Tag Archives: Google Ad Manager

New guide: Rethink your eCommerce experience with Google Ad Manager

When shopping online, today’s consumers want seamless, convenient, and genuinely enjoyable experiences. They expect retailers to understand what they want, with advertising that puts the right products in front of them at just the right moments. So, how exactly are retailers making it all happen — especially with the modern path to purchase spanning across so many different devices, formats, and channels?

Leading retailers are accelerating their businesses by using integrated technology and data to help them connect with shoppers at each step of their journey. With platforms that provide advanced insights, retailers are collaborating with brands on innovative ad formats and placements that drive action by delivering a frictionless experience across their sites and apps.

In our new guide, Transforming shopping experiences on your eCommerce platform, we show you how Ad Manager can help you deliver unique experiences at every stage of the shopping journey, and increase profits while serving your customers, partners, and employees.

Ready for a new approach to eCommerce? Download the full guide here and see how you can create experiences that work for all of your customers.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Simplifying programmatic: first price auctions for Google Ad Manager

In the very early days of programmatic buying, publishers typically used only one auction to sell their ad inventory. Today the programmatic ecosystem has evolved into a much more complex marketplace where a single ad can pass through a mix of over ten different auctions, with different rules, before a winning bid price is selected and an ad is served. This complexity has made it difficult for advertisers and agencies to properly value programmatic inventory and it has driven our publishers and app developers to implement increasingly complicated ad monetization strategies, reducing transparency across the industry. Further, the increasing intricacy of programmatic has made it operationally very difficult, even for experts, to determine what’s going well and what needs to be improved.

In order to help simplify programmatic for our partners, in the coming months we’ll start to transition publisher inventory to a unified first price auction for Google Ad Manager. We expect the transition to be complete by the end of this year. By switching to a single first price auction, we can help reduce complexity and create a fair and transparent market for everyone.

What this means for our partners

With this change, every offer from programmatic buyers will compete in the same unified auction, alongside inventory which is directly negotiated with advertisers. An advertising buyer’s bid will not be shared with another buyer before the auction or be able to set the price for another buyer. The buyer that wins the auction pays the price they bid. By simplifying our auction in Ad Manager, we can help make it easier for publishers and app developers to manage and get fair value for their inventory.

Preparing for this change

Since the change from second to first price will require both buyers and sellers to make changes in their programmatic strategies, we’ll give everyone time to prepare over the next few months before we start testing. During this time, publishers and app developers will need to rethink how they use price floors and technology partners will need to adjust how they bid for Google Ad Manager Inventory.

It’s important to note that our move to a single unified first price auction only impacts display and video inventory sold via Ad Manager. This change will have no impact on auctions for ads on Google Search, AdSense for Search, YouTube, and other Google properties, and advertisers using Google Ads or Display & Video 360 do not need to take any action.

We are excited to take this next step to simplify the programmatic ecosystem and help our partners grow. As we get closer to the start of our transition to a unified first price auction, we’ll work with all our partners to help them get prepared.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Simplifying programmatic: first price auctions for Google Ad Manager

What this means for our partners

Preparing for this change

Source: The Official Google Blog

Are broadcasters prepared for the convergence of TV and digital video?

There’s no doubt that TV is evolving. As more devices and distribution platforms give consumers an unprecedented level of control, are broadcasters prepared to deliver premium viewing and ad experiences everywhere they are watching?

To help broadcasters thrive in the new era of TV, we need to understand their needs and priorities. That’s why we recently published a report featuring first-person insights from twenty broadcast executives and senior TV media buyers.

As part of our research, we asked participants to rate how prepared the industry is to support the convergence of TV and digital on a scale from 1 (not at all prepared) to 5 (completely prepared). The average rating was 3. Let's take a closer look at the ways these industry leaders feel they are and are not prepared for what's coming next:

Prepared for the convergence of TV and Video

Most prepared - Technology and infrastructure

Nearly all broadcasters interviewed shared that they’re investing substantial resources in developing, licensing, and/or acquiring the technology required to shift their businesses from one, to all screens. Among sports broadcasters, scalability is receiving extra attention, especially as they consider how to live-stream large events to millions of digital viewers.

Broadcasters interviewed also felt relatively well prepared when it comes to delivering relevant ads to their audiences. They agreed that the availability of tools to support advanced ad delivery has grown considerably in recent years. Considering how well digital reaches audiences with addressable messages, most broadcasters interviewed are confident that these capabilities will carry over into the linear TV ecosystem.

While technology was initially the biggest hurdle broadcasters addressed, readiness in this area is now outpacing sales alignment and organizational preparedness.

Least prepared - Managing inventory sales

In terms of managing inventory sales, broadcasters feel the industry is least prepared for what lies ahead. While the traditional model of media sales is one-to-one and based on past relationships, the TV ad sales teams of the future will be data-driven, technical and results-oriented. The new landscape is challenging the industry to modernize not only its infrastructure but its sales systems as well.

Respondents were especially concerned about the future in these ad-related areas:

Ad sales execution: Broadcasters are struggling to adapt their sales models for digital. Many organizations are responding by restructuring traditional departments while expanding research and analytics teams.
Revenue models: TV metrics like age and gender are broad and don’t translate well for sophisticated digital buyers, so broadcasters are working to reinvent their pricing models.
Buyer-seller conversations: Broadcasters indicated the industry needs to focus on adapting the sales approach so that conversations between buyers and sellers better reflect the reality of the new TV landscape.
Measurement: Broadcasters specified a need for more consistency in measurement across connected devices and traditional TV platforms.

Moving cautiously toward programmatic sales

What about preparedness to adopt programmatic sales? The study results showed that broadcasters are moving cautiously toward implementing Open Auction demand sources after finding success with Programmatic Direct deals. The issue of pricing is often the top concern, as well as control over the value of and compensation for premium content.

For programmatic sales to fully take flight, several challenges need to be overcome. As one broadcaster noted, the industry must strengthen the skills required to sell programmatically. Another key obstacle is the complexity of creating the right infrastructure to support programmatic sales.

The future of TV is exciting, and Google is investing in flexible technology to prepare our partners for success. As audiences dictate the future of the TV experience, and broadcasters look to monetize their content everywhere viewers are watching, advanced TV solutions powered by Google Ad Manager can help.

To get more insights about the future of TV, download the full report here. And to keep up with all things Ad Manager, bookmark our blog and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Using AMP to make display ads safer, faster and better for users

The performance benefits and security guarantees offered by AMPHTML ads, which are display ads created using the AMP framework, translate to better advertiser ROI, publisher revenue and overall better user experience. Because of this, Google has expanded serving AMPHTML ads not only to AMP pages, but also to regular web pages. As of January this year, 12% of all display ads served by Google are now AMPHTML ads.

All of the code in the AMP repository is open source which is carefully reviewed by the project maintainers before being merged. As a result, ads written in AMP start performant and stay performant. Such a process also drastically reduces the likelihood of AMPHTML ads having code that takes advantage of chipset level vulnerabilities or drain CPU by crypto-mining from users’ devices.

Since AMPHTML ads can be trusted, they can be rendered into a more performant same-origin iframe. This performance boost results in the ad rendering faster on page which translates to higher publisher revenue and better advertiser ROI.

AMPHTML Ads Stats — Experiment results from GPT.js rendering AMPHTML ads in a same-origin vs cross-origin iframe

AMPHTML ads on AMP pages deliver even better ROI

An AMPHTML ad delivered to an AMP page has better performance compared to the same ad running on a regular web page. This is due to the inherent design of AMPHTML ads outlined here, giving advertisers better click through rates and viewability.

AMP pages have seen steady growth over the past few years and advertisers now have access to well over 1 billion impressions/day worth of premium (from a user experience & ad experience standpoint) inventory. In addition, more than 35 percent of ads served to AMP pages are already AMPHTML ads.

Publishers and Advertisers seeing success with AMP pages and AMPHTML ads

The news publisher EL PAIS partnered with Volkswagen, one of their advertisers, to run a multivariate A/B test measuring how Volkswagen’s display ads created in AMPHTML vs HTML5 would perform on AMP vs regular pages.

Simply moving from a standard HTML page to an AMP page (with the same HTML5 ad) resulted in a 26 percent CTR increase. Moving further to an AMP page with AMPHTML ads resulted in an additional 48 percent CTR increase.

AMPHTML Ads Increase in Performance — Increase in performance metrics when combining AMP pages with AMPHTML ads

You can read the full case study here.

Getting started with AMPHTML ads for advertisers

AMPHTML ads are a subset of the AMP spec and ships with many good-by-default ads UI components, an analytics measurement framework, a spam detection system, viewability measurement and other building blocks to create a good and measurable ad.

We encourage you to read more about the benefits of using AMPHTML ads, but if you want to jump ahead to start creating them, this is a good place to begin.

Once you have created the ad, you can choose one of the following options to serve AMPHTML ads:

Work with an Authorized Buyer that allows to target just AMP or regular inventory
Use Google Ads to target inventory in the Google Display Network
Direct buy with publishers using Google Ad Manager
[Coming Soon] Display & Video 360 support to deliver AMPHTML ads to AMP pages

Google continues to invest in delivering better user ad experiences by increasing the share of AMPHTML ads vs regular ads. Once mobile app support launches in Q2, 2019, advertisers can fully transition to creating a single AMPHTML ad and have it render across all environments and devices.

We hope you’ll take full advantage of the performance, security benefits and the increased ROI by choosing to build & serve AMPHTML ads in your next campaign.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Reimagining the commercial break in 2019

The TV industry continues to evolve rapidly and our partners are leading the change by bringing exceptional content and entertainment to viewers with more ways to watch that content than ever before. As viewers take advantage of new ways to watch anytime and anywhere, whether it’s on connected TVs, set-top-boxes, mobile apps, or the web, our partners are using Google Ad Manager to monetize their video content across screens everywhere. Let’s take a closer look at how media companies are transforming the TV landscape and what’s ahead for 2019.

New opportunities and challenges as TV and digital converge

In our recent research report on the convergence of TV and digital video, we learned that TV executives feel most prepared for the future of TV technology and infrastructure, but feel least prepared when it comes to changes in ad sales execution, revenue models, buyer-seller conversations, and measurement. They’re adapting their distribution strategies to reach viewers on more devices, platforms, and digital services. Last year alone, we saw ad impressions served to connected TVs using Ad Manager increase by more than 80 percent.

As TV and digital continue to converge in 2019, we expect to see even more options for people to watch the content they love, including direct-to-consumer apps and skinny bundles.

Effective features to help partners reimagine the commercial break

Our partners are reimagining the commercial break by using Ad Manager’s advanced TV solutions to deliver seamless, personalized, and measurable ad experiences everywhere. This includes capabilities like Dynamic Ad Insertion, where we saw impressions served during live events increase by over 2x during the past year. We’re powering seamless ad experiences for the world’s largest events from brands like Major League Baseball, WWE, National Football League, and NASCAR Digital Media. We’ve also added new features like Smarter Ad Breaks that help partners optimize for yield while honoring TV business rules for a more personalized ad experience and we’re working with the IAB’s Open Measurement Working Group to enable open viewability measurement across the ecosystem.

In 2019, we’ll be working with our TV partners to build solutions that bring the best of TV and digital together, giving partners more TV-like control with digital flexibility over their commercial break experience.

New partnerships to advance the future of TV

We’re partnering with some of the biggest leaders in broadcasting and entertainment globally to build for the future of TV. For example, we recently expanded our strategic relationship with The Walt Disney Company and Ad Manager will serve as their core ad technology platform to power video ads for their properties across multiple channels, including on the web, in mobile apps, streaming through connected TVs, and for live events. We’re also working with partners like TotalPlay, one of Mexico’s most innovative telecommunications and IPTV providers, to test delivering addressable ads to their TV audiences. And this past year we welcomed new partners to our platform like Univision, CheddarTV, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, and many more globally. Each of these partners will be able to use Ad Manager to provide seamless, personalized, and measurable ad experiences that keep their viewers engaged, whether it’s on live, linear, or on-demand content.

As we look forward to 2019, we’ll continue to innovate with our TV partners and the industry for the future of TV, including driving next generation TV standards like ASTC 3.0 and HbbTV. As the gap between digital and TV continues to close and new opportunities emerge, we’ll be working hand-in-hand with our partners to reimagine the commercial break and inspire the best ad experiences everywhere.

Source: The Official Google Blog

2018 rewind: A look back at the top stories, moments and research

And just like that, the curtain has closed on 2018! While the industry navigated its fair share of changes this year (just like every year before), the holiday season and the promise of a fresh start always work as a natural reminder to reflect on the past twelve months. With that in mind, here’s a look back at the top stories, moments and research from Google Ad Manager that had the biggest impact on our partners. Much more to come in 2019—we’ll see you then.

We welcomed Google Ad Manager

This year we introduced Google Ad Manager, a complete platform to grow ad revenue and protect your brand wherever people are watching, playing or engaging with your content. Bringing Ad Manager to fruition was a three year project that seamlessly folded DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers together into a truly unified platform.

Exchange Bidding went mainstream

In April, we announced that Exchange Bidding was available with new features to all customers using Google Ad Manager. With Exchange Bidding, publishers can increase revenue by allowing multiple exchanges to compete with each other — and with Google Authorized Buyers — in a unified auction. Publishers can now access real-time demand from more than 10 exchanges including new partners like Triplelift and Aerserv directly in Google Ad Manager. Learn how partners like Vice and RhythmOne are using Exchange Bidding to grow revenues and transform their businesses.

The ads.txt standard made strong progress

In July, we put out an update that nearly 90 percent of our publisher partners had adopted ads.txt, and that over 80 percent of the available inventory across exchanges accessed by Display & Video 360 was authorized. In an effort to prevent advertisers from buying unauthorized inventory, we also released a new ads.txt inventory control that allows marketers and agencies using Display & Video 360 to run campaigns only on sites that support ads.txt, and exclude inventory from sites without the file. And just last month, the IAB Tech Lab released the app-ads.txt spec for final review.

Industry collaboration led to the takedown of the “3ve” botnet

At its height, the 3ve botnet compromised over one million IPs resulting in over three billion bid requests per day. Google worked with White Ops and nearly 20 partners for over a year to combat the operation, referred the case to law enforcement, and ultimately helped take the operation down. In partnership with White Ops, we published a white paper about how we identified the ad fraud operation, the steps we took to protect our clients from being impacted, and the technical work we did to detect patterns across systems in the industry.

Advanced TV moved to primetime

In September, we detailed how Google Ad Manager is helping TV broadcasters and distributors reimagine the commercial break by highlighting key platform features developed to enhance the TV viewing experience. We followed this news by releasing a comprehensive research report on “The convergence of TV and digital” which analyzed 20 interviews from top TV executives and highlighted the current challenges and future opportunities. Lastly, we announced a new strategic partnership with The Walt Disney Company to power their video ads on the web, in mobile apps, streaming through connected TVs and for live events across their premium brands and properties.

GDPR required changes to our consent policy

Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May, requiring that publishers take extra steps to ensure they are compliant with the new laws and ad policies. Google took extensive steps to help prepare our clients and partners for the transition and made updates to our EU user consent policy that reflected the regulations. We launched a number of product updates to help publishers comply, including: ad technology provider controls, optional consent gathering tools, and a non-personalized ads solution.

Brands and publishers adopted Programmatic Guaranteed

Globally, the amount of revenue publishers earned from Programmatic Guaranteed deals grew more than 2x year-over-year in 2018 (according to internal data). This growth indicates that both publishers and advertisers are realizing the performance and operational benefits outlined in the research we produced with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Nielsen. BCG found that Programmatic Guaranteed deals took as much as 57 percent less time for publishers to set up and manage than traditional direct deals. Nielsen found that when brands consolidate their direct and indirect deals using Programmatic Guaranteed, they experienced an 11 percent increase in unique reach on average.

Learn more, do more

Over the past year we’ve worked to develop and share success stories that highlight amazing work and ingenuity from our partners around the world. These case studies and more can be found in the research section of the Google Ad Manager website. We’ve also published dozens of blogs highlighting news and announcements about new product developments, events and partnerships. And lastly, we’ve added a new monetization section on the Think With Google website with high level content for publishers. To stay up to date on our latest news you can sign up for the Google Publisher Connection newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Once again, we’d like to thank all of our partners for making 2018 a fantastic year.
More big things to come in 2019!

Source: The Official Google Blog

Disney and Google expand strategic relationship

People today exercise greater control over what they view and when—and on which screens—they view it. They watch sitcoms in taxis and on trains, and stream news and documentaries at the gym. All of which contribute to a striking new reality: TV is no longer a stationary box anchored to a corner in your living room.

People also expect the same content they love in the living room on every screen, which can be the difference between a loyal fanbase and a lost audience. Advertisers want to deliver quality ad experiences that are relevant, seamless and measurable across screens, inspiring media companies to reimagine the commercial break.

That’s why we’re excited to announce today a new global strategic relationship with The Walt Disney Company.

Disney and Google share a passion for bringing quality content and information to everyone, everywhere. With this new relationship, Disney will bring its entire global digital video and display business onto Google Ad Manager, which will serve as its core ad technology platform.

That means that Google will now power advertising for Disney’s unmatched collection of brands and properties—including Disney, ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars—across multiple channels, including live streaming and direct-to-consumer content offerings. Disney will be able to serve video ads effortlessly on the web, in mobile apps, streaming through connected TVs and for live events.

Together, we plan to build an advanced video experience for Disney that will transcend devices, platforms, and living rooms to bring the magic of premium video content into people’s hearts, minds, and screens—everywhere.

Source: Google Ads

New research on the convergence of TV and digital video

The landscape of TV is shifting in significant, exciting ways. Consumers have more content choices and ways to watch than ever before and broadcast leaders (including traditional linear broadcasters, OTT providers, and digital-first video publishers) are adapting their business strategies for the new era of viewership. Throughout this transformative period broadcasters have been met with several challenges; they’re grappling with cross-screen monetization, onboarding new technology, and changing the way their organizations think about digital.

In an effort to help our advanced TV and video partners prepare for the future, we recently commissioned Illuminas, an independent research partner, to interview twenty TV executives to learn what’s top of mind now for broadcasters and what their long-term objectives are for the future.

We’re excited to share their observations in a new report, “The convergence of TV and digital: How broadcasters are building for success,” which covers topics ranging from consumer viewing trends to changes in revenue models to the opportunity for programmatic TV.

So, what are the TV trends that matter… and how are industry leaders getting ready for the future? Download the full report to find out.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Join us at advanced TV events this fall

The TV industry is steadily embracing digital as people consume more live, linear, and on-demand content across all screens. This presents both exciting opportunities and interesting challenges as we navigate this new space and build for the future of the TV experience. As part of this shift, we recently announced Google Ad Manager’s advanced TV solutions to help our partners deliver seamless, personalized, and measurable commercial experiences everywhere audiences are watching.

This fall, alongside several of our partners, we’re participating in two events to share how we’re bringing the power of digital to advanced TV: the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in New York and TV Week New York City. These forums are some of the best places to learn about industry trends, new technologies, and how to provide high-quality experiences as the TV landscape evolves.

We hope you’ll join us at these events to learn more about how we’re reimagining the commercial break and taking television into the future with our partners.

National Association of Broadcasters Show:

The NAB comes to the Javits Convention Center in New York City from October 17 - 18 and features three Google Ad Manager sessions at its Streaming Summit.

Wednesday, October 17

2:30 PM: Bringing Addressability to Every Screen Including Linear Television

3:15 PM: Best Practices for Deploying Server Side Ad Insertion

Thursday, October 18

10:15 AM: Monetizing Video Content Direct-to-Consumer

NYC TV Week:

TV Week returns to New York City on October 29 - November 1, bringing together leaders across broadcast, cable, advertising and technology to discuss emerging trends in the TV industry. You can find Google Ad Manager sessions at the Advanced Advertising Summit and Next TV Summit.

Thursday, November 1 - Advanced Advertising Summit

9:10 AM: Keynote: Embracing an Advanced TV Future

3:20 PM: Reality-Check Roundtable: Cross-Channel Ad Planning/Buying/Selling

Thursday, November 1 - Next TV Summit

2:15 PM: Keynote: Delivering a Premium Viewership Experience

3:45 PM: Panel: Marketing & Advertising Trends in Video Consumption & Advertising

We’re excited to share insights into the future of advanced TV at these events, and we hope to see you there. Learn more about the NAB Show NY and NYC TV Week.