Delivering Mobile Rich Media Ads to Mobile Apps with AdMob

In January, we announced mobile support in DoubleClick Studio for rich media ads that are based on HTML5 standards. Today, we’re expanding the number of places that these creatives can be delivered in mobile. Now, both standard and rich media ads trafficked in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) can run on AdMob inventory. Acquired by Google last May, AdMob is a mobile display ad network comprised of 89,000+ mobile sites and apps across 230 countries. DoubleClick is the only 3rd party ad serving platform from which rich media ads can be delivered into the AdMob network.

Today, through the mobile rich media beta with AdMob, advertisers can build HTML5 ads in DoubleClick Studio and run them across select apps on the AdMob network. AdMob’s certification of DoubleClick Rich Media covers three main HTML5 mobile rich media formats: banners, interstitials and expandables. When HTML5 ads are built in DoubleClick Studio, trafficked in DFA and run on AdMob, advertisers benefit from the integration of their mobile rich media metrics within the same reporting system they’re using for other channels such as search, online display and in-stream.

To date, advertisers have enjoyed the ability to build an ad once and run it anywhere with online display and rich media ads. Our work with AdMob gets us one step closer to making this possible for mobile display advertising too. At Google, we are committed to helping mobile scale and perform even better for brand advertisers.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

Making Creative Trafficking More Efficient in DFA

This month we are releasing two highly requested features for creative trafficking in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA): Flash variable detection and validation.

This update alleviates a major pain point for traffickers when uploading creatives in DFA. Previously traffickers needed to use a number of tools in order to detect and validate Flash variables in their creatives. Additionally, DFA did not detect any FlashVars that were written in ActionScript 3 so each one had to be added into the system manually. As a result, traffickers often found this process to be very time-consuming.

Now, when uploading Flash In-Page creatives, DFA automatically detects FlashVars for files written in both ActionScript 2 and ActionScript 3. We also built Flash validation directly into the interface so traffickers can do all of their work in one place instead of enlisting mulitple tools to get the same work accomplished.

The new “Override ad-level click-through” check box (as indicated above) also provides greater transparency into the URL for each exit.

These new features are just the latest in our continual efforts to make DFA more efficient and easier to use. Keep following us on this blog or in the DFA Help Center (login required) to read up on the latest product developments.

Posted by Jai Mani, Product Specialist

An Interface Facelift for DFA

Over the last ten years, DoubleClick for Advertisers has gone through many revisions and added scores of new features. The launch of DFA6 in 2008, in particular, was a significant step in improving the overall usability of the trafficking system. Now, we are entering another phase in delivering usability improvements across the DFA interface as we work to standardize DFA’s look and feel across the system.

As we roll out these enhancements you will notice that pages within the DFA interface will be:

• Shorter because we’re removing unnecessary white space
  
• Easier to scan and read because we’re incorporating color to help distinguish field labels from their values
  
• Easier to use because we’re standardizing elements across the user interface - such as buttons, drop downs and text fields

At first, we’ll be giving a preview of the updated look in the Admin tab. Soon to follow will be the Advertisers and Campaigns tabs.

These changes will definitely be noticeable, but remember: we’re not removing any fields or changing how DFA works; all the workflows will be staying exactly the same. We’re just making what we’ve got easier to use.

Keep on the lookout for other user experience enhancements coming soon!

Posted by Mike Gordon, User Experience Designer

TellApart Yields Tremendous Returns with Real-Time Bidding

We’ve written before that DoubleClick Ad Exchange has seen rapid uptake of real-time bidding (RTB). Ad Exchange inventory bought through RTB jumped from 8% in January 2010 to 66% in April 2011 -- a tremendous upswing in just over one year.

One company contributing to this upswing is TellApart. The company’s pay-per-conversion business model brings more dollars to display by ensuring ROI for e-commerce retailers. It’s adding as much as 8% in total revenue growth for top sites like Diapers.com, eBags, Drugstore.com, CafePress, Hayneedle and more.

Josh McFarland, CEO and Co-Founder of TellApart reports, “In our move to real-time bidding, we saw both our click-through rates and the volume of clicks increase, which means we’re getting more clicks at the right price. We’re increasing our spend with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, because we know every new dollar spent returns new revenue for our clients.”

For more details on how TellApart uses DoubleClick Ad Exchange as a core component of its model, download the full case study here.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

A new way to measure unique visitors to a site in Ad Planner

With DoubleClick Ad Planner our goal is to identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make better-informed advertising decisions. We’re constantly looking to add to and improve the quality of data presented in Ad Planner, and we’re pleased to announce a significant change to our algorithm that will improve how we derive the unique visitors (users) metric.

The unique visitors (users) metric is the estimated, unduplicated number of people who visit a site over a specific month. This measurement is key to understanding what percentage of your target audience you can reach at any given site.

We are rolling out our improved algorithm across all of the sites in Ad Planner today, April 19, 2011, and as a result we expect that you will start seeing an increase in the number of unique visitors for most sites. We’ve spent the past year on intensive research to build this new model and are very excited to finally put it into effect.

Note that the methodology for all other metrics in Ad Planner remains the same with this change. For more information on how we compile the data in Ad Planner reference this article in the Ad Planner Help Center.

Posted by Roshan Khan, Product Manager

Tracking Mobile Conversions in DFA

When talking to advertisers about mobile advertising, one topic that comes up again and again is the need for consistent, independent ROI tracking for their mobile campaigns. As users spend even more time in Mobile Apps and on the Mobile Web, these have become excellent channels for advertisers to reach their customers. However, despite the growth in scale and innovation in formats it has remained difficult to use just a single solution to track the performance of all those campaigns and to compare them to their online advertising counterparts.

We’ve been listening and are excited to announce two improvements to our mobile ad serving solution today that will help advertisers do just that.

Tracking conversions for mobile ads
First up, we are pleased to introduce conversion reporting for mobile ads in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA). Now it is possible to see post-click conversions for mobile ads right alongside your existing conversion reports for display ads, enabling even more efficient allocation of budget.

To enable conversion tracking for a mobile site you can use exactly the same Floodlight tags as regular DFA conversion tracking. We’ve optimized the system to handle the quirks of cookie handling and javascript support on different mobile devices so it now supports a huge range of mobile phones, from older generation phones to the latest model smart phones covering the vast majority of the mobile traffic that we see. In addition, because it uses Floodlight, mobile conversion tracking in DFA allows you to use conversion counters and even e-commerce tags with your mobile campaigns so that you can track not just visits and actions but value too.

Now that mobile conversion reporting is captured in DFA, you have more information at your disposal to better understand the elements (search, display, apps and websites) driving traffic to your mobile websites and to compare them directly to the online campaigns you are already running.

Click trackers for mobile placements
DFA users create click trackers to record the number of clicks on text links, links in emails, or on other elements that are hard-coded on a website. They can also be used to track clicks on creatives that are not delivered by DFA, including clicks on distinct parts of multi-file creatives.

Now we are allowing clicking tracking in DFA to include mobile placements so that you can track clicks on site-served creatives or text ads (such as search ads) on mobile sites, with reporting by platform, carrier and country. These click-trackers are also optimized to use the same conversion tracking system as regular mobile ads in DFA.

>> Read more (login required)

Expect to see further enhancements in the coming months to DFA to enable you to serve mobile ads with the same ease and functionality as the display ads that you already serve through the system.

Posted by Alex Gawley, Product Manager

Travel and Taxes are Top of Mind in February’s Ad Planner 1000

The second installment of the Ad Planner 1000 list for 2011 saw similar trends to January in a few major areas, while a couple major events drove attention to additional sites.

Travel is still on the rise, as the popular travel aggregators priceline.com, travelocity.com, travelzoo.com (+10%), and booking.com (+7%) had a strong showing for a second consecutive month.

While not as drastic as the previous month, well known outlets such as sears.com (-16%), walmart.com (-13%), costco.com (-13%), bestbuy.com (-11%), overstock.com (-10%), macys.com(-9%), and jcpenney.com (-7%) still saw declines in visitors to their sites.

Also following last month’s trend, the upcoming tax season continues to boost irs.gov (+45%) and TurboTax sales keep driving up intuit.com (+10%). Folks are also turning to tax advisors, with hrblock.com making its 2011 debut in the top sites list at #803.

Sports in February saw an end to the football season (with a thrilling Green Bay victory), and a subsequent drop to nfl.com (-49%). To pick up the slack, the 2011 NBA All-Star Game was played in Los Angeles this month and drove up traffic for nba.com (+12%).

After multiple delays and rescheduling, the long-awaited final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery finally took off on February 24th. This event and the anticipation leading up to it also likely launched interest in nasa.gov (+24%).

Finally in tech news, the 2011 Mobile World Congress took place in mid-February in Barcelona. Google announced Android 3.0, its first OS built for tablets and android.com debuted on our list at #680.

Posted by Alex Lin, Product Specialist