Category Archives: DoubleClick Advertiser Blog

News, features, tips, and training – DoubleClick Advertisers

Get more powerful bid automation with new DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding

Efficient and effective bid management is a foundational component of any successful digital marketing program. Today, we’re excited to announce Smart Bidding, our new name for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search that reflects the powerful machine learning behind it.

Making bidding smarter for improved performance

Smart Bidding is built on Google’s deep experience using machine learning to power a wide range of products, including the Google assistant, automatic album creation in Google Photos, and AlphaGo, the first computer program to ever beat a professional player at the game of Go. Smart Bidding can factor in millions of signals to determine the optimal bid, and it continually refines models of your conversion performance at different bid levels to help you get more from your marketing budget.

Even when it encounters areas with lower conversion volume, Smart Bidding's learning capabilities quickly maximize the accuracy of your bidding models to improve how you optimize the long-tail. It evaluates patterns in your campaign structure, landing pages, ad text, product information, keyword phrases and many more to identify more relevant similarities across bidding items to effectively borrow learnings between them.

With Smart Bidding improvements, advertisers using Target CPA and Target ROAS in DoubleClick Search saw an average 16% lift in conversions at the same or better ROI.1

On top of its machine learning capabilities, Smart Bidding is built on three pillars, inspired by feedback we’ve heard from you about what’s important in a bidding solution:

  • Precise bid optimization tailored to a user’s context
  • Flexible performance controls that factor in your unique business goals
  • Transparent reporting that provides clear insight into how your bids are performing

In DoubleClick Search, we have several innovations coming soon across these areas. Get a full overview of DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding here.

New bidding signals that give you a richer view of user context

DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding tailors bids based on a user's context to set the right bid and maximize performance. It factors in a wide range of signals like device, location and remarketing lists to automate bids and bid adjustments across engines. We’re continuously exploring new signals to add to our bidding models that are impactful predictors of performance. These include recent additions like weekday seasonality, and others like sales and promotional calendars that are coming soon, enabling our system to customize bidding models to your business that help you make the most of these important events.

Set multiple performance targets that incorporate your custom data

To help you include more of your own business intelligence in the bidding feedback loop, custom Floodlight variables can now be used as inputs for DoubleClick Search bid strategies. With custom Floodlight variables, you can enrich a conversion event with additional information such as “new customer”, “gold loyalty status”, “device” and more. You can then set unique ROI goals based on this additional information. For example, you can target a $10 CPA for new customers and $5 CPA for existing customers, or aim for a 50% higher ROAS from your most loyal customers.

Identify the most impactful campaign opportunities for Smart Bidding

We’ve also built bid strategy opportunities in DoubleClick Search which identify campaigns with the greatest potential for improved performance. After defining a goal, bid strategy opportunities finds campaigns that are most likely to benefit from Smart Bidding, forecasting how much each campaign's conversion volume could grow if it were managed by a bid strategy.

Once you select the campaigns for automated bidding, the Smart Bidding wizard guides you through the setup, and recommends initial ROI targets (CPA/ROAS) and constraints to ensure a successful transition to Smart Bidding.

Bidding insights that can automatically troubleshoot issues

Coming soon, an enhanced version of bid strategy health will continually analyze your bid strategies for a number of known issues. For example, it will monitor for conversion tracking issues and bid and budget constraints, and alert you if they are adversely impacting your campaigns. It also forecasts the performance impact of resolving these issues and provides a recommendation and one-click solution to quickly implement the fix.

Advertisers like AnadoluJet and eBags are already using DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding to drive better performance.

AnadoluJet is the rapidly growing, low-cost branch of Turkish Airlines. They used Smart Bidding with cross-device conversions to intelligently bid on clicks across devices, ensuring campaign budgets were being allocated most effectively across each device. It drove a 30% incremental lift in clicks and conversions across devices. Read the full case study here.

eBags has been the #1 online bag retailer in the U.S. since 1999 and recently expanded internationally. eBags saw an opportunity to get improved performance by switching from their in-house tool to DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding. It helped the company grow revenue by 38% at a higher ROAS. Read the full case study here.

To learn more about DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding, visit the Help Center and check out our best practices.

Posted by Anthony Chavez
Product Management Director, Search Ads, Google

1 Google internal data. August 2015 before and after of adding Google’s machine learning to DoubleClick Search bidding algorithms.

From the DoubleClick Leadership Summit: Better, faster ads at scale

Delivering a better experience for users has been our top priority since Google was founded, from the products we develop and the ads that we show to how we do business with our partners and clients. This will be on full display at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, our annual gathering of large advertiser, agency and publisher clients beginning today.

This year, our focus is on how we can work together to create better, faster ad experiences across every screen, starting with mobile.

You can join us for the livestream of my opening keynote, starting at 9 a.m. P.T. during which I’ll share updates about new innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

Making ads on the mobile web faster

Our research shows that the average mobile site takes 19 seconds to load. Think about that for a minute. That’s a long time! Not only is this frustrating for users but it’s also a huge missed opportunity for publishers -- we estimate mobile sites that load within 5 seconds can earn up to 2x more revenue than those at the 19 second average.

To help make the mobile web faster for users, Google joined a global community of publishers and other tech companies to launch the open sourced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (also known as AMP). Early analysis shows that mobile web pages that use AMP HTML load four times faster and use 10 times less data on average than non-AMP mobile web pages.

AMP is already making a difference for a variety of publishers such as the Washington Post, which is seeing first-hand how AMP pages deliver great mobile web experiences that build user loyalty.

But just speeding up the content is not enough - slow-loading ads are also a problem. We’re announcing two new features that will make ad experiences better on the mobile web:

  • AMP for Ads - With AMP for Ads, we're bringing everything that's good and fast about AMP to ads. Unfortunately, most advertisers’ campaign creative are not fully optimized for mobile experiences. AMP for Ads allows advertisers to build beautifully-designed ads in AMP HTML so that the entire AMP experience, both the publisher’s content and the advertiser’s creative, load simultaneously at AMP-speed.
  • AMP Landing Pages - AMP Landing Pages are fast, custom pages, built by advertisers so that when someone clicks on their AMP ad, they continue to have an AMP experience. AMP Landing Pages are also built with AMP HTML so that advertisers or their agencies use the same process to create these pages as they do with AMP content pages.

Building the next generation of ads with DoubleClick

Over the past year, Google has been working with publishers to help them adopt native ads - ads that match the look, feel and style of their surrounding content on a publisher’s website. Users find this type of ad format useful, particularly on mobile. However, in the advertising industry, the process of building and trafficking native ads is still largely manual.

Today, we are announcing significant updates for native ads across our platforms that will help to accelerate adoption of this user-friendly format with programmatic.

  • For the first time, advertisers will be able to buy native ads programmatically in DoubleClick Bid Manager, across all screens. Instead of providing fully-designed creatives, advertisers upload the components of the ad - headline, image, text, and so on - and DoubleClick automatically assembles them to fit the context and format of the site or app where they appear.


  • For publishers, we’re now offering a complete native ads solution in DoubleClick. Publishers can now make native ad inventory across web and apps available programmatically or through traditional direct sales.

Creating value with programmatic

Programmatic buying delivers results, so it’s no surprise that brands and agencies are continuing to invest. Today, we’re excited to announce a new global partnership with one of the world’s largest entertainment brands, Time Warner Inc.

DoubleClick will work with all of Time Warner’s businesses, networks and brands, such as, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Harry Potter and CNN, among others, as well as Time Warner’s agencies, for programmatic buying, ad serving, and measurement globally.

Time Warner is not alone in growing their investment in programmatic. We’ve seen tremendous momentum on our own platforms. In 2015 alone,

  • Programmatic video revenue for TV and media companies increased more than 6x on DoubleClick for Publishers.
  • Video spend by advertisers using Programmatic Direct on DoubleClick Bid Manager grew more than 7x.
  • The number of Programmatic Direct deals on DoubleClick AdExchange tripled.

Together with our advertiser and publisher partners, we've made huge strides in improving the digital ads experience for users. Digital ads can be lightning fast, engaging and as beautiful as the site and app where they appear.

We've come a long way from ads that just blink text in blocky boxes - and yet we know there is still work to do. Today’s announcements represent our continued commitment to help our clients and partners deliver better and faster ad experiences for users.

Posted by Paul Muret
Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics, Google

Visit the DoubleClick website at www.doubleclick.com next week for a series of articles with more details on today’s announcements.

Just eight days until the DoubleClick Announcements livestream

Join me on Tuesday, July 19th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET for a livestream broadcast of my keynote address from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS). I’ll be sharing updates on the latest innovations on the DoubleClick platform and how we’re helping advertisers and publishers adapt to today’s mobile world.

At Google, one of our enduring principles is to “focus on the user and all else will follow.” This has been an important guidepost throughout our history, and it has never been more relevant than it is today. People are more ‘mobile’ now than ever before. We spend every waking hour connected to our devices. We expect to find what we want, when we want it. But with only a split second to engage and capture attention, user experience matters more than ever.

In my keynote, I’ll share an update on the technologies we’re developing to help advertisers, agencies and publishers create better experiences for people on the go. You can expect to hear more about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Native Ads, as well as new, more immersive experiences like 360 video. I’ll also be unveiling new product features to help our clients and partners more effectively reach, engage, monetize, and measure audiences across screens.

I’m looking forward to the livestream on July 19th. Please register to watch here.

Posted by Paul Muret
Vice President of Analytics, Display, and Video Products, Google

Google display ads go 100% HTML5

In February, we announced that DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and the Google Display Network are going 100% HTML5. Starting June 30th, 2016, display ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, or AdWords.

DoubleClick advertisers who currently use Flash ads in their campaigns have several ways to ensure your creative can continue to show up in your live campaigns. Read more here.


Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Join us as we announce the latest innovations in digital marketing

Tune in on July 19th for the DoubleClick Announcements Livestream. Watch live as Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video Ads and Analytics at Google, shares new product announcements and DoubleClick's vision for the future.

Register and get the link to the livestream in your inbox before the event.

The event will be streamed live on DoubleClick.com on July 19th, 2016 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET.

Posted by The DoubleClick Marketing Team

The creative process for programmatic: A toolkit for creative agencies

Programmatic advertising accounts for 67% of all digital display ad sales1. When you consider that data-driven creative is the creative powerhouse behind programmatic, and that 70% of a media campaign’s performance hinges on the creative2, it’s clear that knowing how to build data-driven creative is a must for any agency with an eye toward the future.

As important as data-driven creative is, adopting is easier said than done. That’s why we put together a set of resources to help marketers, media agencies, creative agencies and production teams understand how to connect the dots between data and creative, to build more effective campaigns. We launched our first piece, a guide for marketers, back in March, along with an infographic to illustrate the process.

Today, we’re excited to launch a toolkit for creative and production teams, to help you understand how data can fit into your creative process.


Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

1 eMarketer, 2015
2 Internal data, Google Media campaigns, October 2015

Win by reaching Olympics viewers with DoubleClick Ad Exchange

All eyes will be on Rio de Janeiro from August 5-21 as the world’s top athletes battle for medals in swimming, track and field, gymnastics, basketball, beach volleyball and other popular sports. Millions of sports enthusiasts, families and even non-sports fans across the globe will tap into the excitement of the Summer Olympic Games.

With the whole world watching, advertisers have an opportunity to reach Olympics viewers on every screen they use to follow the games. Informed data can help you win during Rio as thousands of athletes compete and billions of people watch. Knowing where viewers spend their time, which sports they follow and what they’re interested in can give you an edge—and wider reach.

Check out our Olympics guide to learn how DoubleClick Ad Exchange can help you increase your reach during the games.

Team up with a DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner

Digital platforms give brands the tools to reach audiences where they spend their time, at scale and with personalized messaging not possible through other channels—so it’s no surprise that in 2017, total digital ad spending is predicted to surpass TV for the first time.1 With this milestone approaching, we’ve heard your excitement about the opportunities digital can bring to your organization, but also that you’re looking for help to design and implement a digital strategy that meets your unique business needs.

Today, we’re launching the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner program to help give you the confidence you need to win in digital. Connect with a global network of certified digital marketing experts so you can achieve your goals, from building your brand to driving sales.

Connect with DoubleClick Digital Marketing

Certified Marketing Partners provide a range of technology and service offerings. Whether you’re looking for creative or media management services, data or technology integrations, help with measurement and attribution, or access to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, our partners can help you succeed.

Find a partner

We’re excited to welcome over 40 Certified Marketing Partners into the program, from around the world. And we’re working hard to build out the program to ensure you can reach your marketing goals by teaming up with a Certified Marketing Partner, no matter where you are.

When a partner has the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner badge, it means they’ve been carefully vetted and meet our rigorous qualification standards. Partners who’ve earned the badge are listed on DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner Search, so you can find the right partner for your business.

Many advertisers are already seeing value working with our Certified Marketing Partners:

"In the fast-moving and often chaotic world of programmatic advertising, MightyHive has been a trusted partner that we have come to rely upon. In addition to strong strategic advice, we appreciate their product recommendations, campaign execution and intelligence on the latest trends in the marketplace. MightyHive has consistently delivered."
Scott Jensen, Senior Vice President of Digital, Partner Fusion

“We needed a partner to assist and lead the transition into the DoubleClick technology stack, and Acceleration has been first-rate. This partnership allowed our agency to reach our goals, and because of Acceleration we continue to exceed them in terms of growth.”
David Taylor, Digital Director, Accord Group Ltd

“FiveStones brings effective digital strategy and optimization solutions. This partnership has helped us advance our brand marketing strategy and our ability to capitalize on the shift to digital."
Karen Tsang, Head of Marketing, Openskools Limited

To Find a Partner, visit www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/certified-marketing-partners/

Posted by Chip Hall
Managing Director of Media Platforms, Google


1eMarketer ‘Digital Ad Spending to Surpass TV Next Year’ 2016

Three new ways for brands to succeed with search in a mobile-first world

Mobile is where search starts today for many consumers. Last year for the first time, more Google searches took place on smartphones than on desktops and laptops globally1. Mobile is where consumer micro-moments really thrive: in the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I-want-to-buy moments where decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Brands that help consumers in these intent-rich moments will win.

To help brands be there and be useful, we're pleased to announce that support for three new mobile tools are in the works for DoubleClick Search users: AdWords expanded text ads, call-only ads and call metrics.

Optimized ads for the mobile-first world

Expanded text ads were announced yesterday by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google, during his Google Performance Summit Keynote. They're the biggest change to mobile ad formats since AdWords launched over 15 years ago.

Expanded text ads give advertisers improved control over the longer headline field, increased character limits across all text fields, and a simplified display URL workflow.

Based on early testing, some advertisers reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. Expanded text ads in AdWords provide nearly 50% more ad space, so you can showcase more information about your products and services right on the search results page.

Expanded text ads aren't available widely just yet. We’re working with the AdWords team and we plan to have full support quickly once campaign management for expanded text ads becomes publicly available.

Until then, here's what DoubleClick Search customers who are taking part in the AdWords beta can expect in three key areas:

  • Campaign management: Expanded text ads won't appear in the DoubleClick Search interface at this time.
  • Bid optimization: Expanded text ads are included in automated bidding for DoubleClick Search for all AdWords beta users.
  • Measuring results: Engine and conversion stats for the expanded text ads will be attributed to the correct keyword in DoubleClick Search. Aggregate reporting (at the ad group level and above) will incorporate stats from expanded text ads.

Even if you're not in the AdWords beta, it's a good idea to start planning now for this upgrade. Review Google’s Creatives that Click to learn about best practices.

Connect with calls

While the mobile web and apps continue to grow, calls remain an important way for consumers to connect with your business. In fact, 33% of mobile searchers have called a business after doing a related search on their smartphones in the past three months2.

Today we’re announcing full support for AdWords call-only ads and call metrics in DoubleClick Search. Support for these features starts immediately and you should see them in your account now.

Put your business phone number and a "call now" button in your mobile search ads, and more customers will call you directly instead of visiting your web site.

These ads are a great way to connect to consumers in their I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments. In fact, Forrester Research recommended Google solutions in its recent report Capture Customers With Click-to-Call3:

“Google has the longest tenure with click-to-call and provides the greatest reach of all possible media outlets, so we recommend building your click-to-call foundation on it.”
- Forrester Research, February 2016

Until now, call-only ads were created by selecting a checkbox in call extensions. These new call-only ads replace this option.

With call-only ads, you can bid based on the value of a call to your business, and tailor your ads for phone calls to let people know they can reach your business easily without needing to visit your site.

And, with call metrics, you can use a Google forwarding number to see how many calls were generated, how long they lasted, and other details that will help you measure the value of phone calls, right in DoubleClick Search.

Learn how to create call-only ads in DoubleClick Search in our Help Center, or discover new ways to Drive More Calls to Your Business with Google’s best practices.

Looking ahead

These three new features are our latest steps toward helping DoubleClick Search customers stay ahead in a mobile-first world. They join other mobile innovations such as cross-device conversions, cross-device bid strategies, and app-install campaigns that help you put your apps in users' hands. We hope they'll help your brand succeed with search in a mobile-first world.

Posted by Amit Varia
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search


1 Google Internal Data, for 10 countries including the US and Japan, April 2015
2 The role of mobile search on store purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015, n=1327 Mobile Searchers 18+, who have conducted a purchase-related search on a smartphone in the past 3 months
3 Capture Customers With Click-To-Call. Forrester Research, February 2016

A revamped UI and responsive design capabilities, now in Google Web Designer

Today, we’re excited to introduce an entirely revamped UI for Google Web Designer and responsive design capabilities that help creative developers make true responsive ad units a reality.

New UI lets you customize your workflow

We’ve given the UI a Material Design-inspired makeover, to make it easier and sleeker for you to use.
You can customize the UI so it fits the way that you work best:
  • Re-order and move the panes on the right for Color, Library and Components panels as easily as you do for your browser tabs. You can separate them into panels of their own, or combine them onto one panel.
  • Choose from ten new color themes for our code editor. (So you can see your code in whatever color doesn’t hurt your eyes!)
  • Choose from a number of popular key mappings (keyboard keys mapped to on-screen functions) to make code view even easier to use.
  • Set default text styles (font, size, color) and apply them throughout a single document and across documents.
  • Save these stylistic preferences for next time. When you log in again, the tool will remember your last-saved customizations.
  • Bonus: When you add a component to your stage, you can preview it with the actual asset, instead of as a gray “placeholder” box. This way, you get a better sense for how your creative will actually look.

Media rules for responsive ad units

Media rules help you build a single ad unit that can change its layout based on the height and width of the screen it shows up on. The easy-to-use interface creates color-coded ranges of ad sizes (see the red, yellow and purple bars along the top of the gif below and the blue and green bars along the left). You can build rules into your ad unit around which creative assets and layouts should show up for each size range.
For example, say you want to build an ad that can work in a large full screen space on a mobile phone, in a regular 300x250 space on a desktop, and in a small 300x50 space. You can build a single ad unit, then define the styling and layout the ad unit should use for each size. So when the ad renders on a screen, it recognizes the size and renders the correct styling and layout for that size. Of course, this works on a sliding scale, so all sizes in between the cut-off points will render appropriately as well. Learn more.
Example of the GWD UI for building responsive ads:

The resulting ads for the most popular sizes:
We’re really excited to bring this new and improved Google Web Designer to creative developers. We hope the responsive design capabilities help you create ads for multiple sizes more easily, so you can bring your experiences to life across screens.

Want to learn more?

Our training and engineering teams are hosting a hangout on air on May 26 @ 12pm ET to walk through these features in more details. RSVP here.
As a reminder, if you’ve already downloaded Google Web Designer, it will automatically update to reflect these new features. If you haven’t yet downloaded the tool, you can download it for free here.
Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick