As digital advertising changes, it's essential for advertisers to stay ahead of the curve while meeting people's expectations. Consumers want privacy but they also want relevant ads. In fact, 62% of consumers in the US consider it important to have a personalized experience with a brand.[96be74]We don’t believe this should be rocket science for programmatic advertisers. This is why we are building simple, off-the-shelf solutions in Display & Video 360 with first-party data and machine learning. We’re announcing two of these solutions today, optimized targeting and Exchange Provided Identifiers.

Optimized targeting helps advertisers expand reach across relevant audiences and increase return on investment with the touch of just a button. Exchange Provided Identifier, also known as EPID, provides Display & Video 360 with new signals which will be used to automatically future-proof frequency management tools. In the future, EPIDs will be powering a variety of other marketing use cases in Display & Video 360 with no action required by advertisers.

Programmatic buys automatically powered with publishers’ data

Advertisers increasingly rely on publishers' first-party data to enrich their marketing strategies. That’s why we’re evolving our programmatic technology to organically inform Display & Video 360 solutions with those valuable signals.

You may be familiar with Publisher Provided Identifiers, also known as PPIDs, which became available for publishers to use programmatically last year. PPID allows publishers to send Google Ad Manager a first-party identifier for marketing use-cases. EPID expands on this technology. It makes it available to more exchanges, publishers, or vendors looking to share their first-party identifiers with Display & Video 360’s backend to improve the quality of programmatic ads served on their respective properties. EPIDs from a given exchange or publisher cannot be used to inform marketing strategies outside of that publisher’s inventory. This protects people from being tracked across the web.

Earlier this year, we started testing this feature and receiving EPIDs from several publishers and exchanges, including Magnite. Based on partner feedback, we began improving this feature. We’re excited to grow our list of partners and progressively enhance advertisers’ programmatic campaigns with these new durable signals.

In the coming months, EPID will be used to inform Display & Video 360 users’ frequency management solutions. This will ensure brands can continue avoiding ad repetition while maximizing reach efficiency even when third-party cookies go away. Advertisers won’t have to make any changes in their account since EPIDs will be organically embedded in Display & Video’s technology. Brands and agencies will automatically benefit from EPID when setting frequency goals.

In the near future, EPID will be used as a signal for building Google audience segments in Display & Video 360. This will give advertisers a chance to deliver more personalized ads on publishers’ sites for which EPIDs are received. Down the line, EPID will also help brands unlock other core advertising functionalities, like cross-device reach on a domain by domain basis, and invalid traffic prevention in a privacy-safe way.

Expand reach across audiences more easily

Reaching the right people with a message is one thing. But to be successful, advertisers have to reach enough of these people and scale their audience strategy. This is where machine learning and optimized targeting come in.

Optimized targeting lets advertisers find new and relevant customers likely to convert within their campaign goals. Campaign settings, such as manually-selected audiences including first-party data and Google audiences, influence the machine learning algorithm. Optimized targeting then uses machine learning to expand reach across other relevant groups without relying on third-party cookies.

Because it uses the same goals as our automated and custom bidding solutions, optimized targeting reaches people most likely to drive impressions, clicks, or conversions as defined and customized by the advertiser to drive business outcomes. This ultimately leads to better performance and increased conversions. In our early tests, we found that advertisers who use optimized targeting in Display & Video 360 can see, on average, a 25% improvement in their campaign objectives when using Google audiences and can see, on average, a 55% improvement when using first-party data.[4f8fcc]

In Display & Video 360, optimized targeting is currently available for YouTube Video Action campaigns and will expand beyond YouTube to all display and video campaigns in the coming months. Once launched, new eligible display and video campaigns will be opted into optimized targeting with the ability to opt out.

We are continuing to create Display & Video 360 solutions that will allow marketers to successfully reach and influence their most relevant audiences, while ensuring consumers feel safe online. EPID and optimized targeting are two of many new audience tools and features we are building for programmatic buyers.

Today’s customer journey is rarely a straight line. Consumers are constantly moving between touchpoints and channels, and brands need the right tools to keep up. Digital out-of-home is an increasingly popular option that brings the best of digital technology to a traditional advertising medium. It helps brands engage shoppers at moments when they make key decisions or take certain actions such as walking in a shopping mall or lining up at the grocery store checkout.

Today, we’re making digital out-of-home ads available to all Display & Video 360 users so that they can reach people out in their real-world journey with the efficiency of programmatic technology. This includes screens in public places such as stadiums, airports, bus stops, shopping centers, elevators, taxis and more.

The best of out-of-home and digital combined

With digital out-of-home ads in Display & Video 360, brands can combine the emotional power and captivating formats of traditional out-of-home advertising with the efficiency of other digital channels. With a single plan, they can reach people on screens of all shapes and sizes. And, it can be done rapidly and efficiently. Marketers can activate, pause, and optimize digital out-of-home campaigns in near real time. They can tackle everything from strategy and activation to reporting and optimization all in one place.

Centralizing buys and automating out-of-home campaigns is particularly effective for brands with international footprints. It gives them a chance to reach their global audience using a single tool. Today Display & Video 360 already partners with exchanges Hivestack, Magnite, Place Exchange, Ströer SSP, VIOOH and Vistar Media. These exchanges give access to large media owners around the world like Clear Channel Outdoor, Intersection, JCDecaux, Lamar and Ströer. All of this inventory can be secured via programmatic deals.

Another benefit to programmatic digital out-of-home is the flexibility it provides. While traditional buying tactics are usually geared toward one general region, digital out-of-home allows brands to run different versions of their messaging based on location of the screen or time of day.

Effective, contextual ads

Digital out-of-home ads placed through Display & Video 360 are not personalized, and we do not use individual identifiers or any user location data. Instead, advertisers can reach people based on contextual information of the screen location, like a traditional out-of-home ad, but with the flexibility and ease of programmatic. For example, a fast food spot can quickly advertise on a billboard in a bustling business district during the lunch hour for office workers to see. Later that day, the same billboard can promote an upcoming performance at a nearby concert venue.

When measuring ad impact, publishers provide Display & Video 360 with an impression multiplier, which estimates the number of people who may have seen an ad. This estimate, which isn’t based on an individual’s data, helps advertisers properly measure the impact of their digital out-of-home campaigns. Display & Video 360 vets all publishers to ensure they follow measurement methodologies defined by industry-recognized vendors like Geopath. Publishers that self-measure are not supported.

ASOS finds its fit with digital out-of-home in Display & Video 360

ASOS, one of the world’s leading online fashion retailers, wanted to find new and engaging ways to create fame on the high street whilst staying true to its digital roots. ASOS’ marketing team decided to use digital billboards in heavy footfall areas to generate awareness for their brand and drive passersby to visit their online store.

ASOS used Display & Video 360 to quickly select digital billboards with the map UI and arrange relevant Programmatic Guaranteed deals with leading publishers like Intersection in the U.S. and JCDecaux in the U.K. This streamlined approach allowed the brand to lean on a central platform to buy, implement and measure their campaign. As a result, the team fast tracked the process of booking hundreds of digital billboards, generating 22 million viewed impressions across the two countries.

The retailer then conducted a geo experiment with JCDecaux’s measurement partners to evaluate the impact of digital out-of-home ads on brand metrics. They observed a 14% increase in brand awareness and a 22% increase in brand consideration in exposed vs control areas.

Find out more about how to get your message out with digital out-of-home in Display & Video 360.

Enterprise marketers and agencies are increasingly turning to automation to handle many of their complex ad operations. Automating tasks is key for swift execution. Together with machine learning, it also lets you deliver relevant ads without reliance on sensitive data.

Display & Video 360 combines automation with customization so that you can create your own secret sauce to boost performance. You can harness your proprietary data and insights and combine them with Google's strengths in machine learning to achieve better advertising outcomes.

Custom bidding is a great example of this. It allows you to stay in control of your bidding strategy and curate a differentiated approach. And many of you have already turned to this tool to boost return on investment. For example, Charlotte Tilbury Beauty reduced cost per acquisition by 29% with custom bidding. As a luxury beauty retailer, it sells high-end products that drive fewer conversions at a higher price. To account for the fact that the brand had fewer conversions on which to optimize, it used a tailored full-funnel algorithm that factored in relevant event data higher up in the user journey. For example, the retailer started valuing visits, clicks, and ad viewability as new input signals.

Today, we’re announcing two new custom bidding functionalities in Display & Video 360.

Optimize to capture people’s attention

A growing number of marketers are looking to optimize their bids with the goal of capturing user attention. Attention is a particularly relevant metric for brands reaching their audience in lean-back environments such as connected TV. Optimizing towards users’ attention is especially beneficial when direct conversions are difficult to measure. For example, buyers can estimate the attention an ad will get based on its size or whether the video ad is audible or muted.

So on top of metrics like ‘complete in-view & audible’ and ‘time on screen’, we’re adding new custom bidding signals such as “player size” and "audibility", and extending custom bidding support to CTV. This gives you a chance to create attention-based algorithms using your own definitions.

Optimize for user paths on your site

Bidding towards the most valuable stages of the purchase journey is another winning strategy. To do this, leading brands are using first-party data from their Google Analytics accounts to tailor their bids and strengthen campaign performance in Display & Video 360.

We know that many of you have moved or are working on moving from Universal Analytics to the new Google Analytics. So we made sure that data coming from any new Analytics 4 property — either standard or 360 — can be activated in Display & Video 360.

Stay tuned to learn about more upcoming Display & Video solutions designed for brands and agencies to customize how machine learning and automation is applied.

As viewers continue to shift from traditional TV to connected TV (CTV), marketers are looking for effective ways to connect with streamers and measure the reach of their campaign across a variety of CTV apps. So we’re introducing new CTV solutions in Display & Video 360 to give you the option to pick the inventory and measurement solutions that work best for you.

First we’re adding audience guarantees based on Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) to Display & Video 360 and expanding advanced Programmatic Guaranteed features to more exchanges. Programmatic Guaranteed lets you access top CTV ad placements, combining the best of the direct deal buying experience with the automation and personalization of programmatic. Leading brands like Uber already use this buying technique to secure coveted CTV inventory around high-visibility events while still enjoying the efficiency of programmatic advertising.

Second, we’re making it simpler to buy YouTube CTV and other CTV apps in a consolidated workflow. This will give you a chance to improve your media performance by managing your campaign goals seamlessly across any CTV inventory.

Audience guarantees backed by Nielsen

CTV and video buyers often use Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings as the system of record to understand how many unique viewers they reached within their core audiences and prove campaign impact across digital media platforms. That’s why we’re launching Nielsen audience guarantees across streaming TV and video in Display & Video 360. This will make it easier to plan, buy and measure an entire connected TV upfront in Display & Video 360 in a way that’s comparable to linear TV. Being able to reach your key audiences has been central to effective traditional TV advertising — the same goes for CTV.

When setting up your guaranteed deal, you can now choose a specific age and gender demographic, like adults ages 18 to 49, and pay only for the ad impressions that reach your target audience as measured by Nielsen DAR. This feature works for all types of video campaigns — including for connected TV ads — and comes at no additional cost for advertisers.

For now, audience guarantees are available for Programmatic Guaranteed ads running with a set of publishers on Google Ad Manager in the U.S. We look forward to onboarding more publishers and exchanges.

Advanced Programmatic Guaranteed features available for more exchanges

Speaking of expansion, we’re making Google audiences for Programmatic Guaranteed available across a variety of exchanges including Google Ad Manager but also Xandr and Magnite and looking to add more. We've already expanded capabilities for you to reach Google audiences on CTV campaigns when bidding on open auction inventory. Google audiences can help drive a higher return on investment by reaching the groups of consumers who are most likely to respond to your message based on Google’s understanding of intent. Now, you can also use Google affinity, in-market and demo segments while buying Programmatic Guaranteed deals across a variety of participating publishers, giving you even more flexibility in your audience strategies for CTV.

For these exchanges, we’re also improving how ad frequency management works for Programmatic Guaranteed deals, helping to enhance the viewing experience for your audiences. Once your campaign frequency goal is reached for certain users, whether via open auction, Programmatic Guaranteed, or a combination of the two, Display & Video 360 now stops showing ads to these users while still prioritizing and delivering the agreed number of impressions from your guaranteed deals.

Consolidated CTV workflow across YouTube and other CTV apps

For many marketers, simplifying campaign execution for a variety of CTV apps is fundamental to effectively reaching streamers. And Display & Video 360’s capacity to plan, manage ad frequency and measure performance across YouTube and other CTV inventory sources saves them time and money. To help CTV buyers deliver more coordinated ad campaigns, YouTube ads can now be purchased within Display & Video 360’s insertion order dedicated to connected TV ad buying. This simplified workflow features parameters designed specifically for CTV campaigns to help minimize technical blockers that typically limit reach on CTV devices. Because it puts YouTube side-by-side with other top CTV inventory, it also makes it easier to optimize for common goals or control ad frequency across your entire CTV media mix.

Test this integrated workflow and advanced Programmatic Guaranteed capabilities today and combine them with new CTV frequency management solutions in Display & Video 360 to get the most efficient reach out of your CTV deals.