Seven Rich Media Innovations for Your Next Campaign

Today, technical experts from our rich media team will present seven rich media innovations to a room full of developers, programmers and technologists within creative agencies at Creative Sandbox | Behind the Screens. This is part of our ongoing effort to help foster more relevant, more real-time and more interactive display ads across screens. Below you can play a video about each of the seven innovations being covered. We look forward to seeing these ideas come to life in live campaigns.

Dynamic Creative with DoubleClick Rich Media
Use multiple headlines, offers, calls-to-action, product images, landing pages -- even videos -- all within a single creative.

QR Code in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Provide a bridge from online display ads to consumers’ smartphones with QR codes.

Augmented Reality in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
With augmented reality in an ad, all people need is a webcam and a simple printout or camera phone to experience immersive games or stunning 3D product demonstrations.


Credits: Carmichael Lynch for the Living Sasquatch example (www.livingsasquatch.com); Euro RSCG, Media Contacts and Volvo for the Volvo S60 augmented reality ad

+1 Button in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
The +1 button in an ad allows consumers to recommend advertised products or services to contacts and connections across the Internet.


Credits: AKQA for Gears of War 3

Twitter in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Combine social media with the reach of paid advertising by including Twitter in a DoubleClick Rich Media ad.


Credits: Media Contacts for Volvo XC60 and Tribal DDB for VW Passat

Social Toolbar in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Bring sharing to the forefront of any ad with a social toolbar.

Interactive Page Takeover with DoubleClick Rich Media
Use an interactive page takeover to transform a user's favorite web page into a full-screen ad that surprises and delights.


Credits: Discovery Communications for River Monsters; OMD, Tag Worldwide and Intel for Intel Core i5

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

Tips & Tricks: Simple Steps to Ensure Proper Conversion Tracking in DFA

Being able to track campaign performance starts with proper tagging of the relevant conversion points on your advertiser’s website. If your tags are not set up properly to begin with, then you could lose precious information on how your campaign is performing.

In DoubleClick for Advertisers, conversion tags are referred to as Floodlight activities. To save yourself the headache of Floodlight tag errors that could result in campaign conversions not tracking and reporting correctly, here are three easy QA steps you can take to determine whether a Floodlight tag has been implemented correctly.

Step 1: Compare DFA code and site code
Confirm that the Floodlight tag implemented on webpage matches the tag code in the DFA user interface (UI), and that there are no red flags such as line breaks.

Click into the Floodlight tag in question in the DFA UI. Copy and paste the tag code found in the “Floodlight Tag Preview” section into a simple text document.

Load the webpage where this same tag has been implemented. View the source code of the page by selecting View -> Page Source from your browser menu. Do a quick search for “doubleclick” within the source code. Unless the Floodlight tag has been coded on a hidden layer of the website, you should be able to find the tag somewhere within the page source code.

Once located, copy the Floodlight tag code and paste it into the same text document where you pasted the tag code from the DFA UI.

Compare the two tags. The syntax should match.

Step 2: Break down the syntax of the tag
Confirm that each “key=[value]” pair of the Floodlight tag that you just located within the source code of the webpage is correct. These key-values should exactly match those of the Floodlight tag you copied from the DFA UI.

Here's an example:

<iframe src="http: net="" src="1234567;type=abc123;cat=fghij456;ord=[Random" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0" style="display:none">

src=1234567: Identifies the advertiser that is the source of the Floodlight activity. The value of the src= key is the advertiser ID.
type=abc123: The group tag string, which identifies the activity group with which the Floodlight activity is associated in DFA.
cat=fghij456: The activity tag string, which identifies the Floodlight activity.

Step 3: Use a proxy sniffer
Use a proxy-sniffing tool to confirm that the tag is successfully firing every time the webpage loads. A proxy-sniffing tool is a browser plugin such as Tamper Data, HttpWatch or Charles.

Turn on your proxy sniffer, load the webpage, and filter by tags containing “doubleclick.” You should see your tag fire accordingly.

Refresh the page several times to make sure that the ord= key-value is correctly populated with a random number that is at least 8 digits long.

For a more complete guide to Floodlight conversion tracking and tag QA, make sure to visit the Floodlight module of the DFA Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Kasey Spickard, DFA Technical Services Associate

Tips and Tricks: Mobile Ad Serving in DFA

Considering running a mobile campaign? As long as the publishers on your media plan are able to dynamically serve mobile ad tags to users who are accessing the sites on a mobile device, you can traffic your mobile placements through DFA. Mobile trafficking in DFA is very similar to standard image trafficking with a couple key differences.

If your publishers have questions about DFA Mobile tags, how they work and how to implement, please direct them to our Partner Support Site (no DFA sign-in required).

1. Mobile Placements: Create mobile placements by selecting Mobile in the Placement Properties tab.

Key Difference #1: Mobile placements don't have media dimensions. Placements include all sizes in a single placement/creative delivery.

2. Mobile Creatives: Upload your mobile image files by clicking Add Creative > Mobile. There should be multiple sized assets for each DFA mobile creative based on MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) standard sizes. DFA will detect the best creative size to match the device when the tags are served. For each creative message, all mobile image files are uploaded into a single DFA mobile creative. When that single creative set is selected, the optimal creative dimension for the individual mobile device will be displayed.

Note: While it's possible to traffic only one image file size per creative, we strongly recommend using all four MMA standard sizes per placement as a best practice. This will ensure that there are appropriate sizes for the most common mobile devices.

Key Difference #2: Multiple-sized assets for each creative.

3. Mobile Ads: Next, create a mobile ad by clicking Create Ad > Mobile Ad on the Ads tab. Only mobile creatives can be associated with mobile ads, and only mobile ads can be assigned to mobile placements.

You can assign multiple creative messages (each with different-sized assets) to rotate to the same ad slot with a random creative rotation. For mobile ads, you can target to countries and mobile platforms.

4. Mobile Tags: To download mobile ad tags in DFA, you will need to download them separately from standard in-page tags. All mobile placements will display the same 0x0 size. On the Tags tab, under Placement Type, select Mobile.

5. Mobile Reporting: Similar to the Single Advertiser query, the Mobile query in ReportCentral provides delivery results for one or more campaigns from a single advertiser. In addition, the Mobile query includes delivery information based on mobile carrier, country, mobile platform, and size profiles.

We hope you found these tips helpful but if you have further questions about DFA's mobile capabilities, please email dfa-support@google.com or contact your account manager. You can also find more details within the Mobile section of the DFA Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Will Trang, DFA Technical Services Associate

Three Ways to Accelerate Your Social Media Efforts

Think you have social media checked off on your marketing plan because you have a blog, podcast, vodcast and active forum? Think again. Now that you've hit your stride with social media, it's time to accelerate the conversation by drawing in new participants. We'd like to share three ways to use rich media ads to do this:

Plug Your Blog: Embed your blog feed into an ad unit. Include a call-to-action in the unit to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Add Media to the Ad: Advertise new podcasts or vodcasts as they become available. Include part or all of the podcast in the ad unit. Promote links to subscribe to your feeds in addition to offering individual download links.

Bring it All Together: Package all your social media channels -- blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, comments feeds -- into one comprehensive widget. Allow people to share it on their blog or social network of choice. Seed the widget by running it as a shareable ad on relevant paid media.

Posted by Sally Cole

Spotlight on Spotlight Tags

We have a major announcement coming out Monday that's related to Spotlight tags. In light of this, I'd like to offer up some tips and tricks to using them.

• Woody Allen's advice that "80 percent of success is just showing up" applies surprisingly well to Spotlight tags. Any advertiser with the smallest direct response goal should be using Spotlight tags to gain insight into their campaign effectiveness. Advertisers should make sure that Spotlight tags are "showing up" on their Web site(s).
• The more tags the merrier. The use of multiple Spotlight tags provides more opportunities to understand how audiences respond to your campaign. An easy mistake to make is to use a single Spotlight tag to measure a single response goal, such as purchases. There's plenty of other Web site activities that indicate a response, such as visiting a specific page or filling out a form. Implement as many tags as you need to track all possible responses to a campaign.
• It's the little things that count. As a best practice, take a detailed look at Spotlight tag implementation from time-to-time. Check that the code for each Spotlight tag is at the top of the page it is coded for, but not in the tag. Don't use line breaks in the code. If you want an apples to apples comparison of one Spotlight tag to another, make sure they are setup in the same way. Make sure to setup Spotlight tags under the right advertiser in DFA. A campaign running under one advertiser can't take advantage of Spotlight tags setup under another advertiser.
• Put it to the test. DART for Advertisers makes it easy to test and monitor Spotlight tags. If DART finds an error in a tag, an error message will be displayed on the Navigation and Status bar under the Advertiser tab in DART. Be sure to check this tab after implementing new tags and on an ongoing basis to monitor existing tags.

Posted by Sally Cole