Bringing Rich Media to Mobile with HTML5

Today, DoubleClick Rich Media makes interactive, video-rich advertisements for the mobile web possible with added support in DoubleClick Studio for HTML5. Traditionally, the core assets that rich media ads are based on have been developed using Adobe Flash. Now, with support for ads developed to the HTML5 web standard, creative agencies can manage rich media ads for the mobile web in DoubleClick Studio, right alongside the Flash-based ads that they are already managing.

HTML5 makes it possible to improve ad engagement levels among the growing number of people who browse the web from devices that don’t have Flash, such as Apple iOS devices like the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and all Android devices without Flash installed. With continuous growth in mobile web-enabled devices, advertisers need a way to captivate and engage with mobile audiences. This release makes that possible.

If you’re interested in seeing impactful creative units on the mobile web for campaigns you’re involved with, download our information sheet. Then contact a DoubleClick Rich Media account manager or fill out the form here.

This is just one small piece of Google’s overall approach to mobile advertising. To stay abreast of all of Google’s innovations in mobile advertising, visit the Google Mobile Ads blog and Google Mobile Ads site.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

November Insights from DoubleClick Ad Planner

Insights abound in the latest global Ad Planner 1000 list for November 2010. This is a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner. Access the list here for more detailed information on each of the top 1,000 sites.

Perhaps not surprisingly with the holidays coming up in December, department store sites and retailers saw significant gains in unique visitors on the global list. Walmart.com went up a whopping 44% in November and other retailers saw significant gains as well kohls.com (+35%), jcpenny.com (+34%), target.com (+31%), sears.com (+31%) and macys.com (+20%).

Other categories, such as news, travel and hospitality didn’t fare so well. Here in the U.S. with the November elections you would think that sites such as the huffingtonpost.com (down 24%) would experience a big increase in the unique visitors from the previous month but that wasn’t the case. Apparently it was a slow news cycle in November, at least when it came to online news sites.

Other news-oriented sites that experienced notable declines in the number of site visitors in November include:

• aolnews.com (-32%)
• abcnews.go.com (-31%)
• nytimes.com (-27%)
• telegraph.co.uk (-26%)
• time.com (-25%)
• boston.com (-25%)
• usatoday.com (-24%)
• cbsnews.com (-18%)

We also observed that technology news sites, mashable.com (-33%) and techcrunch.com (-31%), lost almost a third of their site traffic from the month before.

Travel and hospitality sites also saw declines in the number of unique visitors to their sites during the month of November. Travel search sites priceline.com (-26%), orbitz.com (-25%), kayak.com (-24%) and booking.com (-20%) all saw significant decline from their October site traffic. Hotel sites marriott.com (-25%) and hilton.com (-19%) also saw their traffic fall from October to November as well as the hotel booking site, hotels.com (-23%).

If you want to dive into the data even deeper, we now publish 21 top 100 lists in 16 languages. Select your preferred language to access the latest top 100 country lists. We have top 100 lists for November for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States.

These 21 lists are available in British English, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

Expect to see more observations with your favorite sites when we publish our next monthly update with December's data.

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

Signal to Noise tunes into local and foreign markets with DoubleClick Ad Planner

San Francisco-based interactive agency, Signal to Noise, wasn’t quick to jump on the DoubleClick Ad Planner bandwagon when the product was first available in 2008. It took a little time but the agency’s media team found Ad Planner really useful to supplement its other media planning tools when it came to managing campaigns targeting specific U.S. cities, foreign countries and other languages.

A major online retailer asked Signal to Noise to expand their online display campaigns to Canada, including websites in French. But the agency had no access to media planning data outside of the U.S. unless they were willing to make an expensive upgrade to their existing services.

When Allen Stern, media director for Signal to Noise, took another look at Ad Planner, he was impressed. “When we started to expand into Canada and to do French language campaigns, I tried Ad Planner again, and I was very surprised; I thought it was great!” he says. “All of a sudden, Ad Planner became a great tool for us.”

Stern’s team used DoubleClick’s free online tool to identify likely sites in Canada for his client to place its ads, mostly banners in English and French. He used Ad Planner’s flexible features to search for sites in Canada, in the French-speaking province of Quebec, or simply by language.

“We identified sites and put a plan together. Ad Planner actually helped us allocate budgets. Those ads worked great and have continued to drive ROI,” says Stern. “So our client was very pleased, and we continue to deliver media plans for Canada.”

It was the same story when his agency needed to understand the media landscape
in France and Germany. Once again, Ad Planner helped Stern find and track
appropriate sites, and saved the agency thousands of dollars in subscription fees
for other tools.

And even though his team can’t read French or German, that’s not a problem; Ad
Planner can still delve into a site’s statistics and tell them—in English—whether it’s a good prospect to add to a campaign.

Read the full case study to learn more about Signal to Noise’s success with clients’ campaigns using DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

DoubleClick Ad Planner Makes Regional Campaigns Easier

DoubleClick Ad Planner just made it easier to plan media buys for regional ad campaigns through two important upgrades.

First, the product has been localized to support 15 languages. In addition to American English, Ad Planner can now be displayed in British English, Russian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish.

Second, the Ad Planner team has published lists of the top 100 sites in each of 21 regional markets. Named the “Ad Planner 100,” these lists provide a quick reference to identify the most popular sites by country. Check out the Ad Planner 100 lists for the countries you advertise within:

Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China France Germany

Hong Kong Italy Japan Korea Netherlands Poland Russia

Spain Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Kingdom United States

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

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