Tag Archives: Ads

Bridging the gap between TV and digital video

If you’ve watched a movie on your mobile phone or streamed a YouTube video on your TV, you’re not alone. People are watching great content wherever and whenever they want, across the small screens in their pockets to the large screens in their living rooms. We’re in the golden age of video, and while this explosion of great content is great for users, it creates a lot of complexity for advertisers and publishers.

As the lines blur between TV and digital video, it's important that marketers are able to reach their audiences across screens. That’s why we’re making traditional TV inventory available to buy in DoubleClick Bid Manager in the US. We are integrating with WideOrbit, clypd and Google Fiber to provide access to national, local and even addressable TV inventory in DoubleClick Bid Manager.


Manage TV and digital video campaigns in a single platform with DoubleClick Bid Manager

Historically, TV and digital advertising have been bought and measured through different systems and currencies. By adding traditional TV buying into DoubleClick Bid Manager, we are taking the first step towards allowing advertisers and agencies to manage their video campaigns across digital and linear TV, in a more efficient and effective way.

In addition, to help brands and agencies understand the effectiveness of their TV campaigns, we will be providing impact-based metrics in DoubleClick. For example, an advertiser will be able to measure the lift when someone searches for their brand on Google or YouTube after seeing their TV ad.

Programmatic technology has already automated some of the manual processes associated with buying digital video, and with these new integrations we’ll be extending many of the same workflow improvements to traditional TV.

Access to new advertisers for television networks and station owners

With their inventory now available through DoubleClick Bid Manager, television networks and station owners get access to new types of buyers, such as advanced TV buying groups in agencies, digital-first advertisers, and even global advertisers. Many of these buyers already use DoubleClick, but until now, have had limited access to US TV audiences.

As viewership patterns change, advertisers and publishers have new opportunities to provide audiences with great ad experiences across screens and content types. By bringing TV and digital video advertising together, we hope to help advertisers and publishers grow with video in a more impactful way.

Posted by Rany Ng
Director, Product Management, Google

Bridging the gap between TV and digital video

If you’ve watched a movie on your mobile phone or streamed a YouTube video on your TV, you’re not alone. People are watching great content wherever and whenever they want, across the small screens in their pockets to the large screens in their living rooms. We’re in the golden age of video, and while this explosion of great content is great for users, it creates a lot of complexity for advertisers and publishers.

As the lines blur between TV and digital video, it's important that marketers are able to reach their audiences across screens. That’s why we’re making traditional TV inventory available to buy in DoubleClick Bid Manager in the US. We are integrating with WideOrbit, clypd and Google Fiber to provide access to national, local and even addressable TV inventory in DoubleClick Bid Manager.


Manage TV and digital video campaigns in a single platform with DoubleClick Bid Manager

Historically, TV and digital advertising have been bought and measured through different systems and currencies. By adding traditional TV buying into DoubleClick Bid Manager, we are taking the first step towards allowing advertisers and agencies to manage their video campaigns across digital and linear TV, in a more efficient and effective way.

In addition, to help brands and agencies understand the effectiveness of their TV campaigns, we will be providing impact-based metrics in DoubleClick. For example, an advertiser will be able to measure the lift when someone searches for their brand on Google or YouTube after seeing their TV ad.

Programmatic technology has already automated some of the manual processes associated with buying digital video, and with these new integrations we’ll be extending many of the same workflow improvements to traditional TV.

Access to new advertisers for television networks and station owners

With their inventory now available through DoubleClick Bid Manager, television networks and station owners get access to new types of buyers, such as advanced TV buying groups in agencies, digital-first advertisers, and even global advertisers. Many of these buyers already use DoubleClick, but until now, have had limited access to US TV audiences.

As viewership patterns change, advertisers and publishers have new opportunities to provide audiences with great ad experiences across screens and content types. By bringing TV and digital video advertising together, we hope to help advertisers and publishers grow with video in a more impactful way.

Posted by Rany Ng
Director, Product Management, Google

Introducing Marketing Mix Model Partners: Helping brands better understand the impact of their marketing

The following was originally posted on the Google Agency Blog.

CMOs and marketing executives use marketing mix models to understand how their marketing investments are driving sales and how to optimize their spend across multiple brands, channels, and regions. With rising investment in digital and mobile advertising, marketers want to be sure the models they use correctly value the impact of these channels.

Today we’re excited to announce a program to help marketing mix model providers better incorporate Google media data into their services. The Marketing Mix Model Partners program is designed to ensure advertisers can accurately measure the ROI of their digital investments and confidently understand the digital drivers of ROI to improve returns year-over-year.

The Marketing Mix Model Partners program offers:

  • Data Access: Partners get access to accurate, granular campaign data across all relevant Google video, display, and search media in a standardized format. We’re also making the data easier to access by providing data from multiple properties, like Search and YouTube, in one centralized location.
  • Expertise: Partners also get dedicated training, resources, and specialists to better understand Google advertising products and practices and incorporate digital data into their model methodologies.
  • Actionability: We provide Google account and technical teams to help advise on results and strategies designed to understand the drivers of ROI and improve returns over time.

Our partners

We’re excited to be working with the initial participants in the program, Marketing Management Analytics, Neustar MarketShare, and Nielsen. Google customers can talk with their Google representatives about working with one of these partners on using Google data in their marketing mix model engagements.

Here’s what our partners have to say about the program:

“The ability to collect and analyze digital data at extremely granular levels enables both marketers and their advertising partners to more successfully measure, predict and action the most effective and profitable means of optimizing each digital channel to achieve their business objectives. We are excited that Google has taken such a proactive approach in working with MMA and analytic companies within the marketplace in providing such a high level of objectivity and transparency."
‒Patrick Cummings, CEO of Marketing Management Analytics

“Today’s measurement solutions need to be connected, always on and incorporate the myriad of channels, as well as critical econometric externalities in order for marketers to truly get an accurate view of marketing’s impact. We are thrilled to be a Google launch partner as this signals our commitment to helping brands understand how their marketing investments are driving business results. Through this partnership our advanced analytics models will incorporate more accurate, granular data, giving marketers a more complete understanding of the effectiveness of their marketing and how best to optimize their spend to improve future outcomes.”
‒Julie Fleischer, Vice President, Product Marketing, Marketing Solutions, Neustar.

"As the marketing landscape rapidly evolves, it is critical to use the most robust data-streams in our Marketing Mix models to ensure the highest standard of insight quality. Working with Google, we will have better input and better consultative output so that our advertiser clients can best understand what is driving their performance today and make informed decisions for tomorrow.”
‒ Jason Tate, VP of Global Analytics at Nielsen.

As part of our commitment to providing the industry with trusted, transparent, and independent third-party metrics, we’ll be expanding the program over the coming months. If your company provides marketing mix model services and you’re interested in learning more about the partner program, please sign up here.

Posted by Mallory Fetters
Product Manager, Marketing Mix Models

Bringing programmatic buying to reservation deals everywhere

At DoubleClick, we’ve always focused on building solutions that help publishers and advertisers connect in better ways. Today, delivering on that goal means giving advertisers the programmatic tools to find and reach their audiences across their preferred publisher partners. It also means giving publishers the flexibility to negotiate a variety of different types of deals that can be delivered programmatically, including direct deals that were historically transacted via paper insertion orders and tags.

This was the premise for Programmatic Guaranteed. Advertisers gain guaranteed access to premium inventory on brand-safe publisher sites with the ability to optimize their campaigns programmatically. Publishers benefit from locking in revenue from preferred advertisers with greater efficiency.

With these benefits, it’s no surprise that Programmatic Guaranteed impressions served on DoubleClick grew at a monthly rate of 20% in 20161, making it the fastest growing transaction type on our platform. We’ve seen adoption from global advertisers like Turkish Airlines and Mercedes-Benz, and premium publishers like Conde Nast and Vox.

Building on our initial announcement last year, today we’re excited to share that Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick for Publishers users globally with two new key features—support for buyer audience lists and sponsorships.

Reach the right user with audience lists

Using Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists, advertisers can target (or exclude) their own audience lists and secure guaranteed access to preferred publisher inventory while minimizing media waste. Publishers can forecast the inventory available against advertisers’ lists and guarantee they’re only serving ads to the buyer’s target audience. Since we announced this feature, advertisers and agencies such as i360 have used Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists to meet their reach goals while targeting only their desired consumers on premium publishers. The net result: a 25% uplift in viewability and a 72% completion rate for their video ads.

Greater flexibility to transact fixed fee deals programmatically

Programmatic Guaranteed with sponsorships allows publishers to sell high-value inventory on a flat-fee sponsorship basis—a common practice among publishers transacting via traditional reservations. With this new capability, advertisers and publishers can maintain the control of a sponsorship transaction, while reaping the efficiency benefits of programmatic.

“Being able to sell sponsorships through Programmatic Guaranteed really benefits us. On one hand, we are able to transact high value placements through a new channel generating new business to Universo Online. On the other, we also see a lot of operational benefits for us and for our buyers. With this new feature, it is possible to bring agility to the entire workflow of booking, trafficking, credit checking and invoicing. Consequently, we have a more agile and efficient implementation process to run campaigns.”
-Adriano Marques, Head of Adtech at Universo Online (UOL)

Connect faster with Marketplace and Programmatic Guaranteed

Media buyers who use DoubleClick Bid Manager can discover and request to reserve premium inventory from any publisher participating in DoubleClick’s Marketplace. With the recent release of the new RFP workflow in Bid Manager, advertisers now have a simple solution to create a media plan. And with a single click, they can request quotes from publishers who they already know or from publishers whose inventory matches their campaign goals or their first party audience data.

Extending Programmatic Guaranteed to even more DSPs

Last year, we expanded Programmatic Guaranteed deals to more third party DSPs, giving publishers on DoubleClick access to even more advertisers looking to reserve inventory programmatically. Since then, we’ve seen successful campaigns executed by partners like Adobe Advertising Cloud, MediaMath and The Trade Desk. Given the benefits our publishers and DSP partners are seeing, we’re excited to share that we’ve continued to extend the program to new DSPs like DataXu.

"The days of programmatic buying being perceived as a niche tactic to build cheap reach are over. Brands are embracing automated, data-driven buying on their private and direct buys of the most premium inventory out there. Google’s expansion of Programmatic Guaranteed is part of what’s making that possible on the supply-side, and we’re proud to offer that inventory for cross-screen buying in Adobe Advertising Cloud."
-Keith Eadie, VP of Revenue & Partnerships at Adobe Advertising Cloud

“Providing programmatic access points to high quality, brand-safe inventory with guaranteed volumes is exactly what top advertisers want from their media buying platform. Expanding our integration with DoubleClick to strike Programmatic Guaranteed deals with premium publishers allows for just that and is a natural strategic progression of our partnership. Collaborations like these are a positive sign for the industry. We’re all trying to deliver great storytelling opportunities for brands and better ad experiences for consumers; it starts with quality inventory and data-driven decisioning. Programmatic Guaranteed offers both.”
-Tim Sims, VP of Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk

With the launch of these new features, we’re excited to prove the value Programmatic Direct can bring to every deal and all tiers of publisher inventory. Advertisers are reaching their audiences with more efficiency and accuracy on the publisher brands they care about, and publishers are making new connections to grow their businesses.

Stay tuned as we continue to expand the capabilities of our programmatic platforms to bring the full power of automation and machine learning to improve advertising performance for our partners.

Check out the latest Programmatic Direct trends in our newly updated report “The State of Programmatic Direct” or g.co/ProgrammaticDirect.

Posted by Kurt Spoerer
Group Product Manager, DoubleClick		 Posted by Roshan Khan
Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Jan 2016-Dec 2016

Bringing programmatic buying to reservation deals everywhere

At DoubleClick, we’ve always focused on building solutions that help publishers and advertisers connect in better ways. Today, delivering on that goal means giving advertisers the programmatic tools to find and reach their audiences across their preferred publisher partners. It also means giving publishers the flexibility to negotiate a variety of different types of deals that can be delivered programmatically, including direct deals that were historically transacted via paper insertion orders and tags.

This was the premise for Programmatic Guaranteed. Advertisers gain guaranteed access to premium inventory on brand-safe publisher sites with the ability to optimize their campaigns programmatically. Publishers benefit from locking in revenue from preferred advertisers with greater efficiency.

With these benefits, it’s no surprise that Programmatic Guaranteed impressions served on DoubleClick grew at a monthly rate of 20% in 20161, making it the fastest growing transaction type on our platform. We’ve seen adoption from global advertisers like Turkish Airlines and Mercedes-Benz, and premium publishers like Conde Nast and Vox.

Building on our initial announcement last year, today we’re excited to share that Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick for Publishers users globally with two new key features—support for buyer audience lists and sponsorships.

Reach the right user with audience lists

Using Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists, advertisers can target (or exclude) their own audience lists and secure guaranteed access to preferred publisher inventory while minimizing media waste. Publishers can forecast the inventory available against advertisers’ lists and guarantee they’re only serving ads to the buyer’s target audience. Since we announced this feature, advertisers and agencies such as i360 have used Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists to meet their reach goals while targeting only their desired consumers on premium publishers. The net result: a 25% uplift in viewability and a 72% completion rate for their video ads.

Greater flexibility to transact fixed fee deals programmatically

Programmatic Guaranteed with sponsorships allows publishers to sell high-value inventory on a flat-fee sponsorship basis—a common practice among publishers transacting via traditional reservations. With this new capability, advertisers and publishers can maintain the control of a sponsorship transaction, while reaping the efficiency benefits of programmatic.

“Being able to sell sponsorships through Programmatic Guaranteed really benefits us. On one hand, we are able to transact high value placements through a new channel generating new business to Universo Online. On the other, we also see a lot of operational benefits for us and for our buyers. With this new feature, it is possible to bring agility to the entire workflow of booking, trafficking, credit checking and invoicing. Consequently, we have a more agile and efficient implementation process to run campaigns.”
-Adriano Marques, Head of Adtech at Universo Online (UOL)

Connect faster with Marketplace and Programmatic Guaranteed

Media buyers who use DoubleClick Bid Manager can discover and request to reserve premium inventory from any publisher participating in DoubleClick’s Marketplace. With the recent release of the new RFP workflow in Bid Manager, advertisers now have a simple solution to create a media plan. And with a single click, they can request quotes from publishers who they already know or from publishers whose inventory matches their campaign goals or their first party audience data.

With the launch of these new features, we’re excited to prove the value of programmatic in connecting advertisers with their audiences on premium inventory. Stay tuned as we expand the capabilities of our programmatic platforms to bring the full power of automation and machine learning to improve advertising performance for our partners.

Check out the latest Programmatic Direct trends in our newly updated report “The State of Programmatic Direct” or g.co/ProgrammaticDirect.

Posted by Kurt Spoerer
Group Product Manager, DoubleClick		 Posted by Roshan Khan
Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Jan 2016-Dec 2016

Expanded safeguards for advertisers

Cross-posted from The Keyword
The web has opened a door for new communities and platforms that help people find diverse views and have a voice. Today, anyone with a smartphone can be a content creator, app developer or entrepreneur. And Google has enabled millions of content creators and publishers to be heard, find an audience, earn a living, or even build a business. Much of this is made possible through advertising. Thousands of sites are added every day to our ad network, and more than 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. We have a responsibility to protect this vibrant, creative world—from emerging creators to established publishers—even when we don’t always agree with the views being expressed.

But we also have a responsibility to our advertisers who help these publishers and creators thrive. We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right.

Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize. We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us. That’s why we've been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies and tools, and why we made a public commitment last week to put in place changes that would give brands more control over where their ads appear.

I wanted to share that we've already begun ramping up changes around three areas: our ad policies, our enforcement of these policies and new controls for advertisers.

Raising the bar for our ad policies

We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values. So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites.

We’ll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won’t stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized.

Increased brand safety levels and controls for advertisers

Every company has brand guidelines that inform where and when they want their ads to appear. We already offer some controls for advertisers that respond to these needs. In the coming days and months, we’re introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web.

  • Safer default for brands. We’re changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.
  • Simplified management of exclusions. We’ll introduce new account-level controls to make it easier for advertisers to exclude specific sites and channels from all of their AdWords for Video and Google Display Network campaigns, and manage brand safety settings across all their campaigns with a push of a button.
  • More fine-tuned controls. In addition, we’ll introduce new controls to make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear.

Increasing resources, accelerating reviews and improving transparency

We’ll offer advertisers and agencies more transparency and visibility on where their ads are running, and in the coming months we’ll expand availability of video-level reporting to all advertisers.

We'll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising. In cases where advertisers find their ads were served where they shouldn’t have been, we plan to offer a new escalation path to make it easier for them to raise issues. In addition, we’ll soon be able to resolve these cases in less than a few hours.

We believe the combination of these new policies and controls will significantly strengthen our ability to help advertisers reach audiences at scale, while respecting their values. We will continue to act swiftly to put these new policies and processes in place across our ad network and YouTube. But we also intend to act carefully, preserving the value we currently provide to advertisers, publishers and creators of all sizes. In the end, there’s nothing more important to Google than the trust we’ve built amongst our users, advertisers, creators and publishers. Brand safety is an ongoing commitment for us, and we’ll continue to listen to your feedback.

Posted by Philipp Schindler
Chief Business Officer, Google

Expanded safeguards for advertisers

The web has opened a door for new communities and platforms that help people find diverse views and have a voice. Today, anyone with a smartphone can be a content creator, app developer or entrepreneur. And Google has enabled millions of content creators and publishers to be heard, find an audience, earn a living, or even build a business. Much of this is made possible through advertising. Thousands of sites are added every day to our ad network, and more than 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. We have a responsibility to protect this vibrant, creative world—from emerging creators to established publishers—even when we don’t always agree with the views being expressed.

But we also have a responsibility to our advertisers who help these publishers and creators thrive. We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right.

Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize. We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us. That’s why we've been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies and tools, and why we made a public commitment last week to put in place changes that would give brands more control over where their ads appear.

I wanted to share that we've already begun ramping up changes around three areas: our ad policies, our enforcement of these policies and new controls for advertisers.

Raising the bar for our ad policies

We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values. So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites.

We’ll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won’t stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized.

Increased brand safety levels and controls for advertisers

Every company has brand guidelines that inform where and when they want their ads to appear. We already offer some controls for advertisers that respond to these needs. In the coming days and months, we’re introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web.  

  • Safer default for brands. We’re changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.

  • Simplified management of exclusions. We’ll introduce new account-level controls to make it easier for advertisers to exclude specific sites and channels from all of their AdWords for Video and Google Display Network campaigns, and manage brand safety settings across all their campaigns with a push of a button.

  • More fine-tuned controls. In addition, we’ll introduce new controls to make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear.

Increasing resources, accelerating reviews and improving transparency

We’ll offer advertisers and agencies more transparency and visibility on where their ads are running, and in the coming months we’ll expand availability of video-level reporting to all advertisers.

We'll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising. In cases where advertisers find their ads were served where they shouldn’t have been, we plan to offer a new escalation path to make it easier for them to raise issues. In addition, we’ll soon be able to resolve these cases in less than a few hours.

We believe the combination of these new policies and controls will significantly strengthen our ability to help advertisers reach audiences at scale, while respecting their values. We will continue to act swiftly to put these new policies and processes in place across our ad network and YouTube. But we also intend to act carefully, preserving the value we currently provide to advertisers, publishers and creators of all sizes. In the end, there’s nothing more important to Google than the trust we’ve built amongst our users, advertisers, creators and publishers. Brand safety is an ongoing commitment for us, and we’ll continue to listen to your feedback.

Expanded safeguards for advertisers

The web has opened a door for new communities and platforms that help people find diverse views and have a voice. Today, anyone with a smartphone can be a content creator, app developer or entrepreneur. And Google has enabled millions of content creators and publishers to be heard, find an audience, earn a living, or even build a business. Much of this is made possible through advertising. Thousands of sites are added every day to our ad network, and more than 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. We have a responsibility to protect this vibrant, creative world—from emerging creators to established publishers—even when we don’t always agree with the views being expressed.

But we also have a responsibility to our advertisers who help these publishers and creators thrive. We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right.

Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize. We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us. That’s why we’ve been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies and tools, and why we made a public commitment last week to put in place changes that would give brands more control over where their ads appear.

I wanted to share that we’ve already begun ramping up changes around three areas: our ad policies, our enforcement of these policies and new controls for advertisers.

Raising the bar for our ad policies

We know advertisers don’t want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values. So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites.

We’ll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won’t stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized.

Increased brand safety levels and controls for advertisers

Every company has brand guidelines that inform where and when they want their ads to appear. We already offer some controls for advertisers that respond to these needs. In the coming days and months, we’re introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web.  

  • Safer default for brands. We’re changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.

  • Simplified management of exclusions. We’ll introduce new account-level controls to make it easier for advertisers to exclude specific sites and channels from all of their AdWords for Video and Google Display Network campaigns, and manage brand safety settings across all their campaigns with a push of a button.

  • More fine-tuned controls. In addition, we’ll introduce new controls to make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear.

Increasing resources, accelerating reviews and improving transparency

We’ll offer advertisers and agencies more transparency and visibility on where their ads are running, and in the coming months we’ll expand availability of video-level reporting to all advertisers.

We’ll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising. In cases where advertisers find their ads were served where they shouldn’t have been, we plan to offer a new escalation path to make it easier for them to raise issues. In addition, we’ll soon be able to resolve these cases in less than a few hours.

We believe the combination of these new policies and controls will significantly strengthen our ability to help advertisers reach audiences at scale, while respecting their values. We will continue to act swiftly to put these new policies and processes in place across our ad network and YouTube. But we also intend to act carefully, preserving the value we currently provide to advertisers, publishers and creators of all sizes. In the end, there’s nothing more important to Google than the trust we’ve built amongst our users, advertisers, creators and publishers. Brand safety is an ongoing commitment for us, and we’ll continue to listen to your feedback.

Join us live on May 23, 2017 as we announce the latest Ads, Analytics and DoubleClick innovations

What: Google Marketing Next keynote live stream
When: Tuesday, May 23, 9:00 a.m. PT/12:00 p.m. ET.
Duration: 1 hour
Where: On the DoubleClick Blog

Be the first to hear about Google’s latest marketing innovations, the moment they’re announced. Watch live as my team and I share new Ads, Analytics and DoubleClick innovations designed to improve your ability to reach consumers, simplify campaign measurement and increase your productivity. We’ll also give you a sneak peek at how brands are starting to use the Google Assistant to delight customers.

Register for the live stream here.

Until then, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn for previews of what’s to come.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy
Senior Vice President, Ads & Commerce

Improving our brand safety controls

From our founding days at Google, our mission has always been to make information universally accessible and useful. We believe strongly in the freedom of speech and expression on the web—even when that means we don’t agree with the views expressed.

At the same time, we recognize the need to have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear. The intention of these policies is to prohibit ads from appearing on pages or videos with hate speech, gory or offensive content. In the vast majority of cases, our policies work as intended. We invest millions of dollars every year and employ thousands of people to stop bad advertising practices. Just last year, we removed nearly 2 billion bad ads from our systems, removed over 100,000 publishers from our AdSense program, and prevented ads from serving on over 300 million YouTube videos.

However, with millions of sites in our network and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recognize that we don't always get it right. In a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our monetization policies. We promptly remove the ads in those instances, but we know we can and must do more.

We’ve heard from our advertisers and agencies loud and clear that we can provide simpler, more robust ways to stop their ads from showing against controversial content. While we have a wide variety of tools to give advertisers and agencies control over where their ads appear, such as topic exclusions and site category exclusions, we can do a better job of addressing the small number of inappropriately monetized videos and content. We’ve begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network.

We are committed to working with publishers, advertisers and agencies to address these issues and earn their trust every day so that they can use our services both successfully and safely.