Attend a DFA Training in September

Whether you're looking to brush up on certain features of DoubleClick for Advertisers or are entirely new to using the product, the DFA training team offers a variety of training experiences that best suit your needs. In addition to in-person classroom training for a deep dive on the product, we also offer a regular rotation of webinars focused on a particular hot topic.

Visit the DoubleClick Learn Center to register (sign-in required).

Classroom Training

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

• New York - September 7
• Chicago - September 14
• Toronto - September 15
• Boston - September 22
• Santa Monica - September 26
• San Francisco - September 28

DFA Trafficking Lab: This lab provides users with practice at running campaigns. It covers basic DFA functionality including assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation. As a prerequisite, attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• New York - September 8
• Chicago - September 15
• Toronto - September 16
• Boston - September 23
• Santa Monica - September 27
• San Francisco - September 29

MediaVisor: Learn more about MediaVisor in this course that covers how to plan and create campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• New York - September 8
• Chicago - September 15
• Toronto - September 16
• Boston - September 23
• Santa Monica - September 27
• San Francisco - September 29

Webinar Training
This month join us for webinars focusing on the basics of Rich Media. For those not able to attend the classroom training sessions, we offer monthly webinars for both DFA and MediaVisor Fundamentals.

Basics of Rich Media and DFA - September 20
This webinar will cover the benefits of Rich Media, the campaign life cycle, and the basics of trafficking Rich Media creatives.

Reporting on Rich Media in DFA - September 27
Learn about the the standard and custom metrics available in Rich Media reporting, how to pull the reports, and tips on how to analyze the data.

DFA for New Users - September 14 and September 28
An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - September 15
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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Latest Display Benchmarks Now Available

Evaluating the success of display campaigns can be an exercise in relativity. You gauge current campaigns against past performance or compare across multiple campaigns and advertisers within your roster of brands or clients.

But in seeking more comprehensive benchmarks that reflect trends going on in the display industry, you might find yourself falling short. Advertisers and agencies alike are looking for more data to answer the basic questions of "How do I know if my display ad campaigns are doing well?" and "Are there credible benchmarks I can use to compare the results on my current campaign?"

It’s no surprise then that our display benchmarks have met with much enthusiasm since we first started publishing the data in 2009. We’re pleased to introduce a dedicated space for display benchmarks data on the Watch This Space website. The first set of metrics you’ll see available are the latest display benchmarks which cover the breadth of data from CTR metrics to engagement metrics for rich media ads such as interaction and expansion rate, video complete rates and average interaction times -- all across a broad range of ad sizes, creative types and industry verticals.

Some interesting observations from these latest benchmarks:

• Use of rich media ad formats have doubled. We saw a two-fold increase in the proportion of impressions going to Rich Media ads. In 2010, simple flash ads accounted for 54% of all global formats served via the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform, down from 74% in 2009. Image ads, in comparison, experienced an uptick with 28% of formats served in 2010 up from 17% in 2009. That leaves rich media ad formats growing to 18% of all the impressions served in 2010 up from 9% globally in 2009.
  
  
• Response and engagement rates have been holding steady since 2009. In the past two years, the overall click-through rate has remained steady at around 0.09%.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Interaction rates trended slightly lower when comparing Q4 2010 to Q4 2009 but in general this measure of engagement has remained relatively steady over the course of 2010 after coming down from its peak in early 2009. (Note: Due to a change in the DFA methodology for interaction rates back in April 2008, we only reflect benchmarking data for interaction rates from then onward.)
  
  
• Expansion rates have fallen considerably since early 2009 but now we are seeing rates leveling off with a slight uptick towards the end of 2010.
  
  
• Video completion rates on rich media ads have generally remained consistent except for a several month peak towards the later half of 2008.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Larger ad sizes tend to generate greater response. Size does matter apparently. As we have seen in years past, bigger ads perform better. We observed this with the latest set of metrics in which the half-page ad unit (300x600) which had the highest CTR, interaction rate (for both in-page and expandable formats) and expansion rates of all the available creative sizes we tracked for the benchmarks.
  
  
• Although the U.S. had one of the lowest expansion rates, this market showed the highest expansion time. So Americans seem to expand ads less but when they do spend more time engaging with the ads themselves.
  
  
• In terms of industry verticals, auto advertisers performed the best in terms of CTR (0.13% for flash ads) but conversely had the lowest interaction (1.9%) and expansion rates (0.2%). For interaction rate, telecom (9.4%) and B2B (9.2%) advertisers were the highest while B2B stood out in terms of expansion rate (7.5%) benchmarks.

A couple of notes about this latest set of online advertising benchmarks. The data for these benchmarks are derived from a robust data set across DoubleClick for Advertisers, based on rigorous methodology with input from the Advertising Research Foundation. The charts cover global benchmark figures for the entirety of 2010 by ad format, ad size and industry vertical. The benchmarks are normalized across hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions.

For additional insights and access to the full set of available benchmarks, visit the benchmarks section on the Watch This Space website. More in-depth benchmarks by industry are available exclusively to DoubleClick clients so contact your account manager to discuss further.

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

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Make DFA Even Better, Participate in Our Usability Studies

Building a great ad serving system is dependant on you, our users, giving us feedback on what would best suit your needs in DoubleClick for Advertisers. We listen and learn from our customers every day and are always looking to learn even more from you.

So DFA users, please participate in our usability studies and see your efforts result in product enhancements designed to better meet your needs.

It’s simple to participate. Just fill out this form and whenever we have a study coming up and you fit the profile we are looking for, one of our User Experience Researchers will be reaching out to you. You must be a current user of DFA to participate.

The DFA User Experience team will spend some time with you reviewing new ideas for product enhancements and gather your thoughts, ideas and opinions. Your commitment is just 1-2 hours at a place most convenient for you - whether over the phone, at your office or in our usability lab located in New York City. Mostly we’re interested in observing first hand the ways in which you use DFA so we can come up with new ideas and novel solutions for your most common workflow issues.

What’s in it for me, you might ask? Well, as a DFA usability participant you will get a sneak preview of the latest DFA features before they hit the wider market. You’ll be able to have a direct impact on the way new DFA features are rolled out and ultimately make your day-to-day lives in the system that much easier.

Posted by Anastassia Drofa, User Experience Researcher

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Tips & Tricks: Simple Steps to Ensure Proper Conversion Tracking in DFA

Being able to track campaign performance starts with proper tagging of the relevant conversion points on your advertiser’s website. If your tags are not set up properly to begin with, then you could lose precious information on how your campaign is performing.

In DoubleClick for Advertisers, conversion tags are referred to as Floodlight activities. To save yourself the headache of Floodlight tag errors that could result in campaign conversions not tracking and reporting correctly, here are three easy QA steps you can take to determine whether a Floodlight tag has been implemented correctly.

Step 1: Compare DFA code and site code
Confirm that the Floodlight tag implemented on webpage matches the tag code in the DFA user interface (UI), and that there are no red flags such as line breaks.

Click into the Floodlight tag in question in the DFA UI. Copy and paste the tag code found in the “Floodlight Tag Preview” section into a simple text document.

Load the webpage where this same tag has been implemented. View the source code of the page by selecting View -> Page Source from your browser menu. Do a quick search for “doubleclick” within the source code. Unless the Floodlight tag has been coded on a hidden layer of the website, you should be able to find the tag somewhere within the page source code.

Once located, copy the Floodlight tag code and paste it into the same text document where you pasted the tag code from the DFA UI.

Compare the two tags. The syntax should match.

Step 2: Break down the syntax of the tag
Confirm that each “key=[value]” pair of the Floodlight tag that you just located within the source code of the webpage is correct. These key-values should exactly match those of the Floodlight tag you copied from the DFA UI.

Here's an example:

<iframe src="http: net="" src="1234567;type=abc123;cat=fghij456;ord=[Random" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0" style="display:none">

src=1234567: Identifies the advertiser that is the source of the Floodlight activity. The value of the src= key is the advertiser ID.
type=abc123: The group tag string, which identifies the activity group with which the Floodlight activity is associated in DFA.
cat=fghij456: The activity tag string, which identifies the Floodlight activity.

Step 3: Use a proxy sniffer
Use a proxy-sniffing tool to confirm that the tag is successfully firing every time the webpage loads. A proxy-sniffing tool is a browser plugin such as Tamper Data, HttpWatch or Charles.

Turn on your proxy sniffer, load the webpage, and filter by tags containing “doubleclick.” You should see your tag fire accordingly.

Refresh the page several times to make sure that the ord= key-value is correctly populated with a random number that is at least 8 digits long.

For a more complete guide to Floodlight conversion tracking and tag QA, make sure to visit the Floodlight module of the DFA Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Kasey Spickard, DFA Technical Services Associate

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Attend a DFA Training in August

Whether you're looking to brush up on certain features of DoubleClick for Advertisers or are entirely new to using the product, the DFA training team offers a variety of training experiences that best suit your needs. In addition to in-person classroom training for a deep dive on the product, we also offer a regular rotation of webinars focused on a particular hot topic.

Visit the DoubleClick Learn Center to register (sign-in required).

Classroom Training



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

• New York - August 15
• Toronto - August 22
• Santa Monica - August 29
• San Francisco - August 31

DFA Trafficking Lab: This lab provides users with practice campaigns that cover basic DFA functionality including assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation. As a prerequisite, attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• New York - August 16
• Toronto - August 23
• Santa Monica - August 30
• San Francisco - September 1

MediaVisor: Learn more about MediaVisor in this course that covers how to plan and create campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• Toronto - August 23
  
  
• Santa Monica - August 30

Webinar Training

Join us for webinars covering traffic sheets, mobile and advanced ad serving topics. For those not able to attend the classroom training sessions, we offer monthly webinars for both DFA and MediaVisor Fundamentals.

How to Use a Traffic Sheet: August 16

Learn about best practices as well as some helpful tips and tricks for using the Excel traffic sheet to make modifications to your campaigns.

DFA For New Users: August 17 and August 31

An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

DFA Mobile: August 23

Tap into the fundamentals of DFA for mobile, including how to traffic a mobile campaign, tracking mobile conversions and mobile reporting.

MediaVisor Fundamentals: August 24

An introduction to the fundamentals of MediaVisor.

Advanced Ad Serving: August 30

Learn about advanced topics such as audience segmentation, creative groups and targeting.

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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Free Google White Paper Helps Buyers Benefit from Real-Time Bidding

In September 2009, the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange (ADX), built on Google technology, opened for business with support for real-time bidding (RTB). Since then, we’ve witnessed explosive growth in RTB. For example, RTB spend as a percent of spend on ADX has risen from 8% in January 2010 to 68% as of May 2011. Plus, the volume of impressions purchased via RTB for the first half of 2011 is 6.4x that of the first half of 2010.

At Google, we believe that the overall display advertising pie can get bigger and see RTB as one of the technologies that can help get us there. In February 2011, we did a “Real-Time Display Advertising State of the Industry Survey” with Digiday, which found that advertisers and agencies are reporting that they will spend more on digital advertising in 2011 because of the benefits of RTB.

To help buyers achieve the benefits they expect from RTB, we’ve published a white paper that shares our view of real-time bidding for online display advertising. Based on research and primary interviews with Google’s RTB experts across our product, sales and services organizations, this paper provides a clear definition of what real-time bidding is and how buyers can get involved with it. Whether you are a large or small advertiser, an agency or a trading desk or a media buying intermediary, Google would like to help you succeed with real-time bidding. We hope that this paper helps.

Download the free white paper (PDF)

Update posted 8/4/2011: Figure 1 in this white paper was missing the demand-side platform LucidMedia. We have now added them.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

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Going Beyond Placements with Ad Planner

Since its release DoubleClick Ad Planner has strived to simplify the display planning experience by helping you find the most relevant sites on the internet for your campaign. But even the best placements get extraneous impressions - folks who are unlikely to convert in a direct response campaign or outside the target audience for a brand. Why can’t you always reach the right people as well as the right placements? Well - now you can.

Here at Google we’ve been working on some novel technologies to enable audience based buying. Thanks to this effort audience buying is now available to all AdWords users. And today we’ve brought the ability to plan for an audience buy into Ad Planner. You can now select from over 1,000 interest categories across the more than 500 million daily users of the Google Display Network (GDN). Advertisers like ShoeDazzle have used audience buying on the GDN to improve conversion volume as much as 400% and interest targeting consistently shows CTR far greater than the display ad average. This phenomenal performance is driven by the power of Google audiences across the GDN.

Through Ad Planner you can now set up a campaign that will reach your users across the GDN regardless of the site they are on. That means greater ROI for advertisers who want to reach their audience at scale for brand or performance goals. This will also result in more meaningful, relevant ads for users, ultimately translating into higher conversion rates. And it means an easier time building the campaign by allowing you to focus on defining your audience rather than sorting through a list of sites and placements.

Log into Ad Planner and take a test drive on the new Audience Planning tab. While you’re doing that we’ll be working on the next set of exciting features for interest categories powered by Google.

Posted by Roshan Khan, Product Manager

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