Tag Archives: Programmatic

Netshoes sees 5X increase in conversion rates with DoubleClick Bid Manager

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 micro-moments: Creating valuable programmatic advertising with search insights

Year after year we've heard pundits announce that this is "The Year of Mobile," but we don't quite seem to get there. Still, the facts don't lie: eMarketer estimates that mobile will account for 72% of U.S. digital ad spend by 2019 and Google's tech-forward target audience spends more than 74% of its time on mobile.1

Because mobile devices are consumers' always-on, constant companions, Google Marketing wanted to deliver personalized, contextual creative programmatically via ads. To show how the Google app can add value in people’s lives, Google Marketing brought the app’s functionality into the ad units themselves. Combining aggregated search insights, geo-targeting, and dynamic creative, the ads proactively fed users with helpful, relevant information.

The Google Marketing team followed four key steps as it developed the creative for the Google app. To learn more about the approach, check out the full case study.

Posted by Kelly Cox
Product Marketing Manager, Google
1 ComScore MobileMetrix, September 2015.

Protecting marketers from falsely represented inventory

As we've stated before, we're committed to keeping fraudsters out of the broader advertising ecosystem. Today we're looking at a specific aspect of this fight: the false representation of domains in ad inventory.

Deceptive ad inventory

Imagine ordering a designer handbag, only to receive a cheap imitation. Unfortunately, this type of misrepresentation happens all too often with ad inventory.

The false representation of domains in ad inventory occurs when publishers intentionally make it look like their traffic is coming from another website (usually a well-known, premium website) in order to charge higher rates for ads. This practice deceives advertisers who end up paying to appear on sites with which they may not want to be associated, and harms legitimate publishers, who aren't actually receiving the funds from ads sold in their name.

The two examples below illustrate how a branded ad can end up on a sketchy website through false representation of a domain.

Protecting against falsely represented inventory in DoubleClick Bid Manager

As part of our commitment to strengthening the integrity of our digital marketing solutions, we've added a new feature to DoubleClick Bid Manager that blocks many cases of domain misrepresentation, one of the most severe types of falsely represented ad inventory.

When a source of fraudulently misrepresented domain information is identified in Bid Manager, a filter is used to exclude invalid inventory with a high degree of confidence before advertisers bid on it, regardless of exchange or reported domain. We’ve discovered that in some instances this type of activity has accounted for up to 40% of inventory for a particular exchange.

Percent of misrepresented ad domains by exchange1

As a recent example, we noticed a publisher attempting to sell ad inventory on a pirated movie sharing website that was falsely represented with the domain name of a well-known newspaper. Fortunately, our new filter prevented ads from being purchased and displayed, thereby safeguarding advertisers from fraud and preventing this copyright infringing publisher from receiving advertising revenue.

Publishers benefit as well

It’s not just advertisers who will benefit from this new feature. The filter ensures that high quality inventory from top publishers is correctly valued and better defended against misrepresentation. As a case in point, we found that 10% of inventory offered for sale claiming to come from two popular US newspapers was in fact from other publishers falsely representing themselves as the two newspapers.

We also recognize that there are valid use cases for selling inventory via alternate domains, which is why we have taken great care to ensure that our filter targets only cases where the false representation masks the real value of the inventory.

Available to all marketers on Bid Manager

We continually look for new ways to improve and defend our advertising platforms against ad fraud, and we’re proud to offer this new feature directly on Bid Manager, without the need for advertisers to maintain blacklists or configuration settings. We’re happy to further protect advertisers and legitimate publishers by giving the boot to pretenders offering bad inventory.

Posted by Andres Ferrate
Chief Advocate, Google Ad Traffic Quality
1 Includes only exchanges from which DoubleClick Bid Manager buys >1 million impressions per day

Delivering yield, speed, and control with DoubleClick for Publishers First Look

Users read, watch, listen, and connect with content across multiple screens throughout the day. With every interaction, they expect fast, safe, and relevant experiences regardless of where they are or what device they’re using. In this environment, publishers only have a split second to deliver the most relevant and highest paying ads to maximize their overall yield without increasing latency and potentially losing users.

A few weeks ago at the IAB Ad Operations Summit, I spoke about a new feature we are testing to deliver yield, speed, and control, called DoubleClick for Publishers First Look. Today, I’d like to give you some more details about it.

One of the fastest-growing segments of programmatic advertising has been from high-CPM, low-match-rate buyers, such as remarketers. These buyers are willing to pay a substantial premium to publishers in exchange for a ‘first look’ at all of a publisher’s inventory, but they need to see a lot of impressions to find the ones they value. The standard implementation of this first look has been through a header bidding tag to indicate interest. While this works, unfortunately it has drawbacks. It adds latency to every pageview, gives one buyer preferential access, and gives up the control and protection of an ad exchange. A better solution would reduce or eliminate latency, enable any selected buyer to compete, and allow publishers to manage demand just as they do with other private or open marketplaces.

First Look does just that. It allows publishers to give trusted programmatic buyers the opportunity to bid on 100% of their inventory -- even ahead of sponsorships and reservations. By allowing these buyers to see more inventory, and by putting them in real-time competition with each other, publishers in our Beta test have seen an average 10% lift in revenue. First Look is simple to set up (no added line items), creates zero added latency (no additional ad requests), and works across all channels and formats. And since First Look is part of the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, you don’t lose any of the controls and protections you already rely on like creative review, category blocking, or malware protection.

“First Look has shown strong performance, increasing our revenue by a double digit percentage across all of our properties. There were no added tags and no need to change our page setup. Best of all, there has been no impact to what our users experience when they visit our properties, regardless of the device they’re using."
Jeremy Hlavacek, Vice President, Programmatic, The Weather Company.

We believe that First Look is good for buyers, too. According to Sam Cox, Vice President at MediaMath:

“First Look is an exciting step towards having all demand compete, simultaneously. Access to more users who are typically consumed by guarantees will drive higher ROI, and the high prices of the inventory should dispel any myth that programmatic is not premium."
Sam Cox, Vice President, OPEN Global Media Management, MediaMath

As I mentioned at the IAB Ad Ops Summit, DoubleClick’s mission is to help our publisher partners grow their ad revenues in a healthy long-term market. With First Look we are striving to create a solution that delivers lift for publishers without sacrificing consumer experience or publisher controls.

We’re excited to launch DoubleClick for Publishers First Look to all publishers early in 2016. Space in our beta is limited, but if you’re interested in getting set-up before the holiday rush, contact your account manager today. And in the coming weeks, stay tuned for more tips on how to maximize your overall yield.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack
Director, Product Management

Reach holiday shoppers at scale with DoubleClick Ad Exchange

It’s the most wonderful time of the year...for you to reach holiday shoppers with your brand and products. We know shoppers come in all shapes and forms, researching and buying across screens and in-stores. That’s why you need to ensure that you’re reaching your target audiences across all the premium publishers where consumers are already spending their time, both on the web and in apps.

Last week, we announced that native ads and mobile video interstitials are now available to buyers on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. These high-impact formats, coupled with the cleanest (fraud-free) inventory and the broadest reach of premium inventory, help you accomplish your campaign goals at scale.

Check out our holiday guide to learn more about how DoubleClick Ad Exchange can help you reach holiday shoppers this season.

Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Payment IDs now available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Last week, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced the “Verified by TAG” initiative to help increase transparency of digital advertising transactions across the industry. We’re fully supportive of both programs outlined in TAG’s announcement and we’re currently in the process of applying for TAG Registration. To support the adoption of Payment IDs across the ecosystem, starting today our version of Payment IDs is available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to all buyers globally.

Currently, if a programmatic buyer finds they’ve bought fraudulent inventory, there is no way to directly identify the supply source responsible for the fraud. The Payment ID system we proposed to the TAG Anti-Fraud working group fixes this problem by asking all supply sources (e.g. ad exchanges, ad networks, supply side platforms) of advertising inventory to create and provide unique and persistent anonymous identifiers that link every impression to who is paid in their accounting systems. If a buyer finds invalid activity from any source in their supply chain, these Payment IDs will help the buyer to identify who is responsible and blacklist those suppliers from their campaigns.

We’ve always invested heavily to keep DoubleClick Ad Exchange free of invalid activity and ensure that money spent on our platform only goes to support legitimate publishers, app developers, and content creators. To show our commitment to a better ads ecosystem, accelerate the adoption of Payment IDs, and help DSPs start integrating them, we’ve implemented the standard as it exists today, and we’ll continue to work closely with TAG and others in the industry to formalize an industry-wide Payment ID program. When the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group has finalized the broader industry standard, we’ll happily make any changes to ensure we are compliant with TAG’s efforts.

"Google has been at the forefront of the fight against digital ad fraud, and this announcement advances our work together to develop an industry-wide Payment ID system. We look forward to continued collaboration with Google and other programmatic leaders through the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group to create a fully transparent digital ad supply chain that will expose the bad actors and cut off their financial support."
Mike Zaneis, CEO, TAG

Leading programmatic buyers, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Dstillery, Magnetic, MediaMath, Rocket Fuel, The Trade Desk, and Turn have all committed to integrating Payment IDs into their systems in the coming months.

Posted by:

Vegard Johnsen
Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality
Chetna Bindra
Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Payment IDs now available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Last week, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced the “Verified by TAG” initiative to help increase transparency of digital advertising transactions across the industry. We’re fully supportive of both programs outlined in TAG’s announcement and we’re currently in the process of applying for TAG Registration. To support the adoption of Payment IDs across the ecosystem, starting today our version of Payment IDs is available in DoubleClick Ad Exchange to all buyers globally.

Currently, if a programmatic buyer finds they’ve bought fraudulent inventory, there is no way to directly identify the supply source responsible for the fraud. The Payment ID system we proposed to the TAG Anti-Fraud working group fixes this problem by asking all supply sources (e.g. ad exchanges, ad networks, supply side platforms) of advertising inventory to create and provide unique and persistent anonymous identifiers that link every impression to who is paid in their accounting systems. If a buyer finds invalid activity from any source in their supply chain, these Payment IDs will help the buyer to identify who is responsible and blacklist those suppliers from their campaigns.

We’ve always invested heavily to keep DoubleClick Ad Exchange free of invalid activity and ensure that money spent on our platform only goes to support legitimate publishers, app developers, and content creators. To show our commitment to a better ads ecosystem, accelerate the adoption of Payment IDs, and help DSPs start integrating them, we’ve implemented the standard as it exists today, and we’ll continue to work closely with TAG and others in the industry to formalize an industry-wide Payment ID program. When the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group has finalized the broader industry standard, we’ll happily make any changes to ensure we are compliant with TAG’s efforts.

"Google has been at the forefront of the fight against digital ad fraud, and this announcement advances our work together to develop an industry-wide Payment ID system. We look forward to continued collaboration with Google and other programmatic leaders through the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group to create a fully transparent digital ad supply chain that will expose the bad actors and cut off their financial support."
Mike Zaneis, CEO, TAG

Leading programmatic buyers, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Dstillery, Magnetic, MediaMath, Rocket Fuel, The Trade Desk, and Turn have all committed to integrating Payment IDs into their systems in the coming months.

Posted by:

Vegard Johnsen
Product Manager, Google Ads Traffic Quality
Chetna Bindra
Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Programmatic momentum across our platforms

Mobile has forever changed the way we live, and it’s forever changed the way we engage with brands. It has fractured the consumer journey into hundreds of real-time, intent-driven micro-moments -- the moments in time when consumers' preferences are shaped and decisions are made. Each one is a critical opportunity for brands, and increasingly we are seeing advertisers turn to programmatic to reach and engage audiences everywhere and win these moments.

As the industry gears up for Advertising Week next week, I want to reflect on the momentum we’re seeing in programmatic buying across our platforms, especially in mobile. At DoubleClick, the number of advertisers using our programmatic solutions has grown nearly 2x in the last 18 months, and now includes over 80% of the AdAge top 100 advertisers. More broadly, IDC estimates that programmatic spending on mobile display and video advertising in the U.S. will grow from $4.7 billion in 2015 to $22.8 billion in 2019 (a CAGR of 65%.)1

With people switching between multiple devices throughout their day and increasing their consumption of mobile video, advertisers have changed how and where they buy programmatically in order to connect with people in micro-moments. Both mobile and video impressions served on DoubleClick Bid Manager have grown more than 3.5x since last year, and impressions served via direct deals that are transacted programmatically have nearly tripled. To provide you with the largest pool of inventory, DoubleClick Bid Manager has access to 70 exchanges and API partners, and we prioritize mobile and video inventory sources when identifying new integrations to pursue.

Ultimately, our engineers spend each day thinking about how to build innovative products that help you win these micro-moments by connecting with the people you want to reach, across screens and at scale. The growth in usage of our platforms shows that we are making progress, but we are even more excited for what's to come. Google has a great line-up of talks set for next week in New York - we hope to see you there.

Posted by Neal Mohan
VP, Display & Video Advertising, Google
1. IDC Report #256782, June 2015 “WW and US Programmatic growth forecasts, 2015-2019”

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