In today's multi-device world, consumers increasingly move across screens when researching and shopping for goods and services. In a recent study conducted by Google and Ipsos Media CT, it was found that nearly 40% of online shoppers start their research on a smartphone and make their final purchase on a computer or tablet¹.

Earlier this year, we introduced cross-device measurement across DoubleClick Digital Marketing, including DoubleClick Search, to help you see the total number of conversions influenced by a specific keyword, regardless of the device where the conversion occurred. For example, if a user who clicks on a search ad on one device goes on to complete a purchase on another device, we can measure that, enabling you to more accurately report on the full value of your search ads.

Now, bid strategies in the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can use cross-device conversion estimates to automatically calculate the mobile bid adjustment that will help you achieve your campaign goals and maximize the impact of your mobile ads.

Using cross-device conversion estimates in the Performance Bidding Suite

If you enable a bid strategy in the Performance Bidding Suite to use cross-device conversion estimates, it can consider these cross-device conversions to determine how much to bid for your mobile ads. The bid strategy can then recommend or automatically apply the optimal mobile bid adjustment based on your conversion or revenue goals.

You can use this feature with a one-step opt in: when configuring the target of a bid strategy, check the box to use cross-device conversion estimates when setting the mobile bid adjustment.

Note: Currently, bid strategies use cross-device estimates only for mobile bid adjustments. Other enhancements, such as adjusting bids based on membership in an AdWords remarketing target, will follow in future updates.

Learn how to use cross-device estimates in bid strategies today.

Tris Southey Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

^{1 The Role of Mobile Search on Store Purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015. Purchases were made within the past 3 months.}

Today, we cover optimization in post four of the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. It’s one of the five steps outlined in our DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite

The DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can automatically optimize bids to help you reach your goals.

During the busy shopping season, DoubleClick Search’s real-time conversion data and intra-day bidding factor current trends into your bids—things like special holiday promotions, sudden spikes in demand due to winter weather, and more. Our machine-learning-powered bid strategies will respond quickly to adjust bids that deliver results. Plus, cross-device conversion tracking helps the bid optimization system make the most of your mobile traffic.

Adaptive Shopping campaigns

Adaptive Shopping campaigns optimize the structure of your shopping campaigns in order to improve their performance. Outlier products are automatically separated into their own product group, giving them a bid tuned specially to that product ad's performance.

We've also improved the algorithm just in time for holidays. Adaptive Shopping campaigns can now take into account your performance goals and your customers' unique behavior. Adaptive Shopping campaigns will also automatically cleanup product groups that stop receiving clicks. All in all, these features help you improve returns by bidding higher on high-performing products, and save money by bidding lower on poor performers.

Remarketing

If you aren't already doing so, use remarketing to turn your site visitors into buyers. Engage those people who’ve left your site or clicked your ads without buying anything by showing them relevant ads on search or display. Here are two ways to remarket:

• Reach high-value customers with remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) — Modify your keyword bids, target search ads, or prevent ads from displaying based on inclusion in your AdWords remarketing list. You can track the performance of each remarketing list in any associated campaign.
• Re-engage shoppers with display remarketing from search ads — remarket to users instantly with display ads on the Google Display Network or across exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager.

We want you to achieve the best possible results from your marketing efforts during this busy season. In our next post, we’ll talk about how to take your efforts this time round to plan ahead for your next peak period. Learn more about all five steps to success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Remember to register now for this weeks webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

In this third post in the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series, we cover measurement, the third step in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays to help you reach the right customers in the right moments this holiday season.

Automated reports

We’ve launched speed improvements to most reports in 2015. Have a last-minute shopping list? No problem—DoubleClick Search reports on Shopping campaigns activity much faster! But why wait—you can set up a scheduled report to receive your data whenever you want it. See how you’re trending year over year by adding “Compare to past” to the date range.

Budget pacing reports

These reports feature columns such as percentage of time elapsed, percentage of budget spent, days and budget remaining.

• Easily visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends and changes.
• See how each campaign contributes to your budget and KPIs.
• Set up reports just for Black Friday through Cyber Monday, to make sure you’re hitting all your spend and efficiency targets.

Formula columns

Quickly create custom columns based on calculations you apply to metrics. Spend less time in spreadsheets, report only on what matters, and calculate using the freshest data. Calculate key statistics for the last 7, 14, and 30 days, or even special treatment for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers. Create a countdown using rules+formula columns: "3 days left for free shipping!"

Floodlight segmentation and activity columns

You can use Floodlight columns to compare different conversions—phone calls versus online, or signups versus transactions, for example. DoubleClick Search Action groups contain Floodlight activities that count how many times users visit a webpage after seeing or clicking one of your ads. Transaction groups track the number of sales made or the number of items purchased. And, with cross-device conversion tracking, you can understand the true impact of your ads across multiple devices!

In our next post, we’ll talk about optimizing for success. Learn more about all five steps to holiday success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

This is the second in post our DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. In our first post, we talked about preparation. Today, we cover automation.

The holidays always roll around too quickly. But this year, with DoubleClick Search, you can “set it, not sweat it.” Set rules for sales, schedule edits, and determine your parameters, then let DoubleClick Search handle the automated, 24/7 campaign management. We’ve created the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays to help you succeed.

Bulksheets

DoubleClick Search scheduled uploads let you prepare and validate bulksheets for bulk campaign actions in advance, then have them uploaded at a scheduled time and date, giving you peace of mind during this busy time.

Automated rules

Automated rules and alerts let you schedule changes to specific campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords, based on your criteria. Use formula columns in rules to deliver everything on your wish list. You can even specify advanced logic for your changes using DoubleClick Search formula columns. Learn more.

For example:

• Daily at 2 P.M., raise budget by 20% for campaigns that have more than 5 conversions and have exhausted more than 80% of your daily budget.
• Every Friday, pause all keywords that have had more than 1,000 clicks but zero conversions during the previous week.
• Every Monday, raise max CPC by 15% for keywords that met all of the following criteria from the previous week:
• More than 50 conversions
• Cost per conversion under $10
• Trigger ads in positions worse than three

Inventory-aware campaigns

Inventory-aware campaigns automatically convert your product catalog to highly relevant, up-to-date search ads. Reach your customers with the right message, every time, with inventory-aware campaigns that automatically update your ads whenever your products change, such as when a product goes out of stock or the price changes.

To give you even greater control over your inventory-aware campaigns this holiday season, we’ve added new functionality. Inventory-aware campaigns now allow you to highlight the number of varieties of an item you have available, such as “Over 90 styles of men’s ski jackets”, so your customers will know you offer a wide selection to choose from. We also added new functions to make setting up inventory-aware campaigns easy, even if your feed isn't perfect, such as the ability to trim, clean or reduce words, automatically.

In our next post, we’ll talk about measurement. Learn more about all five steps to turn searchers into customers this holiday season with the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

This is our first post in the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series to help you get ready for the 2015 holiday shopping season—a critical time for online marketers and retailers. Last year, consumers spent $616.1 billion on retail purchases during November and December¹. As you might know from Google’s 5 Holiday Shopping Trends to Watch in 2015, 40 percent of that spend was made online.

In fact, 2014 was the most-connected holiday shopping season we’ve ever seen. Shoppers spent an unprecedented amount of time researching and buying online:

• 78% used the internet for holiday research vs. 29% relied on friends, relatives, or colleagues (down from 2013)².
• 40% of holiday shopping was online².
• 53% of those who shopped online used smartphones or tablets, up from 41% the previous year³.

For you, this represents a huge opportunity to reach shoppers, either while they're still researching or when they're actually ready to buy. To help you capture this opportunity, we’ve created the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays that walks through five key steps for holiday success. Today, we’ll address the first step: Preparation.

• First, unify your data for insights and action. Effective tagging will help track your success during the holidays.
• Your labels are important, too. Track your holiday promotions, and make them easy to identify in reports by assigning labels to your seasonal campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords.
• Finally, don’t neglect offline data integration. Often, conversions start online and finish offline. Use the DoubleClick Search conversions API to report on and optimize conversions from external data, including call-tracking and in-store transactions.

In our next post, we’ll talk about automation. Learn more about all five steps in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

^{1 National Retail Federation, “Retail Holiday Sales Increase 4 Percent,” January 14, 2015.
2 Ipsos MediaCT, Google Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, January 2015, n=1,500.
3 Ipsos MediaCT, Google Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, January 2015, n=1,167, January 2014, n = 1,077.}

For search marketers, the holiday season starts well before the holidays. You’re busy making preparations to help holiday shoppers check items off their list with you. To make your job easier, we’ve been working hard all summer to bring new campaign management, measurement, and workflow features to DoubleClick Search.

Manage mobile campaigns on Bing and Yahoo! Japan more easily

Mobile search will influence the 2015 holiday shopping season more than any other shopping season before it. The Inside AdWords blog shared in May that more Google searches now take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan. Google's Micro-Moments Guide indicates that mobile conversion rates have shot up by 29% in the last year alone. DoubleClick Search has two new features that will help you capture the mobile search opportunity.

First, we've added mobile and tablet bid adjustments for Bing Ads campaigns. This makes it easy for you to adjust to Unified Device Targeting (UDT) in DoubleClick Search with mobile and tablet bid adjustments for Bing Ads that work just like mobile bid adjustments for AdWords.

Second, we've made it easier to optimize mobile bid adjustments on Yahoo! Japan. You can now set adjustments at the ad group level that will trump adjustments at the campaign level.

Improve the relevance of inventory keyword campaigns

On mobile and desktop, relevance is a key component of search marketing success. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in higher positions, and bring you the most success.

DoubleClick Search retail advertisers use inventory-aware campaigns to build highly relevant campaigns at scale by creating templates that automatically build keywords and ads based on their product feeds. We've made these templates even more powerful with new functions to let you fine-tune and customize your keywords and ad content.

Stay abreast of campaign performance

New DoubleClick Search features for measuring results will help you stay on top of campaign performance throughout the season and beyond.

You can now use bulksheets or the DoubleClick Search API to attribute a conversion in a shopping campaign to a specific product in your inventory feed. To help you analyze and optimize at scale, we've added three reports to the DoubleClick Search reporting API.

We've also made it a cinch to analyze what's happening in the Black Friday to Cyber Monday stretch, or any other period of time, with more flexible date functions for formula columns. For example, you can use Date subtraction to calculate the number of days between two dates, or use weeknum to return the week number for a specified date.

Enjoy improvements to usability and visibility

In order to help you get campaign work done fast, we've enhanced the usability and visibility of some DoubleClick Search features based on your feedback. You can now apply labels when you create new keywords or customize and rename report views.

If you're looking to use DoubleClick attribution models to better understand what's driving conversions, we now automatically pre-populate the time decay model so you can start using it immediately.

Let the holiday season begin

Today's announcement is the culmination of many months of work to help make your holiday campaigns as streamlined and rewarding as possible.

Visit the DoubleClick Search Help Center for a complete overview of what's new and view trainings to help you get started.

Posted by Anthony Chavez
Product Management Director, DoubleClick Search

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

• Support for AdWords "Mobile app installs" campaigns: Use DS to create, target, measure, and optimize on “Mobile app installs” campaigns, a new, simple type of AdWords campaign that focuses on getting people to download your app. Ads from these campaigns appear only on phones or tablets, and they land directly on your app page in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Learn more.

• Manage and report on local inventory ads: Local inventory ads advertise products that are available in nearby stores when a customer searches for items on Google. You can now use DS to manage and report on your local inventory ads along with online ads in AdWords Shopping campaigns. Learn more.

• New reporting column for AdWords campaigns: The Invalid clicks column displays the number of clicks on ads that Google considers to be illegitimate, such as unintentional clicks or clicks resulting from malicious software, as reported by AdWords.

• Ad rotation settings for Bing Ads: If you create more than one ad in a Bing Ads ad group, Bing Ads can either rotate through the ads evenly or predominantly show ads that have the highest click-through rate (CTR). You can use the DS UI or DS bulksheets to specify how Bing Ads should rotate ads in an ad group.

We also updated the following features:

• DS URL templates are now hierarchical: Use DS URL templates to apply a redirect URL or a set of URL parameters to landing page URLs for keywords and sitelinks. You can create DS URL templates at multiple levels within an engine account. For example, you can create separate URL templates for each campaign or ad group. Learn more.

• Improved support for Merchant Center multi-client accounts: If you use DS to manage AdWords Shopping campaigns or inventory keyword campaigns and you have a parent Merchant Center accounts, known as a multi-client account, you only need to link the parent account to DS and AdWords. Learn more.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team