Digital platforms give brands the tools to reach audiences where they spend their time, at scale and with personalized messaging not possible through other channels—so it’s no surprise that in 2017, total digital ad spending is predicted to surpass TV for the first time.¹ With this milestone approaching, we’ve heard your excitement about the opportunities digital can bring to your organization, but also that you’re looking for help to design and implement a digital strategy that meets your unique business needs.

Today, we’re launching the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner program to help give you the confidence you need to win in digital. Connect with a global network of certified digital marketing experts so you can achieve your goals, from building your brand to driving sales.

Connect with DoubleClick Digital Marketing

Certified Marketing Partners provide a range of technology and service offerings. Whether you’re looking for creative or media management services, data or technology integrations, help with measurement and attribution, or access to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, our partners can help you succeed.

Find a partner

We’re excited to welcome over 40 Certified Marketing Partners into the program, from around the world. And we’re working hard to build out the program to ensure you can reach your marketing goals by teaming up with a Certified Marketing Partner, no matter where you are.

When a partner has the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner badge, it means they’ve been carefully vetted and meet our rigorous qualification standards. Partners who’ve earned the badge are listed on DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner Search, so you can find the right partner for your business.

Many advertisers are already seeing value working with our Certified Marketing Partners:

"In the fast-moving and often chaotic world of programmatic advertising, MightyHive has been a trusted partner that we have come to rely upon. In addition to strong strategic advice, we appreciate their product recommendations, campaign execution and intelligence on the latest trends in the marketplace. MightyHive has consistently delivered."
Scott Jensen, Senior Vice President of Digital, Partner Fusion

“We needed a partner to assist and lead the transition into the DoubleClick technology stack, and Acceleration has been first-rate. This partnership allowed our agency to reach our goals, and because of Acceleration we continue to exceed them in terms of growth.”
David Taylor, Digital Director, Accord Group Ltd

“FiveStones brings effective digital strategy and optimization solutions. This partnership has helped us advance our brand marketing strategy and our ability to capitalize on the shift to digital."
Karen Tsang, Head of Marketing, Openskools Limited

To Find a Partner, visit www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/certified-marketing-partners/

Posted by Chip Hall
Managing Director of Media Platforms, Google


¹eMarketer ‘Digital Ad Spending to Surpass TV Next Year’ 2016

Mobile is where search starts today for many consumers. Last year for the first time, more Google searches took place on smartphones than on desktops and laptops globally¹. Mobile is where consumer micro-moments really thrive: in the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I-want-to-buy moments where decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Brands that help consumers in these intent-rich moments will win.

To help brands be there and be useful, we're pleased to announce that support for three new mobile tools are in the works for DoubleClick Search users: AdWords expanded text ads, call-only ads and call metrics.

Optimized ads for the mobile-first world

Expanded text ads were announced yesterday by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google, during his Google Performance Summit Keynote. They're the biggest change to mobile ad formats since AdWords launched over 15 years ago.

Expanded text ads give advertisers improved control over the longer headline field, increased character limits across all text fields, and a simplified display URL workflow.

Based on early testing, some advertisers reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. Expanded text ads in AdWords provide nearly 50% more ad space, so you can showcase more information about your products and services right on the search results page.

Expanded text ads aren't available widely just yet. We’re working with the AdWords team and we plan to have full support quickly once campaign management for expanded text ads becomes publicly available.

Until then, here's what DoubleClick Search customers who are taking part in the AdWords beta can expect in three key areas:

• Campaign management: Expanded text ads won't appear in the DoubleClick Search interface at this time.
• Bid optimization: Expanded text ads are included in automated bidding for DoubleClick Search for all AdWords beta users.
• Measuring results: Engine and conversion stats for the expanded text ads will be attributed to the correct keyword in DoubleClick Search. Aggregate reporting (at the ad group level and above) will incorporate stats from expanded text ads.

Even if you're not in the AdWords beta, it's a good idea to start planning now for this upgrade. Review Google’s Creatives that Click to learn about best practices.

Connect with calls

While the mobile web and apps continue to grow, calls remain an important way for consumers to connect with your business. In fact, 33% of mobile searchers have called a business after doing a related search on their smartphones in the past three months².

Today we’re announcing full support for AdWords call-only ads and call metrics in DoubleClick Search. Support for these features starts immediately and you should see them in your account now.

Put your business phone number and a "call now" button in your mobile search ads, and more customers will call you directly instead of visiting your web site.

These ads are a great way to connect to consumers in their I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments. In fact, Forrester Research recommended Google solutions in its recent report Capture Customers With Click-to-Call³:

“Google has the longest tenure with click-to-call and provides the greatest reach of all possible media outlets, so we recommend building your click-to-call foundation on it.”
- Forrester Research, February 2016

Until now, call-only ads were created by selecting a checkbox in call extensions. These new call-only ads replace this option.

With call-only ads, you can bid based on the value of a call to your business, and tailor your ads for phone calls to let people know they can reach your business easily without needing to visit your site.

And, with call metrics, you can use a Google forwarding number to see how many calls were generated, how long they lasted, and other details that will help you measure the value of phone calls, right in DoubleClick Search.

Learn how to create call-only ads in DoubleClick Search in our Help Center, or discover new ways to Drive More Calls to Your Business with Google’s best practices.

Looking ahead

These three new features are our latest steps toward helping DoubleClick Search customers stay ahead in a mobile-first world. They join other mobile innovations such as cross-device conversions, cross-device bid strategies, and app-install campaigns that help you put your apps in users' hands. We hope they'll help your brand succeed with search in a mobile-first world.

Posted by Amit Varia
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search


^{1 Google Internal Data, for 10 countries including the US and Japan, April 2015
2 The role of mobile search on store purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015, n=1327 Mobile Searchers 18+, who have conducted a purchase-related search on a smartphone in the past 3 months
3 Capture Customers With Click-To-Call. Forrester Research, February 2016}

The television industry is in the midst of a massive change. The rise of new content models and connected devices has led to more choice than ever--both for content creators and consumers. But with this choice and opportunity comes new challenges to solve as well.

I spoke to the TV industry at the Closing General Session of the National Association of Broadcasters Show. In the keynote I discussed the rebirth of TV and how we’re helping Broadcasters and Distributors with discovery, monetization and content creation.

Discovery

Announcing new ways to find where and when to watch your favorite shows.

There are now more ways to watch your favorite TV shows than ever before. This shift has some even saying that we’re in the “golden age” of television. And what we're seeing is that more and more, viewers are turning to their phones to find out what to watch, where to watch it and when it’s available -- in fact, searches for TV shows and films on mobile have grown more than 55% in the past year alone.

Last year we launched video actions in Search to help viewers find direct options to watch the shows they are looking for on programmer and distributors mobile apps and sites or stores like Google Play.

Today, I'm excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now if you're looking for a movie or TV show like The Big Bang Theory, we'll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

Monetization

Announcing personalized TV ads with DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion

Viewers no longer expect content personalized to them, they demand it. And that includes ads.

Today we are taking big steps to bring new addressable advertising capabilities to TV Broadcasters and Distributors by announcing DoubleClick’s Dynamic Ad Insertion. This makes ads hyper relevant for viewers across any screen that they watch. By creating individual streams for every viewer using server side ad insertion, we are able to deliver a better, more personalized viewing experience that looks and feels as seamless as TV today.

And not only will this work for both live and on-demand TV but it works across directly sold and programmatic.

We put this technology to the test with two of the highest rated TV events in the last year: the Rugby World Cup Finals on TF1, the leading network in France, and the Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News, a leading news network in the US. Politics and sports are pretty personal topics, so it’s only appropriate that TF1 and Fox News created a fully addressable viewing experience for the millions of viewers that tuned in using Dynamic Ad Insertion.

Announcing smarter TV ad breaks

Today we’re also announcing that DoubleClick for Publisher clients will soon be able to seamlessly enforce the level of control that has been firmly established in TV -- across all inventory, whether it was sold directly or indirectly. That means, we are able to honor competitive separation - so two automotive ads don’t appear in the same commercial break - and other rules like making sure an alcohol and children's cereal ad don’t appear in the same commercial break.

This has been major blocker to enabling programmatic to work for TV. And now you no longer need to turn down attractive opportunities from advertisers interested in transacting programmatically because of compliance concerns.

Announcing New TV Partners

DoubleClick is focused on building advertising solutions that meet the changing needs of the TV ecosystem. We’re proud of our longstanding partnerships with industry leaders like AMC Networks in the US and Globo in South America.

Today we add three more to the list: we’re happy to welcome MCN, Roku and Cablevision as partners. They’ve all signed on to use DoubleClick for Publishers to serve ads and monetize cross-screen TV and video content.

“As the conventional TV and digital video worlds converge, people are watching more content than ever across a variety of screens. At Cablevision, we’re focused on developing innovative solutions that deliver the best experience for our viewers in this new cross-screen world and unlocking new opportunities for our advertisers. We are enthusiastic about using Google's DoubleClick for seamless advertising delivery across our set-top boxes and connected devices. Together, we are enabling more personalized and relevant ads with addressable and dynamic ad insertion.”
- Kristin Dolan, Chief Operating Officer, Cablevision

Content creation

Announcing Autodesk collaboration to enable 10x improvement in rendering efficiency

Autodesk software has been behind the past 21 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects and we’re bringing this capability to Google Cloud Platform. Yesterday we announced (link) that Autodesk, maker of industry-leading 3D animation and modeling software, is collaborating with Google on a new cloud-based rendering solution called Maya^® for Google Cloud Platform ZYNC Render. This allows artists to focus on creating incredible TV & movie content using the tools they already know, while shifting even the largest rendering jobs seamlessly to the cloud.

TV is the midst of a revival. And just like other media types which have been reimagined for the digital age like music, the arrival of this ‘new TV’ was preceded by change and tumult. But TV’s past was built on a rich history of creativity and innovation, and I’m incredibly optimistic that TV’s future will be as well. Our job is to help make that future become the present and we are excited to partner with the TV ecosystem to build it.

Posted by Daniel Alegre President of Global Partnerships, Google

This is part five of a five-part series introducing the creative process for data-driven campaigns as outlined in our new guide: The Creative Process for Programmatic: A Guide for Marketers.

Until quite recently, the launch of an ad campaign marked an end-point for most of the parties who created it. Once the campaign was out in the world, it was time to crack a few celebratory beers and move onto the next thing: whether that meant coming up with new creative executions that built tangentially on the campaign’s success, or scrapping it for something new entirely.

Today, data-driven marketing empowers brand advertisers and agencies to closely monitor not just how successful a campaign is after launch, but which elements are driving that success. Teams can optimize live campaigns mid-way through the flight and make tweaks to improve performance and update assets for future flights, rather than starting from scratch each season.

As data-driven campaigns have become more sophisticated so, too, have the tools for measurement. It’s no longer just about CTR: now, teams can measure elements such as post-view and view-through conversions as well as engagement metrics such as video completes and interaction rates. This paves the way for more specific and nuanced KPIs, allowing teams to consider what success means for individual campaigns and brands as a whole.

The new creative process is significantly more iterative and cyclical than what we saw in the past:

• Teams are now actively involved in the evolution of the campaign, closely monitoring which audiences respond to which elements of data-driven creative and proactively optimizing on the fly.
• There are greater opportunities for learning, as teams work together to analyze why audiences may be responding favorably (or not-so-favorably) to different elements.
• Teams can use these learnings for future campaigns and, at the same time, pull in learnings from other data-driven campaigns to inform the work that’s currently live.

You can learn more about this campaign, as well as get a full picture of best practices for data-driven creative campaigns, in our new guide The Creative Process for Programmatic: A Guide for Marketers.

Join us for a webinar on our creative research, focused on how agencies can bring data-driven creative to life. Thursday, April 21st @ 12pm ET. RSVP here.

Posted by Becky Chappell Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick