Tag Archives: DoubleClick

Helping publishers recover lost revenue from ad blocking

Today, the majority of the internet is supported by digital advertising. But bad ad experiences—the ones that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you get to the page—are hurting publishers who make the content, apps and services we use everyday. When people encounter annoying ads, and then decide to block all ads, it cuts off revenue for the sites you actually find useful. Many of these people don't intend to defund the sites they love when they install an ad blocker, but when they do, they block all ads on every site they visit.

Last year we announced Funding Choices to help publishers with good ad experiences recover lost revenue due to ad blocking. While Funding Choices is still in beta, millions of ad blocking users every month are now choosing to see ads on publisher websites, or “whitelisting” that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message. In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.

Over the coming weeks, we’re expanding Funding Choices to 31 additional countries, giving publishers the ability to ask visitors from those countries to choose between allowing ads on a site, or purchasing an ad removal pass through Google Contributor. Also, we’ve started a test that allows publishers to use their own proprietary subscription services within Funding Choices.

How Funding Choices works

Funding Choice gives publishers a way to have a conversation with their site visitors through custom messages they can use to express how ad blocking impacts their business and content. When a visitor arrives at a site using an ad blocker, Funding Choices allows the site to display one of three message types to that user:

A dismissible message that doesn’t restrict access to content.

A dismissible message that counts and limits the number of page views that person is allowed per month, as determined by the site owner, before the content is blocked.

Or, a message that blocks access to content until the visitor chooses to allow ads on the site, or to pay to access the content with either the site’s proprietary subscription service or a pass that removes all ads on that site through Google Contributor.

On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent.

Ad blockers designed to remove all ads from all sites are making it difficult for publishers with good ad experiences to maintain sustainable businesses. Our goal for Funding Choices is to help publishers get paid for their work by reducing the impact of ad blocking on them, and we look forward to continuing to expand the product availability.

Posted by Varun Chirravuri
Product Manager

Making the most of commercial breaks across screens

It’s not uncommon for a single TV episode to cost millions, if not tens of millions of dollars to produce. Everyday, teams of studio executives, producers, writers, and actors, all set out to do one thing–create the next big TV moment. But what about the moments in between the content? Commercial break experiences can play a big role in whether someone keeps watching your shows. By bringing the best parts of digital advertising like addressability to broadcast TV, we’re helping our partners keep their audiences captivated during ad breaks and watching longer.

Today, we’re sharing the momentum partners are seeing on our platforms and some of the ways in which we’re working with the industry to bring the performance of digital advertising to traditional linear broadcasts.

Delivering better ad experiences on Connected TVs for more partners

Our continued investments in products such as Dynamic Ad Insertion and Smarter TV ad breaks have delivered better ad experiences for people watching on Connected TVs and over-the-top devices; and created more value for our partners. In fact, across our platform, ad impressions served on living room screens have more than doubled in the past year.1 And we expect this growth to continue as more broadcasters like Major League Baseball and Cheddar partner with DoubleClick to monetize their media.

Since Opening Day, Google has been working with Major League Baseball to monetize the live streams of their games on the MLB.TV app across Connected TVs and other OTT devices. Similarly, Cheddar is partnering with us to ensure no matter where people are accessing news, they’re getting seamless ad experiences.

Bringing addressability to traditional TV

We believe addressable TV ads provide a better experience for the viewer. On our path to enable addressability across the TV ecosystem, we’ve partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters and technology providers such as Unisoft, ATEME, S&T, OpenZNet, and Vewd in a new experiment, now on display at the NABShow.

This demo brings addressable ads into over-the-air broadcast streams via Smart TVs that support the ATSC 3.0 standard. It will feature two TV sets meant to simulate different personas or household types. While tuned to the same broadcast, DoubleClick will serve different ads to each of the TV sets.

In addition to being more relevant, the ads will also feature an interactive element. We’re looking forward to exploring more in this space as this technology evolves to make advertising experiences better for people, wherever they’re watching.

Connect with Google at the 2018 NABShow

To learn all the ways Google is working to improve the advanced TV audience experience, connect with us at the 2018 NABShow. For a full listing of our speaker sessions, visit our Google at NABShow event website here. Or stop by our booth in South Upper Hall #SU218.
Justin Bradbury
Product Marketing Manager


1 DoubleClick Internal Data, Sep 2016 - Aug 2017

Exchange Bidding now available to all customers using DoubleClick for Publishers

The first ad server was created in 1995 with the goal of helping websites deliver ads online. Over the next twenty years, what was once a simple technology with limited capabilities would evolve into one of the most fundamental and advanced aspects of a media organization’s business.

Through that time, DoubleClick’s mission has remained the same: to help publishers maximize revenue and create sustainable businesses. It’s why we’ve been focused on providing our partners with deeper insights into their businesses with initiatives like the Insights Engine Project, and collaborating with the industry on products like Exchange Bidding.

When we first announced Exchange Bidding, we hoped that it would help publishers earn more money from their ad partners without sacrificing user experience across their properties. Exchange Bidding is now a significant revenue driver for hundreds of publishers who have grown their programmatic revenue by an average of double-digit percentage points.1

Today, we’re excited to announce that Exchange Bidding is available with new features to all customers using DoubleClick for Publishers* globally.

Greater revenue, greater transparency

With Exchange Bidding, publishers can increase revenue by allowing multiple exchanges to compete with each other -- and with DoubleClick Ad Exchange -- in a unified auction. In addition to boosting CPM’s, Exchange Bidding provides publishers with a holistic view of each ad partner’s performance and a streamlined billing and payment process. Today we are rolling out new reporting capabilities to provide publishers with greater insights and transparency into each ad partner’s performance.

For example, Exchange Bidding customers can now generate reports across several new dimensions including demand channel, exchange partner, yield group or advertiser on a per-impression level. With these new insights, publishers can make smarter and faster decisions to ensure they’re getting the greatest value from every impression.

“Consolidated reporting through Exchange Bidding means that we can accurately track performance and trends for our demand partners in respect of our full ad stack. We're excited about Google's further developments in this area and look forward to utilising these new capabilities.”
- Alex Payne, VP Ad Platforms, VICE Media

A growing network of global partners

As publisher adoption of Exchange Bidding has grown, so has our network of exchange partners. Publishers can now access real-time demand from more than 10 exchanges including new partners like Triplelift and Aerserv directly in DoubleClick.

Not only are publishers benefitting from Exchange Bidding, but our exchange partners are also seeing a positive impact on their business. RhythmOne, for example, has seen a 40% increase in programmatic revenue among their customers using Exchange Bidding. They’ve also benefited from access to higher quality inventory with cookie match rates exceeding 80%. Index Exchange also cites a 40% increase in total Exchange Bidding revenue attributed to mobile apps.

“Index Exchange’s partnership with Google provides new points of entry to publishers across the globe and allows us to rapidly grow our quality app supply. We’re excited more publishers now have access to these additional tools that will bolster revenue and drive demand for their business.”
- Alex Gardner, SVP Partner Development, Index Exchange

Paving the path for greater innovation

These results for our customers and exchange partners are just the beginning. To ensure publishers continue getting the greatest value for all their ad inventory, we’re expanding Exchange Bidding to more ad formats like video ads and transaction types such as programmatic deals. Both of these products are currently in closed alpha and will be released to beta in the upcoming months.

If you are interested in using for Exchange Bidding on DoubleClick, please reach out to your account manager or contact: [email protected].

*Exchange Bidding is currently available in closed beta to publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business.
1Google Internal Data, May 2017
Posted by Jonathan Bellack
Director of Product Management, Publisher Platforms

Search, with social: Unify your cross-channel marketing for better business results

Consumers engage with your brand across many channels, from search to display to social. However, only 17% of advertisers look at performance across these channels.1 And while search advertising will continue to make up the majority of digital ad spend this year, spending on social ads is estimated to grow. That’s why we’ve expanded DoubleClick Search’s best-in-class cross-channel reporting and optimization to include social ads. Key features include:

Automated click and view tracking

We’ve partnered with social marketing platforms, including 4C Insights and Smartly.io, to make integration simple. Once you connect your account, DoubleClick’s view and click trackers are automatically applied. You’ll be able to see your Floodlight-based conversion metrics, including visits, actions, transactions and revenue in your social reports. In the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding support to include Brand Networks and Sprinklr.
Connect to top paid social marketing platforms
If you’re not using a social marketing platform, you can use tracking sheets to see your social ads activity directly in DoubleClick Search.
“DoubleClick Search streamlined the process of connecting our DoubleClick click and view trackers to our social campaigns. We’ve saved upwards of 6+ hours a month in trafficking, while still being able to leverage attribution insights in DoubleClick Campaign Manager.”
— Andi Brosseuk, Team Lead, iProspect Canada

Unified reporting across channels

See your search, social and display data all in one place. With a connected social account, your clicks, conversions, impressions and cross-channel remarketing metrics are captured together with your other channels.

Using different tracking tags across channels often results in splintered and duplicated data. To ensure you don’t overvalue clicks or channels, DoubleClick Floodlight tags deduplicate conversions across search, display and social. You can also report on assisted conversions, which tells you the number of conversions that were assisted by a particular keyword or ad.
See your search, display and social data together

Unified cross-channel attribution

Assign credit to the right customer interactions across channels by using a single attribution model. Then use Smart Bidding to automatically set bids informed by your cross-channel attribution model for even better performance.

You can also include social data in your DoubleClick Campaign Manager path-to-conversion reports to understand the role your social ads play in your customers’ path to purchase. For example, if you see that most of your sales happen after multiple clicks on your social ads, there might be an opportunity to refine your social ad content.

Cross-channel remarketing

Drive more conversions by creating an audience in one channel, and reaching them on another. For example, reach qualified shoppers on Google.com with an engaging search ad after they’ve clicked on an awareness-building social ad. You can re-engage these social audiences on both search and display.
“As an agency, we’re excited to integrate our social campaigns into DoubleClick Search. The ability to share remarketing lists across channels has not only improved our performance, but also enabled our cross-channel teams to work more closely together. We’re now also able to see more of the conversion path in DoubleClick Search, including the addition of social conversions into our Data Driven Attribution models.”
–Beth Williams, Search Platforms Lead, Merkle Periscopix
Learn more about integrating your paid social campaigns in the DoubleClick Search Help Center.

Posted by Sriram Parameswar
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

1 Source: Advertiser Perceptions/Google, Measurement Survey, U.S., September 2017

Changes to our ad policies to comply with the GDPR

In May, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect. Google is committed to complying with the GDPR, and in preparation, we’ve been working with our customers and partners to inform them about changes we’re making to our policies across our various products.

Today we’re informing advertisers and publisher partners about changes to our ad policies. Google already requires publishers and advertisers using our advertising services to get consent from end users to use our services, as required under existing EU law. However, the GDPR will further refine these requirements.

To comply, we will be updating our EU consent policy when the GDPR takes effect and the revised policy will require that publishers take extra steps in obtaining consent from their users. Before May, we will launch a solution to support publishers that want to show non-personalized ads, and we are working with industry groups, including IAB Europe, to explore proposed consent solutions for publishers.

We’re aware that our customers and partners - European and international - have significant obligations under these new laws, as does Google. Publisher and advertiser partners can expect further updates as we approach the date when GDPR takes effect.

Posted by Carlo D’Asaro Biondo
President, EMEA Partnerships

Changes to our ad policies to comply with the GDPR

In May, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect. Google is committed to complying with the GDPR, and in preparation, we’ve been working with our customers and partners to inform them about changes we’re making to our policies across our various products.

Today we’re informing advertisers and publisher partners about changes to our ad policies. Google already requires publishers and advertisers using our advertising services to get consent from end users to use our services, as required under existing EU law. However, the GDPR will further refine these requirements.

To comply, we will be updating our EU consent policy when the GDPR takes effect and the revised policy will require that publishers take extra steps in obtaining consent from their users. Before May, we will launch a solution to support publishers that want to show non-personalized ads, and we are working with industry groups, including IAB Europe, to explore proposed consent solutions for publishers.

We’re aware that our customers and partners - European and international - have significant obligations under these new laws, as does Google. Publisher and advertiser partners can expect further updates as we approach the date when GDPR takes effect.

Posted by Carlo D’Asaro Biondo
President, EMEA Partnerships

Changes to our ad policies to comply with the GDPR

In May, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect. Google is committed to complying with the GDPR, and in preparation, we’ve been working with our customers and partners to inform them about changes we’re making to our policies across our various products.

Today we’re informing advertisers and publisher partners about changes to our ad policies. Google already requires publishers and advertisers using our advertising services to get consent from end users to use our services, as required under existing EU law. However, the GDPR will further refine these requirements.

To comply, we will be updating our EU consent policy when the GDPR takes effect and the revised policy will require that publishers take extra steps in obtaining consent from their users. Before May, we will launch a solution to support publishers that want to show non-personalized ads, and we are working with industry groups, including IAB Europe, to explore proposed consent solutions for publishers.

We’re aware that our customers and partners - European and international - have significant obligations under these new laws, as does Google. Publisher and advertiser partners can expect further updates as we approach the date when GDPR takes effect.

Posted by Carlo D’Asaro Biondo
President, EMEA Partnerships

The Marketer’s guide to TV and video advertising

The way we watch TV has fundamentally changed. The popularity of on-demand and over-the-top streaming services, the proliferation of devices, and the availability of more high-quality content means that we’re able to watch wherever, whenever and however we want.

While this is great for consumers, it can create complexity for marketers. But there is also opportunity — you can now use advanced data and automated technology to more effectively reach audiences wherever they are choosing to watch.

We’ve launched a new guide for marketers that is all about that opportunity. Learn what TV and video viewing behavior looks like in today’s world and get recommendations for how to apply data and automated technology to reach viewing audiences more effectively.

Then, get started today with our 10 best practices for improving your DoubleClick brand campaigns.



Posted by Becky Chappell
Product Marketing Manager

The benefits of consolidating media buys on a single platform

With DoubleClick’s Programmatic Guaranteed solution, advertisers and media owners can transact both reservation and open auction media buys programmatically, using a single platform. This means advertisers get one view of all their buys across a campaign, allowing them to more effectively control reach and frequency so they get better results. And advertisers and media owners each benefit from a simpler and more efficient workflow.

We worked with Nielsen and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to quantify the benefits of this technology for advertisers, agencies and media owners.

Across 10 global campaigns, we found that the consolidated ad buying approach offered by Programmatic Guaranteed drove an 11% increase in reach efficiency. This means that marketers in the Nielsen study reached 11% more unique consumers -- without increasing their campaign investment -- when using Programmatic Guaranteed, compared to a siloed approach where reservation and open auction buys were managed separately.1

Buyers and sellers also save significant time when using Programmatic Guaranteed: from insertion order to billing, agency marketers in the BCG study spent 30% less time on set-up and ongoing management of campaigns compared to traditional reservations. Media owners in the BCG study spent 57% less time on set-up and ongoing management of Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns compared to traditional reservations.2

To learn more about the results, make sure to download the full report.

1 Results based on a Google commissioned study conducted by Nielsen. The siloed media buying portion of the test reached on average 322,575 unique consumers for each million impressions compared to the consolidated media portion that reached 359,617 unique consumers.

2 Results based on Google commissioned study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group, “A Guaranteed Opportunity in Programmatic”, February, 2018.
Posted by Andrea Vassalli
Product Marketing Manager

Publishers Save 57% More Time with Programmatic Guaranteed Deals

In an industry moving increasingly towards automation and efficiency, traditional reservations (the one-to-one selling and management of direct media buys) represented $26B in global display and video spend in 2017.1 While media buyers and sellers may still prefer to negotiate their premium reservations directly, new research from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) suggests that using Programmatic Guaranteed for the setup and management of direct media buys can save both parties significant time and add value. The report concluded that publishers and agencies/advertisers save 57% and 29% more time, respectively, when using Programmatic Guaranteed deals versus traditional reservations; while still maintaining the same level of control over their campaigns.2

BCG’s report, “A Guaranteed Opportunity in Programmatic Advertising”, investigates the end-to-end direct deal workflows of over 40 advertisers, agencies, and publishers across 12 countries running both Programmatic Guaranteed and traditional reservation deals. The primary objective of the research is to quantify the operational efficiency of each buying methodology. It also explores the performance lift advertisers can gain from Programmatic Guaranteed’s advanced features, like Audience List Guarantees, Custom Creatives, and Frequency Management.

Get the full report to find out how Programmatic Guaranteed can save you time, as well as to learn:
  • The expected growth of programmatic reservations over the next 3 years
  • The (8) areas where Programmatic Guaranteed improves operational workflows for buyers and sellers
  • The (4) levers you can pull to make the most of your Programmatic Guaranteed deals
Download the report here.

Posted by Justin Bradbury
Product Marketing Manager

Source:
1 Magna Global, “Programmatic 2017,” September 2017.

2 The Boston Consulting Group, “A Guaranteed Opportunity in Programmatic Advertising, February 2018. The Boston Consulting Group, “A Guaranteed Opportunity in Programmatic Advertising, February 2018.