DoubleClick Search is a search management platform that aims to allow marketers and agencies to efficiently manage their search marketing campaigns via one platform. Consider, for example, Bing, which already has a market share of approximately 4% in Belgium. The Doubleclick Search interface can show the results of the various search engines and media channels, such as AdWords and Bing.

Furthermore you could save money and time with DoubleClick Search through the numerous functionalities to automate manual tasks, such as the automated bidding tool, which ensures the improvement of your campaign performances. So why should you definitely use the Doubleclick Search platform? Here are 6 good reasons for giving Doubleclick Search a try.

Saved Views

In DoubleClick Search you have the possibility to apply multiple filters to your advertising account in combination with a custom set of columns. You don’t have to select this every time you open DoubleClick Search, but you can also save this as a ‘saved view’. For example, you can create a ‘saved view’ for all the campaign metrics that you wish to quickly review every morning, in that way you can see at glance how these campaigns are performing. 

Labels

Labels can be added to any campaign, ad group, ad or keyword. Through these labels all items with the same label can be displayed. You can also create reports based on one specific label and perform bulk actions. Labels ensure that you can report and edit keywords outside the existing campaign structure. 

Automated Rules

Automated Rules allow you to make adjustments in the settings of your campaigns, ad groups, ads or keywords based on criteria that you define in advance. Instead of immediately adapting the settings, you can use an automated rule to receive a notification as soon as your campaign matches to the criteria you had defined. An automated rule can be used, for example, to add labels to all keywords with a low cpc, or to all keywords that are linked to your brand campaigns.

DS Executive Report

Automated reporting is one of the functionalities of DoubleClick Search to help you save time. The executive reports in DoubleClick Search are easy to set up and maintain and can be used for weekly or monthly follow-up reports but also for ad hoc campaign reporting. You only need to set up the report once, and the report can have multiple tabs in which graphs, tables,.. Can be easily added and copied.

Executive reports ensure that you can easily create a clear overview of your main KPI’s such as investment, clicks, CTR, conversions,... about different product categories, devices, search engines,... The data from the report can come from different advertisers or accounts.

This report makes it possible to follow up your campaigns in a very easy way, both on campaign name or on label. The report can be shared with your clients via a link or you can download the report in pdf or excel.

Support

Doubleclick Search offers excellent support. There is a wide range of tips and tutorials available via the Doubleclick Search Help Center. Moreover, there is also support via live chat in the platform. The live chat provides an answer to all your questions in a very quick way.

Display Remarketing via Search ads

With this option you have the possibility to make an audience of everyone who clicked on your search ad. You can use the labels to easily group the search volume on certain similar keywords. Based on the clicks, a cookie list is created to use in DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Imagine you have low end and high end products in your offer and you give those products a label in your search campaigns. Then you can exclude people who are looking for a high end product in the display campaigns for the low end products.

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Attribution (modelling) is a hot topic in digital marketing. All stakeholders have been focussing more and more on attribution: companies, agencies and especially big players like Google have been working and pushing on this subject. The “Why?” is quite clear: since measurability is the big advantage of digital marketing, it’s only logical that we want to measure and value our marketing investments as well as possible. Enter the different attribution models at our disposal.

As we all know, AdWords & Google Analytics use as a default the last-click attribution model, meaning that the last touchpoint will get 100% of the credits for the conversion when it takes place. This will already get you as a marketeer a long way as you’re able to pinpoint exactly which channel is giving people the extra push in the back & make them convert. Off course, last-click is not the only ‘standard’ attribution model:

• First-click interaction model
• Linear model
• Position-based model
• Time Decay model

So, which attribution model should I use as a marketeer?

As mentioned here above, Google-products use as a default the last-click model. Although this model is not without its merits, it doesn’t portray the full picture neither. After all, a customer journey (also an online one) rarely consists out of only one touchpoint between you(r brand) and the prospect. Therefor, it wouldn’t be fair to push all previous touchpoints that come before this last click to the side & stop all investment on those channels.

This doesn’t mean that you should dump the last-click model and pick one of the models pictured above which take into account more than 1 step in the customer journey like the linear or the time decay model. It’s not really fair neither to give the same value to each of the touchpoints prior to conversion as people are probably not always equally as engaged/influenced during each of those touchpoints during the (successful) customer journey.

This means it’s essential to value each element of your marketing approach fully to the actual net worth it delivered for your business + to do so as objective as possible (eliminate the gut feeling). To make all of this a little more concrete, I would like to refer to a sportive exemple:

In a football exemple, we can make the statement that the market value of football players isn’t exclusively determined by the amount of goals they score (even though it’s the most important element in a football game).

Off course, goalscoring strikers will cost you more money if you want to buy them than a goalkeeper, but this doesn’t mean that you can buy a goalie or a defender for a penny. Like marketing, football is a team effort meaning that each player attributes to the success of the team according to his/her role in the team. Same goes for marketing where each channel brings a value in its own way.

Introduction off the DataDriven attribution model

Googles most recently developed attribution model tries to give an answer to the following question: how much value can we attribute to which campaign when we look at the bigger picture?

What’s the reasoning behind the DataDriven attribution model? By comparing the customer journeys of consumers who convert to the journey of customers who don’t, the model identifies patterns among those clicks that lead to conversions. There may be certain touch points along the customer journey that have a higher probability of leading a customer to complete a conversion. The model then gives more credits to these important & valuable clicks during the customer journey. This way each of your channels will get attributed its own value.

The added value of the DataDriven model is that it’s taking the whole customer journey in consideration while this either isn’t the case in other preset models (first or last click model) or it’s being done based on some assumptions that are either not proved or not applicable to a specific campaign (e.g. the linear or time decay model).

How does the DataDriven model help me with deciding on my marketing plan?

When you’re working on your marketing plan, you generally start from a certain idea/vision/goal and from a certain, given, budget. The challenge is then to try to decide which marketing channels you’ll use to reach that goal and how you’ll spread your budget across your marketing channels.

We’re often drawn towards results of previous campaigns to determine how we should make this budget split. Unfortunately, when we use this approach, we risk to under-estimate the impact of channels that play their role in the beginning/first half of the customer journey and thus rarely lead towards a conversion. Cutting budgets on these channels could lead to an overall decrease as well, even if you invest more in your performance channels.

The DataDriven approach will allow you much better to estimate the real value of each channel and to decide which budget each of your channels should have in order to reach the best possible overall result in the end.

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[/col][col class="span9"]AUTHOR

Vincent Saelen

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There are now over 3 million apps and websites on the Google Display Network, and almost as many ways to target your ads over the internet. While all these targeting options allow advanced advertisers to have full control over their advertising & performances, it might be quite overwhelming for many of them.

Indeed, more and more factors enter into account when it comes to advert effectiveness (creatives, device, timing, géolocation, demographics, interests, behavior, … are only the visible part of the Iceberg) and it’s impossible for an advertiser to take advantage of all those elements (and their interactions) by using it manually.

This is where new Google Smart Display Campaigns can make the difference : this conversion-oriented display format uses the power of Google’s machine learning to automatically target ads to audiences and placements that are most likely to drive conversions for the business, with dynamically-generated creatives. Google position it as “automation at scale, helping you deliver richer experiences to consumers and better results for your brand.”

There are three main specificities if you compare it to traditional display campaigns :

• Responsive creatives : the system mixes advertiser-provided headlines, descriptions, logos and images to build responsive text, display and native ads that are eligible for any placements available on the display network (no need to create multiple formats of banners !
• Target CPAs bidding : as mentioned, this format is conversion oriented. Therefore, you’re bidding on a target CPA instead of usual CPM or CPC
• Automatically (IA) determined targeting : for each auction, the system determines the likelihood of conversion based on thousands of factors.

Creating your first Smart Display Campaign

First of all, be aware that there is one major requirement to be eligible for Smart display: you need at least 50 conversions on the Display Network or 100 conversions on the Search Network in the last 30 days. If you don’t meet these requirements, you won’t even have the option to opt-in for Smart Display when creating a campaign.

Creating a smart display campaign is quite similar as creating a traditional display campaign. The only particularities are the fact you have put a target CPA, and that creatives are kind of responsive banners.

1. Click +Campaign and select Display Network Only.
2. Under marketing objectives, pick one of the objectives under “Drive Action.”
3. Check Use Smart display campaign. In the lower part of the tab
4. Pick your geographic and language targeting for this campaign.
5. Enter your daily budget and CPA bid.
6. Click Save and Continue

All you have to do know is creating your ads. For these, enter several assets per category. In order to maximize use of the template, make sure to integrate enough variations of each assets. Recommended:

• 5 text headlines
• 5 text description lines
• 15 images (without any text)
• 5 logos
• 1 landing page (cannot use multiple)

Important: your assets must be fully interchangeable. Any headline, for example, could be paired with any image or description.

Best practices & performances

In order to maximise results and make sure to let the chance to a new Smart Display Campaign to run properly, some best practices should be taken into account :

• In terms of CPA bidding, you should aim for a target CPA 50% higher than your Search CPA (or 20% higher than remarketing CPA).
• In terms of budget, it’s recommended to have a daily budget of 10 to 20 time your target CPA, especially during the first weeks your campaign will be live. This allows you to get sufficient volumes of data to let the algorithm learn properly.
• Smart Display Campaigns take time to run @full potential. It requires 1 week of learning, during which results might fluctuate a lot - it’s normal as the algorithm is testing different elements to find best performing assets & targeting. Let it run 2-3 weeks before starting making changes.

From what we’ve observed on our first tests for several clients, the more data you have, the most efficient Smart Display is. While usage for “small” businesses shows results similar to slightly better than traditional Display campaigns, it really shows its strength for bigger businesses, with noticeable uplift in terms of conversion rate (up to +30-40%).

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Back in June, Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) which goal is to limit third-party trackers from capturing cross-site browsing data. Only a few month later, Google thumbs at Apple nose and comes up with a response to the ITP measure, ensuring conversion tracking is maintained.

You need a refresh on what a cookie actually is? You would like to understand what is Intelligent Tracking Prevention? Well, you are in the right place! In this article, we will tackle the above questions and provide you with a clear explanation on the impact of ITP, the measure Google came up with as well as a step-by-step guide on the needed implementations for your account(s).

What is a cookie again?
To understand the ITP measure, it is essential to be familiar with the notion of cookies. A cookie is a small data file placed on your computer by a website when you visit it. 

There are basically two main types of cookies:

• First-party cookies: cookie is set on the domain name that appears in the browser address bar. The cookie is owned by the website itself.
• Third-party cookies: cookie is set by and on a domain name that is different from the one appearing in your browser bar. The cookies are owned by a third party, like e.g. Google. Note that to gather demographic insights or implement remarketing features, it is necessary to install third-party cookies.

What is Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP)?

The objective of Intelligent Tracking Prevention is to limit third-party trackers. With ITP, third-party cookies that enable to track users across sites can only be used for 24 hours from the time a user visits a website using Safari. After 30 days, the cookies are completely purged. Apple’s official explanation for this feature is to ensure privacy, in a world where online privacy has been redefined.


Image: Screenshot / Apple

Let me give you a concrete example: you visited Zalando’s website last week. I bet your life that since then, you keep seeing display ads featuring the exact same pair of shoes you clicked on when you navigate from one website to another. In a nutshell, the main goal of ITP is to prevent these ads to stalk you while browsing other websites.

What is the impact for the advertiser & for Google?

Google uses 3rd-party cookies for conversion tracking, this would mean all conversions that happen after 24 hours from the time a user lands on your page will not be tracked anymore.

To go back to the Zalando example, if you click on an Adwords ad, spend some time browsing their website and 3 days later come back organically to buy a pair of shoes, ITP would prevent the conversion from being recorded in your Adwords account. The power for advertisers is hereby reduced, as an important part of online conversions are not attributed to the correct advertising platforms anymore.

With Safari accounting for nearly 35% of mobile web traffic in Belgium, in October 2017 (source: howwebrowse.com), there is a risk for advertisers to see their volume of conversions shrink. They would also get a hard time measuring the return on investment from their mobile ads. Consequently, some advertisers could decrease their Adwords investment, making Google a loser in the battle. And we all know Google never loses!

In October 2017, 35% of Belgian mobile users use Safari

Source: howwebrowse.be

Google's response to ITP?

It therefore took only a few month for Google to respond to the ITP measure. The giant came up with a new Google Analytics cookie that will be used to capture campaign and conversion data from Safari in a way that conforms with ITP.

Basically, the workaround works as follows: today the conversion cookie is set on the Googleadservices.com domain, which means it is considered as a third-party cookie. By this fall, the new Google Analytics cookie will be set on the advertiser’s domain, becoming a first-party cookie and thus acceptable to ITP. Conversion tracking from Adwords on Safari will therefore be maintained.

How to make sure conversion tracking is maintained?

If you have already linked your Google Analytics with Adwords (which most advertisers have), you don’t need to do anything. With the new GA cookie (_gac), Google Analytics uses 1st party cookies and shares the data with Adwords, which maintains the conversion tracking.

If you have installed Adwords Conversion Tracking via Google Tag Manager, you need to start using Conversion Linker Tag to make sure the conversion tracking is maintained. You can find a step-by-step guide in the next section of this article. 

How to setup the GTM Conversion Linker Tag ?

If you manage your GTM setup in-house, the Conversion Linker Tag setup won’t take you more than 5 minutes.

1. Select to add a new tag and choose ‘conversion linker'.
   
   
2. Set the default trigger on all pages.
   
   
3. You’re done! Don’t forget to preview & publish.

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[/col][col class="span9"]AUTHOR

Eléonore de Richecour

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