Google Partners Blog: June 2015

Making it easier to deliver compelling experiences across screens

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Making it easier to deliver compelling experiences across screens

We’ve explained how Programmatic Guaranteed in DoubleClick Bid Manager and Native Ads in DoubleClick for Publishers help ensure your brand shows up in the right place and context. But once you’re present, you have to show a relevant, engaging message to each viewer. Today, we’re excited to launch three new mobile video formats for DoubleClick and a new Creative Preview App, to make it easier to deliver compelling experiences across screens.

Bring interactive video to mobile devices: Video Cue Points component in Google Web Designer

The Video Cue Points component, now available for download, allows developers to build an interactive video ad that looks and feels like VPAID, except that the video runs directly within the display ad on mobile devices. Interactive HTML5 banners with video might take 2-3 weeks of developer time to hand code, but with Google Web Designer and our Video Cue Points component, it can take as little as 3-4 hours.

“Teaser Reels” mobile video component in DoubleClick Studio

With Teaser Reels, you can easily create an HTML5 display ad with an autoplay video teaser. Imagine an interstitial between game levels or directly within mobile web content - a user sees the teaser video automatically and then can click to play the entire video on their device. This will be launching in mid-July, so check back on our help center for more details. (Studio login required)

New mobile in-app templates in Google Web Designer

Our mobile starter templates make it easy to create rich in-app experiences, such as this expandable HTML5 video unit, built by the creative agency Think Jam to promote the release of Warner Brother’s Hobbit film. Learn more about Google Web Designer templates here.

The new Creative Preview App

Once you've built ads specifically designed for mobile, you'll want to preview them across device types to ensure the user experience is positive in every environment and size. We’ve launched the Creative Preview App, now available for Google Play and coming soon to iOS, which allows you to push mobile ads from DoubleClick Studio directly to your mobile device. Now you can preview and test mobile ads in an actual mobile environment. You can also test the exits in your ads to see reporting metrics come through in the DoubleClick Studio output console on your desktop.

We’re working to make the process of building rich, engaging ads for every environment more seamless for brands and agencies, from creative authoring through to delivering the right ad to the right customer at the right time.

Posted by Karin Hennessy, Product Manager, DoubleClick Creative Solutions

Creative Inspiration, Just In Time For Cannes Lions

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

At Cannes Lions this week, thousands of creatives are gathering to discuss innovative storytelling, ad technology, and the future of the marketing industry. Whether you’re there or just following along from home (#CannesLions), the latest pieces on Think with Google can get your creative juices flowing. Here’s the big question we’ve been trying to answer for creative marketers: In the age of the skip button, how can we make ads unskippable? On YouTube, advertisers need to grab a viewer’s attention instantly—and then hold it after the first five seconds. With our new research, we tried to find out just how to do that. While there is no exact formula, we found that science could tell us quite a bit about engaging video advertising. For our Unskippable Labs experiment, we tested 3 cuts of the same ad to see which version got the best reaction on smartphones. This experiment helped us uncover some key insights about what creative works on mobile. One particularly interesting learning: shorter doesn’t necessarily mean better. The longest ad in our study (93 seconds) received the highest view-through rate.

For a more macro approach, our latest YouTube Insights piece looked at thousands of ads across 16 countries and 11 verticals, to try and find out what creative elements are associated with how long viewers watch (and how much they remember). The little things—like where you put your brand logo, and what tone you take in the first 5 seconds—can go a long way in helping viewership, brand awareness, and ad recall. Looking for some examples of attention-grabbing ads? The Cannes to Cannes YouTube Ads Leaderboard recaps the top 10 videos since last year’s festival! And for even more big ideas and creative inspiration, be sure to check out our brand new Creative hub on Think with Google.

Micro-moments: The new battleground for brands

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Mobile has forever changed the way we live. When we want to know something, go somewhere, do something, or buy something, we turn to our smartphones.

For consumers, these on-the-go searches are commonplace. For marketers, they’re a new battleground for people’s hearts, minds, and dollars. These real-time, intent-driven moments of need—micro-moments—present critical opportunities for brands to shape decisions and preferences.
Our latest research reveals just how important these moments can be: 82% of smartphone users turn to their phone to influence a purchase decision while in a store. And 91% use their phones for ideas while doing a given task, searching for how-to videos and other ways to learn.
On Think with Google, explore our entire collection of micro-moments research to learn more about this fundamental shift. And there’s more than just data. We talked to real people with real stories about how they used the web in a spontaneous moment of need. Use these statistics and stories to inform your marketing strategy and to ensure you’re connecting with consumers in the moments that matter.

Happy Birthday Brand Lift - We Got You Some New Features

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Today’s consumer journey has become fragmented into micro-moments that span many channels, devices and media types. As a brand trying to reach today’s consumer, it’s more important than ever that you know which moments matter most. And, because consumers are making decisions faster than ever, you need to be able to make decisions equally as fast.
The good news is that while technology makes the consumer journey more fragmented, it also makes it easier to measure brand impact. At Google, it’s our mission to help you measure all of the moments that matter -- from first impression to final conversion.
That’s why last year we launched our Brand Lift solution, giving you insights into what impact your YouTube ads have on the consumer journey - from awareness, to ad recall, to brand interest - in a matter of days, not weeks or months.
So how is our one-year-old doing? In the first year, we’ve run more than 10,000 studies on YouTube campaigns. In April, we published an analysis showing the results Brand Lift has measured on YouTube, and found that 94% of campaigns saw a lift in ad recall, with an average lift of 80%. Not bad for a toddler!
Today, we are excited to announce that we’re expanding Brand Lift to include measuring lift in consideration, favorability and purchase intent for your ads. Our survey methodology will quickly tell you how your YouTube ad resonates at different points in the consumer journey:

Did my ad break through with consumers?

Are they more aware of my brand after seeing my ad?

Is their consideration of my brand higher after my campaign?

Are consumers more favorable towards my brand after seeing my ad?

Has their intent to purchase from my brand risen?

And because more than half of YouTube traffic occurs on mobile devices, we’ve expanded Brand Lift to measure the impact of ads served on YouTube’s mobile app as well.
With these additions, you can measure more of the moments in that make up today’s consumer journey, giving you a more complete view of how your YouTube campaigns drive impact.
Happy birthday Brand Lift! Hope you like the new features we got you.
Posted by Samir Pradhan, Product Manager, Brand Lift

We asked, you voted: Your favorite YouTube ad of the past decade

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Congratulations to Turkish Airlines and the teams at Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Starcom for making your favorite YouTube ad of the past decade: Kobe vs. Messi: The Selfie Shootout.

Kobe vs. Messi: The Selfie Shootout, the follow-up to their 2012 Legends on Board spot, was an instant hit on YouTube. In fact, the video, which pits two of the world's biggest sports superstars against each other in a game of selfie-shooting one-upmanship, skyrocketed to 25M views in the first three days! Cleverly combining the world's newfound 'selfie' obsession with the star-power of Kobe Bryant and Messi, the ad found it's way to the top of both the December 2013 and Cannes Special Edition YouTube Ads Leaderboards.

Rounding out the top five vote-getters:

In second place: Volkswagen's 2011 Big Game spot, The Force (Deutsch Los Angeles, MediaCom), delighted viewers with a little boy dressed as Darth Vader, attracting over 8 million views before anyone saw it on TV.

In third place: Always #LikeAGirl (Leo Burnett, Starcom MediaVest Group) challenged and shattered negative perceptions of what it means to do something "like a girl."
In fourth place:The Epic Split feat. Van Damme
In fifth place:Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You're more beautiful than you think
Combined, these five videos have been watched for over 7.7 million hours¹. That's over 875 years people chose to spend watching ads! Congrats to all of the winners and nominees and thanks again to all who voted.

We often get asked: what's the secret to success like this on YouTube? So we took a look at the 20 nominees—20 examples of iconic, breakthrough digital marketing—to see what stood out. From authenticity to interactivity to memes, we identified 10 trends to cap off YouTube's 10th birthday month: A Decade of YouTube Ads: The Top Ads and the Trends That Define Them.

And if you're really feeling brave, find out how well you know YouTube with our 10th birthday trivia game at youtube.com/10.
#10YearsofYouTubeAds

1 Google Internal Data

Partners Blog

Making it easier to deliver compelling experiences across screens

Creative Inspiration, Just In Time For Cannes Lions

Micro-moments: The new battleground for brands

Happy Birthday Brand Lift - We Got You Some New Features

We asked, you voted: Your favorite YouTube ad of the past decade

Labels

Archive

Feed