Brand measurement research using the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform

We think that better online brand measurement is a hugely important area where technology can play a significant role. We’ll have much more to announce in the coming months; but we wanted to highlight one early experiment. Our research team is working with our clients and Vizu to conduct online brand measurement research for about 70 DFA campaigns.

The IAB’s publication on online ad effectiveness measurement noted that true experimental design (creating consistent, randomly assigned control groups) would be a major step forward in online ad effectiveness research. Our approach does just that. We use DoubleClick ad serving technology to create two randomly selected groups of users - one that sees the campaign’s ads, and another that sees public service ads instead. We maintain this control group for the duration of the campaign, across all sites where DFA serves ads. Vizu’s sampling technology is then used to deliver a brand lift survey to all users so that we may individually measure variables like brand awareness, purchase intent and favorability.

The brand results, presented through DFA, will show how ads performed across the campaign, as well as different sites and ad frequencies. This data can be used with the other campaign metrics in DFA to help marketers to see the impact of the campaign using any metric they want - from impressions to clicks to brand impact to conversions.

Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President of Research, Analytics and Measurement at the IAB commented, “This is very promising and innovative research. After years of settling for less than optimal designs, the industry will finally see if a true experimental design is possible through the use of technology. The results of this research, if successful, could have far reaching implications for the future of brand impact measurement of online advertising campaigns.”

DoubleClick is sponsoring the survey research for all participating clients. We hope this pilot will show that the use of experimental design principles is a great way to address the brand measurement challenge, and to provide real and actionable insights to brand marketers. It’s one of our early stage efforts to re-imagine measurement for online marketers.

To participate in the Brand Lift experiments pilot with DoubleClick and Vizu, you can contact either your DoubleClick or Vizu sales representative for more information and eligibility requirements.

Posted by Jim Dravillas, Google Research team

New Campaign Summary Report Available in DFA’s ReportCentral

We’re bringing the convenience of downloading campaign reports straight into a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation to users of ReportCentral in DoubleClick for Advertisers. Now you can easily extract campaign performance data at the site, ad or creative level with the PowerPoint Campaign Summary reports query in ReportCentral. The easy-to-digest charts and graphs will make it that much easier for you to share the results of your online advertising campaigns with your clients, team or manager.

To read more about how to access this new feature, check out this Help Center article (DFA sign-in required).

You should also check out Report Builder as we have recently added a couple of new options to make it even more efficient in running and managing campaign reports. For instance, now you can re-run any previously saved reports and run multiple ones at the same time from the report list page. You can also aggregate data for several activity groups at a time, search for and re-run saved reports as well as run multiple reports at a time in the “Reports” tab in Report Builder. Detailed information on these latest enhancements is available in the Help Center.

Expect more exciting news from the DFA reporting team in the coming months as we’re looking to introduce a host of new features to make campaign reporting that much more robust, insightful and efficient.

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

New features coming to DFA Report Builder in January

When we introduced the new DFA Reporting system back in the fall, we received great feedback from users saying things like, “I love Report Builder. You have no idea how much time you have saved me!” This month we’re adding some new features to Report Builder, some of which will spell even greater time savings in pulling reports.

Reach by frequency
As an advertiser it’s important to have insight into your campaigns reach as well as the number of times you are actually hitting your audience with your message. Now in Report Builder you can get the Reach by Frequency report which shows the number of users you reached by the number of times you've reached them.

Incremental reach
We’ve introduced three new metrics that measure the number of additional users reached by time period (day, week or month). Reach and incremental metrics are broken down by click, impression or total reach.

These new metrics are useful for analyzing the incremental number of people you are reaching for each day of spend. So you can tell within a given time frame whether your spend is going towards reaching new people or if you’re just hitting the same people again and again.

Reordering Floodlight activities and custom rich media events
The drag and drop interface of Report Builder is now also handy when you want to change the order of Floodlight activities and custom rich media events in your reports.

Copy and delete saved reports
Building reports can be time consuming process especially when you have to run them on a frequent basis. So now you can save additional time by being able to copy or delete saved reports in the ‘Reports’ tab.

Export Summary reports
The Summary Reports tab in DFA Reporting gives you at-a-glance details on your campaign performance. We’ve heard from clients that it would be helpful to be able to see the same data in the Report Builder query tool. So this new option lets you export summary reports to Report Builder. Upon export, you’ll see a pre-built page in Report Builder based on your current view of the Summary Reports tab and the great thing is this view is not limited to the number of rows on screen.

To learn more about these latest features available in Report Builder reference this article in the Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

Bringing Reach and Media Cost Data into Report Builder

As a follow up to the September launch of Report Builder in DoubleClick for Advertisers, we’re pleased to announce several new features that will make the tool even more useful.

Incorporating Reach and Media Cost
New reach reports in Report Builder show an estimate of how many unique users have interacted with your ads. With the flexibility of Report Builder, you can choose specific advertisers, campaigns, ads, and placements, and gain insight into how many people they reached during a selected timeframe.

Media cost is now an available metric in Report Builder and you can add it to your reports as you would any metric. Media cost represents the cost of all impressions, clicks and activities during the specified date range, based on the schedule and pricing information you input into DFA for each placement.

Saved and Deferred Reports
A major benefit of Report Builder is the ability to create detailed reports with exactly the dimensions and metrics you need. Now you can save report reports, which act as templates so you can quickly re-run or reconfigure frequently-run reports.

You also now have the option to defer report generation, which saves the file so you can come back and download it later. This is especially helpful when running a big report, because you can keep working without having to wait for the report to finish generating.

To learn more about these latest features available in Report Builder reference this article in the Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing new DFA Reporting

We know that as online marketers your goals are to drive greater value from your advertising and to optimize future results based on the learnings from current campaigns. Campaign reporting is central to that effort, and so with this in mind, the DoubleClick for Advertisers product team has been working hard on developing some innovations to the reporting system that will impart greater insight into your role as a marketer.

Today we’re launching the new DFA Reporting system with the introduction of two features -- Report Builder and Multi-Channel Funnels -- that offer the power, flexibility and access to near real-time data required to keep up with today’s always connected, multi-device consumer.

Report Builder: In-Depth, Powerful Campaign Reporting
Report Builder, a new query-based reporting tool, allows you to build campaign reports to the exact specifications that you require. Report Builder is the gateway to reporting for all integrated products from across key DoubleClick products including DoubleClick Search and DoubleClick Rich Media.

Multi-Channel Funnels: At-a-Glance Insights on Conversions
Similar to the feature available in Google Analytics, Multi-Channel Funnels in DFA allow you to chart out greater insight into the paths your customers took from the initial interaction to the final conversion.

A collection of three reports are available to help marketers better understand what channels or mix of channels are helping to drive conversions from campaigns tracked in DFA.

• Attributed Channels outlines which channels are contributing to and resulting in conversions.
  
• Path Length reveals the number of interactions a customer had with your ads before converting.
  
• Time Lag tells you the length of time it took between the first interaction with your campaign and the last before conversion.

We’re getting great feedback from clients currently piloting the tool and will be incorporating their feedback into developing additional funnel reports. Make sure to follow the blog for latest developments on new reporting features available in DFA.

In the next couple of weeks we will be offering a free webinar to cover in greater detail the latest developments in DFA reporting. Look out for an announcement here on the blog or sign up here to be notified by email. We’ll be walking through the reports and common use cases and you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions. We hope you’ll be able to make it!

Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

New! Rich Media Metrics in DFA Analytics(beta)

The power of DFA Analytics rests in its visually-driven views of campaign performance with easy-to-understand charts and graphs. Drill-down reporting allows you to view performance at multiple levels and across dimensions such as geography, browser, operating system and connection speed, regardless of whether targeting was implemented during campaign setup.

We’re pleased to announce that with this latest release of DFA Analytics, we’re making the tool even more powerful by incorporating standard DoubleClick Rich Media metrics. New metrics include:

• Impressions
  
• Click Rate
  
• Backup Image
  
• Average Display Time
  
• Interaction Rate and Time
  
• Number of Expansions and Expansion Time
  
• Number of Video Plays and Average Video View Time

DFA Analytics updates the data continuously throughout the day and provides you with a quick and easy way to glance at reporting and verify that your recently trafficked campaigns have gone live and are running smoothly. For example, you could monitor potential issues with your campaign by checking on the number of backup images being served up.

Rich Media metrics in DFA Analytics also allow you to drill down your analysis to any level, from account on down to advertisers, campaign, site, ad and creative. Graph results to compare different Rich Media metrics such as the average display time against average video view time over time. Get deeper insight into how your campaign is performing over time by charting results by day, week or month. Go further by benchmarking a campaign’s interaction rate against that of the whole advertiser. Or get a quick pulse on the success of your in-banner video ads by viewing the number of video plays your campaign is receiving.

We’re continuously adding new features to DoubleClick for Advertisers, so expect to see frequent improvements to DFA Analytics in the coming months.

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager