DoubleClick, Google Content Network and YouTube at OMMA Global

This week OMMA Global takes over the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, and Google will be there. Here's an overview of what's in store.

On March 17th, get a complete view of the art and science of rich media advertising from Google's resident rich media experts, Peter Crofut and Chip Scovic.

Next day listen to Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management, deliver his keynote presentation on opportunities in online display advertising. He'll cover changes in the display ecosystem, and how everyone can embrace these changes and achieve their goals. If you miss his keynote, be sure to catch the panel right after on Online Advertising - Rapid Recovery or Recession 2.0?, or the late morning session Connect with the Google Content Network with Jason Miller, Group Product Manager, Google Content Network.

Later in the day, Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, Video Monetization will participate in the panel Can Online Video Reach Scale for Clients Budgets in 2010? Hear what he, and other experts, have to say about definition, scale and measurement when it comes to online video.

Our DoubleClick, YouTube and Google Content Network teams will also be at the Trade Show to let you know what's new and to answer your product questions.

Interested in attending? Register here, and if you're a MediaPost member, your full-conference pass is FREE. You can also sign up for private networking sessions here. Use the code OGSF20 for a 20% discount.

Posted by Sally Cole

WebServices API v1.9.2 March 13, 2010 Release

DoubleClick is pleased to announce the latest production release of DFA6 WebServices API version 1.9.2 on March 13,2010.

**Please note the WSDL End Point URL for this Production v1.9.2 release has not changed but as with any release, make sure the stub classes in your web service toolkit are updated as new objects, properties and methods have been added.

Production: http://advertisersapi.doubleclick.net/v1.9/api

Release Notes

Read the release notes for the March WebServices API version 1.9.2 release to see details of the new features and enhancements available to you.

Posted by the DoubleClick Advertiser Products team

Better Site Traffic Data in DoubleClick Ad Planner

The mission of DoubleClick Ad Planner, Google's free research and media planning tool formerly named Google Ad Planner, is to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.

One of the many data points that DoubleClick Ad Planner provides is site traffic data. In line with Ad Planner's mission, we've improved how we estimate and share this data in order to provide media planners, buyers and researchers with improved data quality and more data visualization options. This builds upon the traffic improvements we made in January of 2009 and is part of our continuous effort to provide trusted insights into online audiences.

This release includes the following two significant improvements:

• Traffic estimates across a number of metrics are now more accurate (Unique user and reach estimates remain the same)
• Direct measured traffic is now included for publishers who opt-ed in their Google Analytics data

Upgrading Site Traffic Estimates

To improve the quality of our site traffic estimates, we have upgraded our traffic estimation model. Our model uses a hybrid methodology that combines sample user data, from various Google products and services, with direct measured site-centric data. The model's direct measured signal is pulled from Google Analytics customer accounts that have chosen to opt-in to sharing their data with Ad Planner. This hybrid approach allows us to use direct measured data to train our traffic estimation models and produce the best estimate for any given site. For more information about how we use opt-in Google Analytics data check out our past blog posts on how Google Analytics data is used in Ad Planner and on replacing traffic estimates with direct measured Google Analytics data.

This latest upgrade improves the accuracy of our estimates by over 10%. We look at a large amount of data and metrics to evaluate our estimates and are continuously working on improving them. We believe our model to be among the more accurate sources of traffic estimation in the industry.

Publishers who would like to complement their site listing with direct measured data are welcome to do so by opt-ing in their Google Analytics data in DoubleClick Ad Planner Publisher Center. We invite publishers who are new to Ad Planner to learn more about using Publisher Center to manage their site profile.

Providing Direct Measured Site Traffic Data

In May 2009, we announced Ad Planner Publisher Center, which made it possible for publishers to opt-in their Google Analytics data to Ad Planner. We've now upgraded site profiles in Ad Planner to display this data in the worldwide charts for Daily Unique Visitors on site profile pages. For publishers who opted-in, their direct measured data is displayed as a solid line in their chart. For example, Gamezhero, a website offering free online games, opted-in their Google Analytics data in June. Here's what their worldwide chart for Daily Unique Visitors looks like now:

In the coming months, we plan to bring direct measured site traffic data to country-level profile views in addition to the worldwide profile views that are currently supported.

Understanding the Data in Ad Planner

To offer additional transparency into how Ad Planner generates its data, we've published a new help document about our methodology. The document provides more details behind how Ad Planner generates site traffic data, in addition to other data, such as demographics, ad information, categories and descriptions.

Getting Started

Give DoubleClick Ad Planner a try at www.google.com/adplanner. We think you'll find it to be a powerful research and media planning tool that makes it easy to find audiences and create well-informed media plans.

Posted by Sally Cole

Google Ad Planner is now DoubleClick Ad Planner

Over the past year we've built upon the central role of DoubleClick's technology products within Google's display advertising business. For example, we released our next generation ad serving platform for publishers, we strengthened the ties between media planning, ad serving and reporting, and we opened the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange for business.

As a next step in our ongoing effort to invest in DoubleClick's technology products, we've brought Google Ad Planner under the DoubleClick brand. This better aligns Ad Planner's media research and planning tools with our efforts to enable the end-to-end planning, buying, serving and measurement of display ads across the web. In the future, we plan to bring Ad Planner's capabilities deeper into the campaign management process in innovative and useful ways.

As always, anyone can use Ad Planner whether or not they are a DoubleClick customer. The product remains free and open for everyone. The URL to access Ad Planner remains the same: www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Sally Cole

DART for Advertisers Strengthens Ties Between Media Planning, Ad Serving and Reporting

We're pleased to announce the new DFA Analytics beta and the beta integration of Ad Planner within the DART for Advertisers (DFA) platform. Now enhanced with Google technology, DFA offers a more unified and efficient platform to plan, execute, measure, and optimize your online display advertising campaigns.

New! DFA Analytics Beta

DFA Analytics is our new reporting and visualization tool for viewing advertising performance data. It shares similar technology with Google Analytics; if you've used Google Analytics before, you can quickly come up to speed with the easy-to-use graphical reporting tools that are now part of DFA.

With DFA Analytics, you can:

• Get frequent updates--about every three hours--of your campaign performance data.
• See account performance at a glance, in easy-to-understand charts and graphs.
• Drill down through reports at the advertiser, campaign, site, ad, and creative levels.

You can also review performance by:

• Country, designated market area (DMA), state, city, area code, or zip code.
• Hour, day, week, month, and one or more date ranges.
• Browser, operating system, and connection speed.

Here's an example of a DFA Analytics campaign report, graphed by day, with ad performance data:

New! Google Ad Planner Integration

Google Ad Planner is a research and media planning tool that can help you identify sites where audiences are likely to visit, make better-informed media planning decisions, and manage your media plans.

With the upcoming integration, you can:

• Access Ad Planner data (already used by tens of thousands of media planners each week) directly in DFA.
• Enjoy effortless transitions between planning, trafficking, and reporting features.
• Collaborate on media plans using existing account structures and permission settings.
• Take advantage of new Ad Planner features customized for large agency buyers.

Stay Tuned

Overall, this release is designed to increase the efficiency of managing online advertising campaigns with DFA. It's just the beginning to a more unified, efficient, and effective advertising platform.

Please note that DFA Analytics and Ad Planner are only available in DFA 6. To inquire about DFA 6, please fill out our inquiry form.

Posted by Sally Cole

Recap from the 4th Annual Digital Movie Advertising Creative Showcase (DMACS)

Yesterday, we celebrated the best creative work in digital movie marketing with top creative agencies and movie studios at the 4th Annual DMACS event. If you recall from our call for entries, this awards program invited submissions across four awards categories: Home Entertainment Rich Media Display Ad, Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign, YouTube Creative Award and Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad. Take a look at the videos below to see the amazing creative work from the top nominees in each category then read on to find out who won.

Best Home Entertainment Rich Media Display Ad Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Fast & Furious by Ignited, LLC and NBC Universal
• WALL-E by Deadline Advertising and Walt Disney Studios
• Watchmen by AvatarLabs and Warner Bros.

YouTube Creative Award Nominees

Congratulations to:

• G-Force by BLT & Associates and Walt Disney Studios
• The Haunting in Connecticut by Division 13 Design Group and Lionsgate
• My Bloody Valentine by The Visionaire Group and Lionsgate

Best Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Fast & Furious by The Visionaire Group and Universal Pictures
• I Love You, Beth Cooper by Earthbound Media Group and 20th Century Fox
• Coraline by Wieden+Kennedy and Laika Studios/Focus Features

Best Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Bruno by The Visionaire Group and Universal Pictures
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by AvatarLabs and Warner Bros.
• Star Trek by AvatarLabs and Paramount Pictures
• The Haunting in Connecticut by Division 13 Design Group and Lionsgate
• Valkyrie by Palisades Interactive and MGM

And the winners Are...

• WALL-E by Deadline Advertising and Walt Disney Studios for Best Home Entertainment Rich Media Ad
• My Bloody Valentine by The Visionaire Group and Lionsgate for the YouTube Creative Award
• Coraline by Wieden+Kennedy and Laika Studios/Focus Features for Best Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign
• Star Trek by AvatarLabs and Paramount Pictures for Best Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad

We heartily congratulate the winners for their spectacular creative executions and dedication to the craft of movie marketing.

Posted by Sally Cole

Announcing the New DoubleClick Ad Exchange

You may have read on the Official Google Blog that the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange is open for business.

The new DoubleClick Ad Exchange helps to open the ecosystem and establish a new marketplace for buyers and sellers. For a large publisher managing multiple sales channels and ad networks, the Ad Exchange provides real-time yield management to maximize returns. Participating ad networks and agency networks get access to a large pool of inventory and the controls they need to precisely achieve their marketing goals.

We've been working for some time on rebuilding the Ad Exchange on Google technology to deliver an improved platform, with new features and functionality for our customers. Both sellers (publishers) and buyers (ad networks and agency networks) stand to benefit from the new features we've incorporated.

Key benefits for sellers include:

• Real-time dynamic allocation to maximize yield. Publishers can automatically generate the highest return for every impression, using real-time data and bids to allocate ad space to the sales channel that pays the most at that second.
• Access to many more advertisers. The Ad Exchange offers publishers access to new buyers, including AdWords advertisers, bringing higher quality ads and more competition for ad space on their sites.
• Hassle-free payments managed by Google. We manage the billing and payments from networks so publishers get one monthly payment and minimize having to manage multiple relationships.
• Greater controls. Publishers can decide what advertisers, networks, ad formats, and bid types to allow.
• New easy to use interface with enhanced reporting. We use the simplicity of Google's user design principles to help publishers easily find out how their sites are performing, to help them make the right decisions about their ad space.

Key benefits for buyers include:

• Access to more publishers and more ad space. Hundreds of thousands of AdSense publisher sites are now available on the Ad Exchange to Google-certified ad networks. And as more publishers join the Ad Exchange to take advantage of its yield management capabilities, more high quality inventory is being added all the time.
• Real-time bidding. The Ad Exchange supports real-time bidding, which allows buyers to use their own data, optimization and ad serving technologies to bid on their desired inventory on an impression-by-impression basis, choosing only the sites, audiences, or particular type of ad space they want to reach.
• New easy to use interface with enhanced buyer reporting capabilities. Redesigned reports are simple to use and understand, so buyers can easily see how their campaigns are performing to help them make the right decisions.
• More control and precision. Buyers control where their ads appear and don't appear. They can use frequency capping, pacing and other features to precisely control ad delivery.
• Centralized clearing system. Google makes all payments to publishers, reducing complexity with a single billing and payment point. Buyers benefit from managing one business relationship instead of many.
• A new API - Ad networks and agency networks will have access to an API which enables them to integrate their own functionality and systems when working with the Ad Exchange.

We're excited about the open marketplace that the new Ad Exchange creates and believe that it will add substantial value to the display advertising ecosystem.