Constantly innovating: the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform

Earlier this summer we announced we were bringing together DoubleClick’s advertising technology products into the DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) platform for advertisers and agencies.  



Over the coming months we’ll be giving you regular updates on this journey as we launch upgrades of the DoubleClick products, implement cross-product integrations, and deliver innovative, new features within the individual products.

We’ve had a busy summer, and are excited to share the following details:

• Platforms upgrades -  An important first step to delivering on the vision of DDM is upgrading the individual DoubleClick products to take advantage of Google’s technology. Today we’re highlighting the progress we’ve made upgrading two platforms: DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Studio.

DoubleClick Bid Manager -- Google acquired the Invite Media demand-side platform in 2010, and since then we have completely rebuilt the platform.  We announced during the summer that Bid Manager was going into beta and now, with a notable volume of traffic flowing through the system, we’ll be making this new version available to all customers in October.  Customers using the new Bid Manager to target, optimize, and buy display media have seen improved performance, including seeing 16% more inventory due to infrastructure improvements that reduce our latency with exchanges.

DoubleClick Studio version 2 -- We have also upgraded our rich media production tool, DoubleClick Studio, which facilitates a streamlined workflow between media and creative agencies for the web’s most engaging ad formats. Almost 80% of creative agencies using DoubleClick Studio have already transitioned to the new version, which delivers a faster and more responsive UI and integrated dynamic content capabilities.

Upgrading the individual platforms also gives us the opportunity to make sure that they work better together to unlock even more opportunities for our customers.

• Streamlining cross-product interactions:  When we asked leading agencies and advertisers how much time their staff could save by working in an integrated ad platform, they estimated they could save about a third of hours spent per week -- or about an extra month every year each team member could invest in other activities -- just by reducing manual processes and working in a single system.

With the DoubleClick Bid Manager upgrade and its integration with DDM, buyers can now access cross-channel opportunities that are only available through a unified system.  For example,  we’re excited to announce the ability for agencies and marketers using DoubleClick Search to show consumers display ads via DoubleClick Bid Manager based on their interactions with paid search ads. Marketers have struggled to coordinate their search and display marketing efforts, and this new integration makes it easier, with no new site tags and no new products to learn.  

Another subtle step toward cross-product interaction is the rollout this week of a new universal navigation bar and application switcher for users of DoubleClick Search, DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick Studio. While a simple change, we believe this new UI will facilitate seamless switching between DoubleClick products, saving time for marketers who are using our platform to manage their campaigns across multiple channels.   

• Innovation across the platform:  In addition to integrating our platforms, we are continuing to invest in our existing products.  As an example of this, we’re excited to announce the launch later this month of Attribution Modeling in Multi-Channel Funnels in DoubleClick for Advertisers.

Advertisers use a variety of channels, messages and ads to engage customers. Determining which of these efforts is most effective in converting customers can be difficult (see related post here).  Attribution analysis can help identify what is driving customers, but until recently it’s only been practical for the most sophisticated advertisers.  By the end of September, we’re making attribution modeling available to anyone using DFA -- for free.

Some benefits of this approach include:

1. Ready to use data -- the attribution modeling data will live within DFA, so there’s no delay between when you want to run an analysis, and when you can actually start.


2. Flexible, customizable, transparent models -- you can take advantage of five standard attribution models in DFA, or build your own custom model tailored to the needs of your business


3. It’s free -- no need to build your own system for this kind of analysis. We’re giving it to you as part of DFA, with your data loaded and ready to go.

We're rapidly delivering on our vision for a fully integrated experience and common workflows across DoubleClick solutions -- from ad serving to buying and analytics.  We’re excited to be on this journey with our customers and believe that by delivering an integrated experience, we can help the industry truly unlock the full potential of digital marketing. Stay tuned for more updates, there’s a lot more to come!

Posted by: Jason Miller

Need help? Now you can get it right inside the DFA UI

We've made it easier to get right from DFA to the help you need. In fact, you don't even have to leave DFA at all: now you can access a help pane from within the DFA UI. Use it to find and read articles, as well as contact the support team with questions or comments.

To open in-product help, click the Help link in the upper right of the DFA interface. This brings up a search bar you can use to find popular Help Center articles.

If you need more help, try the full Help Center by clicking Explore Help in the lower right of the product help page. Or click Contact Support to send questions to the support team.

In-product help even offers tools to accompany your question or comment with a screenshot of your page. You can highlight areas of the screenshot that are especially relevant to your issue.

Plus, your question or comment will automatically include the URL you’re on, along with key trafficking details and information about your browser type. You can review all this data before you send your message by just clicking on the Included system information link.

Help content may be a route, but we know the product is your destination. That's why we developed in-product help with this in mind: the quickest way back to DFA is never leaving in the first place. So try it out and let us know what you think.

Posted by Jeremy Axelrod, Technical Writer, DFA

Introducing DFA Basics for Traffickers Online training

At DoubleClick, we are always looking for new ways to help our clients gain expertise in using our products. So, we are pleased to announce the DFA Basics for Traffickers online training course for new DFA users looking to learn the fundamentals of third-party ad serving and how to use DFA to manage online display advertising campaigns. While we have a robust offering of classroom training opportunities, we realize that schedules may not always permit you to attend in person.

This interactive course puts you in the role of a new hire at an ad agency. Under the guidance of a fictitious ad executive, you’ll navigate modules at your own pace to learn how to manage online ad campaigns for a “big account.”

Modules cover trafficking, including managing ads, placements, and creatives; creating Floodlight tags for conversion tracking; and reporting, with a focus on DFA Reporting. Complex concepts, such as 1x1 and click tracker tags, are presented lightheartedly in animated videos, and how-to demonstrations are sprinkled throughout the course.

DFA Basics for Traffickers online training is offered in English and will be available in multiple languages soon. You can register here (sign-on required; click the link, then locate “DFA Basics for Traffickers Online” course at the top of the Search Results).

Posted by Jessica Valerio McGovern, Product Training Specialist

Attend a DFA Training in August

Make DFA Training a must on your to-do list for the rest of the summer, and visit the DFA Help Center to register for any webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - August 15
• Los Angeles - August 21
• San Francisco - August 23

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite: Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - August 16
• Los Angeles - August 22
• San Francisco - August 24

MediaVisor Fundamentals: Learn more about planning and creating campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• Los Angeles - August 22

Webinar Training

DFA for New Users - August 22
Learn the fundamentals of trafficking in DFA from creating an Advertiser through exporting Tags.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - August 21
This webinar covers the most common uses of MediaVisor including set-up, sending RFPs and IOs, and trafficking.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for next month's training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

Attend a DFA Training in July

It’s a scorcher out there this summer, so come on inside and attend a DFA training. Visit the DFA Help Center to register for any webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - July 18
• San Francisco - July 19
• Los Angeles - July 23
• Boulder - July 26

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite: Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - July 19
• Los Angeles - July 24
• Boulder - July 27

Webinar Training

MediaVisor Fundamentals - July 24
This webinar covers the most common uses of MediaVisor including set-up, sending RFPs and IOs, and trafficking.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for next month's training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

Introducing the Path to Conversion report

Conversion attribution is the practice advertisers use to give appropriate credit to every impression, interaction or click that helped drive a conversion in a campaign. Instead of the typical “last click wins” model, in which 100% credit is given to that last ad that was clicked on before a conversion, attribution modeling shines a light on the entire path the customer took to get there.

Beyond the “last click wins” approach

There are many reasons why online advertisers have relied on this “last click wins” model. There is a lot of data to sift through, and making sense of it can be a overwhelming. Although only 14% of respondents in a recent survey by Google Analytics in partnership with eConsultancy consider “last click” attribution to be “very effective,” it remains common; most likely because marketers haven't yet found or mastered the right attribution tools. But simply giving all the credit to the final click ignores the contribution of the customer’s previous interactions—whether through search, display or rich media —that led to the final purchase.

At DoubleClick, we provide you with the data needed to properly credit the different channels that led to conversions for your campaigns. First came the Exposure to Conversion Report (E2C), a premium report which lets advertisers view data on up to ten ad interactions leading up to a conversion. Then we released Multi-Channel Funnels in DFA to offer all clients an aggregated view of which channels contribute to and result in conversions.

Expanded insights: The Path to Conversion report

Now, we’re pleased to introduce the Path to Conversion Report. This report, available in new DFA Reporting, makes it easier for you to gain insight into your customer’s journey to a purchase.

For a trial period, the new Path to Conversion report is available to any customer who is already receiving the E2C report.

This new report, currently available to any customer who receives the E2C report, provides similar insights but offers E2C customers significant improvement in a few key areas:

• Easier to use: the data, available in new DFA Reporting is much easier to compile and faster to download.
  
  
• More interactions: the availability of data has greatly expanded. Now you can analyze up to 200 customer interactions (also known as “exposures”) per conversion as compared to a maximum of ten in the E2C report.
  
  
• Custom Floodlight Variables: you can now include custom floodlight variables in the report in order to determine custom conversion details, e.g. order amounts for e-commerce sites or the number of nights booked for travel sites.
  
  
• Enhanced DoubleClick Search integration: Available per interaction: Ad level data including keyword, new DS3 labels and Full DoubleClick Search IDs - for easier optimization.
  
  
• Attribute sales with no clicks: Often you’ll encounter customers who have seen a DoubleClick-served ad from another network, and then went to the advertiser’s site later to buy. Data on these unattributed conversions (aka non-attributed interactions), are now measured in this report.
  
  
• International support: P2C now supports multi-byte characters in Floodlight Custom Variables and in DoubleClick Search Data (keyword, etc).

We invite existing E2C customers to log in to DFA Reporting and try out the Path to Conversion report during this trial period. We’re excited to see how you can leverage this report to take the next step in your attribution modeling efforts.

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

Attend a DFA Training in June

School is out for the kids but for us in online advertising, there is plenty of classroom time to be had this month for DFA users. Visit the DFA Help Center to register for any webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - June 20
• San Francisco - June 21
• Los Angeles - June 25

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite: Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - June 21
• San Francisco - June 22
• Los Angeles - June 26

Webinar Training

DFA for New Users - June 20
Learn the fundamentals of trafficking in DFA from creating an Advertiser through exporting Tags.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - June 19
This webinar covers the most common uses of MediaVisor including set-up, sending RFPs and IOs, and trafficking.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for next month's training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

A digital marketing platform to win the moments that matter

Editor's note (Tuesday, June 5, 2012, 6:15pm PST): We have updated the YouTube link to show a recorded version of the DoubleClick Insight livestream event.

Today, at the DoubleClick Insights conference, we’re unveiling DoubleClick Digital Marketing: the first modern ad platform built for the modern digital world. The improvements we’re announcing today represent the biggest ever overhaul of our DoubleClick ad platform and are the result of a great deal of hard work over the last few years. This fully integrated, unified platform and its components will be rolling out to partners over the coming months.

You can click here to watch a recording of the livestream of the event:

A platform for today

Today’s consumers work, play and share, moving seamlessly between formats and devices. However, for agencies and advertisers, the process of connecting with consumers is anything but seamless. It’s hard to reach the right audience at the right moment with the right message when every channel requires its own system and you’re patching together, and switching, between ad platforms that aren’t in sync. In fact, in a recent survey of 300 clients, marketers and agencies, they told us their team members are spending almost two days a week working across various digital platforms, often on manual workflow tasks. They estimate an integrated digital platform could liberate a third of that time. That’s an extra month every year that each team member can invest in other campaigns and new business.

Based on what we’ve heard from our customers, we challenged ourselves to re-invent ad buying with a unified platform:

• Can we build an ad management platform that’s comprehensive, so that clients can manage all channels in one place, across all formats and devices?
  
  
• Can we build a seamless platform, so that clients can easily optimize, tailor, measure and compare all elements of their campaigns, using a common language and interface?
  
  
• Can we ensure that it’s customizable, so that marketers can easily plug in their own technology, data and third-party suppliers?
  
  
• Can we make ad buying faster, to dramatically speed up data analysis and slash manual campaign management activities?

A platform that works better together DoubleClick Digital Marketing is our answer. The new platform comprises the following components, which will be fully integrated and work together to enable seamless ad campaign management for agencies and advertisers:

• DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager, our upgraded DoubleClick ad server, used by thousands of marketers and agencies worldwide to manage directly bought ad space.
  
  
• DoubleClick Bid Manager, our new demand-side platform, rebuilt on our DoubleClick technology, making it faster and more flexible. Many Invite Media customers are currently in the process of being upgraded to the new DSP. Last year, spending on Invite Media grew by about 50%, and we believe these new investments will create even more momentum for the exchange ecosystem.
  
  
• DoubleClick Search, our cross-engine search management platform that was completely rebuilt last year and is natively integrated into the DoubleClick platform. DoubleClick Search is used by 6 of the largest 10 agencies, and is creating efficiency gains of up to 65%.
  
  
• DoubleClick Studio, our rich media creative solution, now with Teracent’s dynamic creative technology built in, which powers engaging and intelligent ad units. In 2011, rich media ads accounted for 10% of all display ads, doubling in volume over 12 months.
  
  
• Finally, Google Analytics, which will enable attribution modelling, conversion reports and site traffic reporting to be incorporated seamlessly into ad campaigns.

We’ve invested significantly in this area, because we believe that such a system would dramatically improve digital marketing—growing the pie for publishers, funding great online content for users, and helping marketers grow their businesses.

What are we making possible? With the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, we’re enabling:

• Smarter creative that works with your media buy and that dynamically responds in real-time, with the audience in mind.
  
  
• More responsive campaigns that can “learn” the channels where consumers interact and quickly respond with the most appropriate creative, message and offer across all screens (for example, using a single set of frequency capping, remarketing and creative optimization signals across the entire campaign, helping to deliver the right ad as users move through the marketing funnel—from awareness to conversion).
  
  
• Creating greater value for your business and campaigns, enabling a better understanding across channels and formats (e.g., how does rich media perform versus video?); and facilitating real-time, smarter optimization decisions to reduce cost and increase campaign performance (for example, should you reduce bids on your search keywords and exchange buying while increasing your bids to run more video ads?).

A big step forward We’re often asked about the future of digital advertising. We’re passionate about this industry. It’s the fuel that powers the digital world and a powerful engine of growth and employment. Over the last decade, a remarkably successful industry has been built via humble web banners, repurposed pre-roll video ads, desktop computers and a patchwork of ad buying tools. However, for marketers, the combination of re-imagined creative tools, reinvented measurement solutions and re-vamped ad buying platforms can propel digital advertising into a $200 billion industry that funds and supports great content.

In the coming days on this blog, and on the DoubleClick Publishers blog we’ll provide more details of the new buying platform and discuss other announcements from our DoubleClick Insights event, including new solutions for our DFP and Ad Exchange partners.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, 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

Mobile Rich Media Advertising Gets Easier than Ever Before

[Cross-posted to the Google Mobile Ads Blog.]

Advertisers want to manage their mobile display campaigns with the accountability and ease provided by the DoubleClick platform. Toward this goal, in November 2011, we introduced a streamlined workflow for mobile display campaigns by adding support for a "Mobile In-App" rich media format in DoubleClick Studio and DoubleClick for Advertisers. Today we’re happy to announce that advertisers can serve mobile ads, in both standard and rich media formats, from DoubleClick for Advertisers into the AdMob network with no beta restrictions and new options for easily creating beautiful, mobile rich media ads.

This ad serving solution makes it easier to build, traffic, serve and measure mobile rich media ads, allowing easy integration of mobile into the overall workflow. Media teams gain access to interaction rate and clickthrough rate for their mobile rich media ads and can compare this to these metrics for their other ads. There is no need to fuss with multiple reports from different publishers, all information can be aggregated with our robust reporting system.

Building mobile rich media ads can start in DoubleClick Studio, where creative agencies upload HTML5 assets to build and test their creatives. Or, our services team can assemble any one of eleven mobile rich media designs ideal for showing your videos, retail locations or products via a rich ad placed within AdMob mobile apps. These designs make it easy for advertisers to create beautiful and highly interactive ads with no HTML5 expertise.

With desktop display and rich media, advertisers have enjoyed the ability to build an ad once and run it in multiple places. We are continuing to work towards making this a reality for mobile display advertising by extending our reach beyond the AdMob network and integrating with other mobile in-app networks, and are actively performing initial testing. As our reach grows, so will our ability to help advertisers manage their mobile display campaigns with accountability and ease.

To learn more about how DoubleClick’s mobile solutions can meet your needs, download the DoubleClick Guide to Mobile Rich Media.

Posted by Jen Klimas, Wook Chung and Shamim Samadi

Attend a DFA Training in May

Update: Please note that we have added a MediaVisor classroom training in Los Angeles. See below for details.

There are several opportunities to learn more about DFA in the month of May. Visit the DFA Help Center to register for any webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - May 16
• San Francisco - May 24

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite: Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - May 17
• San Francisco - May 25

MediaVisor: Learn more about planning and creating campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• New York - May 10
• Chicago - May 17
• Los Angeles - May 30

Webinar Training

DFA for New Users - May 23
An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - May 15
Learn the basics of MediaVisor, including sending RFPs and creating IOs.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for next month's training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

Mobile click-to-call in DFA

The mobile features in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) make it easy to traffic mobile ads alongside the rest of your online ads. Our mobile tags help you track mobile metrics and reach a wide range of phones. To make DFA even more useful to mobile advertising, we’ve added click-to-call support. You can now use the click-to-call option for:

• Standard ads


• Mobile display ads


• Click tracker ads (static and dynamic) on standard placements


• Click tracker ads (static and dynamic) on mobile placements

What are click-to-call ads?

Click-to-call ads redirect users to a telephone number instead of a landing page. When users click the ad, their mobile devices load the number.

Calling your number should be as easy visiting your landing page. That’s why click-to-call takes dialing out of the equation: it means one less step between seeing your ad and making the call.

To learn more about using the click-to-call option, see Serve mobile ads and creatives to mobile inventory in the DFA mobile guide (sign-in required).

Jeremy Axelrod, DFA Tech Writer

Making the Web Work for Brand Marketers

Learning from the past

In the 1950s, brands slowly moved to TV, just as they have started to move online today. In both instances, buying and selling systems improved; audiences and new content quickly moved to the new medium; and the creative possibilities inspired great ad campaigns.

However, a key moment for TV came in the 1950 with dramatic improvements in measurement—like ratings and quantitative market research. Once major brands could see who they were reaching and what impact their campaigns were having, they fully embraced the medium, creating a multi-billion dollar industry...and TV’s golden age began.

Making better decisions with actionable brand metrics

Unlike the early days of TV, digital advertising is already incredibly measurable. The only problem is a very old and well-known one: the standardized metrics today are largely clicks, user interaction rates and conversions.

But as brand advertisers - such as movie studios or consumer goods companies - know, it’s a challenge to measure changes in brand favorability of a movie or whether an online campaign is driving more consumers to the store. And it’s even harder to take quick action on any such insights.

That's why today, at the Ad Age Digital Conference I'll be introducing the Brand Activate Initiative, an ongoing Google effort to address these challenges and re-imagine online measurement for brand marketers. With this effort, we're partnering with the cross-industry Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. We believe that the industry’s significant investment in brand measurement efforts can substantially grow the online advertising pie, for all.

Is a particular ad in your campaign especially useful at improving brand recall in Illinois? You should be able to immediately increase your coverage throughout the Midwest. Is one ad slightly less effective at driving purchase intent and in-store sales? Tweak the creative, straight away.

The first Brand Activate solutions

We’re working to build truly useful brand metrics into the tools that advertisers already use to manage their campaigns, so they’ll be actionable within seconds, not months.

Here’s a video describing the Brand Activate Initiative:

The first two Brand Activate solutions are rolling out today:

Active View: Advertisers have long looked for insight into whether consumers saw an ad on page 145 of a magazine, or switched the channel during a TV commercial break. It’s similar online, so we’re rolling out a technology, which will be submitted for Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation, that can count “viewed” impressions (as defined by the 3MS’s proposed standard, this is a display ad that is at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second).

Called Active View, this will first be available in coming weeks within Google Display Network Reserve. We’ll also be making this metric a universal currency, ultimately offering it within DoubleClick for Advertisers, as well as to our publisher partners. Active View data will be immediately actionable—advertisers will be able to pay only for viewed impressions. Going forward, we’re working on viewed impression standards with the 3MS, and our agency and publisher partners.

Active GRP: GRP, or a gross rating point, is at the heart of offline media measurement. For example, when a fashion brand wants their TV campaign to reach 2 million women with two ads each, they use GRP to measure that. We’re introducing a new version of this for the web: Active GRP. Active GRP has two key features:

• Built-in: Active GRP is built right into the ad serving tools that our publishers and marketers already use every day. Active GRP will enable real-time decision making, allowing advertisers to make adjustments to their campaigns at the speed of the web. We’ve kicked off a pilot program for DoubleClick for Advertisers clients as a first step, and will roll it out to other products, with brands able to specify a range of audience GRP segments.
• Robust methodology: Active GRP is calculated by a statistical model that combines aggregated panel data and anonymous user data (either inferred or user-provided), and will work in conjunction with Active View to measure viewed impressions. This approach overcomes problems of potential panel skewing and reliance on a single data source. This approach also has the advantage of never using personally identifiable information, not sharing user data with third parties, and enabling users, through Google’s Ads Preferences Manager, to opt-out. We will be submitting our methodology for MRC accreditation.

More to come

We look forward to bringing other measurement initiatives into our suite for brand marketers, including a brand impact survey pilot with Vizu, our brand lift measurement product (Campaign Insights) and various cross-media measurement research projects globally.

This is just the beginning of the Brand Activate Initiative, with much more to come for brands and publishers. We think that with brand new metrics comes a new brand moment - one that will encourage brands to invest in the web, help publishers show the value of their digital content, and stimulate digital media’s own golden age.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising