Tag Archives: Publishers

Building a better web for everyone

Cross-posted from The Keyword

The vast majority of online content creators fund their work with advertising. That means they want the ads that run on their sites to be compelling, useful and engaging--ones that people actually want to see and interact with. But the reality is, it’s far too common that people encounter annoying, intrusive ads on the web--like the kind that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you can see the content on the page. These frustrating experiences can lead some people to block all ads--taking a big toll on the content creators, journalists, web developers and videographers who depend on ads to fund their content creation.

We believe online ads should be better. That’s why we joined the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group dedicated to improving online ads. The group’s recently announced Better Ads Standards provide clear, public, data-driven guidance for how the industry can improve ads for consumers, and today I’d like to share how we plan to support it.

New tools for publishers

The new Ad Experience Report helps publishers understand how the Better Ads Standards apply to their own websites. It provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences we’ve identified to make it easy to find and fix the issues. For a full list of ads to use instead, publishers can visit our new best practices guide.

“We’ve always put our users first and fully support the Coalition’s Better Ads efforts and standards. At the same time, we deal with so many different websites and ad experiences it’s hard to tell at a glance which ads experiences we need to replace. The report’s videos and screenshots are incredibly helpful and make the Coalition’s research actionable for our teams. We’re impressed with the level of detail and transparency Google is providing and are 200% behind this initiative.”
- Troy Young, President, Hearst Digital Media

As part of our efforts to maintain a sustainable web for everyone, we want to help publishers with good ad experiences get paid for their work. With Funding Choices, now in beta, publishers can show a customized message to visitors using an ad blocker, inviting them to either enable ads on their site, or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site through the new Google Contributor.

“Over the past year we’ve lost a substantial portion of revenue to ad blockers across all of our properties. Funding Choices allows us to have a conversation with visitors using ad blockers in a way we weren’t able to before. We’ve found that people are generally open to whitelisting once they understand that adblockers negatively impact our ability to create content for them—you just need a way to start that conversation.”
- Sam Savage, CEO Comicbook.com

Funding Choices is available to publishers in North America, U.K., Germany, Australia and New Zealand and will be rolling out in other countries later this year. Publishers should visit our new best practices guide for tips on crafting the right message for their audience.

Chrome support for the Better Ads Standards

Chrome has always focused on giving you the best possible experience browsing the web. For example, it prevents pop-ups in new tabs based on the fact that they are annoying. In dialogue with the Coalition and other industry groups, we plan to have Chrome stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards starting in early 2018.

Looking ahead

We believe these changes will ensure all content creators, big and small, can continue to have a sustainable way to fund their work with online advertising.

We look forward to working with the Coalition as they develop marketplace guidelines for supporting the Better Ads Standards, and are committed to working closely with the entire industry—including groups like the IAB, IAB Europe, the WFA, the ANA and the 4A’s, advertisers, agencies and publishers—to roll out these changes in a way that makes sense for users and the broader ads ecosystem.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy
Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Improving the living room viewing experience

Picture this: You're chilling on your couch, streaming your favorite show. In the next ad break, the ad loads slowly and is grainy and pixelated. Clearly, you're frustrated because you expect more from your HD TV and lightning-fast internet connection.

You're not alone. Advertisers and broadcasters hate it when this happens too -- they want you to stay deeply engaged with what you're watching and not be distracted by the streaming experience. But providing TV-quality ad experiences has become challenging with the proliferation of connected TV devices that people use to stream video.

At DoubleClick, we are focused on helping deliver great user experiences by enabling advertisers and TV broadcasters to show seamless, high-quality video ads across all screen sizes and device types.

In this vein, we partnered with the IAB, CBS Interactive, Ad-ID and others last year to develop a new digital video standard that allows advertisers and broadcasters to deliver TV-quality ads to living room screens and devices. This standard, called VAST 4.0, updates previous video standards to work better for the viewing behavior in today’s world.

Today, we’re rolling out support for aspects of VAST 4.0 in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and DoubleClick for Publishers. It was important to launch this standard for both advertisers and broadcasters simultaneously to ensure that the whole ecosystem runs smoothly, from insertion order to ad serving.

To enable optimal viewing experiences on living room screens, we prioritized our focus on two specific aspects of VAST 4.0:

  • TV-quality viewing experiences: TV-quality creative files (known as mezzanine files) uploaded to DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick for Publishers can now be passed to services that dynamically stitch ads into video streams (server side ad insertion platforms). This helps ensure a higher quality viewing experience, especially for connected TVs, by enabling the TV-quality ad creative to be transcoded and served in one stream alongside the video content.
  • More efficient ad delivery: A universal ad ID system helps the server side ad insertion platform better identify unique vs. existing creatives, which reduces unnecessary transcodes.

This updated set of standards applies across ad servers and server side ad insertion tools, helping advertisers and broadcasters provide high quality viewing experiences for their audiences.

To learn more about VAST 4.0 and how we’re supporting it in DoubleClick, please register for our webinar, coming up next Monday, 5/22, from 12-1pm ET.

Posted by Peentoo Patel and Sunil Gupta
Product Managers, DoubleClick Video Ads

Boosting publisher revenue with native ads

At DoubleClick, we’re committed to helping our partners deliver great advertising experiences while earning the most from every impression. One way we meet this goal is through native advertising. Native ads match the look, feel and function of their surrounding content, enabling publishers to serve non-disruptive advertising experiences to users.

One year ago, we made native ads on DoubleClick available across all screens — on desktop, mobile web and in apps. Since then, native impressions served through DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) have increased by more than 7x.1 Users are engaging more with these ads than traditional banner ads, so advertisers have ramped up demand as well. Since May 2016, average CPMs for native ads on DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) have significantly increased.2

Today, we’re excited to share some of our partners’ success with native ads and announce new tools for delivering better native ads on DoubleClick.

With higher user engagement, publishers see greater revenue

Native ads on DoubleClick are flexible and dynamic, enabling publishers to optimize their native implementations for better user engagement. In fact, we’ve found that users are more than twice as likely to click on a native ad as opposed to a traditional ad.3

“Moving to DFP native enables us to optimize for better performance. We dictate how we want the ad template to look and A/B test to ensure the best performing position and style combination. This flexibility lets us cater to our partners’ branded content needs. The result is better quality traffic and renewals, a 10% lower bounce rate and a higher average time on page."
- Jen Castillo, Director of Ad Ops, Slate Magazine

Slate is one of many partners benefiting from native ads on DoubleClick. As more publishers recognize the opportunity to increase performance and deliver compelling advertising experiences through native ads, partners such as the New York Times, Vogue, Daily Mail, eBay and Condé Nast are all using DoubleClick to deliver beautiful and responsive native ads.

Publishers are also benefiting from combining the flexibility and engagement of native ads with the scale and efficiency of programmatic. Australia-based real estate marketing provider Domain Group uses DoubleClick to offer advertisers dynamic native ads at scale. In addition to selling directly to advertisers, Domain makes their native ad inventory available on AdX. Compared to traditional banner ads, Domain saw a 38% increase in viewable impressions and a 12% increase in revenue with programmatic native ads.

“Programmatic Native allows us to offer a truly differentiated product to our advertisers. It significantly reduced the complexity and time required for our production team to code and compile individual creatives. And they’re driving significantly positive results.”
- Shannon Fitzpatrick, Commercial Manager for Domain Group’s Trading Group

With better performance, advertisers ramp up on native

As users have responded well to native ads, advertisers have increased their investment. That's why today, we’re excited to announce that programmatic native ads are now available to all advertisers in DoubleClick Bid Manager, allowing more brands to build beautiful ads and deliver them at scale to mobile-first audiences.

In addition to Bid Manager, more than 40 demand-side platforms are currently buying native ads on DoubleClick Ad Exchange, including AppLovin, The TradeDesk, Criteo and Liftoff. And it’s paying off: for third-party DSPs, average click-through rates are more than 4x higher than traditional banner ads.5

“Since launching our support for native ads on AdX, we've seen native ads expand into one of our highest growth channels. We view programmatic native ads as one of the most effective formats for helping our advertiser partners engage with their target audience across all devices through an integrated format."
- Tim Sims, VP of Inventory Partnerships, The Trade Desk.

Growing native adoption with a common language for native ad creatives

To realize the true growth potential of native ads, we need to continue making native ads easier to execute at scale. One key challenge in doing that is ensuring buyers and sellers are speaking a common language when talking about native ad creatives.

The definition of native ads varies across publishers and technology platforms. This causes confusion for advertisers, and without clear guidance on the proper creative assets for effective native ads, they struggle to scale native experiences.

To help solve this problem, we’re launching a new interactive tool that lets advertisers visualize how their native ads could look across different environments. By uploading just one set of creative components, or leveraging sample creatives already supplied in the tool, anyone can see customized native ads dynamically render across multiple websites and devices. For publishers, this tool offers an easy solution for helping their advertising partners preview how their creative assets will assemble to deliver a compelling user experience.

This interactive tool is just the latest step in our ongoing effort to help buyers and sellers create beautiful native ads at scale. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll share new features that make it easier for publishers to create beautiful, high-performing native ads on DoubleClick.

In the meantime, build your native ad today to see what’s possible with native ads on DoubleClick.

Posted by Gabe Bender
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick
1 Internal data, DoubleClick, May 2016 - April 2017
2 Internal data, DoubleClick, May 2016 - April 2017
3 Internal data, DoubleClick, April 2017
4 Internal data, DoubleClick, May 2016 - April 2017
5 Internal data, DoubleClick, March 2017

Bridging the gap between TV and digital video

If you’ve watched a movie on your mobile phone or streamed a YouTube video on your TV, you’re not alone. People are watching great content wherever and whenever they want, across the small screens in their pockets to the large screens in their living rooms. We’re in the golden age of video, and while this explosion of great content is great for users, it creates a lot of complexity for advertisers and publishers.

As the lines blur between TV and digital video, it's important that marketers are able to reach their audiences across screens. That’s why we’re making traditional TV inventory available to buy in DoubleClick Bid Manager in the US. We are integrating with WideOrbit, clypd and Google Fiber to provide access to national, local and even addressable TV inventory in DoubleClick Bid Manager.


Manage TV and digital video campaigns in a single platform with DoubleClick Bid Manager

Historically, TV and digital advertising have been bought and measured through different systems and currencies. By adding traditional TV buying into DoubleClick Bid Manager, we are taking the first step towards allowing advertisers and agencies to manage their video campaigns across digital and linear TV, in a more efficient and effective way.

In addition, to help brands and agencies understand the effectiveness of their TV campaigns, we will be providing impact-based metrics in DoubleClick. For example, an advertiser will be able to measure the lift when someone searches for their brand on Google or YouTube after seeing their TV ad.

Programmatic technology has already automated some of the manual processes associated with buying digital video, and with these new integrations we’ll be extending many of the same workflow improvements to traditional TV.

Access to new advertisers for television networks and station owners

With their inventory now available through DoubleClick Bid Manager, television networks and station owners get access to new types of buyers, such as advanced TV buying groups in agencies, digital-first advertisers, and even global advertisers. Many of these buyers already use DoubleClick, but until now, have had limited access to US TV audiences.

As viewership patterns change, advertisers and publishers have new opportunities to provide audiences with great ad experiences across screens and content types. By bringing TV and digital video advertising together, we hope to help advertisers and publishers grow with video in a more impactful way.

Posted by Rany Ng
Director, Product Management, Google

Bringing programmatic buying to reservation deals everywhere

At DoubleClick, we’ve always focused on building solutions that help publishers and advertisers connect in better ways. Today, delivering on that goal means giving advertisers the programmatic tools to find and reach their audiences across their preferred publisher partners. It also means giving publishers the flexibility to negotiate a variety of different types of deals that can be delivered programmatically, including direct deals that were historically transacted via paper insertion orders and tags.

This was the premise for Programmatic Guaranteed. Advertisers gain guaranteed access to premium inventory on brand-safe publisher sites with the ability to optimize their campaigns programmatically. Publishers benefit from locking in revenue from preferred advertisers with greater efficiency.

With these benefits, it’s no surprise that Programmatic Guaranteed impressions served on DoubleClick grew at a monthly rate of 20% in 20161, making it the fastest growing transaction type on our platform. We’ve seen adoption from global advertisers like Turkish Airlines and Mercedes-Benz, and premium publishers like Conde Nast and Vox.

Building on our initial announcement last year, today we’re excited to share that Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick for Publishers users globally with two new key features—support for buyer audience lists and sponsorships.

Reach the right user with audience lists

Using Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists, advertisers can target (or exclude) their own audience lists and secure guaranteed access to preferred publisher inventory while minimizing media waste. Publishers can forecast the inventory available against advertisers’ lists and guarantee they’re only serving ads to the buyer’s target audience. Since we announced this feature, advertisers and agencies such as i360 have used Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists to meet their reach goals while targeting only their desired consumers on premium publishers. The net result: a 25% uplift in viewability and a 72% completion rate for their video ads.

Greater flexibility to transact fixed fee deals programmatically

Programmatic Guaranteed with sponsorships allows publishers to sell high-value inventory on a flat-fee sponsorship basis—a common practice among publishers transacting via traditional reservations. With this new capability, advertisers and publishers can maintain the control of a sponsorship transaction, while reaping the efficiency benefits of programmatic.

“Being able to sell sponsorships through Programmatic Guaranteed really benefits us. On one hand, we are able to transact high value placements through a new channel generating new business to Universo Online. On the other, we also see a lot of operational benefits for us and for our buyers. With this new feature, it is possible to bring agility to the entire workflow of booking, trafficking, credit checking and invoicing. Consequently, we have a more agile and efficient implementation process to run campaigns.”
-Adriano Marques, Head of Adtech at Universo Online (UOL)

Connect faster with Marketplace and Programmatic Guaranteed

Media buyers who use DoubleClick Bid Manager can discover and request to reserve premium inventory from any publisher participating in DoubleClick’s Marketplace. With the recent release of the new RFP workflow in Bid Manager, advertisers now have a simple solution to create a media plan. And with a single click, they can request quotes from publishers who they already know or from publishers whose inventory matches their campaign goals or their first party audience data.

Extending Programmatic Guaranteed to even more DSPs

Last year, we expanded Programmatic Guaranteed deals to more third party DSPs, giving publishers on DoubleClick access to even more advertisers looking to reserve inventory programmatically. Since then, we’ve seen successful campaigns executed by partners like Adobe Advertising Cloud, MediaMath and The Trade Desk. Given the benefits our publishers and DSP partners are seeing, we’re excited to share that we’ve continued to extend the program to new DSPs like DataXu.

"The days of programmatic buying being perceived as a niche tactic to build cheap reach are over. Brands are embracing automated, data-driven buying on their private and direct buys of the most premium inventory out there. Google’s expansion of Programmatic Guaranteed is part of what’s making that possible on the supply-side, and we’re proud to offer that inventory for cross-screen buying in Adobe Advertising Cloud."
-Keith Eadie, VP of Revenue & Partnerships at Adobe Advertising Cloud

“Providing programmatic access points to high quality, brand-safe inventory with guaranteed volumes is exactly what top advertisers want from their media buying platform. Expanding our integration with DoubleClick to strike Programmatic Guaranteed deals with premium publishers allows for just that and is a natural strategic progression of our partnership. Collaborations like these are a positive sign for the industry. We’re all trying to deliver great storytelling opportunities for brands and better ad experiences for consumers; it starts with quality inventory and data-driven decisioning. Programmatic Guaranteed offers both.”
-Tim Sims, VP of Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk

With the launch of these new features, we’re excited to prove the value Programmatic Direct can bring to every deal and all tiers of publisher inventory. Advertisers are reaching their audiences with more efficiency and accuracy on the publisher brands they care about, and publishers are making new connections to grow their businesses.

Stay tuned as we continue to expand the capabilities of our programmatic platforms to bring the full power of automation and machine learning to improve advertising performance for our partners.

Check out the latest Programmatic Direct trends in our newly updated report “The State of Programmatic Direct” or g.co/ProgrammaticDirect.

Posted by Kurt Spoerer
Group Product Manager, DoubleClick		 Posted by Roshan Khan
Product Manager, DoubleClick

1 DoubleClick Ad Exchange data, Jan 2016-Dec 2016

How we fought bad ads, sites and scammers in 2016

Cross-posted from The Keyword
A free and open web is a vital resource for people and businesses around the world. And ads play a key role in ensuring you have access to accurate, quality information online. But bad ads can ruin the online experience for everyone. They promote illegal products and unrealistic offers. They can trick people into sharing personal information and infect devices with harmful software. Ultimately, bad ads pose a threat to users, Google’s partners, and the sustainability of the open web itself.

We have a strict set of policies that govern the types of ads we do and don’t allow on Google in order to protect people from misleading, inappropriate, or harmful ads. And we have a team of engineers, policy experts, product managers and others who are waging a daily fight against bad actors. Over the years, this commitment has made the web a better place for you—and a worse place for those who seek to abuse advertising systems for their own gain.

In 2016, we took down 1.7 billion ads that violated our advertising policies, more than double the amount of bad ads we took down in 2015. If you spent one second taking down each of those bad ads, it’d take you more than 50 years to finish. But our technology is built to work much faster.

Last year, we did two key things to take down more bad ads. First, we expanded our policies to better protect users from misleading and predatory offers. For example, in July we introduced a policy to ban ads for payday loans, which often result in unaffordable payments and high default rates for users. In the six months since launching this policy, we disabled more than 5 million payday loan ads. Second, we beefed up our technology so we can spot and disable bad ads even faster. For example, “trick to click" ads often appear as system warnings to deceive users into clicking on them, not realizing they are often downloading harmful software or malware. In 2016, our systems detected and disabled a total of 112 million ads for “trick to click,” 6X more than in 2015.

Here are a few more examples of bad ads we took action against in 2016:

Ads for illegal products

Some of the most common bad ads we find online are ads promoting illegal activities or products. Although we've long had a policy against bad ads for pharmaceuticals, last year our systems detected an increase online. We disabled more than 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations, up from 12.5 million in 2015.

Similarly, we saw more attempts to advertise gambling-related promotions without proper authorization from regulators in the countries they operate. We took down more than 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations in 2016.

17M ads removed for illegal gambling violations

Misleading ads

We don't want you to feel misled by ads that we deliver, so we require our advertisers to provide upfront information for people make informed decisions. Some ads try to drive clicks and views by intentionally misleading people with false information like asking, “Are you at risk for this rare, skin-eating disease?” or offering miracle cures like a pill that will help you lose 50 pounds in three days without lifting a finger. In 2016, we took down nearly 80 million bad ads for deceiving, misleading and shocking users.
1,300+ accounts suspended for tabloid cloaking

Bad ads on mobile

If you’ve ever been on your phone and suddenly, without warning, ended up in the app store downloading an app you’ve never heard of, a “self-clicking ad” could be to blame. In 2015, we disabled only a few thousand of these bad ads, but in 2016, our systems detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads on our platforms, a huge increase year over year.

Ads trying to game the system

Bad actors know that ads for certain products—like weight-loss supplements or payday loans—aren’t allowed by Google's policies, so they try to trick our systems into letting them through. Last year, we took down almost 7 million bad ads for intentionally attempting to trick our detection systems.

In 2016, we saw the rise of tabloid cloakers, a new type of scammer that tries to game our system by pretending to be news. Cloakers often take advantage of timely topics—a government election, a trending news story or a popular celebrity—and their ads can look like headlines on a news website. But when people click on that story about Ellen DeGeneres and aliens, they go to a site selling weight-loss products, not a news story.

To fight cloakers, we take down the scammers themselves, and prevent them from advertising with us again. In 2016, we suspended more than 1,300 accounts for tabloid cloaking. Unfortunately, this type of bad ad is gaining in popularity because people are clicking on them. And a handful of scammers can pump out a lot of bad ads: During a single sweep for tabloid cloaking in December 2016, we took down 22 cloakers that were responsible for ads seen more than 20 million times by people online in a single week.

Promoting and profiting from bad sites

When we find ads that violate our policies, we block the ad or the advertiser, depending on the violation. But sometimes we also need to suspend the website promoted in the ad (the site people see after they click on it). So, for example, while we disabled more than 5 million payday loan ads last year, we also took action on 8,000 sites promoting payday loans.

Here are some examples of common policy violations we saw among bad sites in 2016:
  • We took action on 47,000 sites for promoting content and products related to weight-loss scams.
  • We took action on more than 15,000 sites for unwanted software and disabled 900,000 ads for containing malware.
  • And we suspended around 6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, like imitation designer watches.
6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts removed for attempting to sell counterfeit goods

Publishers and website owners use our AdSense platform to make money by running ads on their sites and content, so we have strict policies in place to keep Google's content and search networks safe and clean for our advertisers, users and publishers. When a publisher violates our policies, we may stop showing ads on their site, or even terminate their account.

We've had long-standing policies prohibiting AdSense publishers from running ads on sites that help people deceive others, like a site where you buy fake diplomas or plagiarized term papers. In November, we expanded on these policies, introducing a new AdSense misrepresentative content policy, that helps us to take action against website owners misrepresenting who they are and that deceive people with their content. From November to December 2016, we reviewed 550 sites that were suspected of misrepresenting content to users, including impersonating news organizations. We took action against 340 of them for violating our policies, both misrepresentation and other offenses, and nearly 200 publishers were kicked out of our network permanently.

In addition to all the above, we support industry efforts like the Coalition for Better Ads to protect people from bad experiences across the web. While we took down more bad ads in 2016 than ever before, the battle doesn’t end here. As we invest in better detection, the scammers invest in more elaborate attempts to trick our systems. Continuing to find and fight them is essential to protecting people online and ensuring you get the very best from the open web.

Posted by Scott Spencer
Director of Product Management, Sustainable Ads

Have you been to Publisher University?

Are you a new publisher to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and/or DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and are wondering where to find engaging, publisher-facing training materials?

Do you regularly review Google help centers but want more tailored content?

Or are you already a seasoned publisher who has been waiting for new training materials that would help you drive growth to your business?

No matter your publisher expertise, you can access valuable training materials at Publisher University, a website created specifically for DFP and Ad Exchange users. With Publisher University, you can learn about the product areas that are most valuable to you through tailored, self-study training modules.

Since its launch in 2014, Publisher University has become a one-stop training destination for DoubleClick publishers. There are solutions suited to your needs:
  • Courses: Start with a level 1 course for a well-rounded understanding of how DFP and Ad Exchange work, and then demonstrate your knowledge by passing an exam. The goal is to provide a clear learning path for both products. You’ll even receive a printable certificate, the perfect accessory for bragging to your co-workers.
  • Video Library: If you’re looking to find training on a specific topic, you’ll find all of the publisher training materials conveniently located in one place. With the Video Library, you can go ahead and pick the topics that are most relevant for you.
  • What’s New: The What’s New video series is a great tool to help keep track of the latest feature releases on DFP and Ad Exchange, and see how they work.

Publisher University is constantly improving to help you learn, and has made numerous improvements to serve our publishers better. Highlights include:
  • International language support: All Publisher University content is available in 11 languages, including: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional).
  • Search: No need to click from page to page to find the video you’re looking for. Instead, you can search in the language of your choice for the topic you need to learn.
  • Site responsiveness: Looking to learn on the go? Open Publisher University on your tablet or smartphone to let the learning continue when you’re away from your desk.

Access this high-quality content from the convenience of your own computer, phone or tablet. Especially with our latest updates to our learning resources, there’s never been a better time to learn.

Visit g.co/PublisherU today.
Posted by Danielle Chang
Ad Traffic Quality

Showing why mobile #SpeedMatters

Publishers create the stories, memes, shows and games that entertain and inform us everyday - and most of that content is funded by ads. Our goal at DoubleClick is to help these publishers thrive by delivering great user experiences on every screen, so they can keep us users happy and grow their revenue. That’s why we believe it’s important to share insights when we can, and partner closely with publishers to help them apply learnings from our research to support their businesses.

Calculating the cost of mobile speed

People expect great experiences wherever they’re consuming content, especially on mobile. But slow loading mobile sites are more than a user experience issue; they can cost publishers revenue. Our recent research, The Need for Mobile Speed, shows that mobile websites that load in 5 seconds can earn up to 2X more revenue than sites that load in 19 seconds, the industry average1. To help publishers understand how much more revenue they could earn, we’ve published an interactive revenue calculator on DoubleClick.com showing how mobile page speed relates to ad revenue.


While there are many factors that can impact publisher revenue, the results provided by the calculator are based on analysis of thousands of mobile web domains combined with real revenue and site performance data from DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Google Analytics. By entering just a few data points from their current site, publishers can find out how much money they could earn with a faster site.

Partnering to solve mobile speed

Using lessons and insights from our mobile research, our teams work closely with publishers like Everyday Health and Sinclair Digital to help them improve their mobile experiences and deliver real business results.

After consulting and working together with our team, Everyday Health, Inc. took steps to accelerate their What to Expect mobile web pages.

“We were able to improve the time it takes to load the first part of the page by 33%, and we were able to improve the full page load by 78%, so that’s going to be miles better for a mom who’s impatient, or nervous, or anxious. She’s going to trust us more.”
-Diane Otter, Editor in Chief, Everyday Health

Sinclair Digital contacted various mobile experts to see what metrics they should use and how best to measure them. The DoubleClick team was able to give the Sinclair team a second opinion and specific advice on ways to reduce load times and increase engagement. After implementing changes, Sinclair’s was able to improve their average page speed by 500%.

Read more about how Everyday Health and Sinclair Digital improved their mobile web experiences and then see how much more you could earn with a faster mobile website.

Posted by Alex Shellhammer
Product Marketing Manager

1 DoubleClick, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, September 2016

Publisher sustainability in a mobile and video world

Google believes in the value of the open web, an ecosystem where users get access to information, and publishers are able to create and earn money from their content. And at DoubleClick, our product roadmap is focused on a simple premise: to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising. That commitment isn’t just for today, tomorrow or next quarter - we invest in solutions for the long-term, that will help publishers succeed for many years to come.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the smartphone, when we talk about the open web we are really talking about mobile: more than half of all ad queries on DoubleClick’s publisher platform are on mobile1. At the same time, the fastest-growing form of content across all digital channels is video2. Today, we’re launching three new betas, all designed to help publishers thrive in a mobile and video world.

Putting users first and delivering better ads

People expect great experiences wherever they’re consuming content. That’s why we built a flexible, component-based native advertising solution to help publishers deliver better ads that fit a user’s context. We’re excited to announce that we are bringing video to Native Ads on DoubleClick in a new beta offering.

Since May 2016, native ad impressions served through DoubleClick have more than doubled3 with publishers including The New York Times, Aller Media, Vogue, Zillow Group, Slate, Epicurious and eBay adopting our solution. With the addition of video to our native ads solution, publishers can now capture premium video advertising budgets on their non-video content.

According to Chris Quinn, Head of Commercial Operations at Kijiji, a subsidiary of eBay and an early tester of this solution:

“The [DoubleClick] native video templates — content and app-install — enable Kijiji to give our advertisers an alternative to banner and static native. We were excited about the ability to run assets seamlessly without embedded video players, which will hopefully give us a jumpstart in the video space. Testing has just begun across our iOS app, and we look forward to seeing positive results and potentially incorporating into our greater offering in 2017.”

Maximizing revenue while delivering the best user experience

Our research shows that people will not wait for slow content on mobile: over half of visits are abandoned when mobile web pages take longer than 3 seconds to load4. In this environment, publishers only have a split second to deliver the most relevant and highest paying ads to maximize their overall revenue without increasing latency and losing users.

At DoubleClick, we’ve consistently delivered server-side solutions that create the most revenue possible across all of a publisher’s inventory without sacrificing speed. For example, Dynamic Allocation has helped publishers earn up to a 24% lift in their programmatic revenue5 and publishers like Gannett have seen 15% greater lift in eCPMs for revenue from programmatic channels with new products like DoubleClick for Publishers First Look.

When speed matters, the fastest solutions yield the best results. That’s why we’re excited about our latest offering, Exchange Bidding. Exchange Bidding helps publishers maximize demand for every impression by letting them put multiple exchanges into competition in real time without adding any new client-side code. Since we announced it earlier this year, the number of participating publishers has grown 4x, the number of exchange partners has doubled, and we’ve moved the product from alpha into closed beta in the US.

Continuing this momentum, we’re happy to announce that we are expanding the beta of Exchange Bidding to include mobile apps, with Smaato as one of our first mobile app exchange partners.

“By integrating directly with DoubleClick for Publishers, Smaato can compete in real time for ad impressions based on price and priority, in parallel with other exchanges. We’re delighted to be an early participant in Exchange Bidding and look forward to expanding this solution to all of our partners.”
-Christian Sieweke, Senior Product Manager at Smaato.

Engaging users with personalized video experiences on every screen

Mobile and connected streaming devices are the new destination for digital video. Last year, ad impressions served to Connected TVs via DoubleClick Bid Manager grew over 225%6. Across all these screens, people expect personalized experiences no matter what they’re watching.

Earlier this year, we launched Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) for live TV on DoubleClick as a way to bring addressable advertising capabilities to broadcasters. Whether for live sporting events in France or the Presidential debates in the United States, partners like TF1 and Fox News have used DAI to deliver seamless, personalized ad experiences to all screens. In fact, for some of our biggest partners, DAI represents about a third of all their digital ad impressions, and the majority of their Connected TV impressions are being served via DAI.

Today, we’re excited to announce a beta offering to extend Dynamic Ad Insertion to video on demand (VOD). Publishers like A+E Networks are now inserting relevant, highly targeted ads into both long- and short-form VOD content across all devices, and delivering personalized ads while eliminating common pain points like buffering. This feature will be capable of serving both direct-sold and programmatic campaigns - in both cases delivering smarter, data-driven ads that perform better.

At Google, we know we’re only successful when our partners are successful. Today, building for sustainability means thoughtfully innovating to deliver mobile and video solutions that help publishers earn the most from their content while respecting user desires for better experiences.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack
Director of Product Management, Publisher Platforms

1 DoubleClick internal data, Oct - Nov 2016
2 eMarketer, “Growth of Average Time Spent per Day with Major Media by US Adults, 2013-2018 (% change)”, October 1, 2016
3 DoubleClick internal data, May - Oct 2016
4 DoubleClick, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, September 2016
5 Boston Consulting Group, “The Publisher’s Path to Profitability”, July 2015
6 DoubleClickThe State of Play”, July 2016