Author Archives: Anish Kattukaran

2 days to go: SMG’s Laura Desmond previews her keynote at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit

Laura Desmond, Global CEO at Starcom Mediavest Group, will be keynoting the live stream from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit on June 17th. We caught up with Laura for a quick glimpse of what she’ll be speaking to and what owning the moment means to her. 

Register now to hear her live on June 17 at 9AM ET.

The rate of change is only accelerating, driven by rapid technology advancements and evolving consumer behaviors. FOMO isn’t just for millennials anymore—it’s a pressure our industry feels everyday.

Brands need to shift from mass-market strategies to precision ones that deliver relevancy along with immediacy. Core to delivering is keeping the consumer at the center, understanding them deeply, and delivering experiences that match their pace and purpose. 

Owning the moment requires more than just being “real-time.” Winning now depends on the ability to mix velocity and relevancy, drawing upon data, unification, personalization and agility. 

On Wednesday, I’ll be sharing how against a backdrop of great change, brands can drive impact with velocity marketing. Today’s best marketers are much like the hottest EDM mix artists -- leveraging technology, data, and collaboration to own the moment, deliver relevancy, and spur action. 

Register now to hear more from Laura on Wednesday, June 17th at 9AM ET.

Guest post by Laura Desmond, Global Chief Executive Officer, Starcom Mediavest Group

2 days to go: SMG’s Laura Desmond previews her keynote at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit

Laura Desmond, Global CEO at Starcom Mediavest Group, will be keynoting the live stream from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit on June 17th. We caught up with Laura for a quick glimpse of what she’ll be speaking to and what owning the moment means to her. 

Register now to hear her live on June 17 at 9AM ET.

The rate of change is only accelerating, driven by rapid technology advancements and evolving consumer behaviors. FOMO isn’t just for millennials anymore—it’s a pressure our industry feels everyday.

Brands need to shift from mass-market strategies to precision ones that deliver relevancy along with immediacy. Core to delivering is keeping the consumer at the center, understanding them deeply, and delivering experiences that match their pace and purpose. 

Owning the moment requires more than just being “real-time.” Winning now depends on the ability to mix velocity and relevancy, drawing upon data, unification, personalization and agility. 

On Wednesday, I’ll be sharing how against a backdrop of great change, brands can drive impact with velocity marketing. Today’s best marketers are much like the hottest EDM mix artists -- leveraging technology, data, and collaboration to own the moment, deliver relevancy, and spur action. 

Register now to hear more from Laura on Wednesday, June 17th at 9AM ET.

Guest post by Laura Desmond, Global Chief Executive Officer, Starcom Mediavest Group

How the Cloud is Transforming TV Across All Screens

This post is part of DoubleClick's Evolution of TV series. In this series we identify the risks and opportunities around 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape as TV programming shifts to delivery over the Internet.

Recently, at the National Association for Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas, we released the fourth installment of our Evolution of TV series where we explore the impact of the cloud on TV's transformation. The premise of this new whitepaper is that everything we know about TV delivery and viewing is about to change.


Everything from the way we watch TV to how it's distributed is changing. The delivery and production of the TV content we're viewing—and sometimes binge-watching on so many screens—is on the cusp of industry-wide innovation as TV delivery shifts from over the air, satellite, or cable to the internet. To support TV programming over the internet, those responsible for delivering the content—the programmers and distributors—are beginning to migrate their operations to a more flexible, agile environment: the cloud


In this new whitepaper we explore a few of the cloud migrations happening in specific areas of the TV business like:
  • Subscription services
  • Transcoding and encoding
  • Broadcast automation
  • Stream packaging
  • Signal distribution between partners
  • Signal acquisition between partners
  • Storage and archiving


In short, migrating TV to the cloud not only affords programmers and distributors cost savings and efficiency but also enables innovation that could change TV as we know it today into a far more dynamic, personalized, and addressable medium.


Download the PDF to get the entire scoop on how parallel transformations in other industries show us that the cloud will encourage innovation and necessitate agility for programmers and distributors, as well as create a vastly different viewing experience for users.




Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing, DoubleClick Video & Brand Measurement

How the Cloud is Transforming TV Across All Screens

This post is part of DoubleClick's Evolution of TV series. In this series we identify the risks and opportunities around 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape as TV programming shifts to delivery over the Internet.

Recently, at the National Association for Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas, we released the fourth installment of our Evolution of TV series where we explore the impact of the cloud on TV's transformation. The premise of this new whitepaper is that everything we know about TV delivery and viewing is about to change.


Everything from the way we watch TV to how it's distributed is changing. The delivery and production of the TV content we're viewing—and sometimes binge-watching on so many screens—is on the cusp of industry-wide innovation as TV delivery shifts from over the air, satellite, or cable to the internet. To support TV programming over the internet, those responsible for delivering the content—the programmers and distributors—are beginning to migrate their operations to a more flexible, agile environment: the cloud


In short, migrating TV to the cloud not only affords programmers and distributors cost savings and efficiency but also enables innovation that could change TV as we know it today into a far more dynamic, personalized, and addressable medium.


Download the PDF to get the entire scoop on how parallel transformations in other industries show us that the cloud will encourage innovation and necessitate agility for programmers and distributors, as well as create a vastly different viewing experience for users.




Anish Kattukaran,

Product Marketing, DoubleClick Video & Brand Measurement

How Many Video Ads are Actually Seen? New Infographic and Research for Video Viewability Across the Web and on YouTube.

If an ad isn’t seen, it doesn’t have an impact, change perception, or build brand trust. That is why measuring the viewability of advertising matters. It gives marketers a clear understanding of campaign and messaging effectiveness and allows advertising spend to be allocated to the media where it will have the most impact.

We have long been advocates of viewability as a currency between buyers and sellers, which is why we’ve had viewable-only buying on our network for more than a year and have been investing in our Active View technology.

As a continuation of that effort, today we are releasing new Active View data from across our Google, DoubleClick and YouTube video ad platforms. This new research on the 5 factors of video viewability is being published today on Think with Google to start the discussion about the state of video ad viewability.


In this research we found that only 54% of all video ads served across the web, excluding YouTube, had a chance to be seen! On YouTube 91% of ads were found to be viewable.


As advertisers shift to paying for viewable video ads, rather than served impressions, understanding the drivers of viewability for video ads is more important than ever.

To learn what viewability is and how it is measured, visit our new interactive Active View demo here.

-
Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement
Michael Giordano, Product Marketing, Brand Measurement
Anish Kattukaran, Product Marketing, Video & Brand Measurement


How Many Video Ads are Actually Seen? New Infographic and Research for Video Viewability Across the Web and on YouTube.

If an ad isn’t seen, it doesn’t have an impact, change perception, or build brand trust. That is why measuring the viewability of advertising matters. It gives marketers a clear understanding of campaign and messaging effectiveness and allows advertising spend to be allocated to the media where it will have the most impact.

We have long been advocates of viewability as a currency between buyers and sellers, which is why we’ve had viewable-only buying on our network for more than a year and have been investing in our Active View technology.

As a continuation of that effort, today we are releasing new Active View data from across our Google, DoubleClick and YouTube video ad platforms. This new research on the 5 factors of video viewability is being published today on Think with Google to start the discussion about the state of video ad viewability.


In this research we found that only 54% of all video ads served across the web, excluding YouTube, had a chance to be seen! On YouTube 91% of ads were found to be viewable.


As advertisers shift to paying for viewable video ads, rather than served impressions, understanding the drivers of viewability for video ads is more important than ever.

To learn what viewability is and how it is measured, visit our new interactive Active View demo here.

-
Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement
Michael Giordano, Product Marketing, Brand Measurement
Anish Kattukaran, Product Marketing, Video & Brand Measurement


TrueView coming to DoubleClick: User choice meets programmatic

Today at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco, we are announcing our latest investment to help brands make the most of digital: the TrueView ad format will be available for programmatic buying within DoubleClick Bid Manager.

This launch brings together two important trends we’re seeing: the importance of user choice in advertising and the ability to reach the right person at the right time with programmatic buying.

We introduced TrueView, an innovative cost-per-view (CPV) ad format, five years ago as a way to put user choice at the heart of brand advertising. With TrueView, viewers choose to engage, and brands only pay when they do. Today, the format is a brand mainstay, representing 85% of all in-stream ads on YouTube. And based on a recent study, we’ve seen that two-thirds of TrueView campaigns deliver significant lift in brand interest.

In parallel, programmatic buying has evolved from just a real-time bidding tool for direct response campaigns to an important technology and data-driven solution for brand building. Across our own platforms, we’ve seen the volume of programmatic transactions double year-over-year. With the consumer journey now fractured into many "micro-moments" across screens, programmatic can help brands understand and reach their audiences across devices and formats.

In the coming months, marketers and agencies will be able to buy the TrueView choice-based video ad format on a cost-per-view (CPV) basis through DoubleClick Bid Manager. This is the first time TrueView has been available outside of AdWords, allowing DoubleClick clients to take advantage of features like cross-campaign frequency capping, unified audience insights, measurement and billing across campaigns.

Some of our partners are already seeing success:


"At Netflix, we have always embraced consumer choice. In the advertising world, TrueView is the epitome of that choice. The fact that we can now scale it further via DoubleClick Bid Manager represents a powerful new channel for marketing our content across the world." 
Mike Zeman, Director of Digital Marketing, Netflix




“TrueView has empowered us to give our consumers greater choice while delivering a better engaging viewer experience. As an early adopter of the TrueView beta in DoubleClick Bid Manager in the UK we have seen great success in achieving our CPV goals.” 
Nestlé UK



“We’re really excited to bring TrueView on DoubleClick Bid Manager into our video campaign arsenal. This deepens our ability to achieve client success metrics on highly relevant and viewable video inventory combined with universal controls around targeting, frequency management and reporting.” 
Ian Johnson, EVP and MD, Global Product at Cadreon




“TrueView in DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) allows us to strengthen our branding offering while benefiting from significant efficiency gains. Once we can leverage DBM’s capabilities such as 3rd party audience targeting and universal frequency capping, we will have a very powerful value proposition for advertisers.” 
Roli Okoro, Director of AOD, Middle East and North Africa


This adds to our ongoing investments to help brands get the most out of the programmatic landscape like Google Partner Select, Active View, Verification and brand safety protections. We're committed to providing the most complete programmatic platform to our brand partners to help them connect with their audiences in all the moments that matter. Stay tuned for even more in the months to come.

-
Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products


TrueView coming to DoubleClick Bid Manager: User choice meets programmatic

Cross-posted from our DoubleClick Advertiser blog.

Today at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco, we are announcing our latest investment to help brands make the most of digital: the TrueView ad format will be available for programmatic buying within DoubleClick Bid Manager.

This launch brings together two important trends we’re seeing: the importance of user choice in advertising and the ability to reach the right person at the right time with programmatic buying.

We introduced TrueView, an innovative cost-per-view (CPV) ad format, five years ago as a way to put user choice at the heart of brand advertising. With TrueView, viewers choose to engage, and brands only pay when they do. Today, the format is a brand mainstay, representing 85% of all in-stream ads on YouTube. And based on a recent study, we’ve seen that two-thirds of TrueView campaigns deliver significant lift in brand interest.

In parallel, programmatic buying has evolved from just a real-time bidding tool for direct response campaigns to an important technology and data-driven solution for brand building. Across our own platforms, we’ve seen the volume of programmatic transactions double year-over-year. With the consumer journey now fractured into many "micro-moments" across screens, programmatic can help brands understand and reach their audiences across devices and formats.

In the coming months, marketers and agencies will be able to buy the TrueView choice-based video ad format on a cost-per-view (CPV) basis through DoubleClick Bid Manager. This is the first time TrueView has been available outside of AdWords, allowing DoubleClick clients to take advantage of features like cross-campaign frequency capping, unified audience insights, measurement and billing across campaigns.

Some of our partners are already seeing success:


"At Netflix, we have always embraced consumer choice. In the advertising world, TrueView is the epitome of that choice. The fact that we can now scale it further via DoubleClick Bid Manager represents a powerful new channel for marketing our content across the world." 
Mike Zeman, Director of Digital Marketing, Netflix




“TrueView has empowered us to give our consumers greater choice while delivering a better engaging viewer experience. As an early adopter of the TrueView beta in DoubleClick Bid Manager in the UK we have seen great success in achieving our CPV goals.” 
Nestlé UK



“We’re really excited to bring TrueView on DoubleClick Bid Manager into our video campaign arsenal. This deepens our ability to achieve client success metrics on highly relevant and viewable video inventory combined with universal controls around targeting, frequency management and reporting.” 
Ian Johnson, EVP and MD, Global Product at Cadreon




“TrueView in DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) allows us to strengthen our branding offering while benefiting from significant efficiency gains. Once we can leverage DBM’s capabilities such as 3rd party audience targeting and universal frequency capping, we will have a very powerful value proposition for advertisers.” 
Ali Nehme, Managing Director Digital, Vivaki Middle East and North Africa


This adds to our ongoing investments to help brands get the most out of the programmatic landscape like Google Partner Select, Active View, Verification and brand safety protections. We're committed to providing the most complete programmatic platform to our brand partners to help them connect with their audiences in all the moments that matter. Stay tuned for even more in the months to come.

-
Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products


Announcing new ways for TV providers to manage cross-screen, addressable digital video advertising

Cross posted from our DoubleClick for Publishers blog.

It's an exciting time for broadcasters. With the proliferation of streaming video, OTT devices, connected TVs and mobile devices, the line between offline and digital video is quickly blurring. Navigating this change, though, is tricky--broadcasters are now facing the challenge of how to manage an ads business that spans multiple devices and multiple ways of consuming content. We’ve been working on a few initiatives to help broadcasters with this challenge, I had the pleasure of introducing a few of these at the NAB Show this morning.

Better TV forecasting in DoubleClick for Publishers
One of the biggest challenges broadcasters face in this new landscape is accurately being able to forecast their inventory for their shows. What was once a fairly straightforward process--estimating how many ads they could show during a given program though one delivery method on one screen--now looks like a logic puzzle on steroids. 

Broadcasters now need to take into account the unpredictable nature of viewing habits on multiple screens, seasonality, spikes and fluctuations in traffic (e.g. for NCAA finals), different devices, ad loads, not to mention all of the new data that is available with digital.  How do you even begin to tell an advertiser that you can deliver on their campaign goals if the math is just this complicated? And especially as broadcasters plan for the upfronts?

To help them meet this challenge, we're introducing new ways for broadcasters to forecast in DoubleClick for Publishers by enabling them to forecast available internet TV inventory with greater precision and insights and the impact from patterns in commercial breaks. And coming soon, broadcasters will be able to use seasonality in forecasting for upfront cycles and model based on their offline data. Our goal with these changes is to make it easier for our broadcast partners to manage this process and put together great inventory packages for their upfront offerings.

mDialog inventory comes to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Last year, we acquired a company called mDialog with expertise in dynamically delivering ads to internet-delivered TV content (like streaming video, OTT devices and connected TVs). We’ve been working to bring their technology together with ours. Thanks to this work, we’ve now connected mDialog inventory to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This means that TV providers will be able to monetize TV inventory across OTT devices (like Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TB), across all screens, programmatically. 

Partners like Fox News are already seeing success with this new feature:

'With more and more of our viewers consuming content across screens, digital video is, of course, a huge focus. Google bringing the mDialog technology to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange has allowed us to connect our Internet-delivered television content, whether live programming or full-episode shows with the controls we need to programmatic demand. This is a great step forward both towards being able to better monetize this cross-screen content and providing a great ads experience for viewers. We're excited to see where this goes."
- Zach Friedman,
VP of Digital Ad Sales at FOX News Channel & FOX Business Network

Investing for the future

We're experimenting with additional models, like linear TV, as well. As just one example, we're running trials of addressable ads into linear TV set-top boxes via our Google Fiber service in Kansas City. Powered by DoubleClick technology, we are helping local businesses connect with customers in that market by delivering more relevant messages to viewers.

Continuing to explore the evolution of TV
In our ongoing DoubleClick series on the Evolution of TV, we've been discussing the risks and opportunities around 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape. In Part 3 in our Evolution of TV series (find the rest of the series here) we dispel the hype about programmatic TV, address the challenges, and concentrate on its promise for brand advertisers, programmers, and broadcasters.

Download the new whitepaper from Think with Google for the in-depth story.

Ultimately delivering addressable ads whether across TV ads served via the internet or through the set-top box is about delighting users with the best viewing experience. It's a technology that everyone in the industry can get behind. Advertisers have always wanted the customization, programmers and distributors have always wanted it to maximize the value of every impression and viewers appreciate more relevant ads. Addressable TV is a win-win-win proposition.

Posted by Rany Ng, Director of Product Management, Video

Announcing new ways for TV providers to manage cross-screen, addressable digital video advertising

It's an exciting time for broadcasters. With the proliferation of streaming video, OTT devices, connected TVs and mobile devices, the line between offline and digital video is quickly blurring. Navigating this change, though, is tricky--broadcasters are now facing the challenge of how to manage an ads business that spans multiple devices and multiple ways of consuming content. We’ve been working on a few initiatives to help broadcasters with this challenge, I had the pleasure of introducing a few of these at the NAB Show this morning.

Better TV forecasting in DoubleClick for Publishers
One of the biggest challenges broadcasters face in this new landscape is accurately being able to forecast their inventory for their shows. What was once a fairly straightforward process--estimating how many ads they could show during a given program though one delivery method on one screen--now looks like a logic puzzle on steroids. 

Broadcasters now need to take into account the unpredictable nature of viewing habits on multiple screens, seasonality, spikes and fluctuations in traffic (e.g. for NCAA finals), different devices, ad loads, not to mention all of the new data that is available with digital.  How do you even begin to tell an advertiser that you can deliver on their campaign goals if the math is just this complicated? And especially as broadcasters plan for the upfronts?

To help them meet this challenge, we're introducing new ways for broadcasters to forecast in DoubleClick for Publishers by enabling them to forecast available internet TV inventory with greater precision and insights and the impact from patterns in commercial breaks. And coming soon, broadcasters will be able to use seasonality in forecasting for upfront cycles and model based on their offline data. Our goal with these changes is to make it easier for our broadcast partners to manage this process and put together great inventory packages for their upfront offerings.

mDialog inventory comes to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange
Last year, we acquired a company called mDialog with expertise in dynamically delivering ads to internet-delivered TV content (like streaming video, OTT devices and connected TVs). We’ve been working to bring their technology together with ours. Thanks to this work, we’ve now connected mDialog inventory to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This means that TV providers will be able to monetize TV inventory across OTT devices (like Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TB), across all screens, programmatically. 

Partners like Fox News are already seeing success with this new feature:

'With more and more of our viewers consuming content across screens, digital video is, of course, a huge focus. Google bringing the mDialog technology to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange has allowed us to connect our Internet-delivered television content, whether live programming or full-episode shows with the controls we need to programmatic demand. This is a great step forward both towards being able to better monetize this cross-screen content and providing a great ads experience for viewers. We're excited to see where this goes."
- Zach Friedman,
VP of Digital Ad Sales at FOX News Channel & FOX Business Network

Investing for the future

We're experimenting with additional models, like linear TV, as well. As just one example, we're running trials of addressable ads into linear TV set-top boxes via our Google Fiber service in Kansas City. Powered by DoubleClick technology, we are helping local businesses connect with customers in that market by delivering more relevant messages to viewers.

Continuing to explore the evolution of TV
In our ongoing DoubleClick series on the Evolution of TV, we've been discussing the risks and opportunities around 7 dynamics transforming the advertising landscape. In Part 3 in our Evolution of TV series (find the rest of the series here) we dispel the hype about programmatic TV, address the challenges, and concentrate on its promise for brand advertisers, programmers, and broadcasters.

Download the new whitepaper from Think with Google for the in-depth story.

Ultimately delivering addressable ads whether across TV ads served via the internet or through the set-top box is about delighting users with the best viewing experience. It's a technology that everyone in the industry can get behind. Advertisers have always wanted the customization, programmers and distributors have always wanted it to maximize the value of every impression and viewers appreciate more relevant ads. Addressable TV is a win-win-win proposition.

Posted by Rany Ng, Director of Product Management, Video