Tag Archives: Google Ad Manager

Charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

It’s difficult to conceive of the internet we know today — with information on every topic, in every language, at the fingertips of billions of people — without advertising as its economic foundation. But as our industry has strived to deliver relevant ads to consumers across the web, it has created a proliferation of individual user data across thousands of companies, typically gathered through third-party cookies. This has led to an erosion of trust: In fact, 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center. If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web.  

That’s why last year Chrome announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies, and why we’ve been working with the broader industry on the Privacy Sandbox to build innovations that protect anonymity while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers. Even so, we continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers. Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.

We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people’s email addresses. We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.


Privacy innovations are effective
alternatives to tracking

People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising. 

Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers. In fact, our latest tests of FLoC show one way to effectively take third-party cookies out of the advertising equation and instead hide individuals within large crowds of people with common interests. Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release this month, and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2. Chrome also will offer the first iteration of new user controls in April and will expand on these controls in future releases, as more proposals reach the origin trial stage, and they receive more feedback from end users and the industry.

This points to a future where there is no need to sacrifice relevant advertising and monetization in order to deliver a private and secure experience. 


First-party relationships are vital

Developing strong relationships with customers has always been critical for brands to build a successful business, and this becomes even more vital in a privacy-first world. We will continue to support first-party relationships on our ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers. And we'll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with.

Keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires all of us to do more to protect privacy — and that means an end to not only third-party cookies, but also any technology used for tracking individual people as they browse the web. We remain committed to preserving a vibrant and open ecosystem where people can access a broad range of ad-supported content with confidence that their privacy and choices are respected.  We look forward to working with others in the industry on the path forward.

Power your retail media business with Google

More people are browsing and buying online than ever before, creating an influx of demand and data for retailers. This shift in consumer behavior has in turn created a unique opportunity for retailers to deepen their relationships with brand partners, grow new revenue streams, and improve shopper experiences by developing a retail media business.  

Built on an integrated system of technology, with features ranging from ad management to closed loop measurement, retail media turns site traffic into insights that retailers can use to better understand what their customers want and need. Using these insights and their first-party data, retailers can develop customized advertising offerings for brands that help shoppers find what they are looking for faster, which often leads to more sales. 

Today we are publishing a new guide called Building a Retail Media Business with Google, where we take a deeper look at the benefits and technology needed to develop a retail media business that will flex and scale to your goals. Read on for a high-level overview of what you’ll learn in the guide.


An opportunity for retailers and their brand partners 

As e-commerce continues to grow, brands are looking to spend more of their marketing dollars with retailers online, and looking to partner with those who can offer integrated insights and a holistic view of the customer experience. By establishing a retail media business, retailers can access these brands’ budgets while helping them connect with customers more frequently, and with more personalized promotions. 

For example, Best Buy recently ran a multi-channel advertising campaign for a prominent smart home electronics brand using their first-party data to reach shoppers on Bestbuy.com and across the web. Through their technology implementation, Best Buy was able to unify the measurement and optimization of their ads, boost conversion rates by as much as 45% and generate a 10x return on ad spend for their partner brand.


Building an end-to-end retail media solution

For businesses ready to maximize the impact of their first-party data, Google provides technology and guidance to help build a retail media business. Our privacy-centric solutions can be customized for your organization, and are built to scale. As your business grows, you can integrate other tools in ways that work for you, keeping your retail media business flexible and customized to meet your goals. 

Using Google technology to stand up your retail media business can help you unlock actionable insights, and closed-loop measurement across channels. Though you may already be familiar with Google's solutions individually, integrations between platforms like Google Ad Manager, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360 and Analytics 360 can offer new views and insights into your business’s performance. Additionally, our solutions can integrate with third-party technology or your proprietary technology, meaning you can build your retail media business across an even broader set of solutions. 

By bringing together the power of ad serving capabilities, holistic measurement and end-to-end campaign management, retailers can improve their offering to advertisers and get more value from their first-party insights.


Taking the first step

For retailers looking to get started, our new guide will provide you with insights and direction on how to build your retail media business. Learn how Google can help your business drive greater sales through technology and expertise, and add value to your brand partnerships along the way. Read through our best practices on preparing for recommended organizational changes and the benefits of cross-platform reporting, while diving into details on select tools. Lastly, explore the ways in which retailers like you have invested in retail media, and opened up channels for greater sales, stronger brand relationships and improved customer experiences.


Start the year with new video measurement and reporting features

As 2021 begins, we’re still adapting to new ways of life, whether it’s working from home or streaming the latest TV shows and movies directly from our living rooms. In this new environment, businesses are also learning how to achieve goals while working more efficiently across distributed workforces, and it’s no different when it comes to publishers’ video monetization goals. As viewers spent 57% more time streaming video content this past year, video publishers and TV programmers adjusted quickly to measuring ad performance across screens to understand how to meet their goals, grow revenue and deliver a good viewing experience. 

However, video and over-the-top (OTT) measurement hasn’t always been easy due to the variety of devices and platforms, the lack of standardized signals and the reliance on traditional TV data and reservations. To help our partners more efficiently and effectively measure video and OTT inventory performance, we’re launching a suite of new video-first measurement and reporting tools in Google Ad Manager so they can understand what’s working best and earn more money.


Better understand your true video inventory availability

Video True Opportunities Reporting enables partners to understand the true inventory potential of every commercial break using time-based metrics that are built specifically for video. With this feature, you can easily define the ad duration which you consider to be an ad opportunity, let’s say 30 seconds. Then, you can report on the total number of ad opportunities in a video stream, the number of capped opportunities based on your max ads per pod settings, and the number of matched opportunities that were filled by direct or programmatic demand sources. Video True Opportunities will only measure commercial breaks that viewers actually watch, automatically adjusting for user drop-off that occurs on on-demand content. With a more accurate view into inventory availability and fill rates, you can understand mid-break drop-offs, unfilled ad time, and slate in live broadcasts, so that you can better optimize your video inventory.

You can also use this report with Ad Break Templates, a feature that enables you to use granular advertising rules to create a customized commercial break, so that you can understand ad opportunities based on how you sell your ads. Easily break down Video True Opportunities metrics by custom spots to see how your inventory is performing—whether it’s programmatic, sponsorships or inventory-shared ads. This information can help you determine where user drop-off or empty ad breaks have occurred, optimize your max ad settings and understand where fill rates may be low so that you can improve ad break performance and monetize more effectively across all of your demand partners.

We’ve also made enhancements to TV Forecasting that allow partners to more accurately project available video inventory and account for seasonality complexities like those caused by the unpredictable nature of COVID-19. First, we’ve integrated Video True Opportunities metrics into TV Forecasting, like ad duration and ad opportunities, so that partners can use these new data points to understand future inventory availability. Next, partners can now customize and adjust ad requests based on reference points. For example, if you’re planning to premiere a new season of an existing show in January 2021, but the previous season premiered in November 2019, you can tell Ad Manager to use the traffic spikes or ad request characteristics from the 2019 premiere as a reference point instead of the previous year’s January to more accurately inform the forecasted inventory availability in 2021. 


Explore, measure and package your inventory based on content insights

Content has become an even more critical inventory signal across OTT devices due to device fragmentation. To give partners a new content-aware way to explore, measure and package their video inventory, we’re making the Video Content Explorer UI more widely available and adding new insights cards. The new audience insights card offers demographic breakdowns of content based on your first-party audience data so that you can understand what audiences are watching your content and more effectively value your inventory. Additional insights cards also reveal details into the top devices your content was viewed on, which content is driving the highest impressions, and the sell-through performance of ads on your content. This information can help you optimize your ads across devices and demographics, and understand where there are opportunities to increase monetization of specific content. Moving forward, this screen will be Ad Manager’s primary content hub, where we’ll add more content packaging capabilities, audience insights sources and monetization features.


Video Content Explorer

Increase OTT impression value with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings 

Part of what makes TV content so valuable is the fact that it’s often a shared viewing experience, with families and friends viewing together in the same room. To help our partners accurately measure this viewership, we've integrated with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product suite, which provides OTT measurement of select platforms that is inclusive of co-viewing. Using Nielsen data, you can measure and receive credit for multiple impressions on your OTT inventory that reflects co-viewing. Additionally, using Google Ad Manager’s demographic pacing features, it’s possible to have your line item impression goals update automatically based on Nielsen in-demo rates and advertiser requirements.

As we look at the year ahead, we’ll continue building even more advanced video measurement and reporting features, like automated video notifications, new insights cards and video content packaging, so that you can have more actionable insights and sell your video inventory as efficiently as possible. 

Start the year with new video measurement and reporting features

As 2021 begins, we’re still adapting to new ways of life, whether it’s working from home or streaming the latest TV shows and movies directly from our living rooms. In this new environment, businesses are also learning how to achieve goals while working more efficiently across distributed workforces, and it’s no different when it comes to publishers’ video monetization goals. As viewers spent 57% more time streaming video content this past year, video publishers and TV programmers adjusted quickly to measuring ad performance across screens to understand how to meet their goals, grow revenue and deliver a good viewing experience. 

However, video and over-the-top (OTT) measurement hasn’t always been easy due to the variety of devices and platforms, the lack of standardized signals and the reliance on traditional TV data and reservations. To help our partners more efficiently and effectively measure video and OTT inventory performance, we’re launching a suite of new video-first measurement and reporting tools in Google Ad Manager so they can understand what’s working best and earn more money.


Better understand your true video inventory availability

Video True Opportunities Reporting enables partners to understand the true inventory potential of every commercial break using time-based metrics that are built specifically for video. With this feature, you can easily define the ad duration which you consider to be an ad opportunity, let’s say 30 seconds. Then, you can report on the total number of ad opportunities in a video stream, the number of capped opportunities based on your max ads per pod settings, and the number of matched opportunities that were filled by direct or programmatic demand sources. Video True Opportunities will only measure commercial breaks that viewers actually watch, automatically adjusting for user drop-off that occurs on on-demand content. With a more accurate view into inventory availability and fill rates, you can understand mid-break drop-offs, unfilled ad time, and slate in live broadcasts, so that you can better optimize your video inventory.

You can also use this report with Ad Break Templates, a feature that enables you to use granular advertising rules to create a customized commercial break, so that you can understand ad opportunities based on how you sell your ads. Easily break down Video True Opportunities metrics by custom spots to see how your inventory is performing—whether it’s programmatic, sponsorships or inventory-shared ads. This information can help you determine where user drop-off or empty ad breaks have occurred, optimize your max ad settings and understand where fill rates may be low so that you can improve ad break performance and monetize more effectively across all of your demand partners.

We’ve also made enhancements to TV Forecasting that allow partners to more accurately project available video inventory and account for seasonality complexities like those caused by the unpredictable nature of COVID-19. First, we’ve integrated Video True Opportunities metrics into TV Forecasting, like ad duration and ad opportunities, so that partners can use these new data points to understand future inventory availability. Next, partners can now customize and adjust ad requests based on reference points. For example, if you’re planning to premiere a new season of an existing show in January 2021, but the previous season premiered in November 2019, you can tell Ad Manager to use the traffic spikes or ad request characteristics from the 2019 premiere as a reference point instead of the previous year’s January to more accurately inform the forecasted inventory availability in 2021. 


Explore, measure and package your inventory based on content insights

Content has become an even more critical inventory signal across OTT devices due to device fragmentation. To give partners a new content-aware way to explore, measure and package their video inventory, we’re making the Video Content Explorer UI more widely available and adding new insights cards. The new audience insights card offers demographic breakdowns of content based on your first-party audience data so that you can understand what audiences are watching your content and more effectively value your inventory. Additional insights cards also reveal details into the top devices your content was viewed on, which content is driving the highest impressions, and the sell-through performance of ads on your content. This information can help you optimize your ads across devices and demographics, and understand where there are opportunities to increase monetization of specific content. Moving forward, this screen will be Ad Manager’s primary content hub, where we’ll add more content packaging capabilities, audience insights sources and monetization features.


Video Content Explorer

Increase OTT impression value with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings 

Part of what makes TV content so valuable is the fact that it’s often a shared viewing experience, with families and friends viewing together in the same room. To help our partners accurately measure this viewership, we've integrated with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product suite, which provides OTT measurement of select platforms that is inclusive of co-viewing. Using Nielsen data, you can measure and receive credit for multiple impressions on your OTT inventory that reflects co-viewing. Additionally, using Google Ad Manager’s demographic pacing features, it’s possible to have your line item impression goals update automatically based on Nielsen in-demo rates and advertiser requirements.

As we look at the year ahead, we’ll continue building even more advanced video measurement and reporting features, like automated video notifications, new insights cards and video content packaging, so that you can have more actionable insights and sell your video inventory as efficiently as possible. 

Start the year with new video measurement and reporting features

As 2021 begins, we’re still adapting to new ways of life, whether it’s working from home or streaming the latest TV shows and movies directly from our living rooms. In this new environment, businesses are also learning how to achieve goals while working more efficiently across distributed workforces, and it’s no different when it comes to publishers’ video monetization goals. As viewers spent 57% more time streaming video content this past year, video publishers and TV programmers adjusted quickly to measuring ad performance across screens to understand how to meet their goals, grow revenue and deliver a good viewing experience. 

However, video and over-the-top (OTT) measurement hasn’t always been easy due to the variety of devices and platforms, the lack of standardized signals and the reliance on traditional TV data and reservations. To help our partners more efficiently and effectively measure video and OTT inventory performance, we’re launching a suite of new video-first measurement and reporting tools in Google Ad Manager so they can understand what’s working best and earn more money.


Better understand your true video inventory availability

Video True Opportunities Reporting enables partners to understand the true inventory potential of every commercial break using time-based metrics that are built specifically for video. With this feature, you can easily define the ad duration which you consider to be an ad opportunity, let’s say 30 seconds. Then, you can report on the total number of ad opportunities in a video stream, the number of capped opportunities based on your max ads per pod settings, and the number of matched opportunities that were filled by direct or programmatic demand sources. Video True Opportunities will only measure commercial breaks that viewers actually watch, automatically adjusting for user drop-off that occurs on on-demand content. With a more accurate view into inventory availability and fill rates, you can understand mid-break drop-offs, unfilled ad time, and slate in live broadcasts, so that you can better optimize your video inventory.

You can also use this report with Ad Break Templates, a feature that enables you to use granular advertising rules to create a customized commercial break, so that you can understand ad opportunities based on how you sell your ads. Easily break down Video True Opportunities metrics by custom spots to see how your inventory is performing—whether it’s programmatic, sponsorships or inventory-shared ads. This information can help you determine where user drop-off or empty ad breaks have occurred, optimize your max ad settings and understand where fill rates may be low so that you can improve ad break performance and monetize more effectively across all of your demand partners.

We’ve also made enhancements to TV Forecasting that allow partners to more accurately project available video inventory and account for seasonality complexities like those caused by the unpredictable nature of COVID-19. First, we’ve integrated Video True Opportunities metrics into TV Forecasting, like ad duration and ad opportunities, so that partners can use these new data points to understand future inventory availability. Next, partners can now customize and adjust ad requests based on reference points. For example, if you’re planning to premiere a new season of an existing show in January 2021, but the previous season premiered in November 2019, you can tell Ad Manager to use the traffic spikes or ad request characteristics from the 2019 premiere as a reference point instead of the previous year’s January to more accurately inform the forecasted inventory availability in 2021. 


Explore, measure and package your inventory based on content insights

Content has become an even more critical inventory signal across OTT devices due to device fragmentation. To give partners a new content-aware way to explore, measure and package their video inventory, we’re making the Video Content Explorer UI more widely available and adding new insights cards. The new audience insights card offers demographic breakdowns of content based on your first-party audience data so that you can understand what audiences are watching your content and more effectively value your inventory. Additional insights cards also reveal details into the top devices your content was viewed on, which content is driving the highest impressions, and the sell-through performance of ads on your content. This information can help you optimize your ads across devices and demographics, and understand where there are opportunities to increase monetization of specific content. Moving forward, this screen will be Ad Manager’s primary content hub, where we’ll add more content packaging capabilities, audience insights sources and monetization features.


Video Content Explorer

Increase OTT impression value with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings 

Part of what makes TV content so valuable is the fact that it’s often a shared viewing experience, with families and friends viewing together in the same room. To help our partners accurately measure this viewership, we've integrated with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product suite, which provides OTT measurement of select platforms that is inclusive of co-viewing. Using Nielsen data, you can measure and receive credit for multiple impressions on your OTT inventory that reflects co-viewing. Additionally, using Google Ad Manager’s demographic pacing features, it’s possible to have your line item impression goals update automatically based on Nielsen in-demo rates and advertiser requirements.

As we look at the year ahead, we’ll continue building even more advanced video measurement and reporting features, like automated video notifications, new insights cards and video content packaging, so that you can have more actionable insights and sell your video inventory as efficiently as possible. 

Building a privacy-first future for web advertising

Advertising is essential to keeping the web open for everyone, but the web ecosystem is at risk if privacy practices do not keep up with changing expectations. ​People want assurances that their identity and information are safe as they browse the web. That’s why Chrome introduced the Privacy Sandbox and, today, shared progress on their path to eliminate third-party cookies by replacing them with viable privacy-first alternatives, developed alongside ecosystem partners, that will help publishers and advertisers succeed while also protecting people’s privacy as they move across the web.

It might be hard to imagine how advertising on the web could be relevant, and accurately measured, without ​third-party cookies. When the Privacy Sandbox technology for interest-based advertising (FLoC) was first proposed last year, we started with the idea that groups of people with common interests could replace individual identifiers. Today, we're releasing new data showing how this innovation can deliver results nearly as effective as cookie-based approaches.​ Technology advancements such as FLoC, along with similar promising efforts in areas like measurement, fraud protection and anti-fingerprinting, are the future of web advertising — and the Privacy Sandbox will power our web products in a post-third-party cookie world.


Interest-based advertising

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests. This approach effectively hides individuals “in the crowd” and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private on the browser. 

By creating simulations based on the principles defined in Chrome’s FLoC proposal, Google’s ads teams have tested this privacy-first alternative to third-party cookies. Results indicate that when it comes to generating interest-based audiences, FLoC can provide an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies. Our tests of FLoC to reach in-market and affinity Google Audiences show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising. The specific result depends on the strength of the clustering algorithm that FLoC uses and the type of audience being reached. 

We’re encouraged by what we’ve observed and the value that this solution offers to users, publishers and advertisers. Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release in March and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2. If you’d like to get a head start, you can run your own simulations (as we did) based on the principles outlined in this FLoC whitepaper.


Audience creation

The Privacy Sandbox also includes proposals for how marketers can create and deploy their own audiences, without the use of third-party cookies. One example is when advertisers want to reach prior visitors to their website via remarketing.

Over the last year, several members of the ad tech community have offered input for how this might work, including proposals from Criteo, NextRoll, Magnite and RTB House. Chrome has published a new proposal called FLEDGE that expands on a previous Chrome proposal (called TURTLEDOVE) and takes into account the industry feedback they’ve heard, including the idea of using a “trusted server” — as defined by compliance with certain principles and policies — that’s specifically designed to store information about a campaign’s bids and budgets. Chrome intends to make FLEDGE available for testing through origin trials later this year with the opportunity for ad tech companies to try using the API under a “bring your own server” model.

While proposals such as FLoC and FLEDGE explore privacy-preserving alternatives for reaching relevant audiences, there’s also work being done to help buyers decide how much to bid for ads seen by these audiences. We invite ad exchanges, demand-side platforms and advertisers to begin experimenting with the technology in the Privacy Sandbox. Feedback from these tests will help ensure that ad auctions will continue to function seamlessly when third-party cookies are deprecated.


Conversion measurement

Chrome has proposed a number of technologies within the Privacy Sandbox that would allow marketers, and partners working on their behalf, to measure campaign performance without third-party cookies. These proposals protect consumer privacy while supporting key advertiser requirements, such as event-level reporting that enables bidding models to recognize patterns in the data, and aggregate-level reporting which delivers accurate measurement over groups of users.

By using privacy-preserving techniques like aggregating information, adding noise, and limiting the amount of data that gets sent from the device, the proposed APIs report conversions in a way that protects user privacy. For example, an event-level iteration of the API is currently available in origin trials for measuring click-through conversions. It protects privacy by introducing noise and limiting the bits of conversion data that the API can send at a time. As a result, advertisers will have to prioritize which conversions are most important for their reporting needs.

Over the coming months, Google’s ads teams will continue evaluating how the proposed conversion measurement APIs can be used alongside Google’s measurement products to support use cases such as reporting view-through conversions, determining incrementality and reach as well as performing attribution. We recommend customers implement sitewide tagging with the global site tag or Google Tag Manager in order to minimize disruptions during this time. More decisions will have to be made before a prototype is built — including what the right level of noise should be and what's the minimum number of conversions to include when sending an aggregate-level report — so we invite ad tech companies, publishers and advertisers to get involved in these discussions within the public forums.


Ad fraud prevention

The health of the ad-supported web depends on companies being able to distinguish actual visitors from fraudulent traffic. That’s why Chrome opened the Trust Token API for testing last July to help verify authentic traffic without exposing people’s identities in the process. And today, Chrome shared plans to start an origin trial in March with their next release to support a new type of Trust Token issuer that would improve the detection of fraud on mobile devices while safeguarding user privacy. Google’s ads teams will then start testing this feature with trusted users on mobile, and share feedback within the public forums based on the results.


Anti-fingerprinting

An important goal of the Privacy Sandbox is developing technology to protect people from opaque or hidden techniques that share data about individual users and allow them to be tracked in a covert manner. One such tactic involves using a device’s IP address to try and identify someone without their knowledge or ability to opt out. Chrome recently published a new proposal, Gnatcatcher, for how someone’s IP address might be masked to protect that person’s identity without interfering with a website’s normal operations. This proposal will continue to be refined based on feedback from the web community.


The future of privacy on the web

Thanks to the initial FLoC results, ongoing development of the APIs and encouraging dialogue with the industry, we are more confident than ever that the Privacy Sandbox is the best path forward to improve privacy for web users while ensuring publishers can earn what they need to fund great content and advertisers can reach the right people for their products. For Google’s ads teams, the Privacy Sandbox technologies represent the future of how our ads and measurement products will work on the web. We encourage others to join us in defining this new approach which will create better experiences for consumers while providing more durable solutions for the ads industry.

As we move forward in 2021, you can expect to hear more about the progress being made in the Privacy Sandbox, including more opportunities for you to begin testing these new technologies in your campaigns. So, stay engaged in the public discussions about the Privacy Sandbox proposals in forums like the W3C’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group, or work with your technology partners to evaluate and experiment with the proposals that are already in origin trials. Together, we can reshape the web so that it works better for everyone.

Five ways publishers can drive more revenue this holiday season

We know from previous years that the holiday season and the end of year bring increased internet traffic and advertising spend. But this year, people have already started their holiday shopping. According to research we ran with Ipsos over the summer, over 25 percent of U.S. holiday shoppers said they had started shopping for the season as of the end of August. This means publishers have an opportunity to jump-start their seasonal monetization strategies now.


As people search the web to look for inspiration and research ideas for that perfect gift, publishers can review their content strategies, get their sites and apps ready for fluctuations in traffic, and of course adjust their advertising plans to make the most of the increase in marketer demand. Here are some tips and optimizations Google Ad Manager partners can start applying today to ensure they’re ready for the 2020 holiday rush:


One

Optimize your site’s user experience


Start optimizing your site’s performance as soon as possible. Our Web Vitals initiative identifies three key aspects of performance for you to start with: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. We’ve started surfacing the Web Vitals in all of our most popular tools, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools. You can also quickly improve your pagespeed by optimizing your top Google Publisher Tag (GPT) calls, limiting calls to third-party servers, and compressing images.


You can also work to maximize your site’s ad viewability. Viewability is a measure of whether an ad had a chance to be seen by a user, and marketers are generally willing to spend more money for viewable ads. You can get started improving your site’s viewability with these best practices, such as using responsive design, lazy loading and vertical ad units.

Two

Know your audience


Google Analytics is a good place to start when you’re looking to learn more about your audiences. You can use Analytics core functionality to better understand how your users are engaging with content across your sites and apps, then use those insights to take action, such as improving your UX, optimizing your editorial or content strategies. Analytics also features several seamless integrations with Ad Manager. 

 

Another free tool you can use to learn more about your visitors is News Consumers Insights (NCI). NCI can benefit all types of publishers by providing insight on which readers drive value and how to improve engagement with personalized business recommendations. Download the NCI playbook to learn more.
Three

Increase competition for your ad inventory


Incorporating new ad formats and sizes can help increase competition for your inventory. Some good options include; Native ads, which match the look and feel of your site or app, Sticky ads, which stay visible on the page while the user scrolls through the content, and In-feed and in-article video ads, which allow you to serve outstream video content that can appear in articles, social feeds, or in between levels of games. 


Another way to increase competition is to make sure you aren’t limiting your demand through potentially unnecessary category blocks—for instance, blocking general categories is not recommended. Instead, try blocking sensitive categories, a specific advertiser URL, a sub-category, or reassessing the block altogether. 


For more information on ways to increase competition for your inventory, Ad Manager partners can also check out their Opportunities & Experiments recommendations throughout the holiday season.

Four

Monitor price floors


Keep a close eye on your unified pricing rules throughout the holiday season to make sure you’re not missing out on demand. The pricing rules insights card on your Ad Manager dashboard shows the bid landscape data for your top five rules by revenue, and helps you search for your other rules. If you notice that a large number of bids are coming in below your unified pricing floor, you may want to consider lowering it.


Make sure your unified pricing rules use target CPM. Target CPM is an opt-in feature that uses machine learning to help you optimize your floor prices to increase your revenue. It dynamically adjusts your unified price floor up or down to allow all your non-guaranteed demand sources like Authorized Buyers, Open Bidders, and remnant line items, like those from header bidding, to win more auctions, increasing your fill rate. When you use target CPM, winning bids can be higher or lower than your target CPM, but the average CPM of your inventory will be equal to or above the target price you enter, maintaining your inventory pricing.
Fine

Identify premium ad inventory


During the holidays, advertisers are looking for quality inventory where their consumers are spending the most time. This year more than ever, they’re prioritizing deals on premium inventory early in the holiday season. Take advantage of this high demand to set up deals with your advertisers usingProgrammatic Guaranteed. Our new features allow you to negotiate special sponsorship deals with advertisers for day part or share of voice during high demand periods, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.


To achieve the best results with Programmatic Guaranteed, run regular reporting on your inventory like placements, creative types, and audience segments. This will help you identify and market inventory that is in high demand. Keep an eye out for audience segments that match consumer trends, and proactively flag these to advertisers.


While we may not know all the trends this year’s holiday season will bring, we do know that shoppers have already begun their search for the perfect gifts. By starting to optimize your site and account early, you’ll be better positioned to drive more traffic to your site and offer marketers valuable inventory at a premium price. 


For more tips and optimization suggestions, register for our upcoming How to prepare for the 2020 Holiday season webinar and read our new guide, “Get ready for 5 big shifts in shopping behavior this holiday season.”

Five ways publishers can drive more revenue this holiday season

We know from previous years that the holiday season and the end of year bring increased internet traffic and advertising spend. But this year, people have already started their holiday shopping. According to research we ran with Ipsos over the summer, over 25 percent of U.S. holiday shoppers said they had started shopping for the season as of the end of August. This means publishers have an opportunity to jump-start their seasonal monetization strategies now.


As people search the web to look for inspiration and research ideas for that perfect gift, publishers can review their content strategies, get their sites and apps ready for fluctuations in traffic, and of course adjust their advertising plans to make the most of the increase in marketer demand. Here are some tips and optimizations Google Ad Manager partners can start applying today to ensure they’re ready for the 2020 holiday rush:


One

Optimize your site’s user experience


Start optimizing your site’s performance as soon as possible. Our Web Vitals initiative identifies three key aspects of performance for you to start with: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. We’ve started surfacing the Web Vitals in all of our most popular tools, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools. You can also quickly improve your pagespeed by optimizing your top Google Publisher Tag (GPT) calls, limiting calls to third-party servers, and compressing images.


You can also work to maximize your site’s ad viewability. Viewability is a measure of whether an ad had a chance to be seen by a user, and marketers are generally willing to spend more money for viewable ads. You can get started improving your site’s viewability with these best practices, such as using responsive design, lazy loading and vertical ad units.

Two

Know your audience


Google Analytics is a good place to start when you’re looking to learn more about your audiences. You can use Analytics core functionality to better understand how your users are engaging with content across your sites and apps, then use those insights to take action, such as improving your UX, optimizing your editorial or content strategies. Analytics also features several seamless integrations with Ad Manager. 

 

Another free tool you can use to learn more about your visitors is News Consumers Insights (NCI). NCI can benefit all types of publishers by providing insight on which readers drive value and how to improve engagement with personalized business recommendations. Download the NCI playbook to learn more.
Three

Increase competition for your ad inventory


Incorporating new ad formats and sizes can help increase competition for your inventory. Some good options include; Native ads, which match the look and feel of your site or app, Sticky ads, which stay visible on the page while the user scrolls through the content, and In-feed and in-article video ads, which allow you to serve outstream video content that can appear in articles, social feeds, or in between levels of games. 


Another way to increase competition is to make sure you aren’t limiting your demand through potentially unnecessary category blocks—for instance, blocking general categories is not recommended. Instead, try blocking sensitive categories, a specific advertiser URL, a sub-category, or reassessing the block altogether. 


For more information on ways to increase competition for your inventory, Ad Manager partners can also check out their Opportunities & Experiments recommendations throughout the holiday season.

Four

Monitor price floors


Keep a close eye on your unified pricing rules throughout the holiday season to make sure you’re not missing out on demand. The pricing rules insights card on your Ad Manager dashboard shows the bid landscape data for your top five rules by revenue, and helps you search for your other rules. If you notice that a large number of bids are coming in below your unified pricing floor, you may want to consider lowering it.


Make sure your unified pricing rules use target CPM. Target CPM is an opt-in feature that uses machine learning to help you optimize your floor prices to increase your revenue. It dynamically adjusts your unified price floor up or down to allow all your non-guaranteed demand sources like Authorized Buyers, Open Bidders, and remnant line items, like those from header bidding, to win more auctions, increasing your fill rate. When you use target CPM, winning bids can be higher or lower than your target CPM, but the average CPM of your inventory will be equal to or above the target price you enter, maintaining your inventory pricing.
Fine

Identify premium ad inventory


During the holidays, advertisers are looking for quality inventory where their consumers are spending the most time. This year more than ever, they’re prioritizing deals on premium inventory early in the holiday season. Take advantage of this high demand to set up deals with your advertisers usingProgrammatic Guaranteed. Our new features allow you to negotiate special sponsorship deals with advertisers for day part or share of voice during high demand periods, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.


To achieve the best results with Programmatic Guaranteed, run regular reporting on your inventory like placements, creative types, and audience segments. This will help you identify and market inventory that is in high demand. Keep an eye out for audience segments that match consumer trends, and proactively flag these to advertisers.


While we may not know all the trends this year’s holiday season will bring, we do know that shoppers have already begun their search for the perfect gifts. By starting to optimize your site and account early, you’ll be better positioned to drive more traffic to your site and offer marketers valuable inventory at a premium price. 


For more tips and optimization suggestions, register for our upcoming How to prepare for the 2020 Holiday season webinar and read our new guide, “Get ready for 5 big shifts in shopping behavior this holiday season.”

Five ways to protect your ad-supported connected TV experiences

The growth of connected TV (CTV) continues to transform the television experience, offering viewers new premium content and more ways to watch that content on a variety of streaming services and platforms. With an estimated 76% of US households owning a CTV and viewers streaming more content from their homes than ever before, programmers, distributors, and marketers are all focused on reaching TV audiences with relevant messages. Increasingly, this means through programmatic ads, which offer scale, efficiency, and automation, while maintaining the quality of premium CTV inventory. But because CTV is still an evolving technology with an array of devices and platforms, it’s led to challenges in developing industry standards, which doesn’t just hinder the ability for CTV inventory to be sold programmatically—it also leaves the medium vulnerable to fraudulent activity. This can create risks for the entire ads ecosystem and lead to poor advertising experiences for viewers. 


Protecting our partners, advertisers, and users is our top priority and Google Ad Manager’s connected TV solutions were built with this in mind. To further help our TV programmer and distributor partners protect their ad-supported CTV experiences, my team and I have put together a best practice guide based on years of experience helping the TV industry navigate and succeed with new digital technology. Below is an overview of five best practices that can help you safely monetize your CTV inventory at scale.


CTV Experiences 1

1. Integrate with industry standards to protect and scale CTV monetization

While many industry standards are still being developed for CTV, we’ve worked closely with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) to build and integrate new CTV standards as they become available. Integrating with industry standards where possible helps ensure that your CTV inventory is eligible for programmatic campaigns and delivering high-quality ad experiences. For example, Google Ad Manager’s Dynamic Ad Insertion is the first server-side ad insertion solution to be accredited by the MRC for its client-initiated impression measurement of video ads on live and video on-demand (VOD) content. Ad Manager also supports the IAB Tech Lab’s Identifier for Advertising (IFA) Session ID, which offers an industry standard for CTV frequency capping and reach measurement, and is similarly supported by media-buying platforms like Display & Video 360.

CTV Experiences 2

2. Verify your CTV inventory to ensure it’s authentically represented

An important factor to monetizing CTV inventory is verifying that it is authentically represented, which makes your inventory more valuable to advertisers and helps protect it from fraudulent activity. A best practice for verifying CTV inventory through your advertising technology partner is to leverage its software developer kit (SDK), which offers built-in inventory safeguards and is typically recommended over tag-based solutions. Google Ad Manager offers the Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK, which helps protect your CTV inventory and reduces the risk of fraud by verifying that impressions for live and VOD content are legitimate.
CTV Experiences 3

3. Pass CTV inventory signals to grow advertiser demand

To maximize the value of your inventory and grow advertiser demand, pass programmatic signals when possible, particularly those that reflect viewability, brand safety, and demographics. Sharing this information further increases your ability to protect your CTV inventory and authentically represent it across programmatic demand channels. With Google Ad Manager’s IMA SDK, partners are able to securely pass key programmatic signals like App Name/ID, App/Bundle ID, IFA, Player Size, content signals, and more. We also offer inferred viewability measurement for CTV inventory as an interim solution until a viewability standard is in place, which makes your inventory eligible for advertising campaigns that have viewability goals.

CTV Experiences 4

4. Choose technology providers with safeguards and scale

Delivering a good advertising experience while protecting your inventory hinges on working with the right technology providers. Make sure your technology providers offer scalable high-capacity infrastructure, safeguards to prevent data leakage, features built specifically for CTV, and global support for live and VOD content. Live content is especially high-stakes as it oftens has millions of concurrent viewers and requires creatives to be transcoded quickly for viewers’ devices and bandwidth settings. To help our partners monetize live and VOD content safely and effectively, Google Ad Manager offers global infrastructure, world-class support for live and on-demand content, built-in safeguards with our IMA SDK, and CTV-specific features like Smarter Ad Breaks, Dynamic Ad Insertion, and Programmatic Guaranteed.

CTV Experiences 5

5. Audit and validate your CTV ad request setup

Regular reviews of your CTV ad request setup can help you effectively monetize your CTV content. We recommend validating your CTV setups by establishing recurring audits with your technology team to review your device-specific video players and deployments. Protect your CTV inventory by running an audit to ensure HTTPS is enabled on ad requests, that your signal quality is high, and that you’re actively monitoring campaign performance. My team of TV platform specialists offer ongoing audit support and can help you conduct regular reviews of your CTV ad request setup to ensure you’re able to maximize CTV revenue. 


Download our protecting your ad-supported CTV experiences at scale guide to learn more about having the right protections in place. If you want more details on how Google Ad Manager is providing safe, scalable, and flexible CTV monetization solutions, please reach out to your Google representative or contact us here.

Helping global publishers accelerate business growth

Since launching the Google News Initiative in 2018, we’ve worked with news organizations of all sizes as they’ve adapted to the challenges of an increasingly digital world, which has impacted their business models and consumer behavior. Programs like our GNI Labs have helped publishers tackle specific business challenges, like digital subscriptions, advertising and data, while tools like News Consumer Insights have helped thousands of newsrooms grow their audiences online. 

During this time, we’ve learned from our partners that the shift to digital doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months and even years of hard work to attract and develop digitally-minded talent, adopt data-driven thinking and build an audience-first culture. Through the GNI, we want to support publishers with this transition. 

That’s why today, we’re introducing a global program to help news publishers navigate the complexity of digital transformation. The GNI Digital Growth Program is a free program aimed at helping small and mid-sized news publishers around the world develop the capabilities required to accelerate the growth of their businesses online. The program is informed by the lessons learned from GNI projects and programs, and was built in collaboration with industry experts including FT Strategies, FTI Consulting and Mather Economics, plus news industry associations including INMA, Local Media Association and WAN-IFRA. 

The GNI Digital Growth Program will initially focus on five topic areas: Reader Revenue, Audience Development, Advertising Revenue, Data and Product. Our curriculum includes playbooks full of real-world examples, interactive exercises to help solve business problems, workshops to bring these lessons to life and Labs to provide hands-on advisory support. At first, we’re focusing on our Reader Revenue pillar, with other topic areas coming over the next few months. Participating publishers can anticipate access to:


  • A comprehensive playbook that offers publishers strategies and real-world examples to help with building and optimizing a reader revenue model 

  • A set of interactive exercises, including an Opportunity Sizing exercise to help publishers estimate their potential reader revenue opportunity, a User Funnel diagnostic to identify areas for improvement across key reader revenue performance metrics and a Goal Setting exercise to build a plan for long-term reader revenue growth

  • Workshops led by top industry experts offering business recommendations

  • GNI Labs which provide a group of publishers with personalized support and one-on-one coaching from our industry partners

Publishers can access the free playbooks and exercises at any time on our online hub. The workshops are available on a first-come-first-served basis, while Labs will be available upon application. To sign up for our first series of workshops, please visit our GNI Digital Growth Program page. 

This program builds on our recently launched edition in Europe. We’ve now expanded to ten languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Polish, German, Korean, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia. And as the curriculum evolves over time, we will introduce specialty sessions for publishers, such as Print-to-Digital Transformation and Digital Startups.

Google has long invested in supporting news organizations as they adapt their business models in an evolving media landscape. That’s why widely sharing our findings with the news industry has always been a cornerstone of the Google News Initiative’s approach. Through the GNI Digital Growth Program, we look forward to working with more news companies to think differently about their digital business, unlock new revenue opportunities and build sustainable growth online.