Tag Archives: new feature releases

Learn DoubleClick Search fundamentals: join an upcoming webinar

If you're interested in developing your DoubleClick Search expertise, try our online eLearning and certification, then join our upcoming webinars to learn more. Register through the Training page in the DoubleClick Search Help Center (sign-in required). While you’re there, you can also learn more about our latest product releases.

DoubleClick Search Fundamentals eLearning and Certification 
Get an overview of how to manage large search campaigns in DoubleClick Search. This online, self-paced training course is designed for new and current DoubleClick Search users who want to understand the basics of campaign management, reporting and bid optimization.




Review the material, test your knowledge, and print out your certification when you pass. The course and exam are now available in select languages, including Spanish, Japanese, German, and Portuguese-Brazilian – try it today. Register



Upcoming webinar: Using Analytics Data Successfully in DoubleClick Search – 3/11 
Join this webinar to learn more about Analytics best practices, analyzing Analytics data in DoubleClick Search and how Analytics integrates with specific features, such as formula columns, bid strategies and rules. Co-led with our Analytics trainer. Register

Pre-recorded webinars available 
In case you missed a previous webinar, check out the recorded webinars page in our Help Center – you might be able to find a pre-recorded session ready to watch. We offer numerous videos, including previous New Feature Trainings, as well as videos on the Performance Bidding Suite, Reporting, Campaign Management, and more.

For more DoubleClick Search training updates, stay tuned on the DoubleClick Search blog, or follow us on Google+.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search Team

DS features in January

In January, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search:

  • Inventory Product Listing Ads campaigns
    This release introduces a new type of campaign: an inventory Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaign, which makes it easy to scale up your PLA advertising with detailed reports and bidding on each of your individual products. Inventory PLA campaigns automatically generate ad groups and granular product targets for Product Listing Ads from data in your Merchant Center account.     Learn more.

  • Reporting API
    You can now use the DoubleClick Search API to programmatically download reports. You can combine the API data with data you already have about your products, customers, and business goals (from a CRM system, for example) to complete the picture of your search advertising impact.     Learn more.

  • Assess your bid strategy’s health
    The new     Bid strategy health column displays messages about issues that prevent a bid strategy from performing optimally. If you click the message, DS navigates to the location in the UI in which you can address the issue. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

  • Google Analytics metrics and goals in Executive Reporting
    If you use Google Analytics to track your conversions, you can now enhance your     executive reports with GA metrics and goals for multiple advertisers. For example, you can create a single chart that compares GA new visits with overall revenue for all of your advertisers.

  • More actions and notification options in automated rules and bulk edits
    We made the following improvements to     automated rules and bulk edits (including scheduled edits):
    • You can now perform bulk edits and automated rules on a list of product targets.
    • Change bid strategy and Change mobile bid adjustment % are new options when setting up a bulk edit or automated rule for campaigns or ad groups.
    • When setting up your actions and alerts for a rule, you have more options for when to receive an email. For example, you can choose to receive emails only when a problem occurs.

  • Improved support of targeting settings for Bing Ads ad groups
    When you     create or edit an ad group in a Bing Ads engine account, you'll notice that the Languages, Locations, and Devices settings have been changed to more accurately reflect the way Bing Ads organizes these settings.

Be sure to attend the New Feature Review monthly webinar to see these features in action. There are sessions on February 6, so register today!

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Dialing up better measurement: Announcing integration with top call tracking services

Today, we’re happy to announce new integrations that make it even easier for DoubleClick Search customers to track and report on conversions that happen via phone after interactions with search ads. Recent research shows that over half of smartphone users are taking advantage of click-to-call ad features from Google and others. In addition, around 7% of all mobile searches result in a phone call to a business, so understanding the impact of call data is important to analyzing and optimizing campaign ROI.


Ever since DoubleClick Search introduced the Conversions API, advertisers have been able to upload and report on the offline activities and conversions that make sense for their business, and take advantage of those insights in near real-time. Now we’re happy to announce official integrations with many of the major call tracking service providers in the US, EMEA and Australian/SEA markets.






Australia/SEA: AVANSER


We’re continuing to evaluate other providers for integration on an ongoing basis.


How advertisers and agencies benefit
Cramer Krasselt, an ad agency based out of Chicago, had historically used a number of tactics to measure offline conversions that resulted from their online campaigns. “We knew a lot of conversions were happening where the primary conversion occurs offline,” mentions Rocky Yost, Senior Analyst at Cramer Krasselt, “but we didn’t have an easy way of connecting it to our online campaigns.”


Yost continues, “Because of call tracking integration into DoubleClick Search technology, we now have one place to get reporting. And because it’s automatically uploaded into DoubleClick Search, conversions from customer calls are now also a part of DoubleClick Search bidding models. This integration has improved ROI by decreasing cost per click, giving us better positioning in search results, and in general, the bid management system is able to make a better choice because it has a more complete picture of completed transactions.”


Moreover, advertisers are able to see these conversions in near real-time, and can use the insights gained in both reporting and automated bid optimization immediately, instead of waiting 24 hours or more. As always, all reporting is aggregated and anonymous, and these conversions are not used to target advertising.


Continuing to invest for the future
We’re currently planning the next extensions of the Conversions API and offline conversion tracking. Stay tuned to the blog and our Google+ page for more.

DS features in September

In September, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search:

  • Manage AdWords upgraded sitelinks: DS now supports AdWords upgraded sitelinks, which make it easy for you to reach customers with deeper information about your site or product. Upgraded sitelinks appear in your ads just like non-upgraded sitelinks, but they’re easier to manage and provide more detailed reporting. You can create and edit upgraded sitelinks in the DS UI or by upload, choose whether a sitelink is mobile preferred, specify start and end dates, and more.

  • Optimize bids to custom metrics using formula columns: The DS Performance Bidding Suite now supports the optimization of bids based on formula columns. Use the flexibility of formula columns to first define your own performance metrics, and then easily set up bid strategies that optimize to those metrics.

  • Manage Product Listing Ads in DS: Retail advertisers can now create and manage AdWords Product Listing Ads campaigns directly in DS and take advantage of the powerful features for managing search campaigns efficiently and delivering maximum ROI. You can easily view Merchant Center feeds and define product targets based on those feeds, preview the products that match your criteria in campaigns and product targets, and use DS bulksheets to upload large amounts of product targets at once.

  • Create match type-specific ad groups in inventory campaigns: These ad groups give you the power to more easily manage negative keywords, report by match type, enforce the bid you set, and more.

We also made the following feature updates:

  • Use special characters in template functions:  When using a template function for ads or keywords in inventory campaigns, you can now include “, [, and ] as special characters in your static text, as long as you escape them. Special characters make it easier for you to clean up data from the Merchant Center feed to prepare it for inventory-aware campaigns. To use these characters in a text string, they must be preceded by a backslash (\”, \[, \]).

  • New ROUND() template function for inventory-aware campaign templates. When you add ad templates in an inventory campaign, you can now use ROUND() as a function to round number values from the Merchant Center feed to a given decimal point. This allows you to shorten or round numeric values like price in ad copy, making it easier to fit ad copy character limits. For example, if the price listed for a given item is 25.79, ROUND(PRICE,0) outputs 26, while ROUND(PRICE,3) outputs 25.790.

Be sure to attend the New Feature Review monthly webinar to see these features in action. There are sessions on October 3, so register today!

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team