of remarketing lists and the use of those lists for the purpose of targeting ads in DCM.

Reporting: Attribution – 2/20
In this session, you’ll learn about the attribution options available in Reporting. Get a look at uses for Multi-channel funnels, Attribution, and Modeling. This session is also helpful if you’re upgrading from DFA to DCM to expand knowledge of what the Reporting tool offers.

DFA webinars
Still using DFA6? No worries! Get trained online with our DFA Fundamentals eLearning (available in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Swedish, Italian, and more). We also offer webinars for both DFA6 Fundamentals and MediaVisor.

DFA Fundamentals – 1/21, 2/19, 2/26, and 3/26
Learn the basics of trafficking in DFA6. The bulk of the session focuses on ad trafficking, but touches briefly on Floodlight tags and DFA Reporting. DFA Fundamentals is the first step if you’re new to third-party ad serving and DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals – 2/11 and 3/11
Learn the most common uses of MediaVisor, including how to plan and create campaigns, advertisers, and site placements. You’ll also learn how to send RFPs and IOs, as well as how to traffic placements from MediaVisor to DFA.

Some sessions mention prerequisites where we recommend background knowledge. Be sure to note these to make sure you get the most out of each session. Lastly, be aware of any regional time differences before enrolling in any of the live sessions.

Running into a scheduling conflict? Check out the pre-recorded webinars in the DCM Help Center as well as the DFA Help Center – you might be able to find a pre-recorded session ready to watch.

Don’t forget to sign up for the DoubleClick Digest to get the latest DoubleClick news, research, events and product updates!

Posted by Sarah Payne, DCM Product Trainer

Last week we dove into the new audience capabilities in DoubleClick Campaign Manager that enable you to define, reach, and more deeply understand your customers. Tags plays a critical role in this process, as they allow you to track and measure the impact of your advertising. Today, we’ll dive into how we’re making tagging a much easier and more streamlined part of your digital marketing campaign management.

As it stands today, tagging is one of the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of digital campaign management. In fact, on average, marketers host 14 tags on their sites, 68% of which are third-party. Implementing these tags often involves back-and-forth emails, implementation that can take weeks or months, and a lack of transparency about which tags are installed where. And when tags are implemented incorrectly, it can cause further campaign delays and additional implementation cycles.

We recently introduced two features that will greatly reduce the inefficiencies involved in tagging your campaigns: DoubleClick’s integration with Google Tag Manager, and Tag Assistant.

Making conversion tagging easy with Google Tag Manager integration

To streamline the conversion tagging process, DoubleClick Campaign Manager is now integrated with Google Tag Manager, Google’s free tag management solution. With Google Tag Manager, rather than implementing many individual tags across your site, you can implement one site-wide container tag that uses rules to determine which Google and third-party tracking and measurement tags to dynamically fire. The integration allows you to easily push DoubleClick’s universal conversion tag - Floodlight - directly to Google Tag Manager, making tag deployment faster and and more efficient, while still respecting current campaign management roles.

Deploy tags more quickly: You can push Floodlight tags with one click to Google Tag Manager, reducing implementation time from weeks or even months to minutes. This means you’ll save time, and your campaigns can go live faster. Once your tags are implemented, you can update them in the Google Tag Manager interface in minutes, and you will see these tags deployed on your site within 15 minutes or less. The tags are fired asynchronously, which means they load without blocking other elements on the page from loading, enabling sites to load faster during high-traffic times.

Implement tags more efficiently: With Google Tag Manager, you can rest assured your conversion tags are implemented correctly, as there is only one site-wide contain tag to implement. This helps reduce human error and ensures accurate data is recorded, thanks to rules within Google Tag Manager that determine which tracking and measurement tags to dynamically fire. And you will be able to deploy Floodlight tags across both mobile and desktop pages, making the experience consistent across all devices.

Respect tagging roles: We recognize that different roles within your organization may be responsible for each step of the tagging process. Our goal with this integration was to respect these roles and give you tools to implement tags correctly as quickly as possible. Advertisers still have control over which conversion tags are pushed to Google Tag Manager, and webmasters still have control over which tags go on the page, as they can approve or reject tags within Google Tag Manager.

Simplifying ad tagging with Tag Assistant

Beyond simplifying conversion tagging, we’re also improving how you implement ad tags. One of these initiatives is Tag Assistant, which aims at simplifying the QA process.

Tag Assistant is a Chrome extension that automatically validates the implementation of Google tags on any of your pages. The tool is designed for you to checks tags on the fly and escalate more complex or in-depth issues to support teams.

How it works: Tag Assistant has a predefined list of implementation checks to perform for each tag. When the web page loads, Tag Assistant scans the page, compares your tag implementation against the correct/standard implementation, and cross-references the list of implementation checks. If your tag is implemented correctly, Tag Assistant returns a green status. When a problem is found, a red status is returned along with recommendations and support documentation. The tool not only supports DoubleClick ad tags, but Google Tag Manager, AdWords, and Google Analytics tags as well.

If you're an existing DFA customer, reach out to your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today. You can stay on top of new updates by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on our Google+ page.