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Whip your seasonal campaigns into shape: Four “knead to know” tips for search marketers

Kim — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 17:43:00 +0000

A pinch of salt, a dash of sugar...and a handful of data analysis?

We all know baking is a huge part of the holidays. But amidst the hustle and bustle of planning scrumptious menus for friends and family, as a marketer you’re also juggling fleeting promotions, revising stale ads and trying to balance your budget — all in hopes of reaching holiday shoppers at the moment they’re looking to buy. So how do you avoid those half-baked campaigns during one of the busiest times of the year?

This season, we wanted to share a few of our favorite tools to whip your digital strategy into shape and help you make your holiday promotions a piece of cake. With the right ingredients to scale and streamline your seasonal campaigns, you can find some extra time to sit back and enjoy your perfectly baked holiday pastries — while we take care of the rest.

	1. Whip up new opportunities in an instant with real-time reporting and optimization We get it. The holidays are busy, and you often find yourself running out of time — both in the kitchen and with your digital marketing. Forget the manual, hand-churned methods of the past that can leave your campaign results as stale as last year’s fruitcake. This year, turbocharge your campaigns with up-to-the-minute reporting and optimization in DoubleClick™ Search. We’ll whip up performance and conversion metrics as they happen, so you get a real-time view into how your campaigns are performing. Then we’ll use that near-instant conversion data to update bids throughout the day, —helping you get an ROI the size of a holiday feast.
	2. Handle on-the-go customers with mobile bid modifiers As a master cook, you’re moving around non-stop during the holidays — and so are your customers. But as they’re searching for deals and checking them twice across screens, how do you set the right bids to showcase your hottest products to your most eager prospects — wherever they are? Mobile bid modifiers in DoubleClick Search help you adjust campaign bids to maximize performance for mobile searches. Ready to make your holidays a multiscreen event this year? We’ll raise a glass of eggnog to that!
	3. Find the right recipe with adaptive Shopping campaigns Your digital marketing, much like your cooking, might need some extra help during the busy holidays. Take your go-to recipe from good to great by spicing it up with something special. This year, that secret ingredient can be adaptive Shopping campaigns, which ensures that your Shopping campaign structure is optimized to perform its very best. Adaptive Shopping campaigns dynamically optimize your Shopping campaign structure, based on product performance. That means you’ll set the right bids for your high-performing products, as well as save money on bids for low-performing products. And the best part? It’s all automatic, so you won’t have to make it from scratch.
	4. Measure your product sales with purchase detail reports Proper measurement is one of the most important parts of cooking up an impactful campaign. Especially during the busy holiday season, trying to mix and match different reports can have you feeling like Scrooge. We’ll help your campaigns rise to the occasion this year with purchase detail reports for smarter product-centric measurement. Get clear visibility into the products consumers purchase, as well as the ads that drive those sales. Customize and report on your individual product sales by any product attribute—such as color, size and style—and do it for any type of campaign, including text, Shopping, and on AdWords™ or Bing.

Ready for more holiday treats? Tune in to the DoubleClick Advertisers blog tomorrow for even more tips for media agencies, and sign up to receive our newsletter for regular product updates: http://goo.gl/p03ZMS

Going Back to School with DoubleClick: Digital marketing flashcards to help you make the grade this school year

Kim — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 14:00:00 +0000

This is day 5 of the “Going Back to School with DoubleClick” series. Ready for a quick review? Check out our past flashcards: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4

Like Kia, you can get top marks on your “report” card with better measurement across channels using a unified digital marketing platform. Kia wanted a better way to understand and optimize their marketing investment to address fast-changing consumer behaviors; to do so, they adopted DoubleClick to simplify and more accurately measure the impact of their digital marketing across channels. The result? DoubleClick attribution tools helped Kia improve their cost per acquisition (CPA) by 30%. Take a peek to learn more here.

Now, go on and ace that final exam! For more information on DoubleClick Digital Marketing, stay tuned to the DoubleClick blog, sign up for our newsletter,, or follow us on Twitter and Google+.

Advertisers see Shopping campaign success with new optimization, reporting tools from the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite

Kim — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:00:00 +0000

In March, we introduced Shopping campaigns support in DoubleClick Search, offering a simpler, more flexible way for retailers to manage their Product Listing Ads (PLAs). Thanks to these tools, advertisers have already seen success with Shopping campaigns. As Casandra Jones, Associate Director at iProspect, says: “It’s been incredibly helpful having DoubleClick Search be first to market with a solution for Shopping campaigns. We were able to transition to Shopping campaigns more quickly and determine best practices that work for our brands -- giving us a competitive edge, long before the majority of retailers hit the market.”

Since then, we’ve been focused on building solutions with the scale and speed you need to capture every retail opportunity. Now, we’re excited to announce three new tools from the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite to help make your reporting and optimization even easier. Below, we’ll unpack these features by highlighting the what, the why, and how customers are using our solutions today.

Automated campaign optimization with adaptive Shopping campaigns

	*What*: Adaptive Shopping campaigns is a new way to dynamically create and optimize your Shopping campaign structure, based on product performance. Native integration with Google Merchant Center means we’ll monitor your feed and automatically subdivide existing product groups by product ID, based on the conversion rates of the products in each group.
	*Why*: We’ve found that 90% of the median advertiser’s cost comes from only 9.5% of its products(1). However, advertisers often lump these high-spend products into bid groups with other, lower-converting products -- leading to bid values that are not optimized, based on relative performance. Adaptive Shopping campaigns ensure your most popular SKUs get the right bid by creating product groups for each item earning high traffic.
	*What do customers think?* Andrea Bywater, Marketing Coordinator of Paid Search at BuildDirect, says: “Using adaptive shopping campaigns will be incredibly helpful in helping us group ‘winning’ SKUs together -- especially when things get even busier with the holidays and Black Friday just around the corner. Not only will this be more effective in saving time; it’ll also help us save money on products with lower conversion rates.”

Smarter, faster bid optimization for Shopping campaigns

	*What*: Earlier this month, we rolled out bid optimization for Shopping campaigns -- giving you the ability to extend the same powerful bidding algorithms from our Performance Bidding Suite to your Shopping campaigns, with smarter bidding based on near real-time data.
	*Why*: We know bid optimization can make or break campaign results. Bidding strategies need to be flexible enough to meet your business objectives, while algorithms need to be fast enough to act quickly in a competitive landscape. With bid optimization for Shopping campaigns, you can: Easily define your goals -- setting individual bid strategies, or combining different strategies, just as you do with your DoubleClick Search text ads. Target precisely and efficiently by setting Shopping campaign bid strategies on campaigns, ad groups, or even product groups. Reach shoppers on the go by automatically setting a mobile bid modifier. And as with the rest of your bids, bid optimization for Shopping campaigns benefit from up-to-the-minute conversion data. This means you can use fresher data to more closely track to your promotion goals -- even during the busiest marketing days.
	*What do customers think?* Ashlee Wiltshire, Analytics & Technology Account Manager at Performics, recently helped her team implement Shopping campaign bid strategies for several of their key retail clients. Wiltshire says: “Within two weeks, we've seen CPCs come down 11.2% and ROAS improve by 3.4%. It's also freed up a lot of the teams’ time, and as a result we’re able to build out more granular campaigns without worrying about manually updating bids."

Better transaction insights with purchase detail reports (beta)

	*What*: Purchase detail reports (currently in beta) let you better understand the products consumers purchased, and the ads that drove those sales. Once you specify the products sold in a transaction using the DoubleClick floodlight tag, you can customize and report on specific product sales by any attribute, including color, size, product line, and style. Best of all, these reports are available for any type of campaign -- whether that’s text, Shopping, on AdWords or on Bing.
	*Why*: With ever-changing shifts in seasons and trends, retailers often focus on selling a certain products at a given time. Fashion advertisers, for example, need to sell the latest styles before they fall out of favor. In the past, figuring out if your search advertising actually lead to these product sales has been complex -- requiring lots of time and effort in reporting analysis. Purchase detail reports give granular transaction details for better insights into your campaign performance: Identify the impact of your advertising on achieving core business goals like maximizing profitability or selling off inventory. Improve ad targeting by matching ads to the products that consumers are most interested in purchasing. Understand the real value of brand and general terms in selling your highest margin or most important products.
	*What do customers think?* Justin Johnson, Paid Search Manager at Cabela’s, says: “Having insights into where we spend our money, in addition to what people are looking for, has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions. With this data, we have a better look into where we may not have adequate coverage, and are able to quickly make changes to address that. Being able to pull in margin data to see if certain keywords are actually better or worse at driving profitable traffic than we anticipated helps us be more thoughtful with our spending.”

Reach out to your DoubleClick Search representative or our support team at ds-support@google.com.

To learn more about upcoming DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite developments in easy workflows, insightful reporting, and smarter optimization, stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog, sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Google+.

1. DoubleClick Search internal data, 2014

Going Back to School with DoubleClick: Digital marketing flashcards to help you make the grade this school year

Kim — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:00:00 +0000

This is day 4 of the “Going Back to School with DoubleClick” series. Ready for a quick review? Check out our past flashcards: day 1, day 2, day 3

No need to pull those all-nighters; an integrated digital marketing platform can help you make better use of your time. Using DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform across the stack, Mindshare went from working more than 100 hours to around 30 hours over the Black Friday weekend -- reducing their work time by over 70 hours year-over-year. And as a bit of ‘extra credit’, the team still saw a lift of more than 25% in ROAS. These time savings allowed Mindshare to focus more on making strategic optimizations by looking more closely at the data and insights -- leading to record-breaking campaign performance for their client. Ready for the deep-dive lesson? Check out the lecture notes here.

Tune in tomorrow for our next flashcard on how integrated platforms can help you make the grade this school year, and beyond!

Going Back to School with DoubleClick: Digital marketing flashcards to help you make the grade this school year

Kim — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:00:00 +0000

This is day 3 of “Going Back to School with DoubleClick” series. Ready for a quick review? Check out our past flashcards: day 1, day 2

Sometimes it’s about working smarter, not harder. As shown in a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study, “Cutting Complexity, Adding Value”, campaign teams spend on average only 1 day in 5 on ‘value-creation’ activities, with 80% of their time spent on low-value activities such as trafficking. By adopting a unified ad technology, organizations can improve productivity by up to 33% across the campaign lifecycle. Skip study hall and learn how to save time with digital platforms; check out the cheat sheet here.

Tune in tomorrow for our next flashcard on how integrated platforms can help you make the grade this school year, and beyond!

Going Back to School with DoubleClick: Digital marketing flashcards to help you make the grade this school year

Kim — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:58:00 +0000

This is day 2 of the “Going Back to School with DoubleClick” series. Ready for a quick review? Check out our day 1 flashcard here.

Double-majoring in search and display? Unified advertising platforms can help you get that competitive edge. For VivaKi, an integrated platform provided the team with new ways to drive results across their digital marketing channels. By incorporating their paid search signals into their display activity using DoubleClick display remarketing from search ads, VivaKi aced the performance test with a 60%+ improvement in CPA across their travel and auto advertisers. Want to brush up on how they did it? Check out the full report here.

Tune in tomorrow for our next flashcard on how integrated platforms can help you make the grade this school year, and beyond!

Going Back to School with DoubleClick: Digital marketing flashcards to help you make the grade this school year

Kim — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Alright bookworms, it's Back-to-School time. That means new teachers, new friends, new shoes -- and for digital marketers, new seasonal promotions.

Back-to-school searches have jumped 45% since last year, and many shoppers report that online research will have a notable impact on their in-store purchase decisions. So as a digital marketer, how do you work faster, act smarter, and make better decisions across channels -- all before that recess bell rings?

In a recent report, 75% of organizations believe an integrated platform could meet all of their marketing needs. To help make your digital marketing campaigns look as good as that meticulously-planned “first day” outfit, every day this week we’ll be sharing a few fun and educational flashcards around need-to-know stats, tips, and tricks from DoubleClick.

So sharpen those pencils, crack open that notebook, and let’s get started! Here's today's flashcard:

Integrated and real-time technologies can help you race to the top of the class -- and the results page. Using smart, fast, and unified tools that act from up-to-the-minute conversion data, iProspect exceeded their luxury retail client’s expectations by more than tripling revenue on the first day of their promotion, while decreasing cost per clicks (CPCs) by over 60% year over year. Ready to study up on how? Check out the full notes here.

Tune in tomorrow for our next flashcard on how integrated platforms can help you make the grade this school year, and beyond!

Real-time in retail: Why acting quickly matters in search

Kim — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 21:05:00 +0000

When consumers act, they act fast. Retailers can get a leg up in the marketplace by responding to consumers’ needs as they surface. While some events, such as holidays and championship games, can be anticipated, others, such as weather-related issues, cannot. Using real-time technologies in search, brands can dynamically adjust their reach, competitiveness and relevancy with their target audiences at the most critical times.

In a new Think Insights article, Casandra Jones, Account Director at iProspect, tells us the benefits of adopting SEM tools that act in real time to achieve search success as these important events and conversations occur.

Check out Casandra’s article on the Think Insights page here, and let us know what you think on Twitter or our Google+ page.

A new look and feel across DoubleClick Digital Marketing

Kim — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 20:29:00 +0000

Over the past several years, we’ve been working on a gradual redesign of many Google products like Search, Maps, Gmail, and AdWords -- with the goal of offering a simple, streamlined user experience that helps you get tasks done quickly and efficiently.

Today, we’re rolling out this new look and feel across all our DoubleClick products -- another example of how we’re continuing to unify our solutions across the platform. With this update, you’ll find that all products part of DoubleClick Digital Marketing now offer more screen real estate to our tools and reports, to help you focus on your tasks at hand. This means that you’ll experience the same, easy workflows across our products -- whether you’re managing search, display, rich media, and beyond. Note that this change only affects the style of the page, and does not change any functionality of our products today.

We hope that the new design will help you better navigate through your account and focus more on your data so you continue to succeed with our tools. To stay up-to-date on new DoubleClick developments, follow us on our Google+ page.

Does ad tech stack up? How it’s working at VivaKi

Kim — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 17:19:00 +0000

Marketers and agencies have countless opportunities to engage audiences with rich formats across channels and devices. But today, organizations are using an average of 4.7 ad tech platforms to execute what should be a seamless experience across search, display, video, mobile, and more.

Many forward-thinking organizations know the real opportunity lies in creating unified, cross-channel experiences that span multiple touchpoints. In a new Think Insights article, Marco Bertozzi, Executive Managing Director at VivaKi, explains the benefits of adopting a unified solution to unlock the full potential of digital marketing. Check out the article on the Think Insights page here.

Holiday results: VivaKi Search Hub increases conversions by 360 percent and decreases costs by 27 percent with real-time bid optimization

Kim — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 07:39:00 +0000

During the 2013 holidays, we shared some tips and tricks on how to adjust your bid strategies to take advantage of seasonal opportunities. Today, we wanted to take a look back and highlight one of our holiday success stories with the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite for real-time bid optimization. The following story comes from the VivaKi Search Hub -- VivaKi’s marketing support service that uses a deep knowledge of DoubleClick Search to drive results for their advertisers’ search programs.

One of the VivaKi Search Hub’s advertisers, a large retail brand, looked to the team to overhaul their current strategies for maximizing results over the 2013 Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days. To prepare for this peak time, the team turned to the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite to automate bids based on real-time conversion data, and respond immediately to market changes.

Timothy Lackhouse, Team Lead for Bid Strategy at the VivaKi Search Hub, was in charge of managing the advertiser’s bid strategies. “The bid strategies in DoubleClick Search are incredibly clear to set up and modify,” said Lackhouse. “With near real-time and granular reporting, we don’t need to spend countless hours or days waiting for the data. We’re able to get a deep level of insight into our performance right away -- assessing what’s working, what’s not, and making tweaks as necessary.”

Within days of launching the new bid strategies, the positive results were irrefutable. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the VivaKi Search Hub was able to increase its advertiser’s conversions by 360 percent while lowering CPO by 27 percent -- all while saving 90 minutes a day.

To get the full scoop on the VivaKi Search Hub’s success with the Performance Bidding Suite, read the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

DoubleClick Search teams with Boost Media for ad optimization

Kim — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:03:00 +0000

Search marketers understand that the right optimization tools can make or break campaign performance. But for many, optimizing ad creative can be a challenge: beyond just relying on algorithms, marketers can spend hours repeatedly writing, testing, and refining ad copy across large-scale campaigns. To address this, today we’re excited to extend the suite of DoubleClick optimization solutions by partnering with Boost Media (formerly BoostCTR) -- bringing the company’s ad creative optimization solution to the DoubleClick Search platform.

With DoubleClick Search, customers are already taking advantage of performance-driving features to save time and improve results -- including inventory-aware campaigns for dynamic ad creation, A/B landing page testing to drive traffic to the highest ROI landing pages, and the Performance Bidding Suite for real time bid optimization. By coupling Boost Media’s ad optimization platform with core workflow and optimization tools from DoubleClick Search, advertisers can benefit in the following ways:

Increase ROI with proven optimization algorithms. On top of intra-day keyword bidding from DoubleClick Search, Boost Media tests ads side-by-side, and chooses ads based on Boost Media’s proprietary algorithms. According to Boost Media, their clients experience an average of 30 percent increase in sales volume.
Scale campaigns, save time with custom-tailored ad creation. Boost Media offers a network of professional copywriters to develop engaging and high-performing ads at scale. Advertisers can expect unique and creatively written ad text, distinguished from the standard Dynamic Keyword Insertion templates that are often used today. According to Boost Media, advertisers save an average of 60 hours per month on writing, testing, and reporting on creative.

Cut costs by focusing on the right ads. Boost Media decreases cost by identifying and eliminating underperforming ads, allowing clients to capture additional, unseen revenue from their ad groups. According to Boost Media, users see an average 5% decrease in CPAs.

DoubleClick Search customers interested in using Boost Media can contact their DoubleClick Search Sales representatives.

We’ll continue to develop more optimization features to drive ROI for our customers. Stay tuned to learn about our plans in to deliver deep performance-driving capabilities across audience, attribution, and more.

ymarketing boosts performance for Clark Pest Control, while saving 20-30 hours per week with the DoubleClick Search Conversions API

Kim — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:30:00 +0000

Earlier last year, we announced improvements to our Conversions API -- a flexible offline conversion platform that lets you automatically upload, report, and optimize on offline data (like calls) in near real-time. Today, we wanted to highlight one of our success stories around this feature. The following story comes from ymarketing, a full-service digital agency who adopted the Conversions API to fuel their search campaigns with offline call data -- giving them access to more powerful insights than ever before.

Tired of importing and reconciling call data into their standard online reporting manually, ymarketing moved one of their clients, Clark Pest Control, to DoubleClick Search to take advantage of call tracking integrations from the Conversions API. Because Clark Pest Control’s prospective customers would often schedule their first appointments by phone, having the ability to optimize from offline call data was key. Today, DoubleClick Search integrates with ymarketing’s call tracking partner, Mongoose -- one of many call-tracking service providers working with DoubleClick -- ensuring that their client’s reporting reflects the most up-to-date call information for more insightful analysis and optimization.

Steven Hellbusch, Performance Media Supervisor at ymarketing, says, “With the Conversions API, we have the ability to attribute calls to the specific keyword by search engine in almost real time. The ability to then optimize from both online and offline conversions has allowed us to better meet our clients’ goals. With all of our data in one place, we have a more accurate picture of what’s happening from a user experience, and more importantly, we have ability to unearth new opportunities for our client.”

A month after implementing this solution for Clark Pest Control, ymarketing was impressed by the results: the team increased conversions by 173%, while cost per action decreased by 20%, and conversion rate doubled from 16% to 32%. On top of these significant performance gains, the team was able to save an estimated 20-30 hours of work a week.

To get the full scoop on ymarketing’s success with the DoubleClick Search Conversions API, read the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

A better e-commerce experience: Channel Intelligence and DoubleClick Search team up for enhanced feed management, optimization

Kim — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:12:00 +0000

In an earlier blog post, we highlighted how shoppers exposed to a brand’s Product Listing Ads (PLA) and text ads are more likely to engage with that brand. To take full advantage of this opportunity across ad formats, it’s important that retailers have both a complete, accurate product feed and the tools to manage their campaigns at scale.

Today we’re excited to announce that DoubleClick Search will integrate feed management and optimization capabilities from Channel Intelligence. As an add-on solution to the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite , the first step in this integration combines the data feed expertise from Channel Intelligence with the core workflow and optimization features from DoubleClick Search. Especially with the announcement of Shopping campaigns, having a detailed product feed is crucial for retailers to run high-impact search campaigns. This integration benefits retailers in the following ways:

Build optimized product feeds. Channel Intelligence works with retailers to refine product feeds -- ensuring that the feed is comprehensive, the data is organized, and product attributes are accurate.
Use improved feeds to dynamically create and update PLAs and text ads. Channel Intelligence feeds can power DoubleClick Search inventory-aware campaigns for automated campaign management. Using these optimized product feeds, DoubleClick Search can generate customized PLAs and text ads at scale, and keep them up-to-date based on changes to a retailer’s physical inventory.
Optimize in real time to maximize ROI. To further boost performance across these ads, DoubleClick Search bid strategies update bids up to 4 times a day, based on up-to-the-minute conversion information. This scale and speed allows retailers to respond to product inventory changes and market trends at the drop of a hat -- even during the busiest holiday shopping days.

Performics pilots solution for major retail client

Global leader Performics is one of the first agencies to take advantage of the integrated offering for one of their clients, a large department store retailer.

"We're really excited to team with Channel Intelligence and DoubleClick Search to optimize and fully integrate the search experience for our retail brands,” says Eric Papczun, President US of Performics. “The integration is greater than the sum of its parts, and we feel that these combined technologies will give our clients a clear competitive edge in the marketplace."

Even more to come

To learn more, join us for a webinar on March 10th where we’ll cover the integration, as well as discuss the power of moving toward real-time for retail campaigns. Sign up for the webinar here http://goo.gl/cBlAcx

Our teams will also be attending eTail West coming up March 3 - 6. Come meet us during the pre-day panels and roundtables, hear us present a keynote on Day 3, or find us on the conference floor.

Making eyes at ROI: Love notes from DoubleClick customers

Kim — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 13:00:00 +0000

Each year, people are falling deeper in love with Valentine’s Day; in fact, this year’s numbers show consumers will spend $1.6 billion on candy to celebrate the day of love. And while Cupid’s been busy pairing up sweethearts, here at DoubleClick, we’ve been focused on connecting digital marketers with the right audiences to boost performance for their online marketing campaigns. To share that warm and fuzzy feeling, today we’re highlighting love notes from our top clients who are making eyes at ROI -- showcasing just a few ways they’re winning the hearts of consumers with faster, smarter tools from DoubleClick.

Make sure your valentine knows you exist, with a creative message they can’t resist.

Every Romeo knows that snagging the prettiest Juliet starts with the perfect words and a timely delivery. That’s why Unfold Agency’s Brick Rucker and Daniel Weisinger have been using DoubleClick Rich Media for years to build beautiful creative messages that they can get in front of their target audience at the right time. Because they can review, approve and publish all their creatives themselves, they’re able to quickly turn their campaigns around and get them live on a deadline.

“We believe in turning around creative quickly,” Weisinger says. “And most of the ad units we build are really complex.” By using DoubleClick, Unfold is able to push every banner as far as it can go, building innovative and engaging experiences within their rich media ad units. One recent creative even coordinated the ad unit with the surrounding skin of the website to provide a holistic brand experience for the user. “We’ve been using DoubleClick Studio for years...We’re as good as we are because DoubleClick created the platform for us.”

Make it love at first ‘site’ with a sleek, new interface

Now that you have just the right message for your Valentine, you’ll also need to look sleek to really impress them. That’s why with DoubleClick Campaign Manager - the new version of DFA - we focused on building a beautiful, intuitive interface to help you work more efficiency and maximize your results across screens.

For all those who have already upgraded to DoubleClick Campaign Manager, it’s been love at first ‘site’. Power users from Situation Interactive - Mara Winkler, Senior Media Planner, and Joyce Tse, Media Coordinator - told us about the benefits they’re seeing from using the new trafficking interface: “With the upgrade to DoubleClick Campaign Manager, we’ve been able to streamline the trafficking process. The new trafficking workflow makes it easy to edit everything without switching pages, and allows us to use our time more efficiently. For example, when we swap creative it’s an extremely easy and intuitive process, and changes are reflected almost immediately. This helps us to ensure that the correct creative is running at all times.”

Go ga-ga over programmatic buying

As Cupid would have it, no meaningful connections with your sweetheart should be overlooked, and neither should an opportunity to connect or reconnect with your customers.

The agency Deutsch LA turned to programmatic to help a major real estate company reach customers at scale, at the lowest possible cost. To drive success, Deutsch brought the best of targeting, formats and inventory together on the DoubleClick Bid Manager platform.

To maximize share-of-voice, the team paired contextual and audience targeting using both display and video formats. Best-in-class semantic contextual targeting ensured they could engage users in the moment they read content related to their client’s products. While contextual comprised of 20% of campaign spend, it drove the highest clickthrough rate, at a CPA 50% lower than the rest of their buy. Stephanie Waddle, VP and Digital Associate Media Director at Deutsch LA tells us why she’s a fan: “Targeting endemic content is important for our client. It qualifies our audience and drives lower CPAs. In addition, it keeps them top of mind in a very competitive category.”

The team also coupled their cross-exchange buy with a programmatic direct buy, to augment reach with increased focus on private marketplaces. Integrating their reserved and programmatic display buy within the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform gave the team added efficiencies and fresh, holistic reporting across their buy.

Get your heart racing with real-time insights

And when it comes to seeing the results of your efforts, any Valentine’s Day planner knows it’s never good to wait until the last minute -- not with dinner reservations, and certainly not with your digital campaigns.

With instant conversions in DoubleClick Search, DigitasLBi was able to analyze their performance in a heartbeat, and use that up-to-the-minute information to influence bid decisions. “It’s been a great tool for DigitasLBi,” says Ashley Tsoumas, Search Marketing Analyst at DigitasLBi. “DoubleClick Search makes bid and budget adjustments automatically based on your goals, and then within the same day, you have an understanding of how those adjustments have impacted the overall business.” For one particular account across all Google and Bing keywords, these optimizations from instant conversion feedback contributed to 30% more orders at 68% lower CPO, month-over-month.

Customers are feeling the real-time romance across the DoubleClick platform, too. Megan Moldovan, Director of Platform Logistics at Annalect, tells us how unified reporting lets her team take advantage of every opportunity across their digital marketing with fresh, accurate data: "Integration of search, display, RTB -- the ability to track all of that within one system, see how thats impacting media and actually start to act on that in real-time across all channels is an amazing new feature."

For more customer love stories, be sure to check out our list of case studies here.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at DoubleClick!

Introducing the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite: A smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management

Kim — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 16:00:00 +0000

Here at DoubleClick Search, we’ve been focused on developing tailored solutions for retail advertisers -- delivering the scale, performance, and speed our customers need to maximize revenue for their businesses. Today, we’re excited to introduce the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, a robust toolset offering a smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management. The suite is comprised of solutions that help you automatically create and update text ad and PLA campaigns based on your product catalog, leverage real-time data to optimize against your product or category-level business goals, and measure it all with flexible, product-based reports.

Putting “product” at the core of commerce investments

We designed the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite with products at the core, letting you efficiently build, manage, and optimize campaigns by seamlessly integrating with your existing product investments. As the only platform directly integrated with Google Merchant Center, we make your product inventory visible and accessible within DoubleClick Search -- meaning there’s no need to navigate a separate interface, manage a manual upload, or wait for a separate team to deliver product feed data. Instead, anyone on your marketing team can act on live updates, as they happen.

For example, inventory-aware campaigns uses this live product information to automatically create and update text ads, keywords, and bids based on real-time changes to your Google Merchant Center feed -- inclusive of updates to pricing, availability, product descriptions, and more -- with no extra work, and at no extra cost to set up.

For ATG Stores, an ecommerce company for home goods, the ability to directly interact with Google Merchant Center data in DoubleClick Search was crucial in allowing the team to quickly iterate across their four million SKUs. “Inventory-aware campaigns have been a game changer,” says Tom Heffernan, Search Marketing Manager for ATG Stores. “It’s impressive to see that what would previously have taken a full week to do is now being updated in the system in less than an hour.” In addition to time savings, this smart automation also helped the team take advantage of broader long-tail keyword coverage to widen reach and uncover incremental revenue. As a result, ATG Stores tripled their return on ad spend (ROAS) for their inventory-managed campaigns.

Today, we’re extending the power of this product-centric automation with two new capabilities for Product Listing Ads (PLAs):

Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation, an extension of inventory-aware campaigns, lets you automatically generate and update PLA campaigns in real time, based on your Google Merchant Center feed.
Product Listing Ads optimization with intra-day bidding based on the freshest data lets you react quickly to changes in the market -- executing bids to meet your ROI goals on both high-volume products, as well as the long tail.

Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation

In addition to your text ads, you can now dynamically manage your PLA campaigns using the same, seamless workflow you use for the rest of your campaigns -- ensuring you’re always up to date, maximizing coverage, and driving better ROAS and volume.

Already, advertisers are seeing the benefits. “The ability to auto-generate PLA campaigns from existing product inventory drastically simplifies our setup process,” said Carissa McStay, Associate Manager at global marketing firm The Search Agency. “I was able to generate new PLA campaigns with over 1000 ad groups by product type in a matter of minutes -- not only saving us hours of time, but ensuring that our new customers see the most compelling ads that are relevant to them.”

Product Listing Ads optimization (beta)

Our Performance Bidding Suite offers the flexibility to optimize from a variety of signals and conversion sources including formula columns, external data (like calls), and Google Analytics goals; now, these same powerful bidding algorithms extend to your PLA campaigns. With more product-level information available, DoubleClick Search bid strategies can fine-tune bids on high-volume products to drive the most revenue, as well as handle the long-tail products that may receive less traffic.

And like with the rest of DoubleClick Search bid strategies, PLA bid strategies benefit from access to the same real-time data, with bids based on up-to-the-minute conversions to capture every new opportunity. This allows advertisers to respond to market changes at the drop of a hat -- even during the busiest holiday shopping days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Valentine’s Day.

As the global leader in performance marketing, iProspect understands that speed is often the difference between seized and missed opportunities for retail clients. "Real-time is the future of retail, and DoubleClick is leading the way with the ability to optimize from real-time conversion information,” says Jeremy Hull, Director of Bought Media at iProspect. “With fast, accurate data, DoubleClick Search offers clients the tools they need to optimize throughout the day as traffic shifts occur.”

Just the beginning

This product-centric focus will continue to guide our feature development, helping us quickly innovate additional tools that will drive revenue for the ecommerce business. To learn more about upcoming DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite developments in easy workflows, insightful reporting, and new technology integrations and partnerships, stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog, or follow us on Google+.

Piston boosts ROAS by 51%, conversions by 50% for retail client using inventory-aware campaigns

Kim — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, we announced improvements to our inventory-aware campaigns feature, which automatically creates and optimizes a retailer’s search campaigns, based on updates made to their Google Merchant Center product feed. Since then, we’ve seen some impressive results across the board, showing that inventory-managed keywords more than doubled return on ad spend for heavy users(1).

Today, we wanted to highlight one of our success stories around this feature. The following story comes from Piston -- a bicoastal digital agency in the US, who helped their retail client maintain a “stylish profile” by keeping their campaigns relevant using inventory-aware campaigns.

After working around the clock to keep up with ever-changing product descriptions, prices, and landing pages during a busy holiday season, Piston turned to inventory-aware campaigns to scale their campaign management across their retail client’s 8,000+ products.

“When we’re looking for a solution, the key questions we ask are: can this save us time, can this save us money, and does it have features that can really help us impact our bottom line? And with DoubleClick inventory-aware campaigns, the answer was always ‘Yes’.” says Jennifer Johnstone, Senior Performance Marketing Strategist at Piston. “Inventory-aware campaigns allow us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enable us to spend our dollars on more efficient product level keywords, and help us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds.”

One quarter after adopting inventory-aware campaigns, Piston saw a 51% rise in ROAS, a 26% jump in CTR, and a 50% boost in conversion rate, compared to manually-managed campaigns. Additionally, inventory-aware campaigns allowed them to expand keyword coverage on both products and SKUs by 49% -- all while saving an estimated 38 hours over one quarter since implementation.

To get the full scoop on Piston’s success with inventory-aware campaigns, download the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

1. Google internal data, 2013

Go back to school, DoubleClick style: 5 ways to win this school year with retail solutions from DoubleClick Search

Kim — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Dust off your textbooks and boot up your laptops: it’s time to go back to school!

While “Back to School” might be a dreaded time for students, it also presents unique challenges (and opportunities) for retail search marketers. More than 60% of shoppers will begin their Back to School shopping online, and most shoppers report that online research will have a notable impact on their in-store purchase decisions(1). In a highly competitive online space, how can you as a search marketer work faster, act smarter, and make better decisions -- all before that final school bell rings?

Today, we want to help you beat the Back to School blues and take advantage of the second largest retail event of the year. So we’re opening our school supply box and sharing a few successes we’ve heard from search marketers who’ve done their homework. Below are just a few powerful tools from DoubleClick Search to make sure you’ll get voted “most likely to succeed” in retail this school year, and beyond.

Keep your promotions organized with inventory-aware campaigns

Shake off that lazy summer feeling and get your new Back to School promotions in tip-top shape with inventory-aware campaigns, which let you use your existing Google Merchant Center feeds to efficiently and automatically update your search campaigns.

Our star student: Piston. Jennifer Johnstone, Performance Marketing Strategist at Piston, mentions: “Inventory-aware campaigns allow us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enable us to spend money on more efficient product level keywords and help us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds.” The team cut out the busywork by setting up inventory rules to automatically pause keywords when products go out of stock, and change landing page URLs when links in their feed change. The team also increased profits by expanding their keyword lists, auto-generating highly relevant SKU-level keywords. In a matter of weeks, Piston saw a 51% uplift in ROAS, 26% higher CTR, and a 50% higher conversion rate for their retail client -- all while saving around 38 hours over the past quarter.

Get to the top of the class (and the search page) with smart bid calculations

Become a math whiz with powerful bid management tools from the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, which considers dozens of factors to make intelligent bidding decisions in near-real time.

Our star student: iProspect. To better manage their search campaigns at scale, iProspect adopted the Performance Bidding Suite for automated bid optimization—with some impressive results. Casandra Jones, Account Supervisor at iProspect, notes: “The one feature from DoubleClick Search that our team can’t live without are the bid management tools. It’s saving us 8 hours a week, compared to manual bidding.” Within 6 weeks of adopting Floodlight tag bidding -- a bidding strategy that leverages Floodlight to set unique goals for varying conversion types -- iProspect saw significant improvements for their retail client: 10% increase in click volume, 20% increase in daily revenue, and 20% decrease in costs.

Secure cross-channel opportunities with display remarketing from search ads

Not sure how to juggle your cross-discipline studies? With display remarketing from search ads, use paid search clicks from DoubleClick Search to show consumers display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network, all with an easy and tagless workflow.

Our star student: VivaKi. In the search for the best deals, online shoppers can quickly get distracted. VivaKi implemented DoubleClick's display remarketing from search ads to make sure they didn’t lose their audience. With a turn-key setup on one integrated platform, the VivaKi team set up their remarketing lists in just a few clicks, and were ready to begin reaching customers with display ads via DoubleClick Bid Manager. As a result, VivaKi increased conversions by 32% for a leading insurance company, and reduced CPA by 66% for an automotive client.

Take notes on the important details, using labels across your entire campaign

Don’t get lost in all the “noise”. Highlight the need-to-know details using labels from DoubleClick Search to categorize, manage, and report on your most important campaigns, ads, groups, or keywords at a glance.

Our star student: The Search Agency. The Search Agency used labels from DoubleClick Search to break out of their existing campaign structure and easily track and manage attributes most important to them. Matt Grebow, Director of Paid Search at The Search Agency, notes: “Labels help us quickly identify account segments that are important to our clients, and provide the flexibility to adjust these segments along with any shift in business focus.” Beyond simply tagging different campaign attributes, we’ve seen our customers use labels in unique ways with other DoubleClick Search features, including combining labels with automated rules to manage their promotion schedules.

Ace your “report” card with better measurement from DoubleClick

Find out how your campaigns are stacking up with insights from our real-time, holistic reporting solutions. With a single view of your customer across display, rich media, mobile, video, and more, discover what’s working, hone in on new opportunities, and find your spot on the digital marketing honor roll.

Our star student: Digitas. In a dynamic search space, waiting 24 hours for reports to be updated, then mashing up and matching data from those separate reports, can feel like nails on a chalkboard. “I think the biggest factor that goes into our decision-making process for a platform is its ability to handle data, “Sean McDonald, Vice President and Group Director at Digitas, remarked. “DoubleClick really allows us to view the data all in one place, and make decisions based off of what’s best for our clients, rather than what's best for our individual teams.” With reporting by device type, quickly compare how campaigns are performing on desktop computers, mobile devices, and tablets, down to the individual keywords. For cross-channel insights, use DFA Attribution tools to better analyze conversion paths.

Ready for the next lesson? Play teacher’s pet and tune in to the DoubleClick for Advertisers blog later this week to learn how DoubleClick Bid Manager can help advertisers engage with in-market consumers during the Back to School season, and get set up for success for the upcoming holidays.

1. Google data, 2013: http://googleshopping.blogspot.com/

4 ways to win in retail this 4th of July with DoubleClick Search

Kim — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog)

Ah, the 4th of July: a time for day-long picnics at the park, fishing trips by the lake, night skies filled with fireworks -- and of course, shopping. If you’re a search marketer focused on retail, you know that holidays like the upcoming 4th of July can be an enormous opportunity to capture additional traffic from shoppers looking for the best deals online. So while you’re planning your annual hot dog eating contest, we want to help you start a new tradition this year to win in retail, using integrated solutions from DoubleClick Search. Today, we’re offering up a few retail-ready features to make sure you kick off your holiday search campaigns with a bang:

Manage your product inventory, along with your barbecuing.
There’s no need to step away from the grill: with inventory-aware campaigns, create and update your search ads, keywords, and bids automatically, based on your product inventory. And seamless integration with Google Merchant Center means you can leverage your existing feeds, with no extra work, at no extra cost. Set up rules that let you:

Expand your reach by automatically creating new ad groups, ads, and keywords based on product availability. And with deep coverage across your product catalogues, we’ll generate those highly relevant long-tail keywords that can be a chore to manage manually. In fact, we’ve seen that inventory-managed keywords more than doubled return on ad spend for heavy users(1).
Cut out the repetition in managing existing campaigns, by tying the behavior of ads and keywords to your inventory levels. For example, you can pause keywords when a related product is out of stock, and reactivate them when it’s back in stock, or update ad copy to align with promotions and style changes. You can also change landing page URLs when the links in the feed change.
Express rich customization with ad templates that enable granular product-level messaging at scale. We’ve seen that this rich customization delivers higher conversion rates by attracting only the most qualified clicks.

Plan a PLA picnic: you bring the fruit salad, we’ll bring the richer search ads.
With our fully integrated solution, DoubleClick Search makes creating and managing Google Shopping Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaigns as easy as apple pie. Incorporate product-rich information and measure, optimize, and report on PLA performance using the same familiar workflow you use with the rest of your ads:

Integrate with Google Merchant Center to easily view Merchant Center feeds in the DoubleClick Search UI, and to preview exactly what products fall under a product target.
Save time and upload product targets in bulk, using our standard upload sheet workflow to quickly create product targets for your highest revenue-generating products.
Analyze PLA campaign success with existing reporting features from DoubleClick Search. For example, track budget and key KPIs for PLA campaigns using our budget pacing reports. And with full PLA integration, your reports reflect the same Floodlight or Google Analytics conversion data you use for the rest of your campaigns, to give you a more accurate view of attribution.

Light up your most fiery landing pages through A/B testing.
Which landing page is worthy of a fireworks show? With DoubleClick Search landing page testing, identify and drive traffic to the highest ROI landing pages; then, calculate the exact impact of your landing page optimizations and update your ads immediately to boost results:

Easily split your search ads traffic across multiple landing pages to get just the insights you’re looking for. In addition to evenly splitting traffic across your search ads, you can define custom traffic splits (for example, a 90-10 split).
Analyze and compare through historical reporting from previously completed tests to help you determine the exact impact of your landing page changes.

Host a cross-channel block party, get search and display talking.
It’s the perfect opportunity to mingle with the neighbors. With display remarketing from search ads -- a cross-channel feature from the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform -- use paid search clicks from DoubleClick Search to show consumers display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network, all with an easy and tagless workflow. With this feature, you can:

Quickly take advantage of new opportunities before they're gone, with a turn-key setup on one integrated platform. Set up your remarketing lists in 4 easy steps, and begin remarketing to users to quickly deliver the right message to the right consumer, soon after they’ve left your site. And with instant conversions, immediately report on the impact of your remarketing efforts, and fine-tune your approach to improve performance.
Convert browsers to buyers. Re-engage consumers who visited your website, but left without making a purchase. For example, you can reach consumers who placed a pair of sparklers in their shopping cart, but did not complete the checkout process.
Increase loyalty or reinforce brand messages. Re-engage consumers by introducing new product categories from the same brand. For example, show a display ad for Brand X lawn chair to someone who previously purchased Brand X outdoor umbrella after clicking on the brand’s search ads.
Up-sell to converted audiences. For example, after a consumer purchases tickets to an amusement park in Anaheim, CA, show him/her display ads for hotel deals in Anaheim.

Don’t miss a beat this year. With solutions from DoubleClick Search, connect to in-market audiences with the right messages, and report on it all in real-time to capture even more seasonal opportunities. Now that’s certainly something to celebrate!

1. Google internal data, 2013

DoubleClick Search industry perspectives video series: Search marketing is now smarter

Kim — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Last week, we heard leaders from top agencies talk about the need for their search teams to streamline workflows using fast, responsive tools that allow more time for strategy in a constantly evolving search landscape. But as digital marketing increasingly becomes multi-channel, multi-screen, and multi-faceted, marketers today have more opportunities to connect with their audiences across a variety of digital touchpoints, beyond search.

In addition to fast tools, we heard that marketers also need integrated technologies to help make smarter decisions across the breadth of their digital marketing. Our next video, Search marketing is now smarter, explores how unified platforms can help surface deeper insights through a holistic view of online marketing activity -- within search and beyond -- and how DoubleClick fits in.

As Jeremy Hull, Associate Director of Paid Search at iProspect notes: “Paid search doesn’t live in a vacuum. It interacts with every other channel that you work with, online and offline...understanding those interactions is going to allow you to optimize it, and see how it fits in with your overall marketing efforts.” With this in mind, we built DoubleClick Search to natively integrate with our display ad server, demand-side platform, and our rich media and analytics platforms -- all a part of DoubleClick Digital Marketing -- to help marketers drive deeper insights from one, unified view of their customer:

Holistic view: DoubleClick’s proprietary conversion tracking pixel, Floodlight, lets marketers measure and report on deduplicated conversions across search and display for more accurate reporting.
Powerful attribution: DFA attribution tools allow marketers to create and apply custom attribution models to better understand how their marketing efforts are working together to drive conversions.
Offline conversions: Because online advertising often fuels offline conversions, marketers can also connect the dots with the DoubleClick Search Conversions API, factoring in conversions that occurred offline (through in-store transactions and other offline activities) for transactions that started from interactions with online search ads.

Having a single view of the consumer allows marketers to better understand the interplay between channels, without the mashing up and reconciling of different data sources -- but beyond just having access to data, what seamless opportunities do marketers have to take action on those insights and drive results for their business? Join us next week in the final post of our series, where we’ll discuss how top agencies use platforms to improve performance from untapped cross-channel opportunities in our video: Search marketing is now better.

To learn more about DoubleClick Search, visit our YouTube channel and stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog.

DoubleClick Search industry perspectives video series: Search marketing is now faster

Kim — Tue, 28 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Just a reminder that, on Tuesday, June 4th, we’ll host our annual digital leadership summit, thinkDoubleClick, with provocative conversations about the future of digital marketing and media, and you’re invited to join via live stream by registering here!

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What are some of the big questions about search that keep you up at night?

That’s what we asked search marketing leaders from top agencies in a series of interviews, to understand what excites them -- and challenges them -- about the state of search today.

We caught up with Eric Papczun, US President of Performics, Erica Barth, VP of Products and Partnerships at Resolution Media, Jeremy Hull, Associate Director of Paid Search at iProspect, and Sean McDonald, VP and Group Director at Digitas to learn about their perspectives on those “big questions” and how DoubleClick Search fits in. And overwhelmingly, we heard three key themes: the need for search marketers to streamline workflows and act faster, to make smarter decisions with all of their data in one place, and to drive performance for better results. We’re highlighting their perspectives on these themes of faster, smarter, and better with a series of videos -- starting today with Search Marketing is Now Faster.

This video explores how search marketers must keep pace in a digital marketing landscape that's moving faster than ever before, and highlights how the right tools can help search teams work more efficiently to maximize their marketing campaign results.

As Eric Papczun notes, “The ability to change a campaign -- modify a strategy, in the moment -- is what speed is all about.” At DoubleClick Search, we’re investing in features that give search teams a simple, intuitive way to manage their accounts at scale across engines. Many of our newest features, including bulk editing enhancements and new scheduling options help eliminate tactical or repetitive tasks across as many as 150 million keywords in a single day(1), while instant conversions offer up-to-the-minute feedback on campaign performance to let marketers quickly act on real-time feedback.

Agile, responsive tools are just one piece of the puzzle. Marketers also need the right tools to help make smarter decisions within search, as well as across other online channels. Next week, we’ll hear from our thought leaders on how platforms are critical in enabling smarter decisions in digital, with our second video: Search Marketing is Now Smarter.

To learn more about DoubleClick Search, visit our Youtube channel and stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog.

1. Google internal data, 2013

Reminder: register for thinkDoubleClick

Kim — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:17:00 +0000

Hear executives from advertising, agencies and publishers discuss some of the big questions in digital such as:

How do creatives leverage, but not be overwhelmed by, technology to deliver next-generation consumer experiences?
What unique experiences are publishers developing that add value to consumers and advertisers alike?
How do CMOs best use social with other marketing channels to build strong brands?

For more details on our thinkDoubleClick leadership summit, visit our earlier blog post here.

Cutting Complexity, Adding Value: Unified Ad Tech Efficiencies Could Save Marketers 33%

Kim — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:41:00 +0000

Digital marketing delivers powerful results for advertisers -- but running digital campaigns has become too complex. Google commissioned The Boston Consulting Group to better understand the potential to improve efficiency for marketers and create more value in digital campaigns.

Using “lean” methodology to map and measure the end-to-end process of 24 digital campaigns across 15 digital marketers in Europe, here’s a summary of what BCG found:

Campaign teams were spending on average only 1 day in 5 on ‘value-creation’ activities, with 80% of their time spent on low-value activities such as trafficking.
Using a unified ad technology stack (a combined solution from a single vendor) generates resource-productivity improvements on average of 12% and up to 33% across the campaign lifecycle.
Marketers realise further productivity gains by combining a single ad technology stack with wider organizational change -- which frees up talent for higher-value activities, such as strategy development, analysis and creativity.
These are still “early days,” and marketers achieved these gains with even an early version of the unified technology stack. Further gains are possible as technology continues to advance.
Increased efficiency means better performance. Marketers that re-invested efficiency gains into value-creating activities created an important competitive advantage in campaign performance.
It takes a pragmatic approach. Marketers should use a step-by-step lean approach to address pain points in processes, structure and technology.
It also takes an ecosystem. Advertisers, agencies, publishers and technology providers, working together, all have a role in cutting complexity and adding value to the overall industry.

We’re releasing the full report today.

Enhanced campaign upgrade tools now generally available

Kim — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:49:00 +0000

Last month, we introduced the beta release of dedicated tools to help you seamlessly upgrade to enhanced campaigns. Today, we’re excited to announce that these tools are available to all DoubleClick Search customers globally. Read on for details around the newly available features, what's coming, and how customers are seeing success in upgrading to enhanced campaigns with DoubleClick Search.

Easily upgrade to enhanced campaigns

With this release, advertisers can save time when upgrading to enhanced campaigns with custom solutions that will:

Identify similar campaigns that target different devices within your DoubleClick Search account
Create reports to quickly merge and upload these similar campaigns into one enhanced campaign
Provide the AdWords-suggested mobile bid adjustment in DoubleClick Search for more control and precision over bids in an enhanced campaign

Learn about these features and more in our enhanced campaigns upgrade guide.

Upcoming features

This is the second of several feature rollouts we have planned for enhanced campaigns. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing advanced features to prepare advertisers for a constantly connected world, including support for ad group mobile bid adjustments and granular device-segmented reports.

What we’re hearing so far

With the goal of simplifying search management, we’re continuing to invest in solutions that will help marketers run effective search campaigns across devices, as well as across channels -- and our clients are seeing the benefits.

Keith Wilson, VP of of Agency Products at The Search Agency, notes: "Recent enhancements in DoubleClick Search support for enhanced campaigns has been a wind on our backs for transitioning clients to enhanced campaigns. The overall functionality within DoubleClick Search is evolving rapidly, and that enables our teams to keep pace with the changes in the paid search space with the right tools.”

After performing initial upgrades using DoubleClick Search tools, Samridhi Chawla,

Senior Account Manager at Performics, said: "Our accounts look cleaner after upgrading to enhanced campaigns. The DoubleClick Search team has done a great job in making the transition smooth, and we're already seeing positive results."

Hear more about our enhanced campaigns vision from our clients and product experts.

To learn more about how clients have been using our enhanced campaigns upgrade tools, we’ll be at SMX Advanced in June, where Eric Papczun, US President of Performics, will share his company's plans, successes, and best practices on upgrades through using search platforms like DoubleClick Search. Register here, and stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog to learn more about our support of enhanced campaigns features.

DoubleClick Search offline conversions go instant, too!

Kim — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

With DoubleClick Search, you already get instant Floodlight conversion data in all your reports to bring you the freshest, most reliable data. This is just one of the ways we’re focusing on our our reporting investments to help you make better decisions in search, and beyond.

To make your digital marketing even smarter, we’ve recently increased how quickly you can see your offline conversions in DoubleClick Search, so that they’re just as fast as the online conversions you get today:

Updates made to conversions through the DS Conversion API Service or via bulksheet are ready to download from DoubleClick Search reporting within the hour (instead of 24 hours previously). This allows you to test and support your integration with the API much faster.

Conversion statistics such as Actions, Transactions, and Revenue are updated in the DoubleClick Search UI in near-real time for today and yesterday, so you’ll be able to make smarter decisions with up-to-the-minute feedback.

In addition, we’ve made some improvements to the Click ID-based Conversion API:

A newly generated Click ID now becomes usable in the DS Conversion API in near-real time
The API documentation was updated to include guidelines on how to distinguish between DS and non-DS click IDs using the gclsrc parameter. We also added details on error handling for batched conversion uploads.

We’re excited about these recent real-time reporting developments, and look forward to bringing you more tools to power your business with all the insights you need.

For more information on instant conversions or our Conversions API service, reach out to your DoubleClick Search representative or our support team at ds-support@google.com.

Display remarketing from search ads out of beta

Kim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:30:00 +0000

(Cross posted from the DoubleClick Search blog)

Back in October, we announced the beta release of display remarketing from search ads, which allows advertisers to use insights from paid search clicks to remarket to audiences across ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or the Google Display Network (GDN) -- all with a seamless, tagless workflow.

We’re excited to announce that display remarketing from search ads is now out of beta, and is available to all DoubleClick Search customers globally.

Already, customers have shown some impressive results. Anton Kanis, Head of Business Solutions, Netherlands for OmnicomMediaGroup, has been using the feature to remarket via DoubleClick Bid Manager. Kanis notes “Display remarketing from search ads is proving itself to be a very valuable feature, often outperforming regular funnel remarketing and sometimes even search in terms of CPA.”

If you’re interested in trying display remarketing from search ads to take advantage of more cross-channel opportunities, reach out to your DoubleClick representative, or contact the DoubleClick Search support team at ds-support@google.com.

DoubleClick Search at SMX West: Search marketing is now faster, smarter, better

Kim — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog)

Last week on March 11 and 12, our DoubleClick Search team spent two demo-packed days on the floor at the Search Marketing Expo - West, to connect with those of you who manage some of the largest search campaigns.

We set up an interactive lounge featuring demos, videos, games and product experts -- allowing us to show you how we help you go faster, make smarter decisions, and get better results to solve the most complex and demanding digital marketing challenges. Today, we wanted to share some of the topics we covered and the insights we heard from attendees. To kick off the discussion, we’re sharing a DoubleClick Search overview video, which we debuted at SMX West -- with more details that follow.

Go faster with tools for automation

Many of you told us you’re looking for ways to go faster with tools that streamline and automate your workflow across large search campaigns. Especially for marketers with large product inventory, staying on top of changing products, promotions, and seasonal trends can be cumbersome. At SMX West, we demoed inventory-aware campaigns, which integrates with your Google Merchant Center Feeds to automatically update search campaigns, based on your physical inventory. We got great feedback on the seamless workflow that cuts out repetition.

Make smarter decisions with all your data in one place
We also heard your growing need to measure digital marketing holistically -- within search, as well as across channels. So, on the SMX floor, we highlighted the different ways DoubleClick Search powers your business with the insights you need:

Integration of Google Analytics metrics (beta), which incorporates statistics including bounce rate, page views, transactions, and revenue from Google Analytics, to get a clear picture of how search influences customer interaction on your website.
Fast and accurate cross-channel reporting thanks to native integration with the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, to enable faster decision making, without reconciling reports or worrying about potential data drop-off from reporting on disparate tools.
Enhanced campaigns support, which makes it easier for you to promote marketing messages across varying user contexts like location, time of day and device type, within a single campaign. In addition to basic support, we’ll soon help you take advantage of enhanced campaigns in unique and powerful ways, through bulk tools, custom-tailored mobile bid adjustments, and consultative services offered only by DoubleClick Search.

Get better results with tools that drive performance
As a performance marketer, you know it’s ultimately all about results. Over the past few months, we’ve focused on enhancing our Performance Bidding Suite for automated bidding -- understanding that smart bidding technology is the engine that drives campaign performance. At SMX West, we demoed our intuitive bidding UI, which lets you easily express flexible goals that align with your business objectives, and highlighted how fresh data, smart algorithms, fast operations, regular software updates, and the right transparency and controls help you achieve those goals.

To extend the conversation, DoubleClick Search will be at SES New York next week, and we look forward to another great opportunity to show you how we can help make search marketing faster, smarter, and better. We hope to see you there!

DoubleClick Search tools to help you remember those three little words this Valentine’s Day: return on investment

Kim — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:01:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog.

Let’s face it: managing your search campaigns can seem a lot like being in a relationship. Both can be fickle, require lots of work and time, and need the right amount of attention to get the best results -- especially during Valentine’s Day. When everything is going smoothly, you’re feeling confident and on top of your game; but, without commitment and focus, your search management romance can quickly fizzle.

Here at DoubleClick Search, we know it's important for you and your campaigns to be getting along well as more consumers turn to search to find the best deals. This is especially true during high-traffic retail holidays; in fact, online sales are up 28% over last 2 years(1), with $210 billion in web-influenced sales expected for this year(2). This means huge opportunities for search marketers to reach shoppers looking for deals -- but it can also mean a lot of extra work.

So with that, we want to make sure your search management relationship doesn’t fall flat this year. Below are a few DoubleClick Search solutions to put the kick back in your step and help you keep focus on those other three little words this Valentine’s Day: return on investment.

Communication is key
Good communication is a fundamental part of a healthy relationship; after all, being left in the dark can quickly compound problems and stifle new opportunities to grow. Stay connected with a few tools from DoubleClick Search that’ll help you better understand and capture new opportunities:

	Chart bid history. Take the guesswork out of the relationship. With the ability to chart your bid history, DoubleClick Search gives you full transparency into bidding decisions to visually represent your keyword bids over time, and help you better manage to your unique goals.
	Bi-directional sync. Communication is a two-way street. With bi-directional sync, the changes you make in AdWords or adCenter show up in DoubleClick Search with the click of a button. You can even schedule syncs to automatically occur or repeat. (Now, if only it were this easy in a relationship!)
	Display remarketing from search ads. Don’t leave the conversation hanging. Leverage cross-channel opportunities from the DoubleClick integrated platform with display remarketing from search ads, which lets you “follow up” on search ad clicks and remarket to speciﬁc audiences across ad exchanges, via DoubleClick Bid Manager or the Google Display Network, based on their interaction with your paid search ads.

Explore together
Being routine with your campaigns can quickly have you falling into a rut. Exciting launches filled with new keyword additions and optimization can turn into the comfortable complacency of ordering in pizza, watching reruns on TV, and running your campaigns on autopilot. Don’t settle for the ho-hum; stay committed to the next chapter of your search campaigns with DoubleClick Search tools, to make sure they pay off:

	Landing page testing. Show your search campaign some love by pairing your keywords with the best landing page. With landing page testing in DoubleClick Search, split traﬃc between several landing pages and then compare the results to help choose the landing page that delivers the best results.
	Formula columns. Be creative -- ditch the spreadsheets and explore new surroundings with Formula columns that allow you to create your own customized columns directly in the DoubleClick Search interface. Access a wide variety of diﬀerent metrics computed from DoubleClick Search data, or rename columns.

Don’t wait until the last minute
...Not with dinner reservations, and certainly not with your search campaigns. Relationships require regular maintenance; read the signs early and understand your campaign needs to make the most informed decisions for the best results. Here are a few DoubleClick Search tools that can help you analyze your campaigns up to the minute, so you can plan accordingly:

Instant conversions. Stop the procrastination blame-game and act on every signal, as it happens. DoubleClick Search now loads instant conversion data from Floodlight in all its reports -- in addition to the engine performance data we already update in near-real time -- to bring you the freshest, most reliable campaign data. Conversion data in DoubleClick Search is updated automatically throughout the day, minutes after a conversion happens.

Happy Valentine’s Day from DoubleClick Search!

To follow more updates from DoubleClick Search, subscribe to the DoubleClick Search Blog.

(1) Source: ComScore Inc. Press Release, 2011
(2) GroupM research: From intent to in-store: Search’s role in the new retail shopper profile, 2011

Bid optimization series: transparency and control for better bidding decisions

Kim — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth in a series of 7 blog posts about the DoubleClick Search bid optimization white paper, Seven Factors to Consider When Choosing a Bid Optimization Platform.

Last week, we explored the importance of updated algorithms to make use of every opportunity. However, the strength of algorithms can be difficult to evaluate without a clear way to test and see the real business impact delivered from them. For the best insight into measuring the effectiveness of algorithms, you need a bid optimization platform with full transparency and control -- allowing you to monitor progress and introduce new inputs as needed to reach your specific goals.

To learn more about the importance of transparency and control in search bid optimization platforms, follow the full blog post series on the DoubleClick Search Blog.

Five resolutions for better search management in 2013

Kim — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog.

On Wednesday, we gave you 10 Resolutions to Reach Programmatic Zen in 2013. Today, we’re bringing you 5 new resolutions for better search management in the new year.
We know marketers are always looking to run better search campaigns by going bigger, moving faster, and taking new opportunities across formats, devices, and channels. Our mission with DoubleClick Search is to help them do that. Over the past year, we’ve further invested in making DoubleClick Search a best-in-class platform for search management, to meet the needs of agencies and advertisers. We’ve often called 2012 our year of transformation: after rebuilding DoubleClick Search from the ground up in 2011, our team focused 2012 on delivering powerful tools to make managing the world’s largest search campaigns more efficient and effective than ever before. Simply put, our goal is to make search simple -- providing easier, smarter, and faster ways to manage your campaigns -- and do it all as part of your broader digital marketing efforts through the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.

With this vision in mind, we’re kicking off the new year with a new look to our website, and a continued focus on investing in a search management platform that will save you time, get great campaign results, and help you make better digital marketing decisions. And in the spirit of self-betterment, we invite you to join us in resolving to make 2013 your best year yet. Here are a few suggested resolutions to improve your life as a search marketer:

1. I will remember important dates. Keeping track of anniversaries, birthdays, and other special occasions can be tricky enough. While Google Calendar can help you organize your personal events, DoubleClick Search has you covered the rest of the time, with reliable access to your campaigns on any day of the year, without the worry of extended downtime and missed opportunities. Backed by Google infrastructure, DoubleClick Search is up and running when you need it most -- during critical dates like Black Friday, Christmas day, and throughout the holiday season. We’ll keep the lights on throughout 2013, so you can worry about finding that perfect anniversary gift.

2. I will go to bed earlier. We get it; there’s just not enough time in the day. On top of back-to-back meetings, lunch dates, squeezing in some gym time and having dinner ready by 7, the last thing you want to do is manage a campaign that needs to go live at midnight. With DoubleClick Search, we help you get your life (and your search ads) on track with a set of scheduling features, including scheduled sync, scheduled UI edits, and scheduled upload sheets to effortlessly automate campaign changes around the clock. Coupled with easy bulk operations in the interface and ID-less uploads that have lowered bulksheet errors by 50% (1), save time and your sanity by cutting out repetitive tasks. Go on and catch those extra zzz’s -- we’ve got it covered.

3. I will save more for a rainy day. So you really, really want that new pair of shoes -- but resisting temptation can be hard. Ease your way into fiscal responsibility with DoubleClick Search Budget pacing reports, which allow you to keep track of your monthly search budgets at a glance. Visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends to quickly identify search campaigns that are under-spending or underperforming, and adjust keywords, bids, or budgets accordingly. (Now after setting up your Budget pacing reports, go out and get those shoes -- you deserve them!)

4. I will be a better listener. No smartphones out during dinner. No talking over your friends. And no more ignoring key search insights. Just as listening to your friends and colleagues can mean more opportunities to develop better personal relationships, listening to your search campaigns can help you nurture better campaign results to meet your business goals. Our Performance Bidding Suite offers a variety of transparency features into the bid optimization process, including bid rationale, preview intended bids, chart bid history, and primary constraint to help you get down to the nitty-gritty of what might or might not be working. Are your min and max bids too constrained? Is your goal too aggressive? Just lend us your ear and we’ll help you discover those insights.

5. I will spend more time with family. Your family is important -- they’re your bedrock, your confidants, and your circle of trust. That unified sense of integration and understanding is important to us, too. Because we know that search is one piece of a broader digital marketing “family”, we built DoubleClick Search to natively integrate with our display ad server, demand-side platform, and our rich media and analytics platforms -- all a part of DoubleClick Digital Marketing -- to help you take advantage of more opportunities across channels. Use Display remarketing from search ads to “close the loop” on paid search efforts, showing users display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network. Then, call your mom. She misses you.

Here’s to your best year yet. Happy New Year from DoubleClick Search!
To learn more about DoubleClick Search, follow the DoubleClick Search blog.

1. Internal Google data

Bid optimization series: Fast tools to make use of every opportunity

Kim — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:03:00 +0000

This is the fourth in a series of 7 blog posts about the DoubleClick Search bid optimization white paper, Seven Factors to Consider When Choosing a Bid Optimization Platform.

Last week, we explored the importance of using a smart bid optimization tool to choose the right bids for your keywords. But even smart bids can quickly become irrelevant in a dynamic search landscape. That's why "speed" is as important as "smarts" when it comes to effective bid management.

To learn more about the importance of fast search management platforms that execute quickly to make use of every opportunity, follow the full blog post series on the DoubleClick Search Blog.

More investments for powerful, flexible, and fast reporting in DoubleClick Search

Kim — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:04:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog

With online advertising expanding across different ad formats, new devices, and multiple channels, it’s no surprise that reporting continues to be a challenge for marketers. In fact, 69% of business and technology leaders have pinpointed the inability to gather, understand, and act on all the data about their customers as a leading challenge(1). To answer this growing complexity, we at DoubleClick have been focusing on developing the right tools to power your business with all the insights you need. We’ve recently introduced ways we’re making reporting on all your data easy, to help drive insights exactly when you want them, where you want them. Today, we’re excited to announce 4 new features that build on this by ensuring important business data is accessible and actionable within DoubleClick Search: our offline conversions API, Google Analytics data integrations, Formula Columns, and Web Query support.

A few weeks ago, we announced Multi-channel funnels in DFA, which allows advertisers to quickly build, customize, and compare marketing attribution models. By creating and reviewing multiple models standard to the tool, DFA users will be able to more accurately assign value to the various advertising channels in their marketing campaigns. In DoubleClick Search, we debuted the availability of instant Floodlight conversion data for automatic, intra-day conversions in all DoubleClick Search reports, to bring you the freshest, most reliable campaign data.

Event API for easy offline conversion integration

DoubleClick Search already lets you leverage a variety of solutions to report on conversions, including our proprietary Floodlight tag, AdWords conversion tracking, or Google Analytics goals. But we understand that online advertising also fuels offline conversions. To capture these lost conversions and bring offline into your online world, we’re announcing the open beta of our Event API for uploading offline conversion automatically. Upload new conversions to account for in-store transactions, call-tracking, or other offline activities, or edit existing conversions to account for discounts, returns, credit, or fraud through integrated API access. Today, you can combine this information with our Performance Bidding Suite to optimize your campaigns based on even more of your business data.

Google Analytics website data, with the rest of your search

Couple this with the integration of Google Analytics metrics (beta), which incorporates statistics including bounce rate, page views, transactions, and revenue from Google Analytics, to get a clear picture of how search influences customer interaction on your website. These recent developments in reporting mean faster decision making with all your data holistically captured in DoubleClick Search -- all without mashing up and matching reports or worrying about the potential data drop off of reporting from separate tools. In the next few months, we’ll introduce the ability to use bid strategies with your website metrics, ensuring your campaign’s bid optimization is informed by important user engagement metrics.

Formula magic, directly in the interface

With this wealth of data at your fingertips, how do you more easily make sense of it all? In the past, you’d need to use a spreadsheet tool like Excel to create these calculated columns. Formula Columns lets you create your own customized columns, based on calculations that you apply to existing columns. Now, apply formulas directly in DS and streamline your workflow: track custom KPIs, re-express columns in your own terms, and calculate customized fees, costs, and weights, among other applications.

Web query for data, where you want it
And finally, when it comes to easily accessing all your important data right where you want it, we’re introducing Web query support: instead of scheduling or downloading a file to access your reports, DoubleClick Search now provides a URL that you can use to automatically download and refresh that report’s data -- directly in Excel. This makes it even easier for you to create common report templates in Excel and populate those with the latest DS data, removing the need to manually download and import reports.

Formula Columns, instant conversions, and Web Query support are are available now in DoubleClick Search. To learn more about the Event API or Google Analytics integration, please reach out to your Technical Account Manager, or our support team at ds-support@google.com.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search Team

1. Source: PricewaterCoopers (PwC), “4th Annual Digital IQ Survey,” Jan 31, 2012

Making smarter decisions with fresh, reliable data

Kim — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:13:00 +0000

This is the second in a series of 7 blog posts about our bid optimization white paper, Seven factors to consider when choosing a bid optimization platform.

At Google, we recognize that the freshness and accuracy of data is paramount to any data-driven system. And since bid optimization platforms are essentially decision engines, data lies at the center of the process, with the engine considering and analyzing data before deciding on the best bid for a given keyword. It’s no surprise, then, that low-quality and stale data going in often means poor results coming out.

To learn about our position on the quality of fresh data in the bid optimization process, and how the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite fits in, follow the full blog post series on the DoubleClick Search Blog.

Get your DoubleClick Search Fundamentals Certification!

Kim — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:01:00 +0000

Before jumping into managing search campaigns with any SEM tool, you’ll want to make sure that you and your teams can demonstrate proficiency with the right workflows and techniques to effectively manage large-scale search campaigns.

With this need in mind, we are pleased to announce the DoubleClick Search (DS) Fundamentals online training certification course for new users looking to learn the fundamentals of DoubleClick Search. This self-paced, interactive, online course allows a new user to ramp up on DS basics quickly.

The training modules use interactive graphics, videos, and guided tutorials to teach campaign management, reporting, and the Performance Bidding Suite for bid optimization. After completing the course, trainees take a quiz, and if they pass, will receive a certificate of achievement showcasing their proficiency with DS.

After completing and passing the full program, the trainee should feel comfortable launching and managing a search campaign, analyzing performance through reports, and creating bidding goals through the Performance Bidding Suite.

DS Fundamentals online training certification is offered in English and will be available in multiple languages soon. You can register here (sign-in required; click the link, then locate “DS Fundamentals” course at the top of the Search Results).

For more information on DoubleClick Search, visit our website: www.doubleclick.com/search

Posted by the DoubleClick Search Team

An SEM platform?

Kim — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:41:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search Blog

Today, agencies are looking for ways to continue running high-performing search campaigns across different search engines, geographies, formats, and devices. To turn this complexity into opportunity, many look to SEM platforms as a single place to manage, optimize and measure all their campaigns - on many search engines across the world.

Choosing a platform to manage all this isn’t easy. There’s lots of advice and suggestions about how to choose one, (such as this and this). But we’ve learned that every client has different needs - some only want to manage search ads, some want a real integration with their display and mobile campaigns, some have dedicated teams, some are more budget conscious. Through our formal and informal customer feedback sessions we‘ve taken onboard marketers and agencies’ key questions and requests, and used that to revamp DoubleClick Search version 3. And through these same sessions over recent years, we see and hear the factors that are important to marketers and agencies in their choices - these are the questions that most commonly come up in RFPs, in our discussions and in our feedback sessions.

We created a guide with the factors that clients consistently tell us are most important. These guide our investment in DoubleClick Search, and we hope they might be a useful summary for you if you are looking for, or testing out, an SEM platform partner. See the entire guide on the DoubleClick Search blog.

Posted by Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director

Optimizations using Attribution Modeling in DFA

Kim — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:32:00 +0000

In September we launched Multi-Channel Funnels with Attribution modeling for DFA, a powerful tool built into DFA which allows you to create and apply custom attribution models within the UI and in real-time. Since then, we’ve received feedback from advertisers who are better able to understand how their marketing efforts are working together to drive conversions. We put together this short video to highlight how you can use attribution modeling to optimize your campaigns today.

So start optimizing your campaigns today - attribution is already available for all the data in your DFA campaigns.

Attribution modeling is just one area where clients will benefit from a single view of the customer via the unified platform, DoubleClick Digital Marketing. To learn more about what you can do with attribution in DFA, reference these articles in the DFA Help Center (sign-in required).

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager

Join us for ClickZ Academy’s bid optimization webinar, Choosing the Right Bid Optimization Platform to Drive Paid Search Results

Kim — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 01:10:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog

Search marketing today is changing faster than ever before, and as a result, marketers are increasingly turning to powerful bid optimization platforms to help them scale their keyword bidding and take advantage of new opportunities. However, with so many tools in the market -- including our own DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite -- search marketers need to carefully evaluate different platforms before investing in one.

We invite you to join us and paid search luminary Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman at Didit, for a ClickZ Academy webinar, Choosing the Right Bid Optimization Platform to Drive Paid Search Results.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

How automated bid optimization can help search marketers meet their unique business goals
Why smart, fast, and flexible platforms are a must in an increasingly-complex search landscape
How to navigate the balance between automation and control to achieve the best results

Register today to attend the webinar. Live Q&A will follow.

Date: November 19, 2012
Time: 1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT

To follow our bid optimization blog post series on the 7 factors to consider when choosing a bid optimization platform, subscribe to the DoubleClick Search blog.

Introducing our guide for the holidays: Scale your holidays with DoubleClick Search

Kim — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Online holiday shopping is turning into a yearly endeavor for consumers -- and a yearly challenge for marketers. If you're a search marketer, how do you succeed in search during one of the busiest times of the year, to reach the right people with the right message, when it matters?

With the holidays quickly approaching, we want to be right there with you to ensure that yours are stress-free and merry. For seasonal trends, tips, and tricks on how to win this holiday season with DoubleClick Search solutions that’ll let your search go faster, smarter, and better, visit the DoubleClick Search blog to access our Guide to the Holidays, and sign up for our holiday best practices training on November 14th.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search Team

New cross-channel opportunities with DoubleClick Search

Kim — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:17:00 +0000

Last week, we gave an update on the progress we’re making with DoubleClick Digital Marketing to help marketers run cross-channel campaigns seamlessly in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Today, we’re shining light on one of the key features we mentioned - display remarketing from search ads - which allows agencies and advertisers using DoubleClick Search to use search ad clicks as a signal in display campaigns, re-engaging users through display ads when it’s most effective. Read more about this exciting new feature in the DoubleClick Search blog.

DoubleClick Search gets UI, control, and transparency improvements with new Performance Bidding Suite

Kim — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:40:00 +0000

As a search marketer, you know that bid optimization is the engine that drives campaign performance.

Earlier last week at SES San Francisco, the DoubleClick Search team announced UI, control, and transparency improvements to their newly-launched Performance Bidding Suite for bid optimization, making it easier than ever before for search marketers to harness and discover the power of automated strategies. Learn more about the new improvements and the impressive results users are already seeing at the DoubleClick Search blog!

DoubleClick Search: Manage your search campaigns around the clock

Kim — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:49:00 +0000

For improvements in search management worflow, DoubleClick Search has just announced two new features for increased automation: scheduled uploads (available now) and scheduled interface edits (coming soon).

These new features will enable advertisers to work during their regular hours and still have DS work on their campaigns 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The addition of scheduled uploads and scheduled interface edits contribute to one of DS’s key strengths - providing a powerful, flexible workflow that lightens the management load on your team, allowing them to concentrate on higher-level tasks.

For more information on these two automation features, visit the DoubleClick Search blog.

DoubleClick Search: Compare performance by date range

Kim — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:51:00 +0000

DoubleClick Search has just announced its date range comparison feature, one of the many new product features that will be launching this summer to help marketers easily manage search campaigns, at scale.

Date range comparison now gives search marketers the ability to evaluate campaign performance over time and see the impact of changes -- all part of our mission to drive insights (not just data) to improve your campaign results.

For more information on the date range comparison tool, visit the DoubleClick Search blog.