5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DOUBLECLICK BY GOOGLE
What are the key differences between the two distinct digital advertising solutions Google provides to marketers, and are they really that important?
Because Google’s breadth in the digital advertising space is unprecedented, it might be simple to fall victim to the phrase “advertising using Google.” However, brands and organizations who don’t understand the differences between Google’s two digital advertising solutions will ultimately struggle to make educated decisions about which technologies best suit their needs. One solution in particular, DoubleClick by Google, is considered the most robust and sophisticated advertising technology on the market. OK – so what?
Here are five key facts about DoubleClick by Google, and why you, as an online marketer, should care.
#1 DoubleClick by Google is not part of AdWords & Google Display Network (GDN)
Google breaks their advertising technology solutions into two distinct offerings – Google Display Network, often called GDN, and DoubleClick by Google.
While the differences between DoubleClick and Google Display Network can be technical, understanding the distinctions between the two is critical to making the best decision for your marketing plan:
Google Display Network (GDN) is Google’s ad network of AdSense publishers and websites. You can access GDN in your Adwords account and set bids manually in a similar fashion to your AdWords search campaigns.
DoubleClick by Google refers to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform which is a separate division within Google. This is Google’s most advanced advertising tools set, which includes five interconnected platform components.
DoubleClick Campaign Manager: the ad-serving platform, called an Ad Server, that delivers ads to your customers and measures all online advertising, even across screens and channels.
DoubleClick Bid Manager – the programmatic bidding platform for bidding on high-quality ad inventory from more than 47 ad marketplaces including Google Display Network.
DoubleClick Ad Exchange: the world’s largest ad marketplace for purchasing display, video, mobile, Search and even Facebook inventory.
DoubleClick Search: is more powerful than AdWords and used for purchasing search ads across Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
DoubleClick Creative Solutions: for designing, delivering and measuring rich media (video) ads, interactive and expandable ads.
Why You Should Care:
DoubleClick is the platform that advertisers wanting to generate the greatest result for their marketing budget will use. While your budget may be fixed, the tools you use will determine your access to online audiences, inventory, measurement and therefore your results. The robust data generated and contained within the DoubleClick platform allows for the most advanced targeting and measurement capabilities across different campaign elements and channels. DoubleClick is only available through license and requires a team of certified experts to manage campaigns from this advanced platform.
Redwood Credit Union has moved up to DoubleClick to increase the results of their online advertising budgets.
#2 Reach: With DoubleClick’s Demand Side Platform you can access 75% more impressions than in GDN.
Your customers move seamlessly across different digital environments like display, video, mobile, social, Facebook, native and search – and they don’t just visit websites in the Google Display Network. So how do you reach your customers across these vast digital environments? Through DoubleClick you access both GDN inventory as well as 50+ more ad marketplaces with thousands of additional sites.
Why You Should Care
Impression reach is critical for marketers. DoubleClick provides the reach across sites that can’t be accessed using GDN, giving you more opportunities to reach your customers to ensure you are reaching the right audience at the right time, and in the right place.
Capital Public Radio, licensed to California State University Sacramento, moved up to DoubleClick to drive increased membership enrollment and deliver increased donations.
#3. Quality: Through DoubleClick you can access higher quality websites and inventory than GDN
Many more large and important websites like Facebook, Yahoo, Spotify, and LinkedIn are available through DoubleClick, but not in GDN. These larger websites are often in greater demand from advertisers than smaller sites. While smaller sites can add value to marketing campaigns, you do not want to risk not having your ads seen, by being limited to these smaller often-called “long tail” sites.
All of the inventory in GDN is “open marketplace,” which means the inventory comes and goes – there’s no guarantee it will remain consistent. Using DoubleClick, you can access open marketplaces like GDN, as well as Private Marketplaces (PMPs). PMPs are marketplaces where advertisers make private deals with publishers. For example, you can purchase specific audiences and select sections of websites like just men who have an MBA while reading content in the nytimes.com Business section.
Why You Should Care
When you find pockets of high-performing inventory, you can purchase guaranteed inventory in PMPs to keep delivering results. Notre Dame de Namur University uses programmatic direct buys on the nytimes.com Business section to reach prospective MBA students. 
#4. DoubleClick’s measurement is unrivaled
The adage “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” is true. While GDN ’s measurement abilities are limited to its own ad network, DoubleClick’s Ad Server can measure across multiple channels and platforms like display, video, mobile, native, social and search. It’s even possible to measure the performance of direct buys on local news websites, music environments like Spotify and Pandora, and in social environments like Facebook.
Using DoubleClick, you can also measure the metrics related to how many ad impressions are required over a given period for the highest probability of purchase, and optimize your campaigns to meet these requirements.
Why You Should Care
Using DoubleClick, you can measure what matters. Aside from measuring across channels, DoubleClick can aggregate exact transaction amounts, OrderID, Ticket Quantity, Product, and New-To-File customers from all of your different advertising efforts. DoubleClick can also measure purchases across devices. The platform’s Cross-Device measurement capability enables you to tie an ad delivered to any device back to a customer transaction, even if it occurred on a different device or a later date.
SFJAZZ uses customer level insights to determine the optimal number of ads over the optimal advertising time period to drive the greatest amount of ticket purchases.
#5. DoubleClick Gives You Accurate Data
“Attribution” is the process of identifying a set of advertising actions that contribute to the desired outcome (online transaction), and then assigning a value to each of these events. This provides a level of understanding of what combination of events, in what particular order, influence customers to engage in a desired behavior and purchase.
For example, if a customer engages with your Pandora ad, sees your display ads, and then goes to Google to search and make a purchase, DoubleClick knows the order and frequency of the ads shown to this one customer and that in fact, it was just one purchase. The process of tying all these actions back to a single customer purchase is called de-duplication. While GDN does contain conversion data, this data is limited to just the Google Display Network of websites and can therefore provide a limited view of your customers’ online behavior.
Click here to watch a short DoubleClick Video Case Study featuring cross-device measurement and ticket sales.
The Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus uses cross-device measurement to measure mobile advertising campaigns targeting mothers with children, and the increase in ticket purchase made on TicketMaster on a different device and at a later date.
Why You Should Care
If you are running your display campaign in GDN, managing a separate Google AdWords campaign and running a Pandora campaign, your data will be in three distinct places, or silos. As a result, the same single purchase will be reported back to you as three separate purchases – one attributed to each channel. This is how marketing to specific channels without de-duplication or tying back actions to one purchase leads to inflated purchases and ROI.
DoubleClick by Google and GDN/AdWords are not the same. While Google Display Network is a good entry point solution for some marketers, many will recognize the need for greater reach, quality and insights to take their online advertising to the next level. Getting access to DoubleClick and having the team to effectively use these tools can be a barrier. That’s where Mogo Interactive comes in. We have licensed DoubleClick and have the team of experts in place so you don’t have to. We deploy these advanced tools within our clients’ campaigns to deliver superior results that clients would be unable to realize on their own.
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