New Classroom and Webinar Training Registration System

Now you can register for DFA and MediaVisor training directly in the DFA Help Center. Going forward it will be your one-stop shop for training and support needs. This new, easy to use interface includes exciting features like:

• Ability to enroll someone regardless if they have a DFA log-in.
• Integration of Google Maps within the registration confirmation email.
• Session notifications. If a class is full we can send you a notification when another one opens up.
• And much more.

Register now for an upcoming training!

DFA Fundamentals: This all day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving your ads and pulling reports.

• Los Angeles - December 13
• Chicago - December 14
• San Francisco - December 15

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice running campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite:Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Los Angeles - December 14
• Chicago - December 15
• San Francisco - December 16

MediaVisor Fundamentals: Learn more about planning and creating campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• Los Angeles - December 14

We look forward to seeing you in class!

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

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DoubleClick Ad Exchange: First Truly Cross-Format Exchange

Our product teams have been rapidly innovating to bring more format support to DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Recent format innovations include:

• Mobile web inventory. According to internal data from October, mobile web inventory on DoubleClick Ad Exchange from high-end phones and tablets already makes up around 9% of global inventory and 15% of U.S. inventory.
• Mobile in-app inventory. In the coming weeks, AdMob publishers and application developers will be able to make their in-app mobile inventory available on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Read the full announcement here.
• In-stream video. Q3 was our first full quarter of making in-stream video inventory available to buyers. Between the beginning of Q3 to now, we’ve tripled the number of buyers accessing this inventory.
• Rollover to expand. We’ve added the rollover to expand rich media format to our existing click-to-expand and in-page formats.

Recently at OMMA Display, Chip Hall, Director, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, spoke about these innovations in a presentation titled, “Unlocking Opportunities With the First Truly Cross-format Exchange.” In case you missed it live, you can watch it here:

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

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DS3: Announcing Several Upload Improvements

(cross posted from the DoubleClick Search blog. To learn more about DoubleClick Search, contact your Account Manager or request a call from a DoubleClick Search specialist.)

We heard from several of you about the importance of improving the process of downloading reports and uploading files in DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3). You offered comments and suggestions for making the functionality better. As a result, the DoubleClick Search team spent the past few weeks prioritizing and focusing on the changes that would provide the biggest impact. We hope that the improvements described below will make a major difference in your use of DS3.

Faster upload processing of large accounts

Our Engineering team made several changes behind the scenes to improve the upload processing times of large engine accounts (engine accounts with over 100,000 keywords). In the past, uploads of large accounts took a much longer time to process. Now, these previously delayed uploads will process at least 20 times faster per row.

Uploaded keywords now include dashes (-) and periods (.)

Before this release, DS3 would remove all dashes (-) and periods (.) from uploaded keywords. You can now upload keywords with the confidence that they will remain intact.

Downloaded reports now include AdWords broad match modifier (+)

Before this release, DS3 would remove the Google AdWords broad match modifier (+) from downloaded reports. The downloads now include the modifier, and it will also remain if you need to make changes to the report and upload it back into DS3.

We’ll continue to look for new ways to make the download and upload processes better in the future. Please contact your Technical Account Manager or email ds-support@google.com with any suggestions.

For more information about other new features in this DS3 release, including new bid strategy reporting columns, check out the release notes. And keep an eye on the blog for more exciting features in upcoming releases.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

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+1 Button in DFA: Leveraging Social Recommendations in Your Display Ads

Last March, Google introduced the +1 button on search results to make it easier for people to get recommendations from the people they trust right when they’re searching. And then in October, the +1 button was made available on display ads running across the Google Display Network.

For our part, we have been working on some new developments to let advertisers easily incorporate the +1 button with DoubleClick products. You can already make your rich media ads more social by adding the +1 to any DoubleClick Rich Media creative.

And now we’re pleased to announce that you can add the +1 icon to ads you traffic in DFA. Using the Google +1 custom in-page creative template in DFA, you can add the Google +1 icon to your ads so that people can recommend and share your ad and website with others across the web.

For more information on how to incorporate the +1 button into your ad, check out the DFA Help Center (DFA sign-in required). If the custom template is not already available for your DFA account, reach out to the DoubleClick Support Team to have it enabled.

Posted by Jessica Doolittle, Product Manager

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Streamlined Workflow for AdMob Rich Media in DoubleClick Studio and DFA

Since the launch of DoubleClick Studio in April 2009, we’ve streamlined the workflow for thousands upon thousands of rich media creatives for advertiser’s online campaigns. In May 2011, DoubleClick Rich Media creatives were certified to run in AdMob inventory. Now, we’re building on these two innovations to improve the efficiency of mobile display campaigns, too.

This Saturday we added support to DoubleClick Studio and DoubleClick for Advertisers for “Mobile In-App” AdMob rich media formats. With this addition, it’s much easier for creative agencies and media agencies to work together to build, preview, manage and serve mobile display campaigns across AdMob inventory. AdMob’s mobile display ad network is comprised of 89,000+ mobile sites and apps across 230 countries. Mobile advertisers will benefit by combining the efficiency of DoubleClick tools with the scale of AdMob inventory.

Here’s what the creation of a new “Mobile In-App” creative looks like in the DoubleClick Studio interface:

You can preview what your “Mobile In-App” creative will look like on a tablet or phone. The preview tool in DoubleClick Studio includes options to view the ad in landscape and portrait mode and the ability to zoom to 100% or 50% resolutions. Here’s what a tablet preview of a “Mobile In-App” creative looks like:

Just as you can with other rich media formats in DoubleClick Studio, you can now push a “Mobile In-App” creative directly to DFA. The ad will show up to traffickers when they import advertiser-level creatives, as in the screenshot here:

Once the “Mobile In-App” creative is in DFA, traffickers can change properties of the creative, such as its landing page, much like they do for other rich media formats. Here’s how a “Mobile In-App” creative looks in DFA:

Initially, all campaigns and creatives using this new workflow will run through our full-service team. Please contact your DoubleClick Rich Media representative if you're interested in running Mobile In-App creatives or campaigns.

Research shows that rich media campaigns across multiple screens work better than those targeting just one screen. By making the mobile rich media workflow easier, we hope this helps you include captivating mobile display ads in your next campaign and drive campaign performance across screens.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

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Making It Easier to Comply with the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Ads

We know that maintaining consumer trust is an important priority for our clients. To help support that priority, DFA is providing six custom creative templates for implementing the Advertising Option Icon in your ads, in compliance with the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)'s Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising.

These custom templates in DFA work with the three approved providers to provide compliance services: DoubleVerify, Evidon, and TRUSTe. If you partner with one of these providers, you can save time by using these custom creative templates to implement the Advertising Option Icon on your ads. We have provided a template in DFA for Flash and a template for images for each of these providers. We have worked with these vendors to ensure support of OBA functionality but did not validate that any other components of these solutions worked with DFA.

DFA is an open platform allowing our advertisers to take advantage of 3rd party or native solutions for a variety of problems, and compliance with OBA standards is just one example of these problems.

To learn more about how to add the Advertising Option Icon templates to your DFA account and also to add a creative with the Advertising Option Icon within DFA, reference this article in the Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Jessica Doolittle, Product Manager

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Attend a DFA Webinar in November

Attend a DFA Webinar in November and learn more about the newest Reporting options available through DFA. Visit the DoubleClick Learn Center to register for these or any of our Fundamentals webinars (sign-in required).

Navigating the DFA Reporting Options. What to Use, When, and How? - November 15
We've rolled out some exciting new features in recent months. Sign up for this Webinar to make sense of them all. We'll cover questions like, "When should you use each tool?" "What advantages do some tools present over others?" And "What features will make your reporting workflow easier and more efficient?"

Working with Data and Troubleshooting in a Land of Multiple Reporting Options. - November 29
You now have multiple sources of data to pull from. We'll cover questions like "What happens when two sets of numbers do not match?" and "What is an acceptable difference when looking at reports from two different sources?"

DFA for New Users - November 16 and November 30
An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - November 29
An introduction to the fundamentals of MediaVisor.

To sign up for all upcoming webinars and view recordings of past webinars, visit the DoubleClick Learn Center (sign-in required). And be sure to check back with us on this blog for regular updates to our training schedule.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

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Bringing AdMob Mobile Inventory to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange

In 2009, we launched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange as a way to simplify the process of buying and selling display advertising, drive performance for our advertiser and publisher partners, and open up the display marketplace. In the two years since, exchange-based trading has taken off -- we’ve seen the volume of trades on our own exchange grow by more than 150% in the past year. At the same time, display, as a medium, has evolved.

Display started as just banner ads on websites, but has grown to include a range of formats as diverse as the web itself -- rich media ads that bring a page to life, in-stream ads that play before your favorite online video, and ads that run in the mobile version of your daily newspaper. To reflect this growing diversity, we have been expanding the types of formats in the Exchange. We support the most popular types of rich media ads, including units that run in-page with video, or expand when you click or mouse over them. It’s also possible to buy ads across the mobile web. Earlier this year, we announced that in-stream video formats were coming to the Exchange, and we’ve seen huge demand since launch: the number of buyers for in-stream video has tripled over the past quarter.

Today, we are announcing another step forward -- in the coming weeks, AdMob developers will be able to make their in-app inventory available on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Initially, a small number of pre-qualified buyers will be able to compete for this inventory. Over time, we'll be rolling it out more broadly. Ultimately, this will give app developers and publishers access to a wider pool of buyers like demand-side platforms and agency trading desks, improving their potential returns, and helping grow the overall mobile web economy. And marketers on our Exchange will be able to buy, in real time, ads that run inside people’s favorite mobile games, news apps and more. With this important addition, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange will be truly cross-format...and will become the first exchange to support this full range of ad formats.

VivaKi, one of our key partners on the Exchange, is gearing up to start buying in-app ads on the Exchange. “We are delighted to be working with Google as they open up the DoubleClick Ad Exchange to include AdMob in-app inventory, and to deliver this opportunity to our clients,” says Kurt Unkel, Senior Vice President, VivaKi Nerve Center. “We anticipate this experience will help us bring mobile to scale to our partners, and will provide insight into the operational elements and the creative assets that work best in this environment.”

A cross-format exchange is just one of the ways we’re looking to simplify the process of buying and selling display advertising, but one we think will create tremendous value for advertisers and publishers. We will continue to work with our partners to help them get the most out of what the evolving display market has to offer -- today, tomorrow, and in the years ahead.

Posted by Chip Hall, Director, DoubleClick Ad Exchange

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Webinar Recap: Introducing the New DFA Reporting

On Tuesday, October 18, we held a webinar introducing the new DFA Reporting suite covering:

• The vision for how we’re building the next generation of reporting tools
• Details of the new reporting query tool, Report Builder
• Scenarios of how to best use the new Multi-Channel Funnel reports in DFA

For those of you who missed the webinar, a recorded version is now available, which you can watch below. You can also download the materials we covered here.

During the presentation we fielded some great questions from participants; you’ll find responses to the top questions below.

Q. We’ve always been told that since DFA Analytics was in beta, data was not guaranteed and so we were directed to Report Central. Is Report Builder now as trusted and accurate as Report Central?
A. Yes, getting data as accurate as possible between the two systems is a number one priority so yes, you can trust the accuracy of data available in Report Builder. The user interface in Report Builder is in beta so keep in mind that we will be continuously tweaking and improving the user experience of the tool but consider the data as accurate as in ReportCentral.

Q. How far back can you pull data in Report Builder?
A. With Report Builder, we will store data for 24 months - an improvement over the legacy system, ReportCentral, where you can pull the last 16 months of data.

Q. Is ReportCentral being discontinued?
A. Yes but as of now there is no set date as to when that will happen. Of course, we will give clients plenty of lead time to prepare for this. But the end goal is to have DFA Reporting completely replace ReportCentral.

Q. Is there a plan to roll out real-time reporting?
We’re always striving to update DFA data more frequently and will continue to do so. For example, in the old Report Central, we updated data once per day, whereas in the new Report Builder we update data several times a day.

Q. Regarding geo-reporting, can I visualize reports on a map with performance broken down by DMA? Currently, when we pulled maps it only shows statewide delivery and ideally we would like to see multiple DMAs overlayed in the same map.
A. In Report Builder you can pull results by geo dimensions including DMA, country, state, city, but we don’t have that feature available in the map visualizations yet. But it’s a good suggestion to add that feature.

Q. When will geo-reporting be available for Europe?
A. Geo data is currently available for Europe but only down to the country and city level at this point. We will be expanding into more granular geo-data in the future for Europe.

Q. I still don’t understand the attribution report. Where can I see how many (last-click) conversions a publisher generated versus how many assisted conversions generated (not last-click conversions). I can see that in Google Analytics, but I am not seeing the same here.
A. In Google Analytic’s Multi-Channel Funnel Report, they have an Assisted Channel Conversion report which explicitly calls this out.

In DFA, the Attributed Channel report shows you the total number of conversions and if you apply the Assisted Channel filter you’ll see the number of conversions that have an assisting interaction in the path. You can get this information plus if needed, greater detail from the Exposure to Conversion report.

So in DFA we don’t provide you with the total number of assists, but rather the number of conversions that were assisted.

Q: Will the Exposure to Conversion report continue to only be offered as an additional paid service in the system?
A. Yes. The E2C report along with the Cross-Site Duplication and Time Lag will remain premium reports in the new system.

For more information on all your questions, please check out the video to hear the Q&A in its entirety and also check our help center (DFA sign-in required). Thanks to all who attended the webinar, we look forward to hosting additional webinars to update you on the latest in DFA developments.

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

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Introducing Search for Placements in Ad Planner

This week we are launching a group of new changes in DoubleClick Ad Planner. The existing Search by Audience tab is being replaced with a Search for Placements tab. This new tab has all the functionality of the existing interface but also brings many new features into the application.

The new Search For Placements Tab in Ad Planner

Here are some of the great new capabilities we’ve added:

Site Language: In addition to being able to restrict on a language for your Audience you will be able to restrict your search to pages where the content is predominantly in a specific language.
Site Content: Find sites similar to other URLs or a set of keywords.
Topic Exclusion: Find sites that do not belong to the categories you choose.
Advanced Ad Formats: We now support filtering on advanced Video Ad options such as TrueView and Duration.
Attributes: Additional placement level properties for selection.
Browser Class: In an increasingly smartphone and tablet centric world you can now restrict results to those sites that support these types of browsing.

Besides these great features we’ve also brought YouTube content into Ad Planner. You can now search for the best YouTube categories and channels that meet your advertising needs.

A search for YouTube content on Ad Planner

With these changes we are putting more display ad inventory at your fingertips than ever before. By providing the ability to plan Video side by side with your traditional display purchases you can build comprehensive media plans that offer you better reach and engagement. For additional details on the new release check out the Ad Planner help articles.

Roshan Khan, Product Manager

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Seven Rich Media Innovations for Your Next Campaign

Today, technical experts from our rich media team will present seven rich media innovations to a room full of developers, programmers and technologists within creative agencies at Creative Sandbox | Behind the Screens. This is part of our ongoing effort to help foster more relevant, more real-time and more interactive display ads across screens. Below you can play a video about each of the seven innovations being covered. We look forward to seeing these ideas come to life in live campaigns.

Dynamic Creative with DoubleClick Rich Media
Use multiple headlines, offers, calls-to-action, product images, landing pages -- even videos -- all within a single creative.

QR Code in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Provide a bridge from online display ads to consumers’ smartphones with QR codes.

Augmented Reality in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
With augmented reality in an ad, all people need is a webcam and a simple printout or camera phone to experience immersive games or stunning 3D product demonstrations.


Credits: Carmichael Lynch for the Living Sasquatch example (www.livingsasquatch.com); Euro RSCG, Media Contacts and Volvo for the Volvo S60 augmented reality ad

+1 Button in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
The +1 button in an ad allows consumers to recommend advertised products or services to contacts and connections across the Internet.


Credits: AKQA for Gears of War 3

Twitter in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Combine social media with the reach of paid advertising by including Twitter in a DoubleClick Rich Media ad.


Credits: Media Contacts for Volvo XC60 and Tribal DDB for VW Passat

Social Toolbar in a DoubleClick Rich Media Ad
Bring sharing to the forefront of any ad with a social toolbar.

Interactive Page Takeover with DoubleClick Rich Media
Use an interactive page takeover to transform a user's favorite web page into a full-screen ad that surprises and delights.


Credits: Discovery Communications for River Monsters; OMD, Tag Worldwide and Intel for Intel Core i5

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

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