DoubleClick Ad Planner's Audience Measurement Methodologies Submitted for MRC Audit

DoubleClick Ad Planner is our free, online measurement product that helps advertisers and agencies to create media plans, by providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites on which they may wish to advertise. It measures millions of sites in over 40 countries and is used by thousands of advertisers and agencies to build media plans. In recent months, we've been investing significantly in new features for DoubleClick Ad Planner. (Better site data in DoubleClick Ad Planner, Ad Planner updates provide more data, more ways)

To further our commitment to provide reliable data in DoubleClick Ad Planner, we have submitted it for accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC). The MRC is an advertising industry group that works to accredit audience measurement services that are valid, reliable, and effective. MRC accreditation is voluntary and some third-party measurement products have submitted for accreditation, as we have; some have not. Once complete, the MRC accreditation will provide independent confirmation that Ad Planner's methodologies, and the processes supporting this technology, adhere to industry standards.

As part of the MRC audit, we're sharing more details about our data sources and methodology. For our traffic measurement, Ad Planner uses a hybrid measurement methodology that combines direct-measured site traffic, through Google Analytics data that publishers have chosen to opt in to provide us, and sample aggregated data from Google products and services. We currently have over 10,000 sites that are contributing direct measured opt-in data to Ad Planner. Our sample data comes from a variety of sources including anonymized, aggregated Google Toolbar data from users who have opted in to enhanced features, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. All of this data is aggregated over millions of users and is powered by computer algorithms. The breadth and reliability of this aggregated data means that our traffic measurements are among the most accurate in the industry.

To learn more about Ad Planner's data, we invite you to read our recently updated methodology document. To start using Ad Planner, visit us at www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Wayne Lin

Extend Your Reach with Remarketing on the Google Content Network

If you've used remarketing in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) then you know how effective it can be in delivering highly targeted and relevant ads to those who have previously visited your website. Whatever your campaign goals - to drive conversions and sales activities or to promote brand awareness - remarketing can help drive ROI on your campaigns.

Today, the wider availability of remarketing on the Google Content Network (GCN) is a great development for DFA clients. With this latest release, you can easily develop remarketing lists via the "Audiences" tab in AdWords and remarket your ads to an even wider audience on the GCN.

Here's how the newly integrated workflow for remarketing on the GCN works for DFA users:

• Link your existing remarketing lists in DFA to your Google AdWords account
• Your existing DFA remarketing lists can be linked at the advertiser or network level and if you add a new list it automatically shows up in AdWords.
• Your lists will then be available for review and use within the AdWords user interface
• You can create remarketing lists in DFA based on your existing conversion tags without any additional work.

Benefits of remarketing on the GCN

In addition to remarketing on the sites you run through DFA, you should think about extending your audience reach to the GCN. Why?

• You can achieve greater reach and engage with your audience more deeply. Reach a large number of users multiple times a day, week or month. Because of the large number of websites who join the Google Content Network, you can connect with many users on your lists(s) as they browse these sites.
• You can create customized audiences by building remarketing lists in creative ways. For example, you can find "abandoned shopping cart users" by reaching all the people who created a shopping cart but didn't complete a transaction and even reach people at every stage of your sales funnel.
• You can reach your audiences in different ways by adding other layers of targeting, such as by geography or placement. This would, for example, allow you to reach users only in a certain region on certain websites that you select.
• It's easy. With the integrated workflow between DFA and GCN you can easily create and manage lists in AdWords.
• The price is right. With the Google auction, you achieve efficient pricing that drives the right ROI for you. With CPM and CPC bidding, you optimize your pricing with complete control to adjust the bid higher or lower to reach your campaign goals.

What's more is that remarketing in DFA is now part of the core offering and accessible at no extra cost.

If you're on DFA, contact your account manager to find out more. If you're not, contact us to see how you can sign up for DFA and get started.

Posted by Pamela Eng

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