DFA WebServices API Beta Release on May 8

The latest beta release of the DFA WebServices API, version 1.10.2, will be released on May 8, 2010. Read the release notes (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Ruben Perez, Customer Solutions Consultant

Audience Interests Now Available in DoubleClick Ad Planner

Advertisers can now build media plans to reach audiences with interests relevant to their campaigns using DoubleClick Ad Planner. Audience interests represent the aggregate interests of visitors to any given website. With today's release, the top ten audience interests for each site are now listed on the profile page for each of the millions of sites profiled in Ad Planner. This provides an important complement to the demographic data that's already widely available. By combining an understanding of a website's demographic appeal with the range of interests of the audience the site attracts, advertisers can get a more complete picture of who they will reach by advertising on the site.

To date in Ad Planner, advertisers have used site categories, which describe the content of websites, as a proxy for audience interests. For example, to plan an ad campaign for a pet product, advertisers would look for sites with content about pets for their media plan. While this may be an appropriate proxy, it also may overlook some great sites, since when people are interested in a topic, they don't only visit sites about that topic. Audience interests in Ad Planner helps advertisers find a wider range of sites for their media plan without compromising their ability to reach the right audience.

With the "Search by audience" tab in Ad Planner, selecting the "Pets" interest will reveal a list of sites that have a high affinity with audiences interested in pets. While some of the sites will be about pets, many additional sites will be about other topics. Take the screenshot below, which is from the Ad Planner profile for a site about politics. Although the site is not about pets, it scores a high (36.9x) affinity with audiences who are interested in pets, which means visitors to this site are 36.9 times more likely to be interested in pets than the average Internet population. A category filter on pets would never locate this site, but an interests search on pets would.

Audience interests gives advertisers a new tool for selecting the best sites for their media plans. To learn more about how we generate the data for audience interests, please refer to our methodology document. To try out the new audience interests features, visit www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Ben Chambers, Software Engineer

DoubleClick Rich Media Services is Hiring

Do you want to be at the forefront of the advertising industry? Think you have the talent to keep innovating ads in this fast paced business? A number of openings are now available with Google's exciting and innovative rich media team. You'll be working with some of the biggest creative agencies and media agencies to create interesting new ways of advertising in a creative and dynamic way on high profile sites. If you're interested, or know someone who would be interested, take a look at the full job specs below:

• Rich Media Technical Support Coordinator - Paris
• Rich Media Technical Support Coordinator - Dusseldorf
• Interactive Designer, Rich Media Technical Services - Mountain View, CA or New York
• Rich Media Flash Developer - San Francisco, CA
• Rich Media Technical Web Consultant - San Francisco, CA

Posted by Sally Cole

DoubleClick Platforms Support VAST 2.0

Building a Robust Video Advertising Ecosystem

According to eMarketer, Video ad spend is expected to top 40% year-over-year growth for the next five years, becoming a $5B US Market by 2014. To help fuel this growth, we’re introducing three initiatives to streamline online video advertising for marketers, agencies and publishers. First, DoubleClick now supports the IAB’s VAST 2.0 standard for video ad serving in both DFP and DFA. Second, we've launched VAST Inspector, allowing publishers and advertisers to easily review and test ad tags for VAST compliance. And third, we’ve rolled out the Interactive Media Ads SDK, a Flash library that allows publishers to display VAST 2.0 ads.

Creating Efficiencies with a Common Language

DoubleClick has worked closely with the IAB and other industry participants over the past several years to create a universal language for video advertising, resulting in the Video Ad Serving Template, or VAST. In simple terms, VAST is to video ads as HTML is to web pages - a standardized response. Just as all browsers understand HTML, eventually all video players will understand VAST. Other companies that have recently announced VAST 2.0 compliance include ADTECH, a division of AOL Advertising, and SpotXchange.

With VAST 2.0, publishers currently using DoubleClick In-Stream to monetize video assets can now benefit from third-party ad serving, allowing them to open up more video inventory and sell it more effectively. DoubleClick for Advertisers customers can use VAST to run and measure campaigns across any publisher who accepts VAST 2.0 tags.

Compliance with the latest VAST standard reduces time-consuming, error-prone and expensive trafficking work and technical implementations, allowing ads to be easily viewable in many different video players. Additionally, all DoubleClick clients can take advantage of VAST Inspector to make sure tags have been set up correctly for smooth performance and error-free reporting metrics.

Support for a Broad Range of Development Needs

Over the years, DoubleClick has released different Software Development Kits (SDKs) to support various video ad serving needs. We have now consolidated all of these SDKs into a single Interactive Media Ads SDK (IMA SDK). The IMA SDK combines the power of previous versions, and can request and display all of the most popular video ad formats, whether they are served by DFP, AdSense or any other VAST-compliant ad source. We’ve also rebuilt the IMA SDK from scratch to display ads faster and support the latest standards.

For publishers that have basic video ad serving needs, the IMA Component requires virtually no coding. For large media companies and video distributors, the IMA SDK version allows for complete customization. We’ve also worked alongside the leading video player vendors, including Brigthcove, Ooyala and Longtail Video (which distributes the JW player), to ensure compatibility with our SDK, helping publishers get up-and-running quickly with little technology overhead.

Posted by Campbell Foster

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