Tag Archives: Measurement

Viewability spotlight for sellers: Three speedy ways to improve viewability

Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology.

Recently on the blog, we focused on two tips for enabling viewability measurement. In this post you'll learn tips for improving ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share four ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability rates.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran
Product Marketing Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

Viewability spotlight for sellers: Two tips to enable viewability measurement

There's a lot that publishers and app developers can do to increase the likelihood that their ads will be measured as viewable. Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability across four categories based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology. These insights and recommendations come from our services teams that have spent thousands of hours working with publishers and developers to improve advertising outcomes.

In this post, we focus on tips you can use to improve ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations will improve your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 speedy ways to improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran
Product Marketing Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

From Insights to Impact: Driving Value with Analytics

At eTail West this week we were thrilled to give a joint presentation with Chris Duncan, VP of Strategic Marketing for Kohl's, a $19B+ retailer making big strides in omni-channel analytics.  Casey Carey, Head of Marketing for Google Analytics, kicked off the presentation with highlights from our new report with Harvard Business Review.  Following Casey's introduction, Chris gave the audience a glimpse into the Kohl’s Greatness Agenda, launched in 2014 with the goal of becoming “the most engaging retailer in America.”

Kohl’s has seen the growing effect of micro-moments on their business in recent years and has used measurement and analytics to gain key insights:
  • They had more visits on digital devices last year than in all stores combined.
  • Most of their sales are driven by people who have engaged with more than one marketing channel.
  • Customers who engage online are spending more in-store.
Kohl’s has taken action, finding better ways to engage consumers across channels.  They combined direct mail with digital display to make their direct mail dollars go further, they blended email marketing with social media to increase app downloads by 180%, and they got hyper-local with digital display and paid search.  In other words, they used their insights to drive action.

The Google Analytics team is all about turning insights into action, which is why we commissioned a study with Harvard Business Review—we wanted to understand how great companies are using insights to drive customer value.  The findings are compelling:  some companies who capture the full customer journey with integrated data are generating up to 8.5x higher shareholder value.


We invite you to read the full report to learn how great companies like Kohl's are analyzing and acting to create value for their customers and for themselves.

Posted by:  Jocelyn Whittenburg, Product Marketing Manager

Enable better decisions with Data-Driven Attribution

Consumers see a lot of different ads as they make buying decisions. Some ads have a huge impact on the final purchase, others help the process along, and still others contribute absolutely zero. The trick, of course, is knowing which ad does what.

Today we’re introducing Data-Driven Attribution to all DoubleClick accounts. It's a new tool that helps you give the right credit to each and every advertising touch point ― and shows you the optimal combination for your marketing.

Powered by Adometry, Data-Driven Attribution uses a modeling methodology developed by Google engineers and grounded in advanced statistics and economic principles. It assigns credit accurately and automatically to all your digital media ads served through DoubleClick.

Turbocharge your campaigns

DoubleClick Digital Marketing already has a strong attribution foundation with Multi-Channel Funnels and the Attribution Modeling Tool. Now it's even easier to make decisions about how to best allocate your digital media budget. Data-Driven Attribution is:

  • Actionable: The contribution made by each marketing channel is clear (in both converting and non-converting paths), so you can make better data-driven marketing decisions.
  • Accessible: Just choose your goals (such as e-commerce transaction or email signups) and Data-Driven Attribution will show you the contribution made by each of your digital campaigns.
  • Comprehensive: No need for new tags, just turn on the feature and you’ll see data for your campaigns.

There’s no room for guesswork in attribution ― and when you’re not guessing, you’ll see greater ROIs and better performances.

“Mindshare helps brands get the most of their digital marketing. To do that we need meaningful insights on the consumer path to purchase across both display and search. We have been testing Data Driven Attribution in DoubleClick and we have seen tailored recommendations that allow us to take fast action for greater impact and better ROI. In some campaigns we have been able to improve budget allocation and have seen CPA improve by 25%.”
-Karen Nayler, CEO, Mindshare Canada

How to get started

You'll find the Attribution interface in the Reporting and Attribution section of your DoubleClick account. You can activate Data-Driven Attribution for all your floodlight tags and once you start collecting data, you'll see a new recommended model appear after seven days.

Learn more about Data-Driven Attribution.

Posted by Luke Hedrick
Product Manager, DoubleClick

Integrating Marketing Mix Modeling with Data-driven Attribution for Holistic Insights


Today’s marketers have more opportunities than ever to drive business success. They also face increasing pressure to prove, manage, and optimize marketing performance. 

A relentless push towards accountability has driven the adoption of ever-more-sophisticated measurement tools. Many marketers use marketing mix modeling (MMM), some use data-driven attribution, while others consult a separate solution for each. 

Tools continue to evolve. Now, solutions that merge and substantively improve both of these measurement best practices promise faster, more efficient, more holistic insights. To find out more, we commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 150 companies in order to explore how marketers are evaluating, adopting, and using these emerging tools. Key learnings will be presented in our Dec 8th webinar hosted by Google and featuring Tina Moffett, Senior Analyst at Forrester along with Dave Barney, Product Manager, Adometry at Google. Sign up here.

Why consider a merger?
While separate MMM and data-driven attribution tools offer cross-channel measurement, each has limitations:
  • Speed and Granularity. Traditional MMM offers high-level analysis on a quarterly or yearly basis, which can limit more granular, or on-the-fly optimization
  • Data Limitations. Data-driven attribution requires a wealth of granular, user-level  data, which can limit offline channel visibility
When the two measurement practices are combined, however, they improve the outputs from each. Data-driven attribution informs MMM models. MMM data feeds attribution analysis. Resulting insights allow marketers to see the impact of each marketing element in near real-time.

Pending or trending?
Today, many marketers get the optimization benefit from separate MMM and data-driven attribution tools. Will merged tools become a new marketing performance measurement standard?

While it may be too early to tell, there is a growing desire for tools that help marketers move beyond channel-based optimization to larger strategic cross-channel planning. Forrester reports that many respondents have already moved, or plan to move, on the merged measurement trend and the most common approach has been to purchase a solution from a vendor, and to make use of the vendor’s implementation support. 

“There will be a paradigm shift in understanding for the marketing channels. I think it gives them an opportunity to think holistically rather than in a silo, like, ‘this is my world, this is my budget, as long as I get this much traffic in my channel, I am ok.’ It’s no longer the case. Getting that understanding is going to be key. It gives us better understanding of how our customers navigate through different touch-points.”

— Director of Marketing And Automation Systems at a major global retailer

Benefits and challenges
Integrated MMM and data-driven attribution tools are enabling marketers to make strategic planning decisions and precisely measure individual-level interactions in near real-time. Satisfaction with integrated tools is high among those who have implemented them.

Faster access to insights has more companies looping in more stakeholders from marketing execs and analysts to customer insights or analytics, brand managers, and eCommerce professionals. 

At the same time, early adopters report challenges. Integrating tools and data sources is a big ask, learning when to make changes based on new insights takes time, and setting expectations about timelines and results is paramount. 

Ensuring that the entire organization is on board with using a merged measurement platform is critical, as is supporting stakeholders in changing business practices as a result.

Proceed with insight
As merged tools come on strong, the experiences of early adopters may be instructive to those moving to embrace a merged solution. Recommendations on best practices, processes, and supports, are examined in the full whitepaper. 

Making the right move
While companies cite common barriers to adoption, respondents suggest that a number of challenges that are stopping them today would be resolved in the near future including, skills, understanding of benefits and technology blockers.  

As merged tools mature and become more commonplace, technology concerns will abate. More marketers will know about these solutions, and about how to use them to drive marketing optimization and strategy. Staying informed is the key to making the right call on whether, when, and how to adopt merged measurement tools for your business.


To learn more, sign up for our upcoming webinar with Forrester Research on December 8th.

Posted by Natasha Moonka, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics team

Active View updates: Improved cross-screen options for brands and publishers

When advertisers pay for an ad, the chance for it to be seen is a basic expectation. Advertisers shouldn’t have to pay extra to measure and ensure that it was viewable. These expectations drove the launch of Active View back in 2013, an effort to establish a neutral and common set of viewability metrics used by both advertisers and publishers. Since then we've continued to invest in this technology across DoubleClick, YouTube and the Google Display Network, and today we're happy to share two new updates that will help advertisers and publishers run more effective cross-screen campaigns.

Announcing Active View optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager - A better way to programmatically buy viewable impressions

Today, we're introducing Active View bid optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager for clients globally. This new bid optimization feature uses the collective intelligence from many signals (e.g. URL, time of day, page category) to predict, impression by impression, the probability that it will be viewable. It then dynamically adjusts bids higher or lower based on that probability to deliver the viewable CPM target that advertisers set for their video and display campaigns. Active View optimization delivers what advertisers actually care about - the total volume of viewable impressions - and doesn’t fixate on a viewable percentage.

This will help solve a common problem: when marketers buy viewable impressions programmatically using current viewability targeting, the decision to bid on a single impression is very basic. Buyers choose a target viewable percentage (e.g. 50%) and their programmatic buying system bids the same amount for any impressions with a likelihood of being viewed above that target - or nothing at all for impressions with a likelihood of being viewed below that target. This means that buyers are missing out on wide swaths of inventory that may actually be viewable and are driving up competition (and CPMs) for the inventory they are buying.

Announcing Active View for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange - Bringing holistic viewability measurement to publishers

We believe that viewability metrics should be a standard currency between buyers and sellers. To enable this, we've been investing in features that allow publishers to see and report on a holistic picture of viewability across their channels and content. We're continuing that momentum today by announcing Active View reporting for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. With the consumer shift to mobile reshaping how publishers engage with their audience and those interactions increasingly happening on mobile apps, this new measurement solution completes the picture for publishers helping them see how viewability plays out across all of their properties.

At Google, we remain committed to investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands and publishers through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions and partnerships with leading third parties. These announcements are two big steps in our ongoing effort to help our clients measure every moment that matters.

Posted by:

Ari Feldman
Product Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers Reporting and Active View
Deepti Bhatnagar
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager Brand Measurement and Optimization

Active View updates: Improved cross-screen options for brands and publishers

When advertisers pay for an ad, the chance for it to be seen is a basic expectation. Advertisers shouldn’t have to pay extra to measure and ensure that it was viewable. These expectations drove the launch of Active View back in 2013, an effort to establish a neutral and common set of viewability metrics used by both advertisers and publishers. Since then we've continued to invest in this technology across DoubleClick, YouTube and the Google Display Network, and today we're happy to share two new updates that will help advertisers and publishers run more effective cross-screen campaigns.

Announcing Active View optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager - A better way to programmatically buy viewable impressions

Today, we're introducing Active View bid optimization in DoubleClick Bid Manager for clients globally. This new bid optimization feature uses the collective intelligence from many signals (e.g. URL, time of day, page category) to predict, impression by impression, the probability that it will be viewable. It then dynamically adjusts bids higher or lower based on that probability to deliver the viewable CPM target that advertisers set for their video and display campaigns. Active View optimization delivers what advertisers actually care about - the total volume of viewable impressions - and doesn’t fixate on a viewable percentage.

This will help solve a common problem: when marketers buy viewable impressions programmatically using current viewability targeting, the decision to bid on a single impression is very basic. Buyers choose a target viewable percentage (e.g. 50%) and their programmatic buying system bids the same amount for any impressions with a likelihood of being viewed above that target - or nothing at all for impressions with a likelihood of being viewed below that target. This means that buyers are missing out on wide swaths of inventory that may actually be viewable and are driving up competition (and CPMs) for the inventory they are buying.

Announcing Active View for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange - Bringing holistic viewability measurement to publishers

We believe that viewability metrics should be a standard currency between buyers and sellers. To enable this, we've been investing in features that allow publishers to see and report on a holistic picture of viewability across their channels and content. We're continuing that momentum today by announcing Active View reporting for mobile apps in DoubleClick for Publishers and on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. With the consumer shift to mobile reshaping how publishers engage with their audience and those interactions increasingly happening on mobile apps, this new measurement solution completes the picture for publishers helping them see how viewability plays out across all of their properties.

At Google, we remain committed to investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands and publishers through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions and partnerships with leading third parties. These announcements are two big steps in our ongoing effort to help our clients measure every moment that matters.

Posted by:

Ari Feldman
Product Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers Reporting and Active View
Deepti Bhatnagar
Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager Brand Measurement and Optimization

Investing in choice: New Viewability options on YouTube

Cross-posted from the Google Agency Blog
If you can’t measure it, how do you know it worked? With this simple principle in mind, we’ve been investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions like Brand Lift and Active View and partnerships with leading third parties like comScore and Nielsen on GRPs.

Viewability has long been a focus for us. Built on the foundation of our Active View technology, we launched the ability to buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network back in December 2013 and recently completed moving over the last advertiser campaigns from CPMs to viewable CPMs. We’ve worked to ensure viewability rates on YouTube are amongst the industry’s highest. And Active View now works seamlessly across video, display, mobile web and mobile apps (on YouTube and for publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers), and has been adopted by over 80% of advertisers using the DoubleClick platform.

With the MRC-defined industry standard as a base-line for viewability, we are also helping advertisers and agencies go beyond transacting on the industry standard to also measure individual viewability objectives. In order to support this we have begun launching supplementary metrics in Active View, like the ability to see average viewable time and soon when an ad is 100% in view for any length in time. These are the first few in a lineup of supplementary metrics that will provide advertisers with additional data points relevant to their specific campaigns and needs.

Announcing 3rd party viewability reporting on YouTube - bringing you more choice

Today, we're continuing our approach of driving product innovation and supporting choice by announcing that we're broadening the options for advertisers measuring viewability on YouTube. Along with Active View, advertisers will also be able to choose from third party vendors.

Moat, Integral AdScience, comScore and DoubleVerify are a select set of third party vendors that have been approved to report ad viewability on YouTube, beginning with Moat in early 2016. Through these partnerships, we’ll continue to expand measurement options for marketers on YouTube, while maintaining the highest levels of security and privacy for users, advertisers and creators.
“Independent 3rd party verification is extremely important to ensuring that our clients’ media is running as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a long-time partner, IPG Mediabrands is pleased to see Google continue its work to move the industry forward on viewability by allowing independent verification of YouTube, and applaud this recent decision.”
Mitchell Weinstein, SVP Ad Operations, IPG Mediabrands

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Unilever added:
"Having partners like Google address these challenges helps to push the entire industry forward. This move will generate better industry-wide standards across viewability and third party verification practices and continues the momentum in the right direction."
Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever
Stay tuned for continued investments in the viewability space, including ongoing product innovation updates to Active View as well as additional partnerships. Together with our partners, our goal is to help our clients measure every moment that matters.
Posted by Sanaz Ahari
Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement, Google

Forbes, Washington Post and DoubleClick partner to help publishers respond to requests for 100% viewable impressions

Earlier this year, research from Google showed that nearly half of all display and video ads were not viewable. This has helped move forward the ongoing industry discussions around shifting digital ad buys from served impressions to viewable impressions. Simultaneously, advertiser demand for 100% viewable impressions, where advertisers only pay publishers for impressions that are viewable based on the current industry standard as defined by the MRC, has continued to grow.

To help publishers tackle this complex issue, we partnered with experts from The Washington Post and Forbes along with the DoubleClick for Publishers and Active View teams at Google to create an educational case study that surfaces key issues publishers should consider as they respond to RFPs for 100% viewable impressions.

The illustrative scenario in the case study walks through how a sales director at the fictional publisher, The Hourly Report, responds to a RFP from the fictional advertiser, Eh-Okay, for a commitment to provide 100% viewable impressions. The case study references two fictional viewability measurement technologies, Ad Chemist and Bridge, along with Google’s Active View solution, to represent the fact that there’s more than one way for advertisers and publishers to measure viewability.

“At Forbes, we’ve been preparing to transact on viewable impressions for about three years. Done right, viewability will be good for the advertiser, consumer and the ecosystem. Partnering with Google on initiatives like this are a great way to analyze the best approach to deliver a viewable campaign. From technology choices and ad placements to client relationships and overall sell-through rates, each element of a viewable campaign carries significant weight, and the case study we put together demonstrates that.”
-Alyson M. Papalia, VP Digital Advertising Strategy & Operations, Forbes Media

"The potential for an ad to be seen is an extremely reasonable expectation for a marketer and their agency...especially from a premium publisher such as The Washington Post. As the concept is still relatively new, challenges exist with making it an absolute reality. It is key that we are on the forefront of helping to aggressively move the conversation and process forward, and partnering with Google and DoubleClick on efforts like this case study to help educate the industry is a key step in the right direction."
-Jed Hartman, Chief Revenue Officer, The Washington Post

We’re strong believers that the viewability discussion should be just a starting point for publishers and advertisers: understanding whether an ad had a chance to be seen is the first step on the path to ultimately being able to measure whether it had impact. Adopting a single industry standard for viewability - like the MRC defined standard that Google supports - is a critical first step along the path to transacting media exclusively based on viewable impressions.


Read the full case study on DoubleClick.com
Lauren Ashcraft
Strategic Account Manager, Revenue Solutions
Justin Pang
Strategic Partnerships Lead

Webinar: Reach the right audience, faster with comScore vCE in DoubleClick

Just a few weeks ago we announced the release of comScore vCE in DoubleClick, the first completely tagless GRP measurement solution integrated directly into an ad server. With comScore vCE in DoubleClick, Brand Marketers in the US get the trusted comScore audience measurement solution for both video and display ads that delivers 100% coverage.

Register now for a webinar on October 21st at 11am PST / 2pm EST, where you’ll be joined by Anne Hunter, SVP Global Marketing Strategy at comScore, Inc. and Paul Trieu, Product Manager at Google, to learn about:

  • How reach, demographics and GRPs can help enhance campaign success
  • Share practical tips for enabling comScore vCE in DoubleClick in DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Campaign Manager
  • Unveil best practices on using comScore vCE in DoubleClick to measure campaigns
  • Perform a demo of the new simple and easy to read reports
  • Host Q&A
Anish Kattukaran
Product Marketing, Video Platforms & Brand Measurement, Google