DS3 now supports Yahoo! Search Marketing

You’ve probably heard by now that we’ve been busy working to build the next generation of DoubleClick Search, known as DoubleClick Search V3, or DS3. Over the past several months, we’ve upgraded thousands of accounts to DS3 and added many new features to improve how you manage, report on, and optimize your search campaigns.

Now that DS3 offers support for Yahoo! Search Marketing, we’re pleased to announce that most accounts in Europe and Asia-Pacific will soon be ready to upgrade to DS3!

When will my accounts be upgraded?

Dates and information for upgrades will be noted on the Advertiser Home page.

Where can I learn more?

• Sign up for a DS3 upgrade webinar, which will go over the new interface, describe changes to campaign management, uploads, and reporting, and introduce new features.
• Read the DS3 Help Center, which describes the new features in DS3 and also details the Yahoo! Search Marketing support.
• Keep an eye on the DoubleClick Search blog to stay up-to-date on the latest news.

If you have any questions, please contact your Technical Account Manager or the support team at ds-support@google.com.

Get ready for DS3!

Posted by Umesh Unnikrishnan, Product Manager

DS3: More features to speed up your day-to-day workflow

In addition to the reporting updates we announced last week, we'd like to highlight several new campaign management features to help you streamline your day-to-day workflow.

Bulksheet Uploads Across Advertisers: You now have the ability to upload and make changes across different advertisers in a single bulksheet. This new feature helps streamline uploads for agencies that need to make changes to multiple advertisers.

To generate an bulksheet which will allow to upload to multiple advertisers follow these steps:
1. Download an editable agency level report (Scope = Agency, Columns = Editable for re-upload)
2. Make any necessary edits and save the file, ensuring that advertiser and engine account IDs are included
3. From the Uploads tab select Multiple Advertisers and Engine Accounts
4. Upload File

Graph Two Metrics: Easily track and compare high level trends directly in the performance summary graph. Simply choose two metrics from the drop downs on the top right of the graph.

adCenter negative keywords: You’ve only been able manage AdWords negative keywords in DS3 for some time and we’re excited to bring you the same capability for adCenter! Now manage ad group or campaign negative keywords through DS3. With adCenter, if you have negative keywords at both the campaign and ad group levels in DoubleClick Search, Microsoft adCenter will apply only the ad group-level negative keywords and ignore the campaign-level ones.

Before adding new negative keywords in AdCenter through DS interface, please run a sync to ensure the negative keyword list on the engine and DS matches. This will ensure that the full list of AdCenter negatives is kept intact as you add more. You’ll want to run an inbound sync any time negative keywords are created directly on the engine.

Ad Name: We’re also happy to announce the return of the Ad Name field. We heard your requests that this feature from the legacy tool was helpful in managing ads, so you’ll now have the option to add the Ad Name field when creating adCenter or adWords ads. You may have groups of ads you use for promotions and others for certain brands, the Ad Name field can help you organize these different categories of ads.

Be sure to stay tuned to this blog for more updates.

If you like what you see and are ready to chat with a DoubleClick Search sales specialist, contact us. What other features would you like to see in DS3? Tell us.

-posted by Laura Ellison, DoubleClick Search Trainer

DS3: New features for faster reporting workflow and customization

DoubleClick Search is here to help make it easier to manage and analyze your online campaigns. We’re constantly striving to make updates and add features with this goal in mind. Today, we’re excited to announce several updates to reporting that does just that.

Scheduled Reports: Are there reports that you need to run regularly? Scheduled reports now allows you to have report emailed to you, automatically, at specified intervals. You can have reports delivered to you: daily, weekly or monthly, with the ability to select the specific day of the week or month when you’d like the report delivered. For example, if you want a weekly report delivered to you every Monday, select Weekly from the Frequency drop down and then Monday as your day of week.

Read more about scheduled reporting in this Help Center article.

Select Email for Emailing Reports: When downloading and scheduling reports, now write in any email address to send the report to. You’ll also be able to select the specific address for emailed reports.

Select Specific Entities for Report Downloads: Want to run a campaign report, but only for a specific number of campaigns? Now easily select which specific entities(campaigns, groups, keywords) by checking the box next to each object in your table. When you go to download, DS will automatically select ‘Current selection in table’ for the scope. Your report will now only include the objects that you have checked in the table.

With the example in this screen shot, the two campaigns would be included in the report, any unchecked campaigns would not.

For more information on filtering your reports, be sure to read this Help Center article.

If you like what you see and are ready to chat with a DoubleClick Search sales specialist, contact us. What other features would you like to see in DS3? Tell us.

-posted by, Laura Ellison - DoubleClick Search Trainer

DS3: Use monthly spend targets in your bid strategies

With the recent announcements of the new Floodlight tag and CPA and ERS options in DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) bid strategies, we wanted to take a step back and look at a powerful feature in position bid strategies: Monthly spend target.

When you create a bid strategy with a Target average position goal, you have the option of setting a Monthly spend target. This feature is very useful if you want to set a spend target for a set of keywords and are looking to optimize the cost so you get the maximum number of clicks in return. And as the DS3 bid strategy system changes bids multiple times a day, DS3 makes frequent adjustments to ensure optimal use of your spend.

If you set a monthly spend target:

1. DS3 will attempt to maximize the total clicks for the bid strategy’s keywords while staying within the position range. To maximize overall clicks for keywords in the position range, keywords with a lower average CPC will get higher priority in using the spend. This priority usually results in a better position.
2. If, as the month goes on, the total spend of keywords is trending to go over or under the spend target, DS3 will adjust the bids within the position range to get closer to the target. However, if DS3 needs to exceed the target to remain at the lowest position in the position range, it will do so. Similarly, DS3 will spend less than the target if needed to not go beyond the top position. The monthly spend target on a bid strategy is not a strict budget. DS3 will not set bids for keywords lower than the minimum strategy bid, nor will it allow keywords to fall below the defined position targets, even if that means exceeding the spend target.

Tip: If you don’t want to exceed the monthly target, set the lowest position in the range to 99.0 (for example, 3.5 : 99.0). A value of 99 indicates an open-ended range. In the example, DS3 will attempt to achieve up to a position of 3.5, but it will drop to the minimum strategy bid in an effort to stay within the budget (even if the keyword has no impressions and, therefore, no position).

If you don’t set a monthly spend target, DS3 will continue to increase bids for the bid strategy’s keywords (while staying within the minimum and maximum strategy bids) until their average position reaches the top of the position range.

Monthly spend target is just one of many bid strategy features that allow you to optimize bids automatically. Learn more in the Help Center.

Posted by Xiaodong Fu of the DS3 Optimization team

DS3: View Display Network Statistics

As we posted a few weeks ago, Display Network statistics are available in DS3. You can now analyze your Display Network statistics directly in the DS3 interface with even more insight than before! DS3 Display Network reporting now allows you to see what keywords are triggering the site matches resulting in visits and conversions. This greater transparency helps you identify the aspects of your content campaigns that are contributing the most to your success.

View and Read Display Network Stats
To set up your campaigns for display reporting, you'll need to update your network settings on the Campaigns page, and make sure that you have separate campaigns for display and search.

Display Network Stats are reported as a row in the keyword table called Display Network Stats within each ad group (see screenshot below). Engine stats are attributed to the Display Network Stats row, while visits and conversions are attributed to the individual keywords that caused the match.

Placements
DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) provides reporting for campaigns on the Google Display Network. DS3 reporting also includes data for Google AdWords placements, although the placement data will be aggregated with the display data. For example, if there are 50 non-placement display clicks and 50 placement clicks, DS3 will report 100 display clicks.
To set up reporting on placements, you'll need to create placeholder (dummy) keywords on DS3, using the keyword's clickserver URL as the destination URL for the placement on the engine.


See this help center article for more details.

Continue to read through our Help Center or sign up for a DS3 training for opportunities to learn more about all these updates and more! Be sure to stay tuned to this blog for the most up to date information, tips and feature updates.

-posted by Laura Ellison, DoubleClick Search Trainer

The future of ROI-focused display advertising

One thing that sets DoubleClick Search apart from other SEM tools is its tight integration with DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA). From conversations with our clients, we hear that search and display advertising are moving closer together. Both formats are often being used to achieve the same ROI-focused goals. Online marketers need one platform to efficiently manage and optimize them together.


As technology is evolving, tools to manage both display and search will become much better and easier to use. Our goal for DS3 is to reduce “friction” in the online ad management space and make it as easy and efficient as possible to buy search AND display inventory.  


Watch this interview with Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of display advertising, He provides an outlook on the future of display, and why we’ll see fewer banners in the coming year:

-Posted by Fredrik Keerberg, Product Marketing Manager

DS3: Two-way sync now available for adCenter

On May 11, we released Google AdWords two-way sync for DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) advertisers. We’re excited to announce that the same great sync functionality is now available for Microsoft adCenter®!

You can now pull changes made directly on adCenter into your DS3 account. Previously, there were several steps involved to import that change into DS3. Syncing is also a great way to import a new account from adCenter into DS3.

We recently improved the UI to make it easier to run and track your syncs. Follow these steps to sync an account:

1. Select the engine account to sync and then click the Sync from engine button in the toolbar above the table.
2. Select the check box if you want to remove any existing trafficking errors for the campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords in this engine account.
3. Click the Start sync button to initiate the sync.
4. Click Last sync details for information on the sync.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about utilizing the power and flexibility of two-way sync.

Posted by Patrick Riviere, Technical Writer