Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Map of the Week: The Global Transition to a New Economy

Map of the Week: The Global Transition to a New Economy

Why we like it: This map is a great way to discover NGO projects from all over the world. The info-graphic style of the site is a well designed way to catalog a large amount of information, that’s easy to access and understand. Additionally, by using Styled Maps to simplify the color scheme of the map, the color coded markers really pop out.



In the run-up to this year’s United Nations’ Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 (Rio+20), the New Economics Institute launched the Global Transition to a New Economy. As described by the organization, “The Global Transition to a New Economy maps innovative projects that challenge business as usual ... Together, these projects create a world that prioritizes human well being, within environmental limits.”







Promoting activism on a global scale is a very complex task. This map aims to make things easier by cataloging the efforts of many different NGOs on and around the map.



The map employs several design elements to create a very focused message. For example, the color of the map fits in well with the branding of the site and there’s even the ability to turn political labels on or off, which is a creative way of using styled maps to show that the problems we face in future are not exclusive to any boundary.







It’s great to see another example of the Google Maps API being used to promote good causes in the world. We hope visitors will use this map to discover great organizations around the world and help solve the environmental and economic problems we face.



Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Join us at IAB Marketplace: Advertising Technology this Thursday in NYC


On Thursday, Jun 21, 2012, IAB is hosting its Advertising Technology Marketplace at the Crowne Plaza Times Square in New York City, and DoubleClick will be there! This event looks to address the developments, opportunities, and impact of technology on the digital media ecosystem, and we have a number of Google leaders contributing to both the advertiser and publisher sides of the conversation. We look forward to seeing you at the event--in particular the sessions we are leading below!


Building Brands with Programmatic Buying: A Case Study with Kellogg’s

9:30 am, Mainstage

Presented by:

Chip Scovic, Head of Sales, Strategic Partner Management for Google

Bob Arnold, Associate Director, Global Digital Strategy, Kellogg’s Company


Demand-side platforms are transforming how digital media is bought and sold, bringing new levels of precision and reach to digital marketing campaigns. And although the technology is still largely relegated to the realm of "direct response," this is quickly changing. RTB is poised to transform not just performance-oriented campaigns, but also brand-building efforts, as marketers are turning to the technology for the advantages it offers. The ability to reach a precise audience, in real time, and increasingly through engaging new formats, metrics and inventory are all trends that are promising new opportunities for marketers. In this session, Google's Chip Scovic partners with Jon Suarez-Davis from Kellogg's to take us through ways in which advertisers are beginning to blend art and science to build their brands online.


The Next Generation Ad Buying Platform

10:25 am and 11:05 am, room 406

Presented by: Stephen Yap, Head of Emerging Products & Markets, Google


In these sessions DoubleClick seeks to answer the question: What is the next generation ad platform? From ad serving and creative, to ad buying and reporting. From mobile and video to search and social. With a clear vision of the future, we will explore the functionality and performance required to advance the industry and meet the evolving needs of digital marketers.


The Publisher Opportunity: Devices & Ad Formats

10:05 am and 10:45 am, room 406

Presented by:

Shane Peros, Managing Director, Americas Sales, Google

Bill Murray, Vice President, Digital Advertising Operations at The Weather Channel


In these sessions, Shane Peros, Managing Director for Strategic Publisher Partnerships at Google will be joined by a top-tier publisher to discuss cross-format opportunities in mobile, video, rich media and the operational efficiencies and benefits of using the DoubleClick suite of products.


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

Monday, June 18, 2012

New Training Curriculum: DS Personal Trainer

Are you new to DoubleClick Search (DS) and need to get ramped up?  Do you have a lot of new hires on your team that need to learn the ins and outs of DS?  Then DS Personal Trainer is perfect for you!

DS Personal Trainer is a self-paced training curriculum, composed of numerous Help Center articles and videos, that allows you to go through all of the major components of DS3 (admin set-up, campaign management, reporting, and bid management) as well as complete quizzes for each section and take a final exam.









Upon completing the course, you’ll receive a nifty DS3 certificate of completion that you can hang up in your cube and brag about to others, displaying your DS3 knowledge.  This training is mainly geared towards new DS3 users, but  any user can participate. 








Please note:  DS Personal Trainer is currently only available in English in North America.

Simply register for Personal Trainer through the training registration page here, and once registered you’ll receive the link to access it and get started!

Posted by the DoubleClick Search Team

Friday, June 15, 2012

Fab Friday is getting ready for I/O


Author Photo

Google I/O is around the corner, and I’m really looking forward to all the great sessions and meeting many of our great developers. There are ten sessions scheduled scheduled for Google Maps, plus three codelabs. OK, now I’m getting nervous thinking about everything that has to be done before then!



Anyway, the whole Google Maps Developer Relations Team will be there, as well as several engineers, product managers, and at least one vice president. For those of you who will be there, please introduce yourself, we love meeting Maps developers. If you can’t make it to Google I/O, you can still participate through Google I/O Extended, and all the sessions will be recorded.  OK, now it’s time to get ready!



To help warm us up for Google I/O, on Tuesday, Susannah Raub and Marcelo Camelo from the Google Maps API team in Sydney will join me in the next Google Maps API Office Hours. Susannah is the tech lead for the Google Maps API, and Marcelo is the tech lead for the Place API. The three of us will talk about our upcoming sessions at Google I/O and answer your questions. For more information, check out our Google+ Post. Susannah and Marcelo are fun so it should be a great conversation. I look forward to having you there.



Speaking of Office Hours, Yesterday I sat down with Thor Mitchell and Chris Broadfoot for our latest Google Maps API Office Hours, at a Sydney friendly time. Chris and I talked with Thor about his favorite subject, the Google Maps API. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the Google Maps API V3, the coming end of the deprecation period for V2 and general thoughts about the future of Google’s mapping technologies. You can check out the video here:






Posted by Mano Marks, Google Maps Developer Relations Team

Thursday, June 14, 2012

How To Recover From Google's Panda Effect

Google Panda is Google's latest search algorithm. Introduced last year, the algorithm was created to a draw a line between awesome sites and not-so-good sites. This update ranks all websites according to the quality and quantity of the quality content on present on them. So, lets say you had a website about gorgeous girls, it will obviously get more hits and thus be considered a hit by Google Panda. On the same end, if you had a website about how sexy George W. Bush is, it wouldn't get as many visitors as you'd like and be ranked below-the-belt website (!).

Where the update itself needs a little bit of getting used to, it actually is pretty handy. For one, the big companies won't be listed at the top of the search just for their unbeatable SEO tactics. Secondly, quality content will be prioritised and show on the top of the search engine driving more traffic into your website.

Now, Google Panda is going to kick your butt out of its community if you have:

1. Copied or Duplicate Content

2. Outdated or Idiotic Content which the Users find Irrelevant

3. Grammatical and Spelling Mistakes

4. Automatically Generated Content

5. Frivolous SEO Content

6. Over Optimization


Make one mistake and your website is going to be penalized for it now. You have entered the Rabbit's Hole and it goes much deeper than you think. This, I would like to think, is a plus for quality bloggers. We feel sorry for all the spammers out there who had dreams to make it big through copying someone else's content and posting outdated material thinking it didn't matter as long as they got paid.

Alright, lets get to the "Fixing and Fighting" part of Google Panda. We have a few solutions for you regarding your page ranking and Google Panda. Let's check them out below:

-Release The Demon Inside: 'Copy and Paste' Trend Won't Work Any more:

Give your brain a little nudge, or perhaps a light pinch, doing this could be sufficient to reduce the numbness that you have provided it with for so many years. If that doesn't work to wake it up, then might as well give up your dream to become a successful blogger. Unleash the dragon and write with your mind and heart. Produce quality content and write it in your own (intelligible) words. Make your posts interesting, worth-the-while, grammatically correct, spelling mistakes will not be tolerated (yeah, we are back to grade school).

Keep the above suggestion in mind and write at least every once a week. Update your blog/website and make sure all your links are in working condition. Do not leave your site dormant. It will bring you down where all the sucky sites reside.

Write lengthy content, add videos, images, etc to make it more attractive and easy-to-understand to your readers and followers. Know what your followers are looking for and give them exactly that and more.


-Speed Counts:

Optimize your website to higher, more desirable speeds. Make it user-friendly and relevant to your topic. Google likes websites that are in tune with their soul.


-Duplicated Content in a BIG 'NO':

The concept is that when you duplicate or copy some content you are technically 'stealing' it. Google Panda is working very well against the theft or original content so you should remove all the data you have ever stolen from someone and vow never to do it again because the punishment to doing so wont be a few spanks, it will be being dragged down the page ranking chain. If you know what you want to write, then write it the way you feel like it should be written. Don't be a sore loser.


-Use Relevant Keywords:

We can not impress this point enough, you need to know that the keywords you use can either bring you to the top of the food chain or get you eaten brutally and spat out by a bunch of no-good wannabes. Use the most relevant keywords according to your website and your blog. It will help you get the most traffic from the internet users. If you don't know how to use keywords to your benefit, please follow this link.


-Link You Blog/Website to the Social Media (Twitter, Facebook etc):


By using these social websites, you will drive more traffic into your website. Your followers/subscribers will follow your posts and in return, Google will start considering you a legit blogger. If you don't know how to drive traffic to your website through Twitter, please click here.


-Offer Free Promotions:

People like free stuff, we all know that. All website owners should take advantage of this weakness of mankind. Offer free stuff like ebooks, music and video downloads etc and you will instantly drive more traffic into your website.

These suggestions may look tough and most of you must be thinking about getting out while you still can but trust us, if you really are serious about what you do then this is the only way to beat the Panda Effect. You need to start working on your website, give it time, pamper it, love it and Google Panda will give you the results.

Until then, Happy Panda-Kick-Ass-ing Everyone! :)

Re-imagining classic ads for the mobile age

It’s no secret that users are spending more and more time on their mobile and tablet devices, and the trend will continue to scale. Mobile devices drive 10% of total Internet traffic, up from 4% just 18 months ago, and an astounding 29% of U.S. adults now have a tablet or e-reader -- up from 2% three years ago. This opens up many new opportunities for advertisers to connect with consumers. However, with this new opportunity comes new challenges to create rich ad experiences that engage and delight viewers; experiences that leverage unique features of the devices and environment in which they’re seen.



To see what mobile ads of tomorrow will look like, we’ve re-imagined four iconic ads from the 1960s and 70s in Project Re: Brief, an experiment we launched earlier this year. Today we’re releasing the Android app for Project Re: Brief, which lets you play with these new ads on your phone and tablet devices. Built on the latest platform for mobile rich media, these ads try to push the boundaries of what can be done with today’s technology.



Coca-Cola: “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” (mobile ad)

The mobile ad lets you send a free Coke with a text message to a stranger across the world, who can receive it on special vending machines. The recipient can then record a message from the machine and send it right back to your phone. The ad uses the phone’s GPS location to show a customized video of your message flying through clouds, Google Maps and StreetView images.



Volvo: “Drive it like you hate it.” (tablet ad)

This ad lets you follow the unique story of Irv Gordon, a loyal Volvo owner who's on his way to putting three million miles on his 1966 P1800s. You can watch relevant videos and hear audio clips about stories from his journey so far, follow his Google+ feed, see his mileage and location in real-time, and explore features of the latest Volvo cars. The ad shows different copy and video based on the tablet app in which it is seen. Simply swipe the screen left or right to see how the ad behaves in different apps.



Alka-Seltzer: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” (mobile ad)

You can follow Ralph on the day “he ate the whole thing” through a series of 1970’s sitcom-like episodes that are customized to the viewer based on the device, app, time, weather and location. From the ad settings menu, you can select various options to see how a video might be customized to a viewer based on this information. Then, simply tap the display ad to launch the customized video.



Avis: “We try harder.” (tablet ad)

A user can write about his or her experiences with Avis rental cars in natural language, i.e. spoken English, provide some details about the rental car, and within seconds, his or her story is turned into a one-of-a-kind film, which can be shared on the web - all within the ad. The pre-roll animation of the ad changes based on the app. Swipe the screen left or right to see how the animation varies in different apps.



If you don’t have an Android device, you can play with the desktop versions of these ads on projectrebrief.com, and watch videos of the mobile versions. We’re also working hard on an app for your iOS devices.



These are just some examples of what can be done with mobile ads, when you marry big creative ideas with the latest technology platforms. We hope they inspire the advertising community to create even more beautiful mobile experiences.


Posted by Aman Govil, Product Marketing Manager, Display Marketing