Author Archives: Andrea

Get a better view of media performance with the new Conversions API

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

New ways to reach your audience in DoubleClick Bid Manager

You know your customers and their preferences better than anyone else, but reaching these users as they explore sites and content online can be challenging. That's why we're excited to bring additional audience targeting options to DoubleClick Bid Manager to help you connect with customers at the right moments with the right message.

Bid Manager now enables you target your campaigns by demographic, affinity, in-market, and similar audience profiles to help you precisely reach users who are most likely to care about your brand or product. These targeting options complement any first and third-party data you may already be using in Bid Manager.

Reach customers throughout all stages of the purchase funnel

Bid Manager's new targeting options are designed to help you reach new and existing customers throughout all stages of the customer purchase funnel:

  • Demographic: Demographic targeting is what it sounds like-a way to find your target by age and gender. It can help you reach a specific target based on stage of life to continue to serve the most relevant messages to consumers.
  • Affinity: Affinity audiences can help you move beyond demographics and reach people who care about your brand. With over 80 unique personas based on lifestyle and interests, affinity audiences mimic the depth and breadth of TV-style audiences, so marketers can engage with precise audiences at scale.
  • In-market: Reach potential customers while they're actively browsing, researching or comparing the types of products you sell. Connect with those most interested in what you have to offer, using precise segments that classify users based on their demonstrated in-market behavior and purchase intent.
  • Similar audiences: Similar audiences looks at data about your existing remarketing audiences and finds new and qualified consumers who have shared interests with that audience. It's a powerful - but simple - way to reach a much larger audience and drive clicks and conversions among new prospects.

Audience solutions in action

Suppose you own a bicycle shop and you want to reach users who are interested in purchasing a new bicycle. Users with this intent may browse sites or content online as they begin to consider purchasing a new bicycle. Other users may be actively browsing product listings and committed to purchasing a new bicycle.

As a bicycle shop owner, each user represents an opportunity, and Bid Manager's audience targeting can help you reach the right user at exactly the right moment. For example, affinity targeting can be used to reach biking enthusiasts who are currently considering purchasing a new bicycle. In-market targeting can then be used as the user begins evaluating different bicycles to purchase.

We've seen customers have success using these new targeting options for all phases of the purchase cycle. AMNET Spain, for example, helps clients increase the reach on their target audience across TV and online video media buys:

"For branding campaigns, it is essential that we reach as much of our target audience as possible. In one particular case, we were asked to reach women in Spain between ages 25-45. By using Google Demographic Targeting and Google Affinity Audiences, we were able to achieve an extra 20% reach when compared to using TV alone.”
Ramón de la Guardia, Country Manager, AMNET Spain and Portugal

When your message reaches the right audience, you'll see higher engagement and improved performance. Danone Italy has experienced:

“We worked with Mindshare to drive awareness of our yogurt brands in women of different age groups in Italy. Google Demographic Targeting in Bid Manager helped us achieve our target coverage against this demographic and increase engagement, with a 20% uplift in CTR."
Valeria Surico, Marketing Connection Manager, Danone

These new audience targeting options are available today in DoubleClick Bid Manager. Learn more.

Posted by Maithreyi Raman
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager

Cross-device conversion metrics come to DoubleClick

Last week during the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS), we introduced cross-device measurement across all of our DoubleClick advertiser products. Today, as the first post of our week-long DLS series, we're excited to announce that these cross-device metrics will be rolling out to all DoubleClick advertisers in the next week.

Mobile continues to reshape how consumers engage on digital: they are increasingly turning to the nearest device to act on an immediate need in the moment and then seamlessly shifting their attention from screen to screen to complete their journey. With the path to purchase becoming increasingly fragmented, it’s essential marketers understand how consumers interact with their brand across all devices. When marketers have access to cross-device insights, they will also make the best decisions about how to invest their marketing dollars.

With this launch, advertisers can access cross-device metrics in all buying tools within our platform -- DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, and DoubleClick Search. 
What advertisers can measure
Cross-device measurement in DoubleClick allows advertisers to gain insight on the true performance of their campaigns across the web, even when users switch devices in their path to conversion. This means advertisers can measure conversions that begin on one device, and continue or end on another, answering questions like:

How many additional conversions is my digital investment delivering that I haven’t been able to measure?
Which sites/campaigns/ads are driving the most conversions across devices? 

Let’s say a user is reading bicycle reviews on her phone, and clicks on a display ad that takes her to a bike shop’s website. Later, when she gets home, she pulls up the shop’s site on her computer to continue her research, and ultimately buys the red cruiser she’s been eyeing. This is an example of a cross-device path to conversion that you will now be able to measure with our tools. In fact, cross-device measurement enhances the most powerful use cases for our customers:
  • If a user clicks on a search ad on desktop, then completes a purchase on mobile, we can measure that.
  • If a user clicks on a display ad for a smartphone app on their desktop, and then later downloads that same game on their smartphone, we can measure that. 

Principles of cross-device conversion measurement 
We built cross-device measurement for DoubleClick with the following principles at the core:

User-first. We’re investing in these capabilities while prioritizing user privacy. We measure mobile behavior using industry-standard device identifiers that users can see, reset and configure to opt out from interest-based advertising. Additionally, advertisers can only access anonymous and aggregated performance reporting on their campaigns.

Accurate. The cross-device metrics are calculated using fully deterministic data sources. Performance measurements are only displayed to advertisers when there is a sufficient sample size and a strict 95% confidence interval is reached. 

Comprehensive. Built to work across any type of buy (programmatic or reservations), screen, channel (search and display), and format, these tools are consistent with DoubleClick’s core value of giving advertisers a unified view of their audience. 

To learn more about cross-device measurement, register for the webinar on July 9th at 12 PM ET and subscribe to our newsletter. If you have a DoubleClick login you can also read more in our Help Center.

Join us tomorrow for our second post in our DLS series, focused on the Programmatic Guaranteed and DoubleClick Marketplace announcements. 

Posted by Luke Hedrick, Product Manager, DoubleClick