Tag Archives: Google Ad Manager

New MRC accreditations and partners for Google and YouTube ads measurement

Is my marketing working? It sounds like a simple question, but in today's complex environment, answering it correctly is a challenge. To help advance advertising measurement, we’ve invested in third-party accreditations through the Media Rating Council (MRC), and partnerships with leading measurement technology providers. Together, these efforts help ensure that the metrics our advertising solutions deliver are trusted, align with industry standards, and can be compared across providers.

Today, we’re announcing new MRC accreditations across Google advertising products, including Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform (specifically Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager), and Google Ad Manager.1

We’ve also made progress with Google Measurement Partners for viewability, brand safety, and reach reporting on YouTube.

Trusted metrics across Google’s advertising solutions

Advertisers consistently tell us that they struggle with comparing media placements to determine where to invest their limited marketing resources. It’s a problem that’s made even worse when media providers use different definitions of commonly accepted metrics like clicks, impressions, and viewable impressions.

By endorsing the MRC standards and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines for media measurement, we stand on the side of marketers, who deserve transparency and fairness in their media buys.

Below, you’ll see the comprehensive list of MRC accreditations we currently maintain across search, display, and video ads on the web and in apps. Accredited metrics include various aspects of our clicks, served impressions, viewable impressions, and invalid traffic detection and filtration. 

MRC Accreditations

With today’s announcements, YouTube video ad impressions and viewability metrics for desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app are now fully MRC accredited in Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager. And we’ve begun the audit process for MRC accreditation of recently added metrics, including brand safety and Unique Reach reporting on YouTube in Google Ads.

“Google has consistently demonstrated a commitment to helping advertisers and publishers achieve transparency and quality in measurement through its work with the MRC. In addition to submitting products for initial consideration for MRC accreditation, Google also has expanded on the scope of what’s being submitted for existing accredited products. This progress is emblematic of what we at MRC consider to be our core industry mission: to help lift the bar for quality in measurement consistently upward.”

—George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director, Media Rating Council

“Google’s efforts to create transparency and choice through MRC accreditation demonstrates their commitment to delivering a better, more responsible advertising ecosystem. The ultimate goal is to ensure transparency at every step in the complex advertising supply chain, and Google’s efforts are helping us achieve that objective."

—Bob Liodice, CEO, ANA

More transparent YouTube measurement with trusted partners

To help advertisers measure YouTube media in a verified, privacy-safe way with the measurement solution of their choice, we've also made progress with Google Measurement Partners for viewability, brand safety, and reach reporting.

First, the YouTube data feed for video viewability reporting by third-parties is currently under audit by the MRC. Our ultimate goal is to achieve MRC accreditation for our integrations with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS), so advertisers can be confident that YouTube metrics have been third-party verified, no matter where they choose to measure.

In addition, brand safety verification on YouTube by both DoubleVerify and IAS is now in expanded beta. In beta tests with DoubleVerify and IAS, we’re seeing 99 percent success rates on brand safety across both auction and reserve, including Google Preferred.2

We’re also expanding our partnerships for reach measurement, which now include Nielsen, comScore, Kantar, and soon, Meetrics. This month, YouTube’s integration with Nielsen for mobile in-app measurement has expanded to Australia and Italy. This is in addition to the U.S., Canada, Japan, U.K., Germany, and France which are already available.

To know if their marketing is working, advertisers need access to accurate, timely metrics they can trust, regardless of which measurement provider they choose. Looking to the future, we’ll continue investing in measurement solutions and partnerships that help advertisers understand and compare the impact of their investments using commonly accepted metrics and standards.


1. New MRC accreditations achieved since our blog post in February 2017 include:

  • Google Ads:

    • Served Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

    • Viewable Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

    • Sophisticated Invalid Traffic Detection & Filtration for Clicks for search and display on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app, and Viewable Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

  • Google Marketing Platform:

    • Display & Video 360:

      • Clicks for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

      • Served Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

      • Viewable Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

    • Campaign Manager:

      • Clicks for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

      • Served Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app

      • Viewable Ad Impressions for display on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app

      • Sophisticated Invalid Traffic Detection & Filtration for Served Ad Impressions and Viewable Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop and mobile web

  • Google Ad Manager:

    • Served Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app, and for video on mobile in-app

    • Viewable Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app, and for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app


2.  DoubleVerify and IAS Testing, Global, June 2018


Selling inventory is easier with Google Ad Manager

The digital landscape is evolving, and savvy publishers are evolving with it. There are more opportunities than ever for advertisers to reach their desired audience, no matter what platform, channel, or device consumers are using.


That’s why we launched Google Ad Manager—to help you grow revenue wherever people are watching TV, playing mobile games, noodling around on their desktops, or engaging on social media. Here are a few ways you can use Ad Manager to get the most out of your ad inventory.
Tailor your inventory with Google Ad Manager

Tailor your inventory to meet advertisers’ goals

Start by taking control of your inventory. Ad Manager lets you segment inventory in multiple ways, so you can meet demand for ads that reach specific audiences. For example:

Key-values: You can get even more granular by using key-values, such as a specific search keyword, to provide the exact audiences advertisers want to reach.

  • Audience: Organize according to users’ behavior on your sites or apps (first-party segments) or integrate data from outside vendors (third-party segments).
  • Devices and browsers: Organize inventory according to device type, browser, or operating system. You can even use browser language. Want to reach only Spanish-speaking Safari users? No hay problema.
  • Geography: Segment your inventory based on countries, regions, U.S. metro areas, U.K. TV regions, cities, and postal codes. You can also specify places to exclude. Think globally, advertise locally.
  • Delivery: Use Ad Manager’s delivery tools to see which ads in your inventory delivered on your page and why, then manage delivery speed, frequency caps, and day and time segmenting (dayparting) to maximize their ROI. Be surgical and precise.

Sell Inventory

Five ways to sell your inventory on Ad Manager

Regardless of how you work with buyers and advertisers, Ad Manager can help you get the most out of your inventory. So once you’ve optimized your inventory, Ad Manager can help you sell it in a variety of different ways:

  1. Direct sales. Your in-house team can directly negotiate high-priority ads, such as sponsorships, full-page takeovers, and custom creative integrations. Or, you can create valuable “share-of-voice” ads that give advertisers a certain share of the page views on your site.
  2. Programmatic Guaranteed. Ad Manager’s programmatic features allow you to automate negotiation and sales of your inventory, simplifying the process and reducing the potential for human error. Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns allow you and the buyer to agree on a price and terms for premium inventory ensuring you reserve your best inventory for your highest value advertisers. By offering advanced capabilities for buyers, including global frequency management and the ability to use their own audience lists, Programmatic Guaranteed brings new value to your direct sales business.
  3. Exchange Bidding. Invite trusted third-party exchanges to engage in a unified real-time auction. By allowing multiple exchanges to compete with each other, publishers can make more money for their inventory, while maintaining some control over ad quality.
  4. Open Auction. Let Ad Manager automatically select the highest paying ads that match your business rules from all advertisers bidding in the Open Auction.  In other words, Ad Manager will help you find ads in the open auction, that can help you earn the most revenue.
  5. Private marketplaces. These include both Private Auctions and Preferred Deals. A Private Auction gives a select group of buyers access to inventory before it becomes available in the open auction. Preferred Deals bypass auctions completely, with the publisher cutting a deal at a fixed price with one specific buyer. Both options give high-value remarketing buyers access to more inventory.

Integrate your ad management to capture revenue across all buyers

No matter how you sell your inventory, Ad Manager’s rules-based management system automatically synchronizes advertiser blocks across all your deals and inventory, artfully steering clear of any conflicts. It’s a comprehensive ad sales platform that helps organize your inventory and optimize your connections to customers. By allowing you to connect all your inventory to all your advertising partners in one place, you can earn more and grow your business.

Three things to know about Google Ad Manager

It’s been a little over a month since we introduced our newly branded ad monetization platform, Google Ad Manager. Bringing together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange, this unified platform helps you earn more money and protects your brand in all the new places people are watching, playing or surfing -- from traditional desktops to mobile apps and smart TVs.

If you're a customer of Google Ad Manager, you're already familiar with much of what Ad Manager can do. But here are some facts that may still surprise you.


Mobile in pocket

1. It’s small enough to fit inside your pocket

The majority of ads served by Ad Manager are to non-desktop devices.1 In fact, ads delivered to mobile apps grew by more than 60 percent last year alone.2

As people consume more content on the go, and as the next generation of internet users comes online via smartphones first, mobile ads in apps and on the web continue to grow and remain important. According to eMarketer, mobile advertising is growing at nearly 24 percent per year and will account for more than a third of all advertising spend in 2018. That share will rise to 48 percent by 2022.

Google Connected TV

2. Ad Manager also handles TV commercials

Digital video ads generated nearly $12 billion in revenue last year, a 33 percent spike over 2016, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. While the vast majority of those video ads were delivered to phones or computers, an increasing number are being displayed on smart TVs.

Whether your audience is watching live sports or their favorite TV show on-demand, Google Ad Manager can deliver the right commercial break experiences in the living room, keeping people watching.  Last year alone, video ad impressions served to connected TVs using Ad Manager increased by more than 80 percent.3

Globe

3. ...And speaks Swedish

Also Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, Spanish, Polish, and several flavors of English. All told, Ad Manager serves programmatic ads from Authorized Buyers in 44 languages, with 33 regional sales teams serving customers in almost every country in the world.4 Skȧl!

To learn more about Ad Manager and make sure you never miss an update, bookmark our blog for the latest news and tips, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

1,4 Google Ad Manager Data, June 2018

2,3 Google Ad Manager Data, Q1'2017 - Q1'2018


New ads.txt-only inventory control in Display & Video 360

The IAB’s ads.txt standard was created to increase transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem. By letting website owners publicly declare who is allowed to sell their ad space, ads.txt helps ad technology companies identify unauthorized and domain-spoofed inventory being sold across the industry.


Last November, as websites started putting up their ads.txt files, we began blocking unauthorized inventory from Google’s advertising systems. But what about inventory from sites that have not yet published an ads.txt file? To help prevent buying in those situations, we’ve launched a new ads.txt-only inventory control in Display & Video 360 (formerly known as DoubleClick Bid Manager). Now, marketers and agencies using Display & Video 360 can choose to run campaigns on sites that support ads.txt authorized inventory, and exclude inventory from sites without the file.


The transparency, simplicity and effectiveness of the ads.txt standard has helped publishers adopt it across the digital advertising ecosystem at a rapid pace. Since February of this year, more than 430,000 website domains have added an ads.txt file to their sites to verify their inventory, according to our ads.txt crawler.

ads.txt numbers

Based on daily scans of over 30 million domains with the Google ads.txt crawler

We’re proud to say that nearly 90 percent of our publisher partners have adopted ads.txt. What’s more, over 80 percent of the available inventory across exchanges accessed by Display & Video 360 is now authorized. Finally, as more websites continue to adopt the standard, we plan to make the ads.txt-only inventory control the default setting for Display & Video 360 by the end of 2018.

Putting machine learning into the hands of every advertiser

The ways people get things done are constantly changing, from finding the closest coffee shop to organizing family photos. Earlier this year, we explored how machine learning is being used to improve our consumer products and help people get stuff done.

In just one hour, we’ll share how we're helping marketers unlock more opportunities for their businesses with our largest deployment of machine learning in ads. We’ll explore how this technology works in our products and why it’s key to delivering the helpful and frictionless experiences consumers expect from brands.

Join us live today at 9am PT (12pm ET).

Deliver more relevance with responsive search ads

Consumers today are more curious, more demanding, and they expect to get things done faster because of mobile. As a result, they expect your ads to be helpful and personalized. Doing this isn’t easy, especially at scale. That’s why we’re introducing responsive search ads. Responsive search ads combine your creativity with the power of Google’s machine learning to help you deliver relevant, valuable ads.

Simply provide up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines, and Google will do the rest. By testing different combinations, Google learns which ad creative performs best for any search query. So people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context.

We know this kind of optimization works: on average, advertisers who use Google’s machine learning to test multiple creative see up to 15 percent more clicks.1

Responsive search ads will start rolling out to advertisers over the next several months.

Maximize relevance and performance on YouTube

People watch over 1 billion hours of video on YouTube every day. And increasingly, they’re tuning in for inspiration and information on purchases large and small. For example, nearly 1 in 2 car buyers say they turn to YouTube for information before their purchase.2 And nearly 1 in 2 millennials go there for food preparation tips before deciding what ingredients to buy.3 That means it’s critical your video ads show at the right moment to the right audience.

Machine learning helps us turn that attention into results on YouTube. In the past, we’ve helped you optimize campaigns for views and impressions. Later this year, we’re rolling out Maximize lift to help you reach people who are most likely to consider your brand after seeing a video ad. This new Smart Bidding strategy is also powered by machine learning. It automatically adjusts bids at auction time to maximize the impact your video ads have on brand perception throughout the consumer journey.

Maximize lift is available now as a beta and will roll out to advertisers globally later this year.

Drive more foot traffic with Local campaigns

Whether they start their research on YouTube or Google, people still make the majority of their purchases in physical stores. In fact, mobile searches for “near me” have grown over 3X in the past two years,4 and almost 80 percent of shoppers will go in store when there’s an item they want immediately.5 For many of you, that means driving foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar locations is critical—especially during key moments in the year, like in-store events or promotions.

Today we’re introducing Local campaigns: a new campaign type designed to drive store visits exclusively. Provide a few simple things—like your business locations and ad creative—and Google automatically optimizes your ads across properties to bring more customers into your store.

  • Ads_Search.jpg
  • Ads_Maps.jpg
  • Ads_PlacePages.jpg
  • Ads_Display.jpg
  • Ads_YouTube.jpg

Show your business locations across Google properties and networks


Local campaigns will roll out to advertisers globally over the coming months.

Get the most from your Shopping campaigns

Earlier this year, we rolled out a new Shopping campaign type that optimizes performance based on your goals. These Smart Shopping campaigns help you hit your revenue goals without the need to manually manage and bid to individual products. In the coming months, we’re improving them to optimize across multiple business goals.

Beyond maximize conversion value, you’ll also be able to select store visits or new customers as goals. Machine learning factors in the likelihood that a click will result in any of these outcomes and helps adjust bids accordingly.

Machine learning is also used to optimize where your Shopping ads show—on Google.com, Image Search, YouTube and millions of sites and apps across the web—and which products are featured. It takes into account a wide range of signals, like seasonal demand and pricing. Brands like GittiGidiyor, an eBay company, are using Smart Shopping campaigns to simplify how they manage their ads and deliver better results. GittiGidiyor was able to increase return on ad spend by 28 percent and drive 4 percent more sales, while saving time managing campaigns.

We’re also adding support for leading e-commerce platforms to help simplify campaign management. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to set up and manage Smart Shopping campaigns right from Shopify, in addition to Google Ads.

Tune in to see more!

This is an important moment for marketers and we’re excited to be on this journey with you. Tune in at 9am PT (12pm ET) today to see it all unfold at Google Marketing Live.

For the latest news, follow the new Google Ads blog. And check out g.co/adsannouncements for more information about product updates and announcements.


1. Internal Google data

2. Google / Kantar TNS, Auto CB Gearshift Study, US, 2017. n=312 new car buyers who watched online video

3. Google / Ipsos, US, November 2017

4. Internal Google data, U.S., July–Dec. 2015 vs. July–Dec. 2017

5. Google/Ipsos, U.S., “Shopping Tracker,” Online survey, n=3,613 online Americans 13+ who shopped in the past two days, Oct.–Dec. 2017

Source: Inside AdWords


Introducing simpler brands and solutions for advertisers and publishers

We launched AdWords nearly 18 years ago with a simple goal—to make it easier for people to connect online with businesses. A search for eco-friendly stationery, quilting supplies, or for a service like a treehouse builder gave us an opportunity to deliver valuable ads that were useful and relevant in the moment. That idea was the start of our first advertising product, and led to the ads business we have today.

A lot has changed since then. Mobile is now a huge part of our everyday lives. People quickly switch from searching for products, to watching videos, browsing content, playing games and more. As a result, marketers have more opportunities to reach consumers across channels, screens and formats. Advertising on Google has evolved too—from helping marketers connect with people on Google Search, to helping them connect at every step of the consumer journey. As the opportunity to engage consumers has grown and become more complex, we are simplifying our products for advertisers and publishers of all sizes so they can more easily reach consumers anywhere, at any moment and on any channel.

That’s why today we’re introducing new brands for our advertising products: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager. These new brands reflect all of the ways that we help advertisers connect with consumers and make it easier for advertisers and publishers to choose which products are right for their businesses. As part of this, we are releasing new solutions that help advertisers get started with Google Ads and drive collaboration across teams.  

Google AdWords is becoming Google Ads 

The new Google Ads brand represents the full range of advertising capabilities we offer today—on Google.com and across our other properties, partner sites and apps—to help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.  

Google Ads - Logo

For small businesses specifically, we’re introducing a new campaign type in Google Ads that makes it easier than ever to get started with online advertising. It brings the machine learning technology of Google Ads to small businesses and helps them get results without any heavy lifting—so they can stay focused on running their businesses. To learn more, visit this post.

We'll introduce more new campaign types at Google Marketing Live. Sign up to watch the livestream on July 10.

Stronger collaboration with Google Marketing Platform

We’re enabling stronger collaboration for enterprise marketing teams by unifying our DoubleClick advertiser products and the Google Analytics 360 Suite under a single brand: Google Marketing Platform. 

GMP Logo

We’ve heard from marketers that there are real benefits to using ads and analytics technology together, including a better understanding of customers and better business results. Google Marketing Platform helps marketers achieve their goals by building on existing integrations between the Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick Digital Marketing. The platform helps marketers plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. To learn more, visit the Google Marketing Platform blog.

As part of Google Marketing Platform, we’re announcing Display & Video 360. Display & Video 360 brings together features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center to allow creative, agency, and media teams to collaborate and execute ad campaigns end-to-end in a single place. We’ll share more details about Display & Video 360 in the coming weeks, including a demo during the keynote at Google Marketing Live.

Google Ad Manager: A unified platform

We recognize that the way publishers monetize their content has changed. With people accessing content on multiple screens, and with advertisers’ growing demand for programmatic access, publishers need to be able to manage their businesses more simply and efficiently. That’s why for the last three years, we’ve been working to bring together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a complete and unified programmatic platform under a new name–Google Ad Manager. 

Google Ad Manager - Logo

With this evolution, we’re excited to do even more for our partners—earning them more money, more efficiently, wherever people are watching videos, playing games or engaging with content, and however advertisers are looking to work with them. To learn more, visit the Google Ad Manager blog.

Transparency and controls people can trust

We know that the media and technology advertisers and publishers choose to use impacts the relationships they have with their customers. As always, our commitment is to ensure that all of our products and platforms set the industry’s highest standard in giving people transparency and choice in the ads they see. For example, we recently announced new Ads Settings and expanded Why this ad? across all of our services, and almost all websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.

You'll start to see the new Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager brands over the next month.

We’ll be sharing more about these changes—and many other new Ads, Analytics and Platforms solutions designed to help you grow your business—at Google Marketing Live. Register now to watch live on July 10, 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET.