Google’s DoubleClick Gets a New Look

Google has announced a new release of DoubleClick for publishers, available in two versions (for large and small publishers). Along with the new release, Google has given the DoubleClick logo a makeover.

"To reflect our continued investment in DoubleClick's products, as well as the central role of DoubleClick's technology products within Google's display advertising business, we're also today unveiling some changes to the DoubleClick logos — including typeset changes, incorporating a new 'by Google' theme and retiring the 'DART' brand," explains Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan.

"This is the next generation of Google Ad Manager, bringing many requested features such as a new web services API, an improved user interface, and new reporting capabilities," says Google Ad Manager Product Manager Alex Vogenthaler. "We will be upgrading all Google Ad Manager accounts to DFP Small Business automatically. GAM users will see the new DFP Small Business name and logo within the product and related resources upon completion of the upgrade. Usernames, passwords, ad delivery data and account data will be unaffected by this change. New customers signing up for Google Ad Manager today will automatically be upgraded on the same schedule as current Ad Manager publishers."

The new DoubleClick for Publishers can be found here, complete with FAQs, support information, etc. Google has also set up a series of videos to give users a quick overview of the upcoming changes. In addition, Google offering webinars discussing the changes.

Google Upgrades Ad-Serving Product for Publishers

Google has just announced a new DoubleClick for Publishers, a service it refers to as "the next generation of ad serving technology for publishers."

"For the past few years, we've been investing in a suite of solutions — AdSense, ad-serving technology and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange — to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both," says Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan. "For major online publishers — including social networks and online communities, entertainment sites, e-commerce sites and news sites — managing, delivering and measuring the performance of ads on their websites can be a hugely complicated process. A publisher's ability to manage this process can have a significant impact on how much money they make from their online content."

The new release includes a new interface, redesigned to save users time and reduce errors, and more detailed reporting/forecasting data. Google says it has "sophisticated algorithms" that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.

DoubleClick for Publishers also comes with a new public API that publishers can use to build and integrate their own apps with the service. They can also integrate third-party apps created for the service into their own.

Doubleclick for Publishers comes in two different versions - one for large publishers, and one for small businesses. The latter is a simpler, free version.

All Google Ad Manager publisher accounts will soon be automatically upgraded to DFP Small Business.

2010: The Year of the Display Ad for Google?

This could be the year of the display ad. That's not to say that display ads aren't prevalent every year, but Google has only been involved with that for a little while, and if analysts' projections are accurate, this will be the year that Google's display ad business tops $1 billion in sales.

Last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that display ads would be Google's next big billion-dollar business. According to BusinessWeek, a Barclays Capital analyst says display ads will account for about 4% of Google's total sales in 2010. This would be a 40% increase from their contribution in 2009. BW's Douglas MacMillan reports:

Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world's most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google's display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. "Display is now a key business for us," says Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice-president of product management and one of the company's earliest employees.

Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google's display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. "Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display," Mohan says.

Advertisers will probably not be shy about getting on board with that. "Research has shown that exposure to both search and display ads from the same advertiser results in a 22 percent increase for conversion rates over search alone," Rich Kahn, CEO of display ad provider eZanga told WebProNews last year.

Back in November, Google announced its acquisition of Teracent, a provider of "intelligent dynamic display advertising". It provides machine-learning algorithms, which can create customized display ads based on thousands of different creative elements.

Google says the one on the right was created with Teracent's technology.

"Teracent's technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors," Google said. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads."

Before that announcement, Google launched a tool to measure the impact of display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network called Campaign Insights, which Google says can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a particular product or service. Google has also repeatedly added new templates  for advertisers to use when constructing their creative.
 

Have You Read This?

> Does Size Matter in Display Advertising?

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Press Releases Can Have a Long Search Shelf-Life

As a follow up to a recent article we ran on how press releases can be great for search, a representative for PRWeb, a press release distribution company, contacted us with another interesting example. This one looks at the shelf-life press releases can have, with regards to search traffic.

"A small business called Leatherup.com, which sells peripheral gear for motorcycle riders issued a news release on November 6, 2008, titled, 'LeatherUp.com 2008 Sales Explode to over $20 Million,'" the representative tells WebProNews. "This year alone, this release has received more than 11,000 unique page views excluding advertising (I can see that Leatherup.com used this release as a landing page for some Doubleclick ads which boosted the total unique views to more than 20,000, so have excluded them)."

"Once I had the 11,000 number, with the exclusion, I looked at the entrance sources," he says. Among the top ten, these include (all numbers are unique views):

Google:  2,832
Direct:  1,551
AOL: 696
search.rr.com 247

"Moreover, peak views included December 11, 2009 – more than a year after the release was published," he continues. "The flat periods before April 7, 2009 are due to the fact that we had not yet implemented Google Analytics at that time, and the flat period in June 2009, is when PRWeb.com migrated over to a new Web site – the point being these search results could well be higher."

There are a number of reasons that press releases can be great for search. They're great for spreading word to the media (journalists/bloggers), they can contain links, when used with credible news wire services, they are often looked upon with some authority, and as discussed above, their shelf-life can be significant.

Have You Read This?

> Search Engine and Social Traffic from Press Releases

> Press Releases New SEO Back Door to Top Rankings

> Getting the Media to Cover Your Business

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