DS features in July

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

• Attribution models: You can now choose from one of several multi-channel, pre-defined attribution models or models authored in DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM).  An attribution model determines the method of distributing credit for a conversion among all of the activity in a conversion funnel. The information is reported in DoubleClick Search Floodlight columns. Learn more about selecting an attribution model.

• Executive Reports: Combined mixed bar and line charts: You can now compare metrics and trends in a single chart in Executive Reports. One metric will display as bars and another metric as a line. Learn more.
  

• Optimize Shopping campaigns using bid strategies: You can now apply ROI bid strategies to Shopping campaigns as well as individual product groups. You can even use the same bid strategy to manage bidding for both keywords and product groups and let DS determine the best bid for reaching your ROI goals. Learn more.

• Sign in to multiple Google accounts: If you use different Google accounts to access different agencies or advertisers within DoubleClick Search (DS), you can sign in to multiple accounts in the same browser window. This allows you to quickly switch between accounts or use different accounts at the same time. Learn more.

We also updated the following features:

• Enhanced Bing Ads support
  • Exclude locations:  To give you more control over where your Bing Ads display, you can now exclude locations from a Bing Ads campaign or ad group in the DoubleClick Search user interface or by bulksheet. 
  • Radius targets: You can use DoubleClick Search to remove radius targets that were added in Bing Ads. DS will remove the radius targets when it traffics the change to Bing Ads. Learn more.

• Richer data analysis using the DoubleClick Search API
  • Report on product groups: You can view performance metrics and settings for your Shopping campaign product groups by using the DS Reporting API.
  • Attribute offline conversions to Shopping campaigns: You can use the DS API to attribute offline conversions to the right Shopping campaign ad and corresponding keyword, product target, or product group. Learn more about uploading offline conversions.

• Use reserved URL parameters: You are now free to use any formerly reserved parameter name such as ds_s_aid and lid for tracking purposes. Just change your engine account's parameter-handling option to Include full URL (unencoded) and DoubleClick Search wraps your landing page URLs.

• Yahoo! Japan device targeting removed:  DoubleClick Search has removed device-targeting settings from Yahoo! JAPAN campaigns, both in the user interface and in bulksheets, because Yahoo! Japan no longer supports the ability to specifically target tablets and other mobile devices. You can still use mobile bid adjustments to adjust bids for ads on mobile devices such as laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Watch the recorded webinar for July features to see these updates in action.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Valuing Website Metrics: Introducing Bid Optimization Support for Google Analytics Goals in DoubleClick Search

As part of our mission to offer the most actionable data and reporting, from all sources, DoubleClick Search lets you report on Google Analytics goals. You may not know that we also have the capability to use Google Analytics Goals as targets for DoubleClick Search bid-strategies. When you create a bid strategy in the Doubleclick Search Performance Bidding Suite, you can optimize to conversions and revenue based on Google Analytics goals and transactions. This feature extends the flexibility of DS bid strategies, which already support optimization to Floodlight activities and formula columns. This release also extends bid optimization support to goals based on site analytics metrics such as pages per visit and visit duration.

Make better decisions based on user behavior insights 
Google Analytics goals make it possible to have user behavior prior to purchase drive your bidding decisions. Conversion windows vary by vertical. Some customers finalize their purchases/actions within minutes or hours, while other customers may take days, weeks or even months to research before converting. If you understand the propensity of a user to convert based on their session behavior, you can bid more for keywords that drive higher quality customers. This is where site analytics data comes in as it provides useful post click data such as "users from ad group X spend an average of 5 minutes on the site after clicking".

Our Google Analytics integration gives you access to powerful new metrics to enhance bid optimization and create custom models that not only include the final conversion but also values keywords that lead to pre-conversion user behaviors including time on site, pages viewed, etc. 

Getting started with Google Analytics goals 
Getting started with Google Analytics goals & DoubleClick Search bid-strategies is simple. They work in the same way as the DoubleClick Floodlight-targeted bid strategies you are already familiar with. Just create a new bid strategy using the wizard and select Conversions, Revenue, or Advanced targeting as the goal. Then Google Analytics can be selected as a conversion source (shown below).



If you want to mix Floodlight Tags and Google Analytics Goals in the same bid-strategy, first define the relative value of the Tags and Goal inside the formula column. For example, suppose you wanted a ROAS strategy for your travel agency. Your main objective is to drive revenue from ticket and package sales, but you value a user spending 10 minutes reading about vacation packages at $1.50 since you expect they will return later to buy. The following formula column would capture this valuation:

FL_ticket_revenue + FL_package_revenue + to_money(1.50 * GA_10_minute_session) 

In the above formula: FL=Floodlight, GA=Google Analytics

Once you've created this formula columns, create a new bid strategy, in step 2 select the conversion source to be "formula column". If you haven’t linked your Google analytics account with DS, you can find a step by step guide here. If you are interested in using the site analytics level goals, please follow the guide here (note: you only need to complete Step 1: Transferring Property). To learn more about DS bid-strategies and Google Analytics integration, please check out our help center article.

DS features in May

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

• Public launch of Shopping campaigns in DS
  You can create and manage AdWords Shopping campaigns in DS, a feature that we initially rolled out in beta in March. Shopping campaigns are a new campaign type for AdWords Product Listing Ads that streamline how you manage and bid on your products, report on the performance of your ads, and find opportunities to grow your traffic from Google. Learn more.

• Specify and report on sitelinks for ad groups
  Sitelinks are an ad extension available in AdWords engine accounts. They appear beneath the text of your ads (and in addition to the main landing page), link to specific pages on your website, and help customers find what they're looking for on your site with just one click. By default, all ads inherit sitelinks from the campaign, but now you can add different sitelinks for each ad group or prevent an ad group from displaying sitelinks. Learn more.

• Include custom dimensions and metrics in DS reports
  If you use Floodlight activities to track conversions, you can add details to your DS reports that are customized to your business needs, such as the genre of a movie that a user purchases, the zip code to which an item is shipped, shipping costs, and so on. Learn more.

• Upgrade to the new AdWords “Search Network with Display Select” campaigns
  AdWords will soon be replacing “Search & Display Networks” campaigns with a new campaign type, “Search Network with Display Select”, that offers 35% better Google Display Network performance than your current “Search & Display Networks” campaigns. You can upgrade your “Search only" and “Search & Display Networks" campaigns one at a time from AdWords, or use DS bulksheets to upgrade multiple campaigns with a single upload. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Executive reporting: Filter data sources in charts
  By default, charts display metrics from all data sources that are in a report. If you want a chart to display metrics only from specific campaigns, devices, or even keywords of a particular match type, you can add a filter to the chart. The chart will contain data only for items that match the filter.

• Support for the AdWords "Rotate indefinitely" and "Conversion optimize" settings
  DS now supports the “Rotate indefinitely” and “Conversion optimize” settings for AdWords campaigns in addition to the “Rotate evenly” and “Optimize for clicks” settings that were available previously. Learn more.

Watch the recorded webinar for May features to see these updates in action.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

DS features in April

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

• Bid strategies that can recommend and optimize mobile bid adjustments
  Bid strategies that target conversions or revenue can now optimize AdWords mobile bid adjustments based on the bid strategy’s goal. If you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can set your bid strategy to recommend mobile bid adjustments. Learn more.

• Use keyword parameters in ads
  You can customize your Google AdWords and Bing Ads ads by using dynamic text parameters in DoubleClick Search (DS). A customized ad is more likely to appeal to potential customers because it's more relevant to their search queries. Ad parameters also allow updates to ads without having to go through the engine’s validation and approval process. This feature works with both manual campaigns and inventory campaigns. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Bid strategies for PLA campaigns
  To optimize bidding on Product Listing Ads, you can now apply a return-on-investment (ROI) bid strategy to product targets, an ad group with product targets, or an entire campaign. You can even use the same bid strategy to manage bidding for both keywords and product targets and let DS determine the ideal bids for reaching your ROI goals. Learn more.

• Executive Reporting: Tables can show how performance has changed over time
  When comparing performance over time in an executive report table, you can now show the change as an actual amount or percentage.

• Use formula columns that contain Google Analytics goals in bid strategies
  If you need greater control over how conversions are combined and weighted in your bid strategy, you can create a formula column that defines your own key performance indicators (KPIs), and then add a bid strategy that optimizes to the formula column. Now, formula columns that include data from Google Analytics conversion or revenue columns can be used in a bid strategy.

• New location and device-targeting columns for campaigns and ad groups
  New bulksheet columns for Bing Ads ad groups more accurately reflect the way Bing Ads organizes the inheritance of location targets and device targets. Also, bulksheet columns for location and device targeting have been updated to be consistent across all engine accounts.

• New reporting resource in the DS API
  DS has added a new resource type to its API that contains the list of all columns an advertiser has created, such as Floodlight columns, Google Analytics columns, or formula columns. Once you retrieve the list of columns, you can request reports for the metrics that the columns contain. Learn more about working with saved columns from the DS API.

• Saved views include segmentation selection
  When you save a report view that is segmented, DS now saves the segmentation selection as well. This only applies to new views that you create going forward. Existing views cannot save the segmentation selection.

• Fresh, new look
  We’ve added more space and softer colors to make DoubleClick Search easier on the eyes. This is the same look in many of the other Google products you know and love.

We also want to let you know about a change in product functionality:

• Fewer AdWords search queries available in the search query report
  Google now removes the search query from the referrer on ad clicks that originate from SSL searches on Google.com. Learn more about this change. The search query report in DS won’t be able to display search queries for these clicks. Instead, you’ll see Other queries. Learn more about how encrypted searches affect the DS search query report.
  
  The AdWords search terms report lets you see search queries that generated ad clicks along with key performance data. And the Search Queries report available in Google Webmaster Tools provides aggregate information about the top 2000 queries, each day, that generated organic clicks.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

The Search Agency saves times and discovers insights at scale with executive reporting from DoubleClick Search

The search marketing landscape can change quickly and marketers need tools that can adapt just as fast - to understand immediate opportunities, and react if necessary. Late last year, we announced executive reporting from DoubleClick Search to give marketers the ability to see their campaign performance quickly, across their entire business or in any specific view. Today, we’d like to highlight how a top digital agency has found success with our tools to increase efficiency and get a better handle on their business.

With hundreds of clients around the globe, The Search Agency’s leaders were finding it increasingly hard to keep an eye on the health of their business. Keen to quickly understand the performance while eliminating time-consuming monthly and quarterly reporting tasks, they adopted executive reporting from DoubleClick Search to help oversee company’s interests.

The team needed a way to get the big picture—fast. They also had to have details such as monthly and quarterly reports of all the agency’s business, aggregated for industries or individual clients, with in-depth costs by month, quarter or device.

“That kind of detail is essential for day-to-day work, but also for quick KPIs,” says Wiratunga. “If I’m walking into a board room with my department leads about a certain client or if I get called into a meeting with 15 minutes to prep, I need a way to see—on the fly—exactly what’s happening with an account and all of its issues.” 

After implementing executive reporting, Wiratunga was able to save multiple hours each month and quarter by eliminating repetitive reporting tasks for his team, and focusing them instead on more strategic work. He was also able to prepare for client escalations on short notice as needed. To get the full scoop on The Search Agency’s success, read the full customer story here.

DS features in March

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

• Support for the new AdWords “Search Network with Display Select” campaigns
  AdWords has launched a new campaign type, “Search Network with Display Select”, which is helping advertisers gain up to 15% more customers than search campaigns alone. Any new campaigns that you create in DS will automatically be “Search Network with Display Select” campaigns. DS will continue to support legacy “Search & Display Networks” campaigns for a few months. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Include impression share in executive reports
  You can now add a chart to an executive report that displays the impression share metric for your Google AdWords keywords. With impression share metrics, you can easily report how many of the overall potential impressions you’re capturing.

• Improved targeting settings for Bing Ads ad groups
  We made some improvements to clarify that a Bing Ads ad group can override the campaign’s location and device settings independently. In other words, you can override one or both of these settings when you create or edit a Bing Ads ad group.

• Segment Google Analytics goals by device
  When a reporting table includes columns for Google Analytics goals, you can now segment the table by device as well as by ads.

• Bid strategies for PLA campaigns
  To optimize bidding on Product Listing Ads, you can now apply an ROI bid strategy to product targets, an ad group with product targets, or an entire campaign. You can even use the same bid strategy to let DS optimize your bids across both product targets and keywords to reach your ROI goals. Learn more.

• Formula columns: new functions, new columns, and new aggregation options
• New functions
  We have added 18 functions that you can use in formula columns: 14 for manipulating strings, 2 for specifying relative dates, and 2 for error handling. In addition, to_number(), to_percent(), and to_money() can now convert localized strings into numbers. See a list of all functions in the new function list for DS formula columns.
• New columns You can now use the Status and Keyword_match_type columns in a formula column. These columns are considered to be enumerated columns because they always contain one of a few values pre-defined by DS. Make sure that any functions you create refer to one of the pre-defined values that the column can contain.
  Here’s an example function that outputs "Brand-Broad" for keywords that are labeled with the “Brand” label and have been defined with a broad match type: If(and(Has_label("Brand"),keyword_match_type="Broad"),
  "Brand-Broad","Brand")
• New aggregation options When you create a formula column, you can specify how the summary row in a reporting table aggregates data from a formula column. Previously, a summary row always summed the raw data in the individual rows and then applied the formula to the sum. Now you can specify that a summary row applies the formula to each row and then sums the formula results.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

DS features in February

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

• Report on impression share You can now report on impression share for keywords in your AdWords engine accounts in DS. Impression share is the number of impressions you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. With impression share metrics, you can easily track how many of the overall potential impressions you’re capturing. Learn more.

• Easy access to agency and advertiser data, and faster account navigation We’ve completed the rollout of two DS UI changes that are designed to enhance usability and workflow efficiency.

• The new agency view: Enables viewing and reporting across multiple advertisers. This view shows key data from multiple advertisers in one integrated, consistent view to help advertisers more easily act on big opportunities.

• The new navigation bar: Provides a more usable way to quickly find and access information across your advertisers. It includes a new horizontal layout, a search-as-you-type function, favorites labels, and keyboard shortcuts.

To learn more, read this blog post and this Help Center section.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Improvements to automated rules and bulk edits We made the following improvements to automated rules and bulk edits (including scheduled edits) in DoubleClick Search:

• Bulk edits and automated rules at the advertiser level
  When you navigate to an advertiser with all engine accounts, or navigate to an advertiser with an engine type (e.g., All AdWords accounts), you’ll now see the Edit and Rules buttons above the table.

• Bulk edits and automated rules for objects within labels
  When you click Labels in the left nav and then click a specific label, you’ll now be able to apply bulk edits and automated rules after navigating to the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads in the label.

• Change min/max bid in bulk for keywords
  Change min/max bid for bid strategies is a new option when setting up a bulk edit or automated rule for keywords.

• Change budgets across engine accounts
  For rules and bulk edits on Bing Ads campaigns, we combined the Change daily budget and Change monthly budget options into one Change budget option. This allows you to change budgets in bulk across Google AdWords and Bing Ads engine accounts.

• Change labels in bulk for ads
  Change label is a new option when setting up a bulk edit or automated rule for ads.

• See the source of your bulk edit or automated rule
  When you click Bulk operations in the left nav, the new Changed by column on the Bulk operations page shows the source of the edit or rule.
• For one-time bulk edits, the column displays the user’s email address.
• For scheduled edits, the column displays Scheduled edit: {scheduled edit name}.
• For automated rules, the column displays Rule: {rule name} with a link to the Rule details page.

• Sitelink descriptions in DS DS now supports syncing and managing multi-line descriptive text for AdWords sitelinks.

• New LENGTH() function for inventory templates Inventory templates for ads and keywords now support the LENGTH() function, which returns the length of a string or other value. With this function, you can create templates that respond to the length of a field, as in the following example that outputs “generic” if the BRAND field is blank: [IF(LENGTH(BRAND) > 0, BRAND, "generic")]. Learn more.

Watch the recorded webinar for February features to see these updates in action.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

DS features in January

In January, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search:

• Inventory Product Listing Ads campaigns
  This release introduces a new type of campaign: an inventory Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaign, which makes it easy to scale up your PLA advertising with detailed reports and bidding on each of your individual products. Inventory PLA campaigns automatically generate ad groups and granular product targets for Product Listing Ads from data in your Merchant Center account. Learn more.

• Reporting API
  You can now use the DoubleClick Search API to programmatically download reports. You can combine the API data with data you already have about your products, customers, and business goals (from a CRM system, for example) to complete the picture of your search advertising impact. Learn more.

• Assess your bid strategy’s health
  The new Bid strategy health column displays messages about issues that prevent a bid strategy from performing optimally. If you click the message, DS navigates to the location in the UI in which you can address the issue. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Google Analytics metrics and goals in Executive Reporting
  If you use Google Analytics to track your conversions, you can now enhance your executive reports with GA metrics and goals for multiple advertisers. For example, you can create a single chart that compares GA new visits with overall revenue for all of your advertisers.

• More actions and notification options in automated rules and bulk edits
  We made the following improvements to automated rules and bulk edits (including scheduled edits):
• You can now perform bulk edits and automated rules on a list of product targets.
• Change bid strategy and Change mobile bid adjustment % are new options when setting up a bulk edit or automated rule for campaigns or ad groups.
• When setting up your actions and alerts for a rule, you have more options for when to receive an email. For example, you can choose to receive emails only when a problem occurs.

• Improved support of targeting settings for Bing Ads ad groups
  When you create or edit an ad group in a Bing Ads engine account, you'll notice that the Languages, Locations, and Devices settings have been changed to more accurately reflect the way Bing Ads organizes these settings.

Be sure to attend the New Feature Review monthly webinar to see these features in action. There are sessions on February 6, so register today!

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

DS features in November/December

In November and December, we added the following features to DoubleClick Search:

• Executive Reporting
  When it’s time to present performance data to your clients or executives, instead of manually downloading detailed data and distilling it into useful summaries, you can now create an executive report in DoubleClick Search (DS). DS executive reports are a powerful new way to create custom visual reports to analyze data and share with your end clients, teammates, and managers. Learn more.

• Analyze performance for all keywords or ads at the advertiser level
  You can now see the performance data for all of an advertiser’s keywords or ads across all engines. Most DS customers have multiple engine accounts, so this feature makes it easier to understand aggregate/overall performance. In the DS UI, simply navigate to an advertiser and click the Keywords tab or Ads tab. Learn more.

We also made the following feature updates:

• Better summary data for your bid strategies
  The bid strategy summary page now focuses on conversions, revenue, and bid strategy status by displaying the Bid strategy performance view by default. In addition to displaying goal type, target metric, and constraints, the Bid strategy performance view has been updated with new columns that show the conversion and revenue statistics relevant to that bid strategy. Learn more.

• Apply bid strategies to campaigns/ad groups via bulksheets: You can now use the Bid strategy column in a bulksheet to apply existing bid strategies to campaigns or ad groups. This makes it much easier to apply bid strategies to multiple campaigns and ad groups. Learn more.

• Use bulksheets to create, change, and delete labels
  There’s a new bulksheet that makes it easier to create multiple labels at once, and it also allows you to change and delete labels. Learn more.

• Segment sitelink performance data by campaign
  You can now view sitelink performance by campaign in a single view. For example, if you applied a sitelink to 3 campaigns in a single AdWords engine account, you can see a list of the campaigns with the number of sitelink clicks in each campaign. Learn more.

• Faster sync We reduced the time needed to sync engine changes into DS.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team