Recently there has been a great deal of discussion about applications that inject or overlay ads on sites without the express approval of users and those sites, and then monetize the inventory as their own. We believe that this kind of activity is bad for end users and damages the integrity of the advertising industry. In order for the programmatic marketplace to achieve its full potential and help as many marketers and publishers as we think it can, there needs to be trust between advertisers, publishers, and users.
We’ve invested, since the beginning, in strong policies and a system of checks and filters to ensure that the inventory on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange is the highest quality in the industry. Here’s a quick summary of what we do to stop invalid injected inventory from entering our exchange.
We don’t support spammy applications. Period.
Both the Google Platforms program policies and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) Seller Program Guidelines strictly prohibit the use of systems, including toolbars, that overlay ad space on a given site without express permission of the site owner. In addition, we have numerous processes and technologies in place to review publishers’ inventory as well as advertisers’ ads to maintain a high standard of quality for how advertising is transacted on our platforms.
Does your platform work with or supply advertising for clients who inject display ads in browsers?
Do your program policies prohibit the use of systems to inject display ads in browsers, without first having obtained user consent or consent from the site affected?
Please provide me a report of all the inventory partners on your platform serving my domain?
We do, and will always, support our publisher partners.
Finally, I’d like to thank the millions of publishers who use the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, large and small, that day in and day out, provide amazing value both to their users and their advertisers. We welcome a broader discussion with our partners and with the industry about how to collectively solve this issue and others. Together, we can all ask the tough questions, hold each other accountable, and ultimately create the web we all want, where publishers, users and advertisers all thrive.
As more brands adopt programmatic technology, there's a growing need to train buyers on how they can deliver greater ROI by simplifying their media buying and audience targeting with DoubleClick Ad Exchange. To help buyers take advantage of these new buying opportunities, we've launched DoubleClick Ad Exchange eLearning and Certification, a free, self-paced online eLearning and certification that teaches key AdX concepts to new exchange buyers.
We recommend that any media buyers, real-time bidders, and developers who plan to buy inventory from AdX, take our fundamentals training to learn AdX, understand our policies, and get an introduction to programmatic media buying and real-time bidding (RTB).
AdX Fundamentals also includes a 30-question certification exam, and a score of 80% or greater is required to pass. When you pass, you’ll get a printable certificate of completion.
Enroll in DoubleClick Ad Exchange Fundamentals and demonstrate your proficiency today.
Keep in mind, this course is only available to current DoubleClick AdX buyers. To access this course, you'll need to sign in with the Google account you use for DoubleClick AdX.
Because of it’s ease of use, Studio Layouts makes rich media ad units much more accessible. Where before it took too long to crank out standard rich media ads that actually worked, now it can take the same amount of time to build a rich media ad as it can to build a standard image or flash ad. So why not trade up?
According to the Doubleclick Display Benchmarks, rich media interaction rates are up almost 60% since April of 2012. During the same period, interaction time has grown 21% and people are now watching videos to completion over 60% of the time. Standard flash and image ads on the other hand, don’t provide opportunities for viewers to interact and therefore can’t provide metrics on how people are actually engaging with your brand.
Larger file sizes -- so your ads can be more beautiful and engaging.
Engagement metrics -- all standard rich media metrics are baked into Studio Layouts (no custom-coding required), so you can show interaction rates, video completion rates, and other engagement metrics to prove the performance of your ads.
HTML5 layouts -- replace a backup .gif with an engaging HTML5 ad and get your creative onto mobile and tablet devices.
With a tool that makes it so easy to reuse your creative assets to build rich media ads, there’s no reason not to upgrade your standard banners to rich media. You'll provide a more engaging experience for your customers and get access to the metrics that prove the success of your campaign.
If you’d like to learn more about the Studio Layouts product, join us on Monday, Aug. 19th, for a Hangout on Air. The Studio Layouts product team will discuss the use cases for Studio Layouts, the features and formats that are currently available and what’s coming up on the product roadmap.
RSVP for the Hangout here and visit our DoubleClick Google+ page on Monday at 1:30pm ET and click “Join Hangout” to participate. We hope to see you there!
Yesterday, we heard from Maureen and Zeena about how Studio Layouts can drastically improve your efficiency when building and QAing rich media ads. With time savings averaging around 4 days and 80% of total turnaround time being slashed, Studio Layouts helps you get the job done faster.
Today we’re going to focus on a slightly different use case: Studio Layouts helps you easily extend a campaign’s reach across channels and devices.
Let’s imagine a large auto company. These days, even though they are increasing their spend online, they still probably allocate more than 50% of their budget to TV and print.* So their creative agencies are already building beautiful assets for TV and print, but these assets probably aren’t getting used to their fullest online. The company’s online campaigns likely contain only standard flash or image ads, with a couple rich media ads thrown in.
Layouts enables them to re-use those beautiful assets in online rich media ads and get more mileage out of all the work they put into that creative. Because it takes hardly any time to build an ad using Layouts, and because all you have to do is upload your existing image and video assets into the tool, you can build many more units for digital, reusing the assets you’ve spent so much time to create and garnering more impressions for those messages. Plus you get the larger file size and expanded canvas that a standard ad just can’t provide, so you have adequate space for those big, shiny creative assets.
Additionally, Layouts offers HTML5 formats, which ingest the same assets as Flash, meaning you can take the image and video assets you have, upload them into an HTML5 Layout, and suddenly have a campaign that is accessible on smartphones and tablets. In this way, you reach a whole new set of users.
So a video that may have originally been intended for TV can get repurposed into both flash and HTML5 rich media ad units that can be served across the internet on desktop, mobile and tablet devices, exponentially increasing the total number of people who see the creative.
Automated buying. Machine-based buying. RTB. Call it what you may, there's no doubt that programmatic buying is changing (read: simplifying) the way media is bought and sold, in real-time. No wonder then, we’ve seen more daily transactions on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange than on the NYSE and NASDAQ combined, and a tripling of instream video ad impressions as brands adopt the technology. And eMarketer predicts that 1/3rd of all display advertising is going to be bought programmatically by 2017.
But what's the real opportunity here for advertisers and publishers? How is programmatic going to safely grow their businesses and deliver ROI? In our new collection of insights, ‘The Programmatic Opportunity’, hear how this technology is transforming the industry, what’s going to make it work and why it’s the way of the future, from senior advertising and media executives like The Weather Company’s Curt Hecht, CBS Interactive’s David Chiang, Digitas’ Joel Aranson and Xaxis’ Mike Finnegan. Get some tips from Washington Post Digital on leveraging programmatic to tap into new buyer segments, and to realize CPMs at par with direct rates.
Yesterday we announced the launch of DoubleClick Studio Layouts, a rich media production tool that makes it easy to build and publish rich media and HTML5 ads. With Studio Layouts, all you have to do is select a layout, upload your existing assets and publish.
Our customers are seeing an average 80-90% reduction in turnaround time for the production and approvals of their rich media creative. To get a first-hand view of the impact of Studio Layouts, I spoke with some of our campaign experts -- Maureen Carroll and Zeena Husami, DoubleClick Rich Media Campaign Managers for some of our largest clients. Here are their thoughts on the new tool.
Tell me about the process of building a rich media ad unit prior to Studio Layouts.
Zeena: Before Studio Layouts, the assets we needed from the creative agency were much more involved and complex (fully functioning Flash assets built by the creative agency). There was often some time-consuming back and forth just to ensure we received the assets in the exact format that we needed.
Maureen: Creative agencies would then hand off those flash files and other creative assets and we’d add in DoubleClick Studio components and custom events for tracking before uploading into DoubleClick Studio. Often times we’d have special instructions which needed to be communicated back to the Doubleclick production and QA teams, thereby delaying the start of post-production.
Zeena: Once in QA, the DoubleClick QA team would thoroughly test the unit to make sure it functioned properly on all browsers and the tracking fired as intended.
Maureen: Even for a QA-only campaign in which creative agencies built directly in DoubleClick Studio themselves, there might be several rounds of QA revisions due to functionality issues and/or spec requirement violations.
How long would this whole build process usually take?
Maureen: Creative agencies might spend several days developing the creative in flash (prior to asset delivery or publishing to QA). Then rich media post-production normally took at least 4-5 business days, and in some cases up to 9-10 business days if high in complexity and/or creative volume.
So what’s the process look like now, with Studio Layouts?
Maureen: Creative agencies can quickly produce a creative by uploading basic image assets, inputting video IDs and making setting selections. No flash development is needed on the part of creative agencies.
Zeena: Once they add the assets, they preview and publish the ad unit and we have a fully functioning rich media ad (including custom rich media tracking). Since Layouts uses a shell that has been tried and true, these creatives typically pass QA in their first round of testing!
And how long does it take, on average, for you to build an ad using layouts?
Zeena: For the most complex unit I’ve built, it took about eight minutes. For less complex units, it takes about three!
Maureen: And we’re seeing an average time savings of 4-5 days spent on post-production and revisions. As a result, creative agencies and advertisers have greater flexibility and are able to launch engaging rich media creatives within shorter timelines.
What are some of the other benefits you have noticed as you use Layouts?
Maureen: Layouts is a great way to get more value out of creative, repurposing creative assets for additional executions to extend a campaign’s reach with minimal effort. Layouts also come with a comprehensive set of custom metrics, providing advertisers with a deep understanding of a user’s interaction with their creative.
Zeena: Layouts simplifies the production of HTML5 ads too, so creative agencies can now spend their time focusing on the content of the ad (images, video, copy) rather than the tedious coding and testing on the back end. Additionally, these Layouts formats were built using best practices from the best performing rich media ads, so they typically perform above benchmark metrics because they are clean and engaging.
Check back here tomorrow for our next post in “The Layouts Series”, focusing on the extended reach that Layouts can provide. And find more information about the product on the Rich Media Gallery.