DoubleClick Search 2010 Recap

DoubleClick Search has had an exciting 2010, with several new features designed to improve your DoubleClick Search experience:

• Added support for several Microsoft adCenter features in preparation for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, including Geographic Targeting, Content Targeting, and Dynamic Ad Text.
• Added support for several Google AdWords features, including Bidding Options, Delivery Method, Ad Rotation, Device Platform Targeting, and Campaign-level Negatives.
• Greatly enhanced the support for AdWords Placement Targeting and Image Ads, moving these features out of beta to full production.
• Launched an all-new Bid Strategies page, with several ways to customize the reporting data to suit your needs. Also, the new Bid Strategy Keyword History page shows detailed history of bid strategy changes for each keyword.
• Added new features to the DoubleCilck Search Reporting Center, including the ability to report on Spotlight tags, and export directly from DoubleClick Search instead of having to queue up a request and then wait for an email.
• Provided users with the ability to resubmit their own search engine tasks in DoubleClick Search.

These features are only the beginning; stay tuned for even bigger changes in 2011. To follow just DoubleClick Search news on this blog, filter your view here.

Posted by Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director

Rich Media Grows to 10% of the Display Advertising Pie

Back in June of 2009, we highlighted the percentage of total display advertising volume going to rich media ads in the introduction of our “Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads” report. The headline on the first figure in the report stated, “Rich Media Only 6% of Ad Serving Volume in 2008.”

Checking back in, we find that, based on data collected by The Nielsen Company during Q3 2010, rich media volume is up -- by a lot. Today, rich media ads make up 10% of ad serving volume -- a whopping 4 percentage point increase since our report was published.

Look for rich media volume to continue to grow as more advertisers seek out the benefits of incorporating video and interactivity into their display advertising campaigns. After all, anything Flash ads can do rich media ads can do better.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing the new DFA API code site

Want to build applications that talk to DoubleClick for Advertisers but not sure where to start? With the release of the new Google Code site for DFA, developers now have a comprehensive set of guidelines for using DFA’s web services API.

The new site will be your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about the DFA API, from documentation, to code examples and how-to’s, to announcements and product updates. There’s also a forum (you’ll need to apply for membership) where users can discuss the API and provide feedback.

In addition, you can refer to the DoubleClick Advertisers API blog for information on new features, discussion on best practices for developers and the heads up on planned outages.

The DFA API lets you build applications that talk directly with our ad trafficking system. It’s especially useful for automating routine, as well as integrating DFA with third-party systems. Most popular programming languages are supported, including Java, PHP, Python, .NET, Perl, and Ruby.

Posted by Ruben Perez, The DoubleClick for Advertisers API Team

Introducing the DoubleClick Ad Planner Marketplace

Today we're excited to announce the beta launch of the DoubleClick Ad Planner Marketplace for advertisers and agencies using DoubleClick for Advertisers. The Ad Planner Marketplace is a new solution connecting buyers and sellers of online advertising to make the process of traditional online media buying simpler and more efficient.

Buying online media can be incredibly inefficient with 28% of total media spend going to administrative costs, according to ThinkEquity. And in terms of planning media, it can be hard to access data to find the best sites that attract your target audience and to get detailed information on a site’s available inventory.

At DoubleClick, we're further developing Ad Planner with these challenges in mind. Ad Planner is a good resource for site research, providing robust data on sites and their available ad placements. The launch of Ad Planner Marketplace takes this one step further by offering additional information about publisher inventory including the availability of inventory, audience profiles for inventory and the ability to place order requests for inventory.

Still in beta, Ad Planner Marketplace is just the first step in building out a completely streamlined media planning and buying solution on the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform.
Currently with the Ad Planner Marketplace you can:

• Search for ad placements that meet your campaign goals
  
• Review information on publishers’ placements including:
  
  • Audience Statistics: Unique Visitors, Demographics, Audience Interests
    
  • Advertising Information: Impression volume, Available ad sizes, Available ad types and formats, and CPM rates
• Send order requests to reserve and purchase site placements directly in Ad Planner from participating publishers in the Marketplace.

The Ad Planner Marketplace beta is currently available to users of DoubleClick for Advertisers. In this beta release, ad placements are only available from publishers selling in US dollars. Expect to be updated in the coming months as we continue to add features and make enhancements to the Ad Planner Marketplace.

If you are interested in signing up for the beta, fill out this form [update 6/1/2011: we are no longer accepting beta requests for Marketplace]. If you are not already on DFA, contact us for more information.

Posted by Seth Demsey, Product Manager

Trends and observations in the September Ad Planner 1000

The September edition of the Ad Planner 1000 offers a few obvious trends as students across the northern hemisphere have returned to school and are putting their thinking caps on.

As the school year gets into full swing, homework and school projects abound and usage of reference sites increases correspondingly. September was a good month for reference.com which was up more than 23%, thesaurus.com followed closely with its 21% increase in the number of unique visitors, wiktionary.org went up almost 18%, merrian-webster.com more than 17% and thefreedictionary.com enjoyed more than a 16% increase in site visitors for the month of September.

The return to school did not seem to bode well for online gaming and entertainment sites as we observed a decline in site traffic with many of these sites. Perhaps much of play time has gone from the online realm to the offline world of the playground.

Battle.net was the most embattled as it saw a huge drop in site visitors (-38%), while 4399.com was not far behind with a steep 35% decline, duowan.com dropped 24%, pcgames.com (-24%), addictinggames.com (-18%), sdo.com was down 17% and nick.com and zylom.com saw 16% fewer visitors to their sites in September. To a lesser extent, miniclip.com (-13%), armorgames.com (-9%) and juegos.com (-8%) also saw drops in visitors to their site during this month.

“Did you catch that season premiere last night?” is likely a common refrain heard around water coolers everywhere. Thanks to the new television season, network sites re-entered the Ad Planner 1000: nbc.com at #679, cbs.com at #712 and abc.go.com at #748. Tvguide.com also benefited with enough of an increase to site visitors to crack the list at #820.

Sports trends have usually shown their mark on the Ad Planner 1000 from month to month and September is no different. In the U.S., football fervor is underway and the biggest beneficiary is nfl.com with a whopping 61% increase in unique vistors to their site. Espn.com fared well (+26%), as did cbssports.com which debuted in the Ad Planner 1000 this month at #672. On the other hand, as playoff contenders emerge in the baseball post-season, the narrowing field of teams to follow seems to have affected mlb.com which saw site traffic go down 16%.

In other trend news, social networking sites Facebook.com remains atop the Ad Planner 1000 this month with a healthy rise in the number of unique visitors of 11%. Twitter fared well too with 12% more visitors in the month of September.

Expect to see more of these interesting observations with your favorite sites when we publish the next update to the Ad Planner 1000 in a couple of weeks.

Posted by Wayne Lin, Product Manager

Congratulations DMACs Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the fifth annual Digital Media Advertising Creative Showcase (DMACS) awards! The event took place Thursday October 14 at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. DMACS 2010 showcased the apex of cutting-edge digital media advertising around entertainment releases over the past year. The most innovative and creative digital media talent in the industry competed in six categories to receive recognition for campaigns executed with excellence. Google's DoubleClick Rich Media Team is the proud sponsor of these awards, and we would like to extend our congratulations to the winners!

Winners of the DMACS 2010 are:

Best Home Entertainment Rich Media Campaign:

Up – Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and Deadline Advertising

YouTube Creative Award:

The Last Exorcism – Lionsgate and The Visionaire Group

Best Television Rich Media Campaign:

The Fugitive Chronicles – A&E and The Visionaire Group

Best Video Game Rich Media Campaign:

Mass Effect 2 – Electronic Arts and Draftfcb, Sabertooth and Wieden+Kennedy

Best Theatrical Movie Rich Media Campaign:

The Expendables – Lionsgate and The Visionaire Group

Best Multichannel Cross-Media Campaign:

Dante’s Inferno – Electronic Arts/Visceral Games and Wieden+Kennedy, Kamp Grizzly and Emerge Interactive

The event was attended by approximately 150 of the entertainment industry’s leading marketing executives, agency heads, creative directors and designers. In addition to the awards ceremony, the showcase explored leading trends in digital marketing. Presentations included a panel discussion, hosted by Kevin Winston of Digital LA, on the topic of “TV Goes Tech: iTV, 3D & apps” and Eyetracking analysis and trends offered up by Lance Porter of New Media Mind.

Awards presenters included a range of talent and marketing executives from across the entertainment industry including Adam Carolla (comedian, talk-show host, author), Andrew Marlowe & Terri Miller (Creator/Executive Producer and Producer of ABC’s Castle), Janina Gavankar (The Gates, The L Word), Gordon Ho (Business development consultant for iTV and digital media and former EVP of Global Marketing at Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) and Jamie Byrne (Head of Marketing Programs, YouTube).

Check out the videos and pictures.

Posted by Kate Macevicz, Campaign Manager

New Ad Planner 1000 List for August

Check out the latest Ad Planner 1000 for August 2010. Summer is winding down here in the northern hemisphere. People are finishing up vacations, soaking up the last rays of the summer sun and preparing their children for the back to school season.

Back to School
At least in the United States, back to school sends parents and kids into a frenzy of excitement or dread depending on which way you look at it. But one thing stands in common - shopping! Retailers hoping to cash in on the back to school season saw a spurt in their site traffic during the month of August.

A popular resource for dorm room decorating, ikea.com saw a 14% increase in the number of unique visitors to their site and the home and garden retailer, bedbathandbeyond.com cracked the AP 1000 for the first time at #999.

A new fall wardrobe to start the school year is in order too and this was reflected in the increase in traffic going to clothing retailers sites such as kohls.com (+10%), hm.com (+10%), gap.com (+9%) and jcpenney.com (+9%).

Not surprisingly, sites offering school supplies were also positively impacted by the back to school season: staples.com (+6%) and apple.com (+9%). An interesting but perhaps unrelated trend in the AP 1000 for August was the rise in sites offering computer security software: symantec.com (+10%), kaspersky.com (+10%) and avast.com (+9%).

Getting an early start on homework perhaps? The increase in unique users to reference sites such as thefreedictionary.com (+13%), wikipedia.org (+11%), thesaurus.com (+11%) seems to suggest that many students are diving into school work these first few days of the school year.

End of Summer Travel
Now that we’ve covered some of the top risers in the AP 1000, there are also some declines in site traffic to report too. Travel and hospitality companies saw decreases in people visiting their sites as people were winding down their summer vacation plans.

• Travel booking sites: hotwire.com (-16%), priceline.com (-16%), expedia.com (-13%), kayak.com (-11%), orbitz.com (-9%), travelocity.com (-9%).
  
• Hotels and airlines: marriott.com (-11%), hilton.com (-11%), and airlines aa.com (-9%), southwest (-9%).

In Tech News
The latest hot trends for social, mobile and location-based services continues to do well with foursquare.com debuting at #985 on the list. Group buying services also continue to gain popularity, groupon.com (+22%), livingsocial.com (entered list). Finally, Michael Arrington’s work ethic seems to be paying off in terms of visitors to his site -- techcrunch.com grew 21% from the month of July to August.

Posted by Alex Lin, Product Specialist