Tag Archives: Creative

Dynamic creative comes to Google Web Designer

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.

  • Wednesday, Dec. 9th @ 12pm ET / 9am PT. RSVP here
  • Thursday, Dec. 10th @ 5pm PT / Friday, Dec. 11th @ 12pm Sydney time (APAC Friendly time) RSVP here
Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, Google Web Designer

Programmatic helps brands make the most of micro-moments

Every day, your audience is filling their days with hundreds if not thousands of micro-moments—intent-rich moments when preferences are shaped and decisions are made. As consumers spread their attention across more and more screens and channels, those moments can happen almost anywhere, anytime. People search on their smartphones while in front of the TV. They watch YouTube videos on their tablets while texting their friends. They open a mobile app to shop for the perfect gift, then head to the store to buy it. With mobile devices never more than an arm’s length away, people can find and buy anything, anytime.

For marketers, this means the purchase funnel is wildly more complicated than it was just a few years ago.

“Brands can use programmatic to assemble a consumer’s micro-moments in just the right way—like joining puzzle pieces together—to see a detailed blueprint of consumer intent.”

It’s hard to plan for nonlinear purchase paths, but programmatic advertising can help, enabling brands to reach the right person with the right message in the moment of opportunity. Brands can use programmatic to assemble a consumer’s micro-moments in just the right way—like joining puzzle pieces together—to see a detailed blueprint of consumer intent. That’s a powerful proposition, and it’s why programmatic advertising spend is projected to grow by more than 77% this year.1

In this article, we share four tips for using programmatic to win these micro-moments and examples of brands that are doing it right.

Visit DoubleClick.com to read the full article.

Posted by Kelly Cox
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

1. IDC, Worldwide Programmatic Display Forecast, 2015.

Maximize yield with custom and flexible ad sizes on DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Over the years, we’ve found that maximizing competition for every impression produces the best results for you. That’s why we’ve developed new Custom and Flexible Ad Size controls in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to bring you even more competition for every impression so you can sell any ad size programmatically.

Maximum demand for all ad sizes

Region-specific ad sizes have always been difficult to monetize programmatically because they typically do not match IAB standard ad sizes. Now with Custom Size controls on DoubleClick Ad Exchange publishers can easily create and sell ads of any size programmatically. For example, in Northern Europe where the 800x250 ad size is popular, publishers can now benefit from the programmatic demand of Ad Exchange with all the controls and reporting they’re familiar with.

In addition to making it easier to implement Custom Sizes, we’re making it possible to increase the demand available to every ad with Flexible Size controls. Publishers can now allow any ad slot to accept bids from multiple ad creative sizes. For example, a custom size slot like 320x300 can now be filled with popular sizes like 300x250 and 250x250 in addition to exact 320x300 matches. Flexible Ad Sizes is now live on all ad slots for publishers globally and publishers can control the range of sizes their slots accept with the Flexible Size rule type.

With Custom and Flexible Ad Size controls publishers globally can sell ads of any size and maximize yield for them with programmatic demand. During testing, we observed a revenue increase across all Ad Exchange inventory with some publishers seeing CPM gains as high as 30% for affected ad slots.

"Custom Ad Sizes has enabled us to move the bulk of our programmatic deal making to DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which has simplified things a lot. The Finnish market is very much dominated by market-specific ad sizes, especially 980x400 and 300x300."
Ville Holopainen, Sr. Operations and Development Manager, Fonecta

Posted by Zutao Zhu
Software Engineer, DoubleClick

Cutting unwanted ad injectors out of advertising

For the last few months, we’ve been raising awareness of the ad injection economy, showing how unwanted ad injectors can hurt user experience, jeopardize user security, and generate significant volumes of unwanted ads. We’ve used learnings from our research to prevent and remove unwanted ad injectors from Google services and improve our policies and technologies to make it more difficult to spread this unwanted software.

Today, we’re announcing a new measure to remove injected ads from the advertising ecosystem, including an automated filter in DoubleClick Bid Manager that removes impressions generated by ad injectors before any bid is made.

Unwanted ad injectors: disliked by users, advertisers, and publishers

Unwanted ad injectors are programs that insert new ads, or replace existing ones, in the pages users visit while browsing the web. Unwanted ad injectors aren’t part of a healthy ads ecosystem. They’re part of an environment where bad practices hurt users, advertisers, and publishers alike.

We’ve received almost 300,000 user complaints about them in Chrome since the beginning of 2015—more than any other issue, and it’s no wonder. Ad injectors affect all sites equally. You wouldn’t be happy if you tried to get the morning news and saw this:

Not only are they intrusive, but people are often tricked into installing them in the first place, via deceptive advertising, or software “bundles.” Ad injection can also be a security risk, as the recent “Superfish” incident showed.

Ad injectors are problematic for advertisers and publishers as well. Advertisers often don’t know their ads are being injected, which means they don’t have any idea where their ads are running. Publishers, meanwhile, aren’t being compensated for these ads, and more importantly, they unknowingly may be putting their visitors in harm’s way, via spam or malware in the injected ads.

Removing injected inventory from advertising

Earlier this quarter, we launched an automated filter on DoubleClick Bid Manager to prevent advertisers from buying injected ads across the web. This new system detects ad injection and proactively creates a blacklist that prevents our systems from bidding on injected inventory. Advertisers and agencies using our platforms are already protected. No adjustments are needed. No settings to change.

We currently blacklist 1.4% of the inventory accessed by DoubleClick Bid Manager across exchanges. However, we’ve found this percentage varies widely by provider. Below is a breakdown showing the filtered percentages across some of the largest exchanges:

We’ve always enforced policies against the sale of injected inventory on our ads platforms, including the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Now advertisers using DoubleClick Bid Manager can avoid injected inventory across the web.

No more injected ads?

We don’t expect the steps we’ve outlined above to solve the problem overnight, but we hope others across the industry take action to cut ad injectors out of advertising. With the tangle of different businesses involved—knowingly, or unknowingly—in the ad injector ecosystem, progress will only be made if we all work together. We strongly encourage all members of the ads ecosystem to review their policies and practices and take actions to tackle this issue.

Vegard Johnsen
Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality

HTML5 is here, are you ready?

Since its launch in 2008, HTML5 has quickly gained widespread adoption and is now becoming the standard for developing digital creatives. The advertising industry is responding, and increasing numbers of advertisers and agencies are building HTML5 creatives.

If you’re a publisher, this means you’ll want to make your site HTML5-ready and help advertisers get up to speed on developing these new creatives. We know the transition from Flash to HTML5 will require some short-term work on your part, but we’re here to help you and advertisers with the process.

What’s so great about HTML5?

HTML5 has seen high adoption rates for a number of reasons.

One key to its popularity is that HTML5 offers strong cross-device support—the language works well on a variety of browsers and mobile devices. This is hugely important now that more people are searching on mobile devices than on desktops.

HTML5 also plays higher-quality video faster—with an average bandwidth reduction of 35 percent. YouTube notably began defaulting users to its HTML5 player this January.

Browsers have taken note of HTML5’s speed and other benefits and have begun introducing power-saving plugins and reducing support for Flash. To increase page-load times, Chrome recently began auto-pausing Flash content that is not a primary part of a page. Safari had already done this and Firefox blocked Flash from auto-loading in July.

Getting ready for HTML5

With the web moving quickly in the direction of HTML5, here some steps that you, as a publisher, can take to prepare for this transition:

  1. Update your creative specifications: Explicitly include HTML5 as a supported technology and increase associated file-size limits to support large HTML5 creatives.
  2. Educate advertisers: Share the benefits of HTML5 and provide HTML5 creative specifications to your advertisers so they can build creatives that work on your site.
  3. Train your teams: Educate your team about HTML creative specifications and let them know what to do when they receive HTML5 ads from advertisers.
  4. Assist advertisers: Share free HTML5 ad conversion and creation tools with advertisers to ease their transition to HTML5.

All of this and is covered in our new guide to help publishers move to HTML5. If you’re looking for more information as you’re transitioning to HTML5, check out the HTML5 resources and HTML5 Toolkit on the Rich Media Gallery.

Also, our Doubleclick Rich Media team is 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). The first hangout is on September 10th (3pm - 4pm EST) and will introduce you to HTML5 development tools and best practices. Register here.

We know that change can be hard, so we want to make your move to the future of digital advertising a bit easier.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Back to school with DoubleClick: Learn the ins and outs of HTML5

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

Updating Google Web Designer to help ease the transition to HTML5

As browsers change the way they support Flash, HTML5 is becoming the de facto language for building display ads. In fact, the IAB just launched their updated Display Creative Guidelines to fully embrace HTML5.

To support this transition, we’ve been pivoting our products to better serve an HTML5-first world. In July, we announced file size increases and bidding updates to DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager. (These changes will begin rolling out in September.) And today, we’re excited to announce a series of new features for Google Web Designer that help make it easier to build HTML5 ads.

Build content that adapts to different screen sizes:

Instead of laying out your assets using pixel-based values for a specific sized ad (e.g. width = 250 pixels and height = 300 pixels), percent-based authoring lets you build the ad using relative values (e.g. width = 20% of the screen size and height = 10% of the screen size.) Asset size/position is then determined by the screen or viewport size, so that you can build an ad that works on varying screen sizes. Additionally, full-screen support lets ads expand to the full size of the screen. Learn More.

Publish in-app ads to AdMob:

You can now create content in Google Web Designer and publish to the AdMob network. When you choose the AdMob environment from the “New File” dialog, you can select from all the default sizes that AdMob supports. Learn More.

Design better creative:

  • When you build an ad with the new “tilt” event, a viewer can trigger animations or events by simply tilting their mobile device. This is a great way to build ad units that take advantage of the inherent interaction modes of a mobile device. Learn more about events.
  • Users can now create ads that send text messages by using the updated Tap-to-Call component.
  • Find that perfect color and make sure you don’t forget it! The color panel has been updated with a larger color mixer and the ability for users to save color swatches.

More HTML5 resources:

Earlier this summer, we hosted #HTML5Week to provide educational resources for creative developers looking to make the transition to HTML5. View the recordings of our high-level and step-by-step hangouts for more information.

We’re also partnering with the IAB to launch the second wave of the Make Mobile Work Initiative, aimed at educating marketers on how to build successful mobile campaigns. Check out our first webinar from last week, which focused on mobile video and featured speakers from Google, Snapchat, and Tremor Video.
Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Beautiful new designs for full-screen in-app ads

Nearly 60% of smartphone users expect their favorite apps to look visually appealing1. We’ve always believed that in-app ads can enhance an app’s overall experience by being well designed. So today we’re announcing a completely new look for our interstitial in-app ad formats - also known as full-screen ads - that run on apps in the AdMob network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Inspired by Material Design, the new app install interstitial comes with a beautiful cover photo, a round install button, and matching color schemes. Technology called “color extraction” makes the ads more consistent with the brand's look and feel -- we extract a dominant color either from the cover photo or app icon and apply it to the footer and install button. We found that having a greater variety of designs and colors can improve conversion rate.

Other features include the app’s rating, and a screenshot gallery which appears when a user taps ‘More images’, so users can learn more about the app without leaving the ad.

The previous design for our app install ads on the left, and our new version on the right.

Different examples of color matching.

Our app install formats have driven more than a billion downloads across Android and iOS. You can use these new designs automatically when you run a mobile app install campaign on the AdMob network in AdWords. That’s right, no extra work required!

Next, our new text-based ads are easier to read, and contain a larger headline and a round call-to-action button that clicks through to a website.

On the left, the previous text ad interstitial design, and the new version on the right.

As with other ad format innovations, our ads UI team test multiple designs - ten in this case over the course of a year - to find final versions that increase clicks and conversions for advertisers, and a positive experience for users. Both app install and text ad formats appear within the app and can be closed easily, so users can return to what they were doing with a single tap.

As we announced at Google I/O this year, the volume of interstitial impressions has more than doubled across AdMob since last July, so now’s a great time to get your business in front of more app users.

If you’re a developer looking to learn more about earning with in-app interstitial ads in your app, visit AdMob now. These new designs will also be available to developers monetizing their apps with DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Posted by Pasha Nahass
Product Manager

1. Mobile App Marketing Insights: How Consumers Really Find and Use Your Apps, Google & Ipsos Media CT, May 2015

Make Mobile Work 2.0: Continuing the Mobile Conversation With Brand Marketers

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, DoubleClick Product Marketing

Learn how to design and build HTML5 with Google Web Designer

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
The program consists of a 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, Google Web Designer Product Marketing Manager