Announcing Audience Extension: a new way to create more premium inventory in DoubleClick for Publishers

Today at the London ATS Trading summit we announced the launch of Audience Extension, a new feature within DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) designed to generate more premium revenue for publishers by leveraging their audiences across the web.

Audience extension enables you to reach your audience across other publishers, bundle these impressions with your own inventory, and resell those packages to your direct advertisers at a premium. Audience extension inventory comes from the vast pool of brand safe inventory via publishers on DoubleClick Ad Exchange.  Audience Extension can be used without leaving DFP; flight dates, targeting and bid parameters are set directly within your core ad server.  

Audience extension is best suited to publishers with high value content channels within their owned and operated inventory that are consistently sold out, or who have defined audiences onsite that have a value to advertisers that transcends the context of their own site. It’s also used by publishers looking to reach a critical mass of users from a given geo-location.

Key Benefits

• A single place to manage, execute and optimize buying across owned & operated and external inventory


• Bid management capabilities integrated in the core ad server


• Integrated data management


• Cross-inventory performance reporting, analytics & insights


• Complexity hidden from sales team & ad operations

Posted by Sean Harvey, Business Product Manager

A New Look and Additional Publisher Controls on DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange

As part of our Google-wide initiative to deliver a new and improved Google experience across all of our products, we’ve been making continuous enhancements to the Ad Exchange. Now, when you log into your account, it will still have the same structure but you’ll notice that some gradual updates have been made. There are some new settings in the interface, including cleaner design elements. If you are also using AdSense, Analytics or AdWords, you’ll be familiar with some of these updates.



The Ad Exchange interface has been refreshed with newly designed menus, tabs, navigation, and buttons. This new look simplifies the interface to make it more visually appealing, while keeping the features where you are accustomed to finding them.



Check out the ‘before’ and ‘after’ look:

Old Interface: Notice changes made to the Left Navigation panel

New Interface: Notice updated Left Navigation, Contextual Help and Alert Summary locations

To provide a more intuitive environment with a streamlined look, we have moved and added a few things. Here are some of the update highlights:

• Contextual Help: One of the changes you’ll notice is the location of help content in your account, which has moved from the left navigation bar to a dedicated ‘Help’ link in the top right corner of every page in your account.


• Alert Summary: We’ve added a new alert summary to the top of the page which collects all of the critical alerts for your account together in one place. Now, when you click the alert summary, a full list of your critical alerts displays without navigating you to a different page.


• Performance Reports: You’ll notice that your Performance Reports are now organized by type (Common reports, Quick reports, Saved reports). Click ‘Common reports’ to access your standard reports, and then use the new date range selector. You’ll still be able to choose to either see your default report or daily account performance, just as before. You can read more about these updates in the Ad Exchange help center.

More Granular Publisher Controls

To give our publishers more granular controls over the ad categories available on their sites, we’ve also updated the blocking options within publisher controls. 

New Interface: Provides Filter Control in General categories at the ad unit level

When you create or edit an ad unit, the Ad Exchange now enables publishers to set up an additional filter -- to block general categories at the ad unit level, which was previously only available at the account level.



Posted by Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management

Preferred Deals: A New Way to Sell in the Ad Exchange

A few weeks ago at DoubleClick Insights, we announced the beta of Preferred Deals on the Ad Exchange to help you find incremental revenue in the “middle tier” between your direct and indirect sales. Preferred Deals (formerly Direct Deals) is a sales tool that makes it easy for you to privately offer inventory to select buyers in a fixed-price, non-guaranteed fashion--before it enters the general auction.



Preferred Deals are best suited for publishers who usually sell their inventory anonymously and are looking to connect with buyers in a discrete way. The buyers benefit by getting access to inventory they can’t find elsewhere. This interface provides a streamlined process for soliciting and negotiating Preferred Deals, giving you and your demand partners a more efficient alternative to phone calls and emails.



Making Preferred Deals work requires that you and your buyers compromise to find areas of mutual benefit. Though Preferred Deals is currently in closed beta, we’re hosting two joint publisher/buyer webinars to help you understand how they work. Register for the time that works best for you below.



North American Webinar

Friday, June 22nd at 11am PDT (1pm CDT, 2pm EDT)

Register HERE



EMEA Webinar

Friday, June 22nd at 3pm GMT (7am PDT, 10am EDT)

Register HERE



Posted by Drew Bradstock, Product Manager

Announcing New DoubleClick Ad Exchange Features: Improved Ad Review Center and Publisher Toolbar

We have been listening to your feedback on Ad Exchange ad controls and we’re excited to announce some new enhancements to save you time and give you even more control to manage which ads run on your site.



New controls in the Ad Review Center

The new Ad Review Center gives you complete transparency into the ads showing on your site. Ad Review Center now shows you ads of all targeting types that have appeared on your pages including real time bidding ads (RTB) and enables you to review and take action on them.



New features and benefits of Ad Review Center include:

• More ad targeting types: You can now easily review and take action on ads of all targeting types -- contextually-targeted, placement-targeted, interest-based, and Real Time Bidded ads.


• Ads ranked by impressions: To ensure that you’re always reviewing the most important ads first, we now show ads ranked by the number of impressions that they’ve received. With ads that you’re holding for review, we show the ads according to the number of impressions that we project they will receive.


• Take action on individual or bulk ads: You can now easily block ads individually or in bulk by simply clicking on an ad or highlighting multiple ads at once.


• Pre-approve and block AdWords accounts: For clarity, we've changed the term "advertiser" to "AdWords account." You’ll find your lists of pre-approved and blocked AdWords accounts on the Settings tab.


• Renamed tabs: We’ve updated the names of the tabs to more clearly explain their purpose.

This version of the Ad Review Center uses graphic technology that is too intensive for older browsers. If you use IE7 and are unable to upgrade, consider installing Chrome Frame, an open source plug-in that enables older versions of IE to correctly render all the newest features in Ad Exchange.

If you’ve used the Ad Review Center in the past, the new version is live in your account now. If you haven’t yet enabled this feature, visit the Allow & Block ads tab to get started.



New Publisher Toolbar

The new Google Publisher Toolbar, a Chrome extension, makes it easy to manage your ads without visiting the Ad Review Center. It displays a variety of information about your Ad Exchange and Google AdSense ads, including alert bar notifications, details about current impressions, revenue stats, ad slots, buyers, and creatives on any site where your ad tags are running when you use a Chrome browser. Publishers can also easily block ads in real-time and report any issues to Google right from within the toolbar.



To learn more about Ad Review Center and Google Toolbar, register for one of the webinars on June 14th or contact your Ad Exchange account representative.



Ad Review Center & Google Toolbar US Webinar

Thursday, June 14th at 11am PDT (1pm CST, 2pm EDT)

Register HERE



Ad Review Center & Google Toolbar EMEA Webinar

Thursday, June 14th at 3pm GMT (7am PST, 10am EDT)

Register HERE



Posted by Dan Stokeley, AdSense Product Manager and Drew Bradstock, Ad Exchange Publisher Product Manager

An Insights Recap

Tuesday I had the pleasure of delivering the opening keynote at DoubleClick Insights, a half-day event in which we brought together the industry’s top digital media executives for a series of honest conversations about where the space is headed and how we can move it forward together. In addition to several announcements I summarize below, the event was packed with viewpoints from ecosystem partners and luminaries. If you weren’t one of the thousands who tuned in for the livestream, you can watch it here on the DoubleClick YouTube channel.


Over the last few years, DoubleClick has focused its publisher efforts on helping you maximize revenues across multiple channels and formats. We introduced the next generation of DFP, expanded our capabilities across mobile and video, and acquired Admeld. Today we’re doubling down on publishers by building on this foundation to help you make smarter decisions, capture new spends, and work seamlessly with partners across the ecosystem.

Make Smarter Decisions
We launched the beta of Ad Exchange Market View, an interface that lets you see an aggregated landscape of pricing and uniques across the entire exchange, including which ad formats and regions are likely to get the best returns. It’s data that’s highly actionable, and no other exchange operates with this type of transparency. In addition, we also introduced the integration of 3rd party audience segments into the new version of DFP. For years, buyers have used aggregate audience data to target particular demographics and segments, and we think publishers deserve the same perspectives for their sales process. The early response to this capability has been enthusiastic and we look forward to expanding it further.

Capture New Spend
With its high-touch private exchange, Admeld took pioneering steps toward helping publishers find value in the elusive “middle tier” between direct and indirect sales. We’re continuing to iterate on this model with the launch of AdX Preferred Deals, a tool for publishers to privately negotiate and sell non-guaranteed inventory to individual buyers. Preferred Deals (formerly called Direct Deals), are best suited for publishers who haven’t yet fully embraced the exchange model, and in the coming weeks we’ll share more information with our clients about how they can take part in this closed beta.

Work Easily with Partners
As the ubiquitous Lumascape attests, our ecosystem is complex and in order for digital advertising to be medium that provides a great experience for consumers, marketers and publishers alike, we all need to work together. DoubleClick believes in the power of openness, and we’re privileged to work with over 200 partners. This includes 100+ for core DFP, 40+ for mobile, 40+ for video, and a dozen each for data and rich media. Together, in partnership with the ecosystem, we’re ready to help you explore the next growth areas, and drive the revenue that funds a new generation of great content.

A Word About Digital Marketing Manager
Lastly, I wanted to mention an big announcement we made on the buy side -- the introduction of DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager (DDM), a integrated buy-side platform that will ultimately unify audience buying and reporting across all digital channels and formats -- search, display, social, desktop, mobile and video. DDM will help buyers spend more and spend smarter. As a publisher, that means means more revenue for you and better ad experiences for your audience. You can read more about DDM at the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog.

My main takeaway from Insights, is that we’re entering an exciting new phase in this industry--one in which everything is being re-imagined, from the ads themselves to the ways they’re created, delivered, transacted and measured. DoubleClick’s goal isn’t just to help you thrive in this change, but help you drive it in ways that meet your evolving business needs. In short, our success is based on yours.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising

Future of Advertising Event - DoubleClick Insights

There has been explosive growth in ad technology over the last 20 years. From each of our perspectives -- whether you are an agency, an advertiser, publisher or a technology provider -- we can all still see unprecedented opportunities as the digital world continues to grow and diversify.

We believe that as an industry, we’re on a common digital journey and that the next wave of innovation in ad tech will come from us all working better together. 

However, like all great opportunities, there are challenges and questions, such as:

• How do we unlock the next $50 billion of opportunity for digital advertising? 


• How do we deliver those immersive, interactive experiences to today’s empowered consumer demands? 


• What do we, as part of the ad tech ecosystem, need to build to create even more value for our clients and consumers?

On June 5th we’re hosting DoubleClick Insights to start exploring some answers to these questions. Senior leaders from top agencies, advertisers and publishers will help lead the conversation -- and you’re invited to join via the live stream! Register here.



The agenda will include topics such as:



Adapting to the Empowered Consumer:

Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising at Google will be joined by David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies, and James Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group, to discuss how technology is being used to deliver new content and advertising experiences to consumers.



If We Build It, Will They (Consumers) Come? 

Terry Kawaja, CEO and Co-Founder, Luma Partners (and creator of the now legendary LUMAscape chart) will lead a conversation about the ad tech ecosystem, and what it needs to do next to add value for agencies, publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers. Terry will be joined onstage by:

• Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai


• Greg Stuart, Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association


• Kurt Unkel, President, VivaKi 


• Shishir Mehrota, Vice President of Product Management, YouTube

Outside the Box: Technology = Creative Friend or Foe?

Technology is supposed to make the life of a marketer easier. For our final conversation, we’re going to focus on the question of: Is this technology exploring resulting in better marketing? Or, is it just resulting in mediocre creative and complexity for both consumers and marketers? Karim Temsamani, Vice President - New Products and Solutions, Google moderates the conversation with leaders from creative agencies, iconic brands and publishers including:

• Brad Ruffkess, Global Connection, Coca-Cola


• Mike Lowenstern, Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA


• Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB 


• John Caldwell, Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. To learn more about our highlighted speakers go to the Speakers page on our site.



Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.



DoubleClick Insights

Tuesday, June 5th 2012

9:00am - 1:00pm PST

Set event reminder today



Following us on Google+ or Twitter (@DoubleClick and @DoubleClick_pub)? Use the #dclkinsights tag as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event?



Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

New industry metrics to help publishers chart their growth plan

As the display industry evolves, we're collectively discovering and analyzing trends that point towards promising opportunities and paths to growth. This is the year where we’re doubling down on publishers, giving you the tools you need to make the most from today’s digital media landscape. One of the ways we’re helping publishers navigate their way to success is by providing new sources of industry knowledge and benchmark data. So today we’re introducing a new report, “Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition”.

The Publisher Edition will be the first in a series of publications looking at aggregated global data from across our display advertising solutions. We’re doing this to generate metrics that will answer a few of of the most common questions we hear from our partners, and put some data behind long-held industry assumptions. For example:

• Is the banner really dead? If you mean the 468x60 banner, then it might be time to hold a wake. This ad size dropped down to 3% of all impressions. Brand-friendly “premium” units are gaining share and we’re seeing that smaller ad units are dropping in popularity. However nearly 80% of all impressions are the ad unit “three musketeers”: the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper still comprise the vast majority of ads served.


• What types of sites are showing strong impression growth?  In 2011, we found that Shopping, Sports, and Auto & Vehicle sites were some of  the fastest year-on-year growth verticals on the Ad Exchange and AdSense. We saw impressive figures across the board, with 15 out of 25 publisher verticals displaying double-digit growth.


• Are your sell-through rates getting a 17% holiday bonus? Anecdotally we’ve heard that publishers’ sell-through rates increase at the end of the year, thanks to higher advertiser holiday spending. We’re now able to quantify this end-of-year shift, and we found that the global publisher sell-through rate increases from 36% to 42% in the fourth quarter. Comparing the regions in 2011, European publishers experienced the greatest sell-through boost, increasing to 47%.


• How fast is the growth in mobile and video? Growth in mobile usage has exploded, with mobile web impressions on the Ad Exchange and AdSense platforms increasing by 250% from the third to fourth quarter in 2011. Over the same period, video ad impressions increased nearly 70% across the DFP Video platform.

• Where in the world are you? All over, as it turns out. Of a possible estimated 245 different countries and territories, we saw publisher ad impressions from 235 of them. These included the island country of Palau - one of the world’s newest sovereign states - and the middle-African nation of Equatorial Guinea, with astounding growth rates of 1106% and 4635% respectively. And while the United States still accounts for the highest percentage of impressions overall, we’re seeing a significant representation from China and Japan, coming in at 11% and 6% respectively.

These metrics are a beginning: they give a snapshot of what’s happening in an ever-changing industry. We hope this sparks conversations across the marketplace about the trends driving these metrics, and how publishers can best capitalize on them to grow their businesses bigger, faster.


For our part, we’ll be continuing the conversation at DoubleClick Insights on June 5th, where we’ll be live-streaming our discussion on the future of buying and selling ads online. We hope you’ll join us there!

Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management, Display Advertising.

Answering to Our Users - Delivering on Commitments

Last year at IAB’s Innovation Days, I made a number of predictions, all focused on answering one central question: how can we put the user at the center of all that we do? One year later, I think it’s time for a progress report - to hold ourselves accountable and see how far we’ve come. I presented an update on some of my predictions earlier today at Digital Media Summit, hosted by Luma Partners:

Prediction: People will have a direct say in 25% of the ads they see
Update: We’ve seen choice friendly formats take off across the industry. In our own network, engaged views of TrueView skippable ads grew 4x last year. Going beyond ads, we rolled out paywall alternative Google Consumer Surveys, which has already shown more than 300 million surveys, with an average publisher RPM of $12. Given all the innovation, I actually think we aimed too low and that consumers will have a say in well over half of the ads they see.

Prediction: Engagement rates across all display ads will increase 50%
Update: This increase in engagement will be driven by two factors: relevance and creativity. While technological innovations continue to improve relevance, we believe rich media will be the key to unlocking the creative potential of digital advertising. According to Nielsen AdRelevance, rich media impressions almost doubled in 2011. We’re committed to helping creative agencies scale and optimize rich media ads with templatized ad units in the latest version of DoubleClick Studio.

Prediction: 35% of campaigns will use metrics beyond clicks and conversions
Update: As we move to a model that seeks to drive engagement versus just clicks, we need new measures of success. We’re working with the industry-wide “Making Measurement Make Sense” (3MS) initiative to establish new standards for brand advertisers to measure reach and engagement. And just last month, we launched the Brand Activate Initiative with several pilots for new metrics--Active View, which shows brands whether their ad has been seen; and Active GRP, the digital counterpart to the gross rating point. We’ve already received interest from dozens of major brands.

As an industry, we’ve made plenty of progress over the last year. With all the innovations to do right by our user, I actually have two new predictions I’d like to add to the list.

New Prediction: 25% of brands will favor digital ads over all other media
This is a pretty bold prediction, considering today this number is probably close to none. So why are we so bullish? First, audiences continue to move online: in 2011, households with broadband but with no cable TV, increased 23% (Nielsen Cross-Platform Report Q3’11). Second, so is content: the newly launched YouTube Original Channels alone will introduce 25 new hours of original programming a day. Third, technology is offering new levels of control and measurement: technologies like real-time bidding will allow for improved targeting while initiatives like 3MS and Brand Activate will demonstrate effectiveness. With reach, control, quality content and measurement, I think the real question will become, why wouldn’t a brand name digital their favorite medium?

New Prediction: 100% of campaigns will be integrated everywhere
All signs indicate that campaigns that reach across screens - TV, desktops, smartphones and tablets -- are more effective. For example, in a study conducted by Google and Nielsen Multi-Media Labs in September 2011, users who saw a multi-screen Volvo campaign had a 24% higher brand recall than those that viewed their ads on TV alone. We’re increasingly seeing increased interest in buying across screens on our own platforms, like DoubleClick for Publishers Mobile, where we’ve seen the number of impressions delivered double every quarter.

The online advertising ecosystem is complex, and in order for digital advertising to be a medium that provides a great experience for consumers, marketers and publishers alike, we all need to work together. For our part, we’ve invested in hundreds of partnerships to better support publishers, and advertisers, ultimately serve our users. Happier consumers will drive better performing ads, more money for publishers and increased ad spend (including marketing budget) for agencies. I look forward to seeing the continued innovation that this “user revolution” inspires and working with all of you to move towards the bright future I hope we all envision for this industry.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

PubTalk: PCH’s Denise Leggio on winning big with DoubleClick Ad Exchange

You probably think of Publisher’s Clearing House (PCH) as a mail-order sweepstakes company that surprised winners with big, over-sized checks. However, PCH has evolved its traditional magazine and merchandise direct marketing business to include several “play and win” properties such as pchlotto.com, pchgames.com and pchsearchandwin.com.

Delivering over 300 million ad impressions per month across these sites, PCH tested multiple strategies for monetizing remnant inventory before turning to DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) in early 2010. Today, AdX’s share of revenue has grown 5X and it now monetizes up to 70% of all remnant inventory. We caught up with Denise Leggio, Director of Ad Operations at PCH, to learn more about what worked for them with AdX.



Won over by strong controls

“With a brand like ours, ad quality is just as important as the RPM. But Ad Exchange is easy to use and allows us a broad range of controls, like blocking competitive or undesirable ads from bidding. It lets us maximize revenue without giving up control of the ads or compromising our brand,” says Denise.



Higher yields with Dynamic Allocation

“One of the biggest benefits of Ad Exchange is Dynamic Allocation with DFP. Ad Exchange will only serve if it can beat the highest-paying ad at that exact time, ensuring optimal revenue.” For PCH, Dynamic Allocation has also informed pricing decisions on direct inventory.



Multiple tools and levers for deeper insights and higher revenue

From reporting features at the individual ad unit level, to the Minimum CPM Recommendation tool to set the minimum auction price, AdX has provided Denise’s team many tools to optimize revenue. “The optimization options have been extremely valuable for our online business. The tools, reports and data provided give us insight into our inventory and buyer habits,” she says. “With those insights, we’re able to make changes extremely quickly.”



Operational efficiencies allow deeper focus on direct sales

The time savings from being on AdX has allowed Denise and her team to better support PCH’s direct sales team, testing and building creative packages involving rich media, takeover ads and site skins. “The operations team can now be a strategic partner on that end, instead of just being on the back end doing yield optimization and trafficking.”



“You have to work with a solution that you trust, and I think that’s why we like Ad Exchange,” Denise says. “For PCH, Ad Exchange is the solution of choice because of its robust technology, insights, control, and ability to offer the highest yield and inventory fill in a highly competitive market.”



Read the full case study here.



This blog post was part of “PubTalk”, a series of conversations with publishers.




Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Manager