Less Shopping and More Travel: Two Top Trends for the January 2011 Ad Planner 1000

A new year often means new resolutions, a time to recover from the excesses of the holiday season and plan for the new year. As reflected in January’s Ad Planner 1000, anyway, it seems that less shopping, tax season and travel are particularly top of mind with people navigating the web.

With the holiday season over retail sites took a hit in January as it appears consumers have scaled back on purchases - at least in the online world. Popular sites in the AP 1000 such as target.com (-40%), shoplocal.com (-38%), kohls.com (-38%), bestbuy.com (-35%), walmart.com (-35%) and sears.com (-32%) all saw significant declines in the number of unique visitors to their site from the month before. But special deals to counteract the expected drop in retail sales can work magic - as it did in for the deal site, livingsocial.com. Its Amazon.com $20-for-$10 offer resulted in over 1.3 million vouchers sold and a 47% increase in the number of visitors to its site for that month.

And while people are spending less, they might be hoping to see tax refunds, and thus the appearances of two tax-related sites in the January list: the irs.gov entered the list at #449 and intuit.com, makers of the popular TurboTax software, entered at #321.

It’s possible that finding new jobs and new destinations are popular resolutions this year if the surge in traffic to career and travel sites are any indication. Job search site indeed.com (+26%) saw more than a quarter of their unique visitors increase in January and sites careerbuilder.com (+21%) and monster.com (+20%) also fared well with increases in traffic from the month before.

The increase in visitors to travel-related sites was particularly notable in January’s AP 1000 list. Tripadvisor.com (+33%), booking.com (+33%), orbitz.com (+31%), travelocity.com (+31%) -- all saw more than a third more unique visitors to their site than in December. While sites hotels.com (+29%), expedia.com (+21%), easyjet.com (+20%) and priceline.com (+16%) also saw notable boosts in traffic.

Check back with us next month to see when we publish the data for February’s AP 1000. We’re looking forward to seeing how cupid’s arrow will work his magic on sites in the AP 1000 list.

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing

Real-Time Display Advertising State of the Industry

The ability to buy and sell impressions in real-time is a major enabling feature of the fundamental changes powering the display marketplace today. Impressions are coming up for sale as they occur in real-time. Savvy buyers are evaluating these impressions and making data-driven decisions about their value. Display advertising is becoming more accountable, scalable and lucrative.

To learn more about this real-time trend, we recently undertook an industry study with Digiday, surveying more than 300 digital media buyers, agencies, intermediaries and publishers about their thoughts on real-time display advertising. Highlights from these findings will be presented today at DIGIDAY:ONMEDIA in Los Angeles. Some of the revealing findings include:

• 88% of buyers plan to buy via RTB in 2011, up from 75% last year.
  
  
• 47% of media buyers say that the benefits or RTB will increase their overall digital advertising budget this year (16% said it would not, 37% were unsure).
  
  
• Spending on RTB is quickly moving out of the "test budget" range: 79% of buyers estimate that more than 10% of their digital display budgets will go to RTB in 2011. 33% estimate that 50% or more of their digital display budget will go to RTB. And 7% estimate 90-100% of their digital display budget will go to RTB.
  
  
• 29% of media intermediaries (such as DSPs, ad networks, and exchanges) anticipate their volume of real-time bidding will increase by 100% or more versus last year. 19% believe it will go up by at least 200%.
  
  
• More formats are moving to RTB: 34% of buyers say they are extremely or very likely to purchase rich media ads via RTB this year, 32% are extremely or very likely to purchase dynamic creative ads via RTB, 20% are extremely or very likely to purchase mobile display ads via RTB, 18% are extremely or very likely to purchase in-stream video via RTB and 14% are extremely or very likely to purchase mobile rich media via RTB.
  
  
• Nearly half (48%) of publishers surveyed say they plan to increase the amount of inventory they will make available via RTB. 28% are still deciding. Only 24% said they were not planning to increase RTB inventory.
  
  

Real-time bidding is a major enabling force behind this sea change in the way digital media is transacted in today’s advertising marketplace. Yet, RTB is just part of an explosion of technology advancements in display. Read more about this technological Big Bang.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

Coming Soon: New Agency and Advertiser Pages in DoubleClick Search

(originally posted on the DoubleClick Search Blog)

In the blog post from January 18, we mentioned that we’ve been working on an updated version of DoubleClick Search, called V3. We’ll soon be introducing some of the features from V3 to the current version of DoubleClick Search: the new Agency Home and Advertiser Home pages. In addition, we'll be adding a unified DoubleClick Search sign-in page on the Google domain. Benefits include:

• Performance: This move to the Google infrastructure will provide a faster and more stable environment for DoubleClick Search with the Agency/Advertiser release, and allow us to make product changes more quickly in future releases.
• Instance consolidation: You'll be able to access agencies and advertisers from all instances at one sign-in page.

• Workflow: It will be easier and faster to select agencies and advertisers, to display only the advertisers that matter to you, and to access the Reporting Center.

• Preparation for V3: These changes will help to pave the way for even bigger changes in the coming months: the full release of the updated DoubleClick Search V3! Come see us at SES in NYC on March 22 for the premiere of DoubleClick Search V3.

To see a preview of the DoubleClick Search Home release, sign up for the webinar on February 24.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

December’s Ad Planner 1000 Shows Big Gains for Greeting Card, Consumer Electronics and Weather Sites

The end of the year and holiday season made their mark on trends in this December’s Ad Planner 1000. Check back each month for the latest list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Holiday greetings went digital in December as a number of online card and greeting sites saw sizeable increases in traffic to their sites. The site 123greetings.com went up 79% from November to December in terms of unique users to their site. Other sites found their way into the Top 1000 thanks to the holidays: jibjab.com (#207), jacquielawson.com (#456), and myfuncards.com (#763).

But perhaps sending a virtual greeting wasn’t enough so many flocked to Skype as a way to reach out to loved ones during the holidays. Skype.com experienced a 32% surge in visitors to their site during the month of December.

And judging by the popularity of consumer electronic sites and retail sites in this month’s AP 1000, many people are receiving gadgets and books as Christmas gifts. Online book retailer, barnesandnoble.com saw a 24% increase of unique users to their site while amazon.com went up 10% in their site traffic from November. Consumer electronic sites, samsung.com (+23%), apple.com (+11%) and logitech.com (+11%), all saw significant increases as well.

No surprise then that shipping companies witnessed notable increases in their site traffic as well in the month of December. The United States postal service site, usps.com, went up 33%, ups.com and fedex.com increase visitors to their site 31% and 22% respectively. That trend was reflected in Japan, as the national postal service site, japanpost.jp increased 20% in the number of visitors from the prior month.

Another trend observed in December was an upsurge of interest in weather-related sites. As storms impacted most of North America in the month of December, it’s no surprise that people went online to check the latest weather conditions: wunderground.com (+38%), accuweather.com (+33%) and weather.com (+22%).

Interested in what January has in store for the top 1,000 global sites? We’ll return with the latest trends in the AP 1000 when January’s data becomes available next month.

Posted by Alex Lin, Product Specialist

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