Tag Archives: Industry

An important step by the Media Rating Council towards a viewable impression currency

Yesterday, the Media Rating Council (MRC) announced that it is lifting its advisory on transacting on viewability for display advertising, originally issued in November 2012. In taking this step, the MRC is signaling that great strides have been made toward the goal of transacting display advertising using viewable impressions, and the industry is ready to begin the process of adopting viewable impressions as a standard metric. We applaud this move and are thrilled to see the industry move closer to the reality of a true viewability currency.

Google has been a longtime supporter of this effort and we’ve partnered with the industry, the Media Rating Council and the IAB, as part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, to help guide the definition and adoption of a viewable impression standard. Last April our viewability measurement solution Active View received accreditation by the Media Rating Council and, in the coming months, we’ll be making Active View reporting available to all DoubleClick customers across our platform. We believe that giving marketers, agencies and publishers access to a common, integrated viewable impression metric will set the foundation for viewable impressions to become an actionable currency.

But measurement alone will not make viewable impressions a currency. To become a currency we need technology that allows advertisers and publishers to not only measure, but also transact on viewable impressions. In December, we took our first step toward making viewable impressions a true currency by giving advertisers the ability to target and buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network. We’ve seen a strong positive response as thousands of advertisers and brands have adopted viewable impression buying on our network, but we’re not stopping there. We’re investing heavily in Active View and working quickly to enable our DoubleClick platform clients to value, buy, sell, serve and optimize to viewable impressions across the web. 

The MRC announcement represents an important milestone in the journey towards a viewable currency. As marketers and agencies adopt the viewable standard we can start to build a new display market that is more transparent and actionable for brand marketers.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Senior Product Manager

Turbocharging the News Business with the Local Media Consortium

Publishers are the lifeblood of the web. Local news providers in particular play vital role in our society, helping us stay in touch with our communities and keep up to date on the news and issues that most closely affect our lives.

We’ve had the good fortune to work with many local news publishers over the years to help power their ads businesses. Today, we’re thrilled to further that commitment with a landmark deal with the Local Media Consortium, an industry body comprising more than 800 daily newspapers and 200 local broadcast stations. Together, we’ll provide the consortium’s membership with a suite of Google advertising products for publishers:
  • A Powerful Private Exchange -- The Local Media Consortium will launch a new private ad exchange, powered by DoubleClick Ad Exchange technology. Programmatic buying is attracting growing budgets (analysts predict 75% growth in 2014). With 10 billion monthly impressions of top quality video and display inventory, this new exchange will enable the consortium to engage with the growing number of national advertisers and agencies investing in programmatic channels and looking to reach audiences at scale.
  • The DoubleClick Platform -- Members will also have access to DoubleClick for Publishers, our widely used ad management platform that lets publishers easily and efficiently manage their digital ads business, across desktop, video and mobile inventory. 
  • AdSense Contextual Ads -- Through AdSense, all members will also have the option to run contextually matched ads on their sites and search results (powered by Google Custom Search). 
The Local Media Consortium represents the best of what the web has to offer in terms of content and engaged local audiences. We’re looking forward to working with their leadership and members to build on this partnership and help grow the businesses of valued newspapers and news stations from across the country. 

Posted by Laurent Cordier, Managing Director, Americas Partnerships - News & Magazines

Investing in a cleaner, more accountable web with spider.io

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest. And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.


Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Investing in a cleaner, more accountable web with spider.io

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest. And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.


Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Redefining "Advertising": How 2013 Transformed Digital Marketing

It was a great year for digital advertising. New technologies took off, helping brands, agencies and publishers reach today’s constantly connected consumers more easily and effectively than ever before. With budgets no longer being siloed, 20% of organizations incorporated digital into each marketing function, per a study by Adobe.

We compiled a few of the bigger changes in marketing and digital advertising in 2013, to see how far the industry has come along. View the full infographic here or see a brief summary below.

Redefining “creative”
New creative formats took center stage in 2013. Marketers invested more in social media and TrueView skippable video ad formats continued to grow on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.



Redefining “integrated”
The new 360 media plan cannot overlook digital and the sheer number of screens people interact with. In 2012, Google released some research indicating that people use 3 screen combinations a day. In 2013, this manifested itself in the form of increased investments in multi-screen campaigns.




Redefining “buying”
New(Up)fronts. Programmatic. 2013 changed the way digital media spend is committed.18 digital media companies presented at the Digital Content NewFronts. And programmatic buying gained significant traction with an expected ~74% growth, according to eMarketer. As brands took to programmatic and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange increased, and Preferred Deal impressions grew 250%. DoubleClick Bid Manager powered social media ads, joined FBX.


Redefining “success”
Earlier this year, AdAge released some research indicating that 50% of display ads are not viewed, making advertising viewability a hot industry topic. Google’s viewability measurement solution, ActiveView, got MRC-accredited. Last week, Google announced that it would enable viewability-based buys on the Google Display Network. Engagement Rate was another hot metric in 2013, with Cost per Engagement pay models enabled for ad formats like Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network.


View the full infographic here.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Redefining "Advertising": How 2013 Transformed Digital Marketing

It was a great year for digital advertising. New technologies took off, helping brands, agencies and publishers reach today’s constantly connected consumers more easily and effectively than ever before. With budgets no longer being siloed, 20% of organizations incorporated digital into each marketing function, per a study by Adobe.

We compiled a few of the bigger changes in marketing and digital advertising in 2013, to see how far the industry has come along. View the full infographic here or see a brief summary below.

Redefining “creative”
New creative formats took center stage in 2013. Marketers invested more in social media and TrueView skippable video ad formats continued to grow on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.



Redefining “integrated”
The new 360 media plan cannot overlook digital and the sheer number of screens people interact with. In 2012, Google released some research indicating that people use 3 screen combinations a day. In 2013, this manifested itself in the form of increased investments in multi-screen campaigns.




Redefining “buying”
New(Up)fronts. Programmatic. 2013 changed the way digital media spend is committed.18 digital media companies presented at the Digital Content NewFronts. And programmatic buying gained significant traction with an expected ~74% growth, according to eMarketer. As brands took to programmatic and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange increased, and Preferred Deal impressions grew 250%. DoubleClick Bid Manager powered social media ads, joined FBX.


Redefining “success”
Earlier this year, AdAge released some research indicating that 50% of display ads are not viewed, making advertising viewability a hot industry topic. Google’s viewability measurement solution, ActiveView, got MRC-accredited. Last week, Google announced that it would enable viewability-based buys on the Google Display Network. Engagement Rate was another hot metric in 2013, with Cost per Engagement pay models enabled for ad formats like Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network.


View the full infographic here.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Google Web Designer beta now available: Build beautiful HTML5 creative with ease.

By now, it’s evident that multi-screen consumption is the way of the future; mobile and tablet devices are becoming consumers’ first screens, so the content that is developed needs to work seamlessly across these screens. There are already more end-users in HTML5-compatible environments than there are in Flash-compatible environments, and HTML5 ad spend is expected to overtake Flash spend within the next two years (1). But until recently, advertisers and publishers didn't have the tools they needed to easily develop content fit for today's cross-screen experiences.

Build once, run anywhere 
We’re working hard to solve this development challenge by offering powerful yet easy-to-use tools for HTML5 production. In this vein, we announced DoubleClick Studio Layouts for HTML5 back in August (also available to DFP Premium publishers using DoubleClick Studio), which lets you create HTML5 ads in minutes, and last week we announced Ready Creatives in AdWords, which creates HTML5 ads for you in seconds.

Today, we’re excited to announce the public beta of Google Web Designer, a new professional-quality design tool that makes HTML5 creative accessible to everyone from the designer to the dabbler.

Google Web Designer enables you to:
  1. Create animated HTML5 creative, with a robust, yet intuitive set of design tools. 
  2. View and edit the code behind your designs and see your edits reflected back on the stage automatically. 
  3. Build ad creatives seamlessly for DoubleClick and AdMob, or publish them to any generic environment you choose. 
  4. Receive updates to the product automatically, without having to re-download the application.
  5. Access all of this entirely for free.

Watch the Demo: A quick glimpse of Google Web Designer

Ready to give it a spin? 
  • Download Google Web Designer. 
  • Read through our getting started guide. 
  • Send us feedback! We need your input to make this tool even better, so share your ideas with us in our user forum or on our Google+ page. We’re working hard over the next couple quarters to add new features and improvements to make the product an even more robust offering. 
HTML5 is a universal language for building beautiful, engaging content that can run across desktops, smartphones, and tablets. We think that Google Web Designer will be the key to making HTML5 accessible to people throughout the industry, getting us closer to the goal of “build once, run anywhere.”

NOTE: Publishers using DFP or DFP Small business, see our Help Center articles to learn more about trafficking creatives. DFP Help Center. DFP Small Business Help Center.


Posted by Sean Kranzberg, Lead Engineer, Google Web Designer 
(1) StatCounter, Top 12 Browser Versions in North America, February 2012 to August 2013 

Continuing to invest in a clean, open exchange

Recently there has been a great deal of discussion about applications that inject or overlay ads on sites without the express approval of users and those sites, and then monetize the inventory as their own. We believe that this kind of activity is bad for end users and damages the integrity of the advertising industry. In order for the programmatic marketplace to achieve its full potential and help as many marketers and publishers as we think it can, there needs to be trust between advertisers, publishers, and users.

We’ve invested, since the beginning, in strong policies and a system of checks and filters to ensure that the inventory on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange is the highest quality in the industry. Here’s a quick summary of what we do to stop invalid injected inventory from entering our exchange.

We don’t support spammy applications. Period.
Both the Google Platforms program policies and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) Seller Program Guidelines strictly prohibit the use of systems, including toolbars, that overlay ad space on a given site without express permission of the site owner. In addition, we have numerous processes and technologies in place to review publishers’ inventory as well as advertisers’ ads to maintain a high standard of quality for how advertising is transacted on our platforms. 

In light of the increased concerns on this subject, many publishers have asked us for guidance on what to ask the exchanges or networks they work with. Here are three suggested questions any publisher partner should be able to answer in regards to protecting against injected inventory:
  • Does your platform work with or supply advertising for clients who inject display ads in browsers?
  • Do your program policies prohibit the use of systems to inject display ads in browsers, without first having obtained user consent or consent from the site affected?
  • Please provide me a report of all the inventory partners on your platform serving my domain?

We do, and will always, support our publisher partners. 
Finally, I’d like to thank the millions of publishers who use the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, large and small, that day in and day out, provide amazing value both to their users and their advertisers. We welcome a broader discussion with our partners and with the industry about how to collectively solve this issue and others. Together, we can all ask the tough questions, hold each other accountable, and ultimately create the web we all want, where publishers, users and advertisers all thrive.


Posted by Scott Spencer, Director of Product Management

AdX – Delivering for our Partners

By all measures, this year has been an incredible one for DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) and its partners. From NYC to London to Tokyo (and everywhere in between), more buyers and sellers are using AdX than ever before, and they’re doing it across a broader range of use cases – including direct programmatic deals, tag-based ad network optimization, and of course, RTB.

From Q1 to Q2, AdX saw a 33% increase in RTB spend in the US and a 24% increase globally. But it’s not just about quantity: as marketers continue to embrace the programmatic opportunity, publishers such as Gannett, British Telecom, and The Weather Company are using the platform to identify and capture this spend. 

Part of what’s driving this shift for publishers is the availability of more powerful tools to specify the exact terms of each transaction and understand how buyers are buying. In the past, doing this required some publishers to stitch together many technologies at once. Although we’ve been working on unifying Admeld and AdX for more than a year, in March we unveiled a key milestone on that road with a major series of updates. In addition to its advanced programmatic tools like Preferred Deals and Private Auctions, AdX now includes the best features of Admeld such as ad network optimization and increased transparency and control. The response has been amazing: To date more than 50% of Admeld publishers by volume have migrated their inventory onto AdX. Hundreds of publishers – including CBSi, Jagex, and Stardoll – have already made the switch, and everyone else is scheduled to transition shortly. 

Though the legacy of Admeld continues to inspire our design decisions, we believe strongly that consolidating our efforts behind a single platform is more effective for our clients and more conducive to providing them with the best possible service. For that reason, we’ve notified all our clients in recent weeks that we’ll be sunsetting the Admeld platform and brand on September 30, before the holiday ad spend begins to ramp up.

We've done a lot of preparation to make the migration process as smooth as possible for you. Your account manager should already be in touch with you about what the migration will mean for you.


Posted by Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management

Announcing Publisher Connection: the newsletter that brings the best of Google right to your inbox

From DoubleClick to Google+ to YouTube to Wildfire - each month we create a ton of content to help publishers like you grow your business and navigate an increasingly complex landscape.

Until now, we haven’t put the best of this content one convenient place - your inbox. That’s why we’re launching Google Publisher Connection, a monthly newsletter with case studies, research, events and trends designed to help you stay ahead of the curve and on top of the issues impacting your business.

Subscribe now and we’ll add you to the monthly Google Publisher Connection mailing list.

Read the first issue here.




Posted by David Hertog, Product Marketing Team