Since its beginnings in 1999, digital marketing agency Jellyfish has been at the forefront of digital advertising, helping clients of all shapes and sizes succeed in digital.

Most recently, Jellyfish partnered with a leading international online university who wanted to attract prospective students using online search. To meet the challenge, Jellyfish turned to DoubleClick Search and its ability to respond in real-time to optimize performance as the best tool for the job.

Goals

• Hit regional lead volume and cost-per-lead goals.
• Maximize quality of leads.

Approach

• Tailor bid strategies by region with the Performance Bidding Suite.
• Use bid strategies to respond to real-time, data-driven feedback including online and offline conversions.
• Deploy best practices with bid strategies.

Results

• Increased lead volume by 29%.
• Decreased cost per lead by 84%.
• Effectively generated quality leads for the university's search program internationally.

To learn more about Jellyfish’s approach, read the full case study.

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

The holidays are a critical time of year for search marketers, as consumers increasingly research and complete their holiday shopping online. To help you win the moments that matter this holiday season, we recently announced several new features and the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Today, we’ve got another special gift to continue the holiday spirit: Bing Shopping Campaigns are now part of the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite.

Bing Shopping Campaigns for Bing Ads make it easier and faster to advertise your products from your Bing Merchant Center store online. This streamlined way of getting Product Ads up and running on Bing is also driving meaningful impact for advertisers.

“According to a recent report, Merkle/RKG clients saw Bing Product Ads’ click volume increase by 332% year-on-year.”¹
Brian Utter, General Manager of Network and Demand Management, Microsoft

With the addition of Bing Shopping Campaigns to the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, you can easily extend the reach of your product-focused advertising. You’ll be able to manage, automate, and measure Bing Shopping Campaigns using the full range of DoubleClick Search tools, the Performance Bidding Suite, Adaptive Shopping campaigns, and Purchase Detail reports.

Learn how to get started with Bing Shopping Campaigns in DoubleClick Search today.

Posted by Henry Tappen
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

^{1 Merkle/RKG Digital Marketing Report for Q3 2015}

This is the fifth and final post of the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. Today, we cover planning ahead, the last of five steps outlined in our new DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays. Your performance in 2015 should propel your performance next year. Here’s how to get ready for 2016.

• Use executive reports: A DoubleClick Search executive report displays your metrics for revenue, costs, trends, and other high-level concepts, all presented in understandable charts and tables. Create your report once, or schedule a daily update throughout the holiday season.
• Review your purchase details. For holiday planning, you want to be strategic about which items you highlight from your sales. So, look at your purchase detail reports to see which similar items were top sellers this year, and use that as a guide for where to put your effort in 2016.
• Leave bid strategies running, but adjust for any changes to your goals: If your return on ad spend or cost-per-action requirements change, adjust your bid strategy goals and DoubleClick Search will bring your bids back into line.
• Save your budget pacing reports: You can go back and see how you paced to get ready for 2016.

That’s it, the last of the five steps to holiday campaign success. We hope these posts will help you during the busy 2015 holiday period. To recap, here are all the steps again:

1. Prepare: Unify your data for insights and action, add more data to maximize conversions, use labels to track your promotions, and integrate offline data.
2. Automate: Use bulksheets, automated rules, and inventory-aware campaigns to make your life easier.
3. Measure: Gain valuable insights by setting up scheduled reports, budget pacing reports, formula columns, and Floodlight activity columns, then analyze and monitor your performance.
4. Optimize: Use real-time data to make adjustments with the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, Adaptive Shopping campaigns, and remarketing.
5. Plan ahead: Create executive reports, review purchase details to see how well you did this year, and save your budget pacing reports.

Be sure to read the entire DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Don’t forget to register now for tomorrow’s webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

In today's multi-device world, consumers increasingly move across screens when researching and shopping for goods and services. In a recent study conducted by Google and Ipsos Media CT, it was found that nearly 40% of online shoppers start their research on a smartphone and make their final purchase on a computer or tablet¹.

Earlier this year, we introduced cross-device measurement across DoubleClick Digital Marketing, including DoubleClick Search, to help you see the total number of conversions influenced by a specific keyword, regardless of the device where the conversion occurred. For example, if a user who clicks on a search ad on one device goes on to complete a purchase on another device, we can measure that, enabling you to more accurately report on the full value of your search ads.

Now, bid strategies in the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can use cross-device conversion estimates to automatically calculate the mobile bid adjustment that will help you achieve your campaign goals and maximize the impact of your mobile ads.

Using cross-device conversion estimates in the Performance Bidding Suite

If you enable a bid strategy in the Performance Bidding Suite to use cross-device conversion estimates, it can consider these cross-device conversions to determine how much to bid for your mobile ads. The bid strategy can then recommend or automatically apply the optimal mobile bid adjustment based on your conversion or revenue goals.

You can use this feature with a one-step opt in: when configuring the target of a bid strategy, check the box to use cross-device conversion estimates when setting the mobile bid adjustment.

Note: Currently, bid strategies use cross-device estimates only for mobile bid adjustments. Other enhancements, such as adjusting bids based on membership in an AdWords remarketing target, will follow in future updates.

Learn how to use cross-device estimates in bid strategies today.

Posted by Tris Southey Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

^{1 The Role of Mobile Search on Store Purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015. Purchases were made within the past 3 months.}

Today, we cover optimization in post four of the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. It’s one of the five steps outlined in our DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite

The DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite can automatically optimize bids to help you reach your goals.

During the busy shopping season, DoubleClick Search’s real-time conversion data and intra-day bidding factor current trends into your bids—things like special holiday promotions, sudden spikes in demand due to winter weather, and more. Our machine-learning-powered bid strategies will respond quickly to adjust bids that deliver results. Plus, cross-device conversion tracking helps the bid optimization system make the most of your mobile traffic.

Adaptive Shopping campaigns

Adaptive Shopping campaigns optimize the structure of your shopping campaigns in order to improve their performance. Outlier products are automatically separated into their own product group, giving them a bid tuned specially to that product ad's performance.

We've also improved the algorithm just in time for holidays. Adaptive Shopping campaigns can now take into account your performance goals and your customers' unique behavior. Adaptive Shopping campaigns will also automatically cleanup product groups that stop receiving clicks. All in all, these features help you improve returns by bidding higher on high-performing products, and save money by bidding lower on poor performers.

Remarketing

If you aren't already doing so, use remarketing to turn your site visitors into buyers. Engage those people who’ve left your site or clicked your ads without buying anything by showing them relevant ads on search or display. Here are two ways to remarket:

• Reach high-value customers with remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) — Modify your keyword bids, target search ads, or prevent ads from displaying based on inclusion in your AdWords remarketing list. You can track the performance of each remarketing list in any associated campaign.
• Re-engage shoppers with display remarketing from search ads — remarket to users instantly with display ads on the Google Display Network or across exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager.

We want you to achieve the best possible results from your marketing efforts during this busy season. In our next post, we’ll talk about how to take your efforts this time round to plan ahead for your next peak period. Learn more about all five steps to success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Remember to register now for this weeks webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

In this third post in the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series, we cover measurement, the third step in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays to help you reach the right customers in the right moments this holiday season.

Automated reports

We’ve launched speed improvements to most reports in 2015. Have a last-minute shopping list? No problem—DoubleClick Search reports on Shopping campaigns activity much faster! But why wait—you can set up a scheduled report to receive your data whenever you want it. See how you’re trending year over year by adding “Compare to past” to the date range.

Budget pacing reports

These reports feature columns such as percentage of time elapsed, percentage of budget spent, days and budget remaining.

• Easily visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends and changes.
• See how each campaign contributes to your budget and KPIs.
• Set up reports just for Black Friday through Cyber Monday, to make sure you’re hitting all your spend and efficiency targets.

Formula columns

Quickly create custom columns based on calculations you apply to metrics. Spend less time in spreadsheets, report only on what matters, and calculate using the freshest data. Calculate key statistics for the last 7, 14, and 30 days, or even special treatment for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers. Create a countdown using rules+formula columns: "3 days left for free shipping!"

Floodlight segmentation and activity columns

You can use Floodlight columns to compare different conversions—phone calls versus online, or signups versus transactions, for example. DoubleClick Search Action groups contain Floodlight activities that count how many times users visit a webpage after seeing or clicking one of your ads. Transaction groups track the number of sales made or the number of items purchased. And, with cross-device conversion tracking, you can understand the true impact of your ads across multiple devices!

In our next post, we’ll talk about optimizing for success. Learn more about all five steps to holiday success in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

This is the second in post our DoubleClick Search Holiday Series. In our first post, we talked about preparation. Today, we cover automation.

The holidays always roll around too quickly. But this year, with DoubleClick Search, you can “set it, not sweat it.” Set rules for sales, schedule edits, and determine your parameters, then let DoubleClick Search handle the automated, 24/7 campaign management. We’ve created the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays to help you succeed.

Bulksheets

DoubleClick Search scheduled uploads let you prepare and validate bulksheets for bulk campaign actions in advance, then have them uploaded at a scheduled time and date, giving you peace of mind during this busy time.

Automated rules

Automated rules and alerts let you schedule changes to specific campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords, based on your criteria. Use formula columns in rules to deliver everything on your wish list. You can even specify advanced logic for your changes using DoubleClick Search formula columns. Learn more.

For example:

• Daily at 2 P.M., raise budget by 20% for campaigns that have more than 5 conversions and have exhausted more than 80% of your daily budget.
• Every Friday, pause all keywords that have had more than 1,000 clicks but zero conversions during the previous week.
• Every Monday, raise max CPC by 15% for keywords that met all of the following criteria from the previous week:
• More than 50 conversions
• Cost per conversion under $10
• Trigger ads in positions worse than three

Inventory-aware campaigns

Inventory-aware campaigns automatically convert your product catalog to highly relevant, up-to-date search ads. Reach your customers with the right message, every time, with inventory-aware campaigns that automatically update your ads whenever your products change, such as when a product goes out of stock or the price changes.

To give you even greater control over your inventory-aware campaigns this holiday season, we’ve added new functionality. Inventory-aware campaigns now allow you to highlight the number of varieties of an item you have available, such as “Over 90 styles of men’s ski jackets”, so your customers will know you offer a wide selection to choose from. We also added new functions to make setting up inventory-aware campaigns easy, even if your feed isn't perfect, such as the ability to trim, clean or reduce words, automatically.

In our next post, we’ll talk about measurement. Learn more about all five steps to turn searchers into customers this holiday season with the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

This is our first post in the DoubleClick Search Holiday Series to help you get ready for the 2015 holiday shopping season—a critical time for online marketers and retailers. Last year, consumers spent $616.1 billion on retail purchases during November and December¹. As you might know from Google’s 5 Holiday Shopping Trends to Watch in 2015, 40 percent of that spend was made online.

In fact, 2014 was the most-connected holiday shopping season we’ve ever seen. Shoppers spent an unprecedented amount of time researching and buying online:

• 78% used the internet for holiday research vs. 29% relied on friends, relatives, or colleagues (down from 2013)².
• 40% of holiday shopping was online².
• 53% of those who shopped online used smartphones or tablets, up from 41% the previous year³.

For you, this represents a huge opportunity to reach shoppers, either while they're still researching or when they're actually ready to buy. To help you capture this opportunity, we’ve created the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays that walks through five key steps for holiday success. Today, we’ll address the first step: Preparation.

• First, unify your data for insights and action. Effective tagging will help track your success during the holidays.
• Your labels are important, too. Track your holiday promotions, and make them easy to identify in reports by assigning labels to your seasonal campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords.
• Finally, don’t neglect offline data integration. Often, conversions start online and finish offline. Use the DoubleClick Search conversions API to report on and optimize conversions from external data, including call-tracking and in-store transactions.

In our next post, we’ll talk about automation. Learn more about all five steps in the DoubleClick Search Guide to the Holidays.

Register now for a webinar on October 29th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT to learn tips and tools to maximize performance and profits during the holiday period from Henry Tappen, Product Manager at DoubleClick Search.

Posted by Nick Macrae Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

^{1 National Retail Federation, “Retail Holiday Sales Increase 4 Percent,” January 14, 2015.
2 Ipsos MediaCT, Google Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, January 2015, n=1,500.
3 Ipsos MediaCT, Google Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, January 2015, n=1,167, January 2014, n = 1,077.}

For search marketers, the holiday season starts well before the holidays. You’re busy making preparations to help holiday shoppers check items off their list with you. To make your job easier, we’ve been working hard all summer to bring new campaign management, measurement, and workflow features to DoubleClick Search.

Manage mobile campaigns on Bing and Yahoo! Japan more easily

Mobile search will influence the 2015 holiday shopping season more than any other shopping season before it. The Inside AdWords blog shared in May that more Google searches now take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan. Google's Micro-Moments Guide indicates that mobile conversion rates have shot up by 29% in the last year alone. DoubleClick Search has two new features that will help you capture the mobile search opportunity.

First, we've added mobile and tablet bid adjustments for Bing Ads campaigns. This makes it easy for you to adjust to Unified Device Targeting (UDT) in DoubleClick Search with mobile and tablet bid adjustments for Bing Ads that work just like mobile bid adjustments for AdWords.

Second, we've made it easier to optimize mobile bid adjustments on Yahoo! Japan. You can now set adjustments at the ad group level that will trump adjustments at the campaign level.

Improve the relevance of inventory keyword campaigns

On mobile and desktop, relevance is a key component of search marketing success. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in higher positions, and bring you the most success.

DoubleClick Search retail advertisers use inventory-aware campaigns to build highly relevant campaigns at scale by creating templates that automatically build keywords and ads based on their product feeds. We've made these templates even more powerful with new functions to let you fine-tune and customize your keywords and ad content.

Stay abreast of campaign performance

New DoubleClick Search features for measuring results will help you stay on top of campaign performance throughout the season and beyond.

You can now use bulksheets or the DoubleClick Search API to attribute a conversion in a shopping campaign to a specific product in your inventory feed. To help you analyze and optimize at scale, we've added three reports to the DoubleClick Search reporting API.

We've also made it a cinch to analyze what's happening in the Black Friday to Cyber Monday stretch, or any other period of time, with more flexible date functions for formula columns. For example, you can use Date subtraction to calculate the number of days between two dates, or use weeknum to return the week number for a specified date.

Enjoy improvements to usability and visibility

In order to help you get campaign work done fast, we've enhanced the usability and visibility of some DoubleClick Search features based on your feedback. You can now apply labels when you create new keywords or customize and rename report views.

If you're looking to use DoubleClick attribution models to better understand what's driving conversions, we now automatically pre-populate the time decay model so you can start using it immediately.

Let the holiday season begin

Today's announcement is the culmination of many months of work to help make your holiday campaigns as streamlined and rewarding as possible.

Visit the DoubleClick Search Help Center for a complete overview of what's new and view trainings to help you get started.

Posted by Anthony Chavez
Product Management Director, DoubleClick Search

In June, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Estimated cross-device Floodlight conversions: Cross-device conversions occur when customers see or click a search ad on one device but convert on a different device. Floodlight activities can estimate the total number of cross-device conversions that occur, giving you a better picture of how your search ads are contributing to your overall total conversions.
  
  
• Create and report on AdWords callout extensions in DoubleClick Search: Callout extensions allow you to add additional descriptive text in your AdWords ads and then report on performance in DoubleClick Search. They give you the opportunity to promote popular or unique aspects of your business. For example, you can use a callout extension to add Free shipping, 24-7 customer service, and Price matching to your ads:

• Set AdWords proximity targets in DoubleClick Search: You can create proximity targets (also known as radius targets) in your AdWords campaigns to show your ads to customers who are within a certain distance from a location. Proximity targets also enable you to set bid adjustments to better reach likely customers. For example, you could target the city where your business is located and bid more for those searches because people who are in the area are more likely to visit.

We also updated the following features:

• Copy AdWords campaigns to Baidu engine accounts: If you need to manage the same campaigns on multiple engine accounts, instead of manually creating the campaigns one by one on each account, you can create them once in AdWords, and then copy the campaign and applicable settings to Baidu accounts (as well as Bing Ads, Yahoo! JAPAN, and other AdWords accounts). If later you make changes to one of the campaigns, you can also copy the changes into the other accounts.
  
  
• Specify device type in uploaded conversions: If you upload conversions from DoubleClick Search bulksheets or the DoubleClick Search API, you can now specify the type of device on which the conversion occurred.

See these updates in action in the new features training video for June:


The full lis of new feature training videos is available in DoubleClick Search Help.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Support for AdWords Upgraded URLs for all DoubleClick Search customers globally is now available. If you haven’t done so already, you must upgrade your URLs via the DoubleClick Search migration tool by July 1, 2015 to prevent any interruptions in managing your campaigns.

Pre-migration steps

Before upgrading URLs, review the migration checklist below. This is important to ensure tracking and campaign management capabilities.

• Move any redirect URLs out of your keyword and sitelink landing page URLs and into a DoubleClick Search URL template.
• Remove any redirect URLs from your ad landing pages.
• If your sitelink landing page URLs use the {copy} ValueTrack parameter, define custom parameters in AdWords.
• If you’re currently running landing page tests, make sure you stop those tests if the landing pages you’re testing are not final URLs.

After you complete the above steps, you're ready to migrate and complete a few post-migration tasks, described below.

Migrate by July 1, 2015

Once ready to migrate, refer to our Help Center to learn more about launching the migration directly from DoubleClick Search.

Migrations should be completed by July 1, 2015 to prevent issues with managing your keywords, ads, and sitelinks. As of July 1, 2015, AdWords will no longer allow the creation of new keywords, ads, sitelinks, or editing landing pages for accounts that haven't been migrated. These actions will result in trafficking errors when attempting to change the landing page and when trying to create new keywords, ads, or sitelinks.

If you’re unable to migrate your account before July 1, 2015, you will be able to do so after the deadline. Any errors due to updating landing pages you see in DoubleClick Search will be resolved and changes will be pushed to AdWords during the migration.

Post-migration steps

Once you’ve migrated to AdWords Upgraded URLs, you can use custom parameters to replace {copy} parameters in sitelinks (if applicable). Learn how.

If using DoubleClick Search placeholder keywords to track unsupported objects, see these instructions for further steps.

If you have any questions regarding the above, please contact your Account Manager, Ads Solutions Consultant, or email Customer Support via [email protected].

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Last week during the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS), we introduced cross-device measurement across all of our DoubleClick advertiser products. Today, as the first post of our week-long DLS series, we're excited to announce that these cross-device metrics will be rolling out to all DoubleClick advertisers in the next week.

Mobile continues to reshape how consumers engage on digital: they are increasingly turning to the nearest device to act on an immediate need in the moment and then seamlessly shifting their attention from screen to screen to complete their journey. With the path to purchase becoming increasingly fragmented, it’s essential marketers understand how consumers interact with their brand across all devices. When marketers have access to cross-device insights, they will also make the best decisions about how to invest their marketing dollars.

With this launch, advertisers can access cross-device metrics in all buying tools within our platform -- DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, and DoubleClick Search. 

What advertisers can measure

Cross-device measurement in DoubleClick allows advertisers to gain insight on the true performance of their campaigns across the web, even when users switch devices in their path to conversion. This means advertisers can measure conversions that begin on one device, and continue or end on another, answering questions like:

How many additional conversions is my digital investment delivering that I haven’t been able to measure?

Which sites/campaigns/ads are driving the most conversions across devices? 

Let’s say a user is reading bicycle reviews on her phone, and clicks on a display ad that takes her to a bike shop’s website. Later, when she gets home, she pulls up the shop’s site on her computer to continue her research, and ultimately buys the red cruiser she’s been eyeing. This is an example of a cross-device path to conversion that you will now be able to measure with our tools. In fact, cross-device measurement enhances the most powerful use cases for our customers:

• If a user clicks on a search ad on desktop, then completes a purchase on mobile, we can measure that.
  
• If a user clicks on a display ad for a smartphone app on their desktop, and then later downloads that same game on their smartphone, we can measure that. 

Principles of cross-device conversion measurement 

We built cross-device measurement for DoubleClick with the following principles at the core:

User-first. We’re investing in these capabilities while prioritizing user privacy. We measure mobile behavior using industry-standard device identifiers that users can see, reset and configure to opt out from interest-based advertising. Additionally, advertisers can only access anonymous and aggregated performance reporting on their campaigns.

Accurate. The cross-device metrics are calculated using fully deterministic data sources. Performance measurements are only displayed to advertisers when there is a sufficient sample size and a strict 95% confidence interval is reached. 

Comprehensive. Built to work across any type of buy (programmatic or reservations), screen, channel (search and display), and format, these tools are consistent with DoubleClick’s core value of giving advertisers a unified view of their audience. 

To learn more about cross-device measurement, register for the webinar on July 9th at 12 PM ET and subscribe to our newsletter. If you have a DoubleClick login you can also read more in our Help Center.

Join us on Wednesday for our second post in our DLS series, focused on the Programmatic Guaranteed and DoubleClick Marketplace announcements. 

Posted by Luke Hedrick, Product Manager, DoubleClick

In May, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Support for AdWords "Mobile app installs" campaigns: Use DS to create, target, measure, and optimize on “Mobile app installs” campaigns, a new, simple type of AdWords campaign that focuses on getting people to download your app. Ads from these campaigns appear only on phones or tablets, and they land directly on your app page in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Learn more.

• Manage and report on local inventory ads: Local inventory ads advertise products that are available in nearby stores when a customer searches for items on Google. You can now use DS to manage and report on your local inventory ads along with online ads in AdWords Shopping campaigns. Learn more.

• New reporting column for AdWords campaigns: The Invalid clicks column displays the number of clicks on ads that Google considers to be illegitimate, such as unintentional clicks or clicks resulting from malicious software, as reported by AdWords.

• Ad rotation settings for Bing Ads: If you create more than one ad in a Bing Ads ad group, Bing Ads can either rotate through the ads evenly or predominantly show ads that have the highest click-through rate (CTR). You can use the DS UI or DS bulksheets to specify how Bing Ads should rotate ads in an ad group.

We also updated the following features:

• DS URL templates are now hierarchical: Use DS URL templates to apply a redirect URL or a set of URL parameters to landing page URLs for keywords and sitelinks. You can create DS URL templates at multiple levels within an engine account. For example, you can create separate URL templates for each campaign or ad group. Learn more.

• Improved support for Merchant Center multi-client accounts: If you use DS to manage AdWords Shopping campaigns or inventory keyword campaigns and you have a parent Merchant Center accounts, known as a multi-client account, you only need to link the parent account to DS and AdWords. Learn more.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Laura Desmond, Global CEO at Starcom Mediavest Group, will be keynoting the live stream from the DoubleClick Leadership Summit on June 17th. We caught up with Laura for a quick glimpse of what she’ll be speaking to and what owning the moment means to her. 

Register now to hear her live on June 17 at 9AM ET.

The rate of change is only accelerating, driven by rapid technology advancements and evolving consumer behaviors. FOMO isn’t just for millennials anymore—it’s a pressure our industry feels everyday.

Brands need to shift from mass-market strategies to precision ones that deliver relevancy along with immediacy. Core to delivering is keeping the consumer at the center, understanding them deeply, and delivering experiences that match their pace and purpose. 

Owning the moment requires more than just being “real-time.” Winning now depends on the ability to mix velocity and relevancy, drawing upon data, unification, personalization and agility. 

On Wednesday, I’ll be sharing how against a backdrop of great change, brands can drive impact with velocity marketing. Today’s best marketers are much like the hottest EDM mix artists -- leveraging technology, data, and collaboration to own the moment, deliver relevancy, and spur action. 

Register now to hear more from Laura on Wednesday, June 17th at 9AM ET.

Guest post by Laura Desmond, Global Chief Executive Officer, Starcom Mediavest Group

Today we're shining a light on the SEM platform capabilities that played a role in HP's decision to switch from an incumbent platform to DoubleClick Search. 

Paid search is core to HP's digital marketing programs. Strategically, it’s critical for the company to have a strong line of sight across all marketing disciplines, including search. It also wants to efficiently respond in real time to marketing opportunities across the globe. HP and its agency Optimedia recently saw an opportunity to optimize performance from improved real-time and cross-channel capabilities by switching SEM platforms.

Having experienced mixed results with other automated bidding platforms in the past, Maren Wesley, VP of Global Search, and the rest of the Optimedia team were initially skeptical of the results possible with DoubleClick Search. "We were looking for proof that the performance for all areas of the program would improve with DoubleClick Search," said Wesley.

In partnership with DoubleClick, the teams deployed a 2-phase test to compare campaign performance between DoubleClick Search and the incumbent SEM platform, which the teams had been using for several years.

At the end of phase 1, DoubleClick Search bid strategies had reduced costs by 23% and increased revenue by 16%, resulting in a 33% improvement in cost per order dollar (CPOD) versus the incumbent platform.

At the end of phase 2, DoubleClick Search bid strategies had reduced costs by 18% and maintained revenue at high levels, resulting in a 17% improvement in CPOD versus the incumbent platform.

The strong results the teams saw from their SEM platform comparison led them to fully migrate to DoubleClick Search as the platform of choice, and as a proven way to realize their real-time and cross-channel goals. Jay Dark, Director of Search and Global Marketing at HP says, "The positive results allowed us to make the decision to switch to DoubleClick Search and because of that decision, we are doing a global rollout across both our B2B and B2C businesses."

For all the details behind HP and Optimedia's SEM platform evaluation, download the full DoubleClick Search case study (PDF).

You can catch up on our real-time series by reading about how real-time helps on big launch days, how to use real-time data to optimize your search ads and Shopping Campaigns, and our initial research on what the real-time gap means for search marketers.


Posted by Nick Macrae, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

We’re excited to announce that support for migrating to AdWords Upgraded URLs for all DoubleClick Search customers globally is launching this week.

Customers should review our migration guide, which details the steps you should take to prepare and migrate your accounts to AdWords Upgraded URLs in advance of the July 1, 2015 AdWords deadline.

The steps required for migration depend on whether your landing page URLs in DoubleClick Search already meet the AdWords definition of a final URL. For most DoubleClick Search customers, you’ll simply need to review and approve to migrate, but some of you will need to make changes to your existing URLs before you can migrate to Upgraded URLs. To help you prepare, we’ve added expanded functionality to URL templates in DoubleClick Search.

Using DoubleClick Search URL templates to prepare for Upgraded URLs
DoubleClick Search URL templates are now even more powerful with support for lower level URL templates at the campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, and sitelink level. In addition, DoubleClick Search URL templates work seamlessly with AdWords Upgraded URLs, so there’s no extra work required for migration once they’re setup.

For customers who use additional redirect URLs, you’ll need to specify landing page URLs at the keyword level. You can then use DoubleClick Search URL templates to specify redirect URLs, giving you flexibility to customize your redirect URL structure to meet your needs.

Example: Keyword URLs before and after migration
Here's an example of the URLs associated with a keyword before and after you migrate:

For additional details on how to take advantage of DoubleClick Search URL templates to prepare for your migration to AdWords Upgraded URLs, please read our Help Center article.

Migrating your accounts
Once you’re ready, you’ll be able to migrate from the DoubleClick Search UI (one account at a time), or from a bulksheet (many accounts at a time), at a time that suits you. You’ll have complete control as to how and when you migrate, so long as it’s completed by the AdWords deadline. In addition, we’ve taken care to ensure that your historical data can be preserved, meaning you can pick up right where you left off.

Please review our Help Center for full details about migrating to AdWords Upgraded URLs in DoubleClick Search, and how to launch and confirm the migration. If you require assistance as you prepare for this process, contact your DoubleClick Search representative.

Posted by

Amit Varia, Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

Nick Macrae, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

In today’s constantly connected world, people are moving seamlessly between screens, sites and apps. To be effective, marketers must connect consumers with relevant content in the moments they are looking.

To this end, we are happy to announce that starting today, DoubleClick Search will support AdWords app install search ads that run on Google.com (and soon on the Google Play Store, which reaches more than 1 billion users in more than 190 countries). With this release, DoubleClick Search allows you to incorporate app distribution into your search marketing campaigns across Android and iOS, enabling you to drive sales, grow loyalty, and maximize lifetime value with your customers.

To support this, we are launching a new, simple campaign set-up flow that’s tailored for mobile app promotion, to help advertisers create, target, measure and optimize their campaigns. Here’s what it includes:

• Campaign and ad creation
• Create AdWords mobile app install campaigns for search ads directly in DoubleClick Search, including bulksheet support
• Develop app install ads in DoubleClick Search using your app URL and your app icon in the Google Play and Apple App Stores
• Targeting
• Add keywords to target users looking for apps like yours on Google.com and Google Play1
• Show ads on phones and tablets (you can optionally exclude tablets), only to users who do not currently have your app installed
• Conversion tracking across mobile platforms
• Measure success with tracking that works on both Android and iOS
• Utilize simple, “SDK-less” conversion tracking on Android that doesn't require modifying your app
• Use Floodlight activities for conversion tracking on iOS (coming soon)
• Bid optimization
• Maximize the total number of app installs with automated bidding
• Bid based on your unique objectives, on a CPC or CPA basis

To learn more about “Mobile app installs” campaigns, visit our Help Center and read the best practices for driving app installs.

Posted by
Bashar Kachachi, Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

Nick Macrae, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick Search

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1Support for Search ads on Google Play will be available at launch in AdWords.

In April, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Dynamic search ads:
• Create and manage dynamic search ads in DS: Now you can create, manage, and track AdWords dynamic search ads in DS. This includes the ability to use DS bulksheets and other bulk editing features to manage large numbers of dynamic search ad campaigns.
  
• Track and report on dynamic search ads in DS:  Report on the performance of your dynamic search ads by attributing Floodlight activities, Google Analytics conversions, IBM Digital Analytics conversions, and offline conversions to dynamic targets.
• Dynamic ad targets report: Gain insight into the search terms that are driving traffic to your site by way of dynamic search ads with the dynamic ad targets report.


• AdWords paid & organic report:  If you've set up the paid and organic report in AdWords, you can now view and download the report in DS.

We also updated the following features:

• Device preference for ads in a Bing Ads account: You can now use DS to specify a preference for individual ads to display on mobile phones. This preference is available when you create or edit ads from the DS UI or from bulksheets.
  Because the change is coming from Bing Ads, you'll need to sync your engine account with DS before you can set a device preference for individual ads.
  

• Executive reports: New Device and Sitelink filters: Filter charts and tables in your executive reports by device or sitelink.
  

• New function for inventory templates: ANY(ATTRIBUTE): Depending on how you organize ad groups in an inventory keyword campaign, some ad groups might contain items with different values for the same attribute. For example, one ad group might contain items with different MPNs. If you created a template that used the MPN attribute, DS wouldn't know which MPN value to use and would report an inconsistency error. You can use the ANY(ATTRIBUTE) function to instruct DS to choose a value from one item in the ad group. Like this:  Buy [ANY(MPN)]  Learn more.
  

See these updates in action in the new features training video for April.


Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

At DoubleClick Search, we’re always looking to expand our list of partners so we can offer clients a comprehensive search management solution. Today, we’re taking another step towards that goal by adding Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, to the list of platforms we support.

Now, agencies who use DoubleClick Search to manage ad campaigns across multiple search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo Japan—can extend their reach to Baidu users globally. The addition of Baidu also gives the Chinese market access to the smarts and efficiency of DoubleClick Search for the first time. 

Baidu support includes all the standard DoubleClick Search features you’d expect—holistic campaign management (including bulk sheets), conversion tracking, cross-media attribution, bid strategies, and flexible reporting—plus Baidu-specific features like province-level targeting.

Clients are already finding success with DoubleClick Search and Baidu. Jose Campon, GM for iProspect Beijing says, “We are very excited to have Baidu now available through DoubleClick Search. After some initial tests on top accounts, we saw astonishing results, with a 20% decrease in CPLs and efficiency gains across the board.” 

For more information about using DoubleClick Search with Baidu campaigns, visit our Help Center, or contact your DoubleClick account team.

In March, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search (DS):

• Support for AdWords features:
  • Call extensions: Call extensions encourage calls to your business by showing a phone number with your ad. You can create call extensions in DS or create call extensions in AdWords and sync them into DS. You can also use DS to report on performance metrics such as clicks on ads that show a phone number, the number of calls made to a specific number, and call conversions. Learn more.
    
  • Ad customizers: Ad customizers are parameters in your ad copy that will be replaced by dynamic text when an ad is served. For example, you can include the {=Mixers.Brand} custom parameter in your ad copy. If you've uploaded a spreadsheet that defines a value for Mixers.Brand, AdWords will substitute the value when it serves the ad. When you create ads in DS, you can include ad customizers in your ad copy. You can also sync in ads with customizers. Learn more.
    
  • Adjust bids by location: A single AdWords campaign can specify different max CPC adjustments for different countries, regions, cities, or zip codes. This enables you to maximize conversions by location without having to maintain separate campaigns. Learn more.
    
  • Upgraded URLs: AdWords is in the process of introducing Upgraded URLs to make it easier to manage tracking parameters and third-party redirection URLs. DS will be introducing updates to support upgraded URLs.
    
    Important: Don't upgrade keywords and sitelinks yet. For now, it's important that you do not upgrade your keyword and sitelink URLs. We'll provide complete migration instructions for DS users soon.
    
    DS already supports upgraded URLs for product groups and will use the new AdWords URL fields after you edit a product group in DS. As a result, you'll be able to use new ValueTrack parameters for product groups. Other than the additional ValueTrack parameters, you won't see any difference with upgraded URLs when working with product groups.
    
    
• Unified Device Targeting in Bing Ads accounts: Bing Ads has completed its final migration of campaigns to Unified Device Targeting. Now, all campaigns and ad groups target all device types. Similar to AdWords, the default bid you enter applies to desktop computers, and you can enter bid adjustments for mobile and tablet devices.
  
  As a first step in supporting this change, DS has removed the old campaign and ad group settings for specifying device targets. If you want to adjust bids for mobile or tablet devices, you need to sign in to Bing Ads and make changes there. It's important to run a sync in DS after you make your changes. This will ensure DS will not change or erase any bid adjustments you make in Bing Ads.
  
  Now that Bing Ads has finished its migration, we highly recommend that you sign in to Bing Ads and review the results. If you previously had multiple campaigns targeting the same keywords on different devices, you may now be competing against yourself for ad placement. Review the Unified Device Targeting FAQs for more information and recommended actions.
  
• Create a geographic location of presence report: If you want to know more about how your advertising performs in, for example, cities in the United States compared to prefectures in Japan, you can now use DS to create a geographic location of presence report. Learn more.
  
• Attribution modeling for Google Analytics conversions: An attribution model determines how to distribute credit for a conversion across all of the activity in a conversion funnel. By default, Google Analytics conversions give all credit to the last click. You can create attribution models in Google Analytics that give some amount of credit to clicks on interactions higher up in the funnel. Then you can import the attribution models into DS and apply them to custom Google Analytics activities columns in DS. Learn more.

We also updated the following features:

• New URL for DS: The URL that you use to access DoubleClick Search has changed from https://www.google.com/doubleclick/search to https://ddm.google.com/ds. You still have access to the same great features, but now they're available at a new URL. DS user credentials will continue to work as expected and existing bookmarks/saved links will redirect to the new URL.
  
• Exclude data from bid strategy optimization: DS bid strategies calculate bids based on the performance history of keywords and conversions. Sometimes, an event may occur that causes a skew in the bid strategy calculations (for example, a web page outage). In DS, you can identify the event and instruct a bid strategy to ignore the performance history during the event. Learn more.
  
• Updates to Executive Reporting:
  • Segment charts and tables by sitelinks: Charts and tables in an executive report can now be segmented by AdWords sitelinks. For example, you can create a pie chart that shows how much revenue each sitelink has generated or line chart that shows how each sitelink has contributed to conversions over time. Learn more.
    
  • Download executive reports in PDF: You now have the option to download your reports in the Portable Document Format (PDF) in addition to the Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) format. Learn more.
    
  • Use formula columns in reports that span advertisers: You can now include formula columns in reports that display data from multiple advertisers. Learn more.
    
  • Use ad group or campaign labels for faster report generation: By default, when you use a label to segment or filter a chart in an executive report, DS collects and summarizes data from each keyword that you've applied the label to. Because working with such a large amount of data can take a long time, the DS UI displays only a quick preview. Now, you can set up a report to only collect data from labeled ad groups or campaigns instead of each keyword. This makes it faster to generate a report, and makes it possible for the DS UI to display the full data instead of the data preview.
    
• Updated search terms report: The search terms report (previously called the search query report) shows the search terms that trigger your ads to appear, and enables you to quickly add keywords or set negative keywords to optimize performance.
  
  You can now view the search terms report at the engine-account level (for AdWords, Bing Ads, and Yahoo! JAPAN accounts). That is, you can see all search terms across all campaigns in an account from a single report.
  
  In addition, the search terms report for AdWords accounts in DS now shows search terms retrieved via the AdWords API. Learn more.
  
• Broad-match negative keywords are now copied to Bing Ads: Previously when copying campaigns to a Bing Ads engine account, DS would ignore any broad-match negative keywords in the source campaign and copy only the exact-match and phrase-match negative keywords into the Bing Ads account. (Bing Ads does not support the broad match type for negative keywords.) However, now DS copies broad-match negative keywords and changes the match type to phrase in Bing Ads accounts.
  
• URL templates are always applied to existing keywords: When DS first released the URL templates feature, you could select the Rewrite keyword landing page URLs not currently using template option to prevent DS from applying the template to existing keywords. This option has been removed. Now, DS always applies the URL template to all existing keywords and any new keywords that you create. Learn more about URL templates.

See these updates in action in the new features training video for March.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team