DoubleClick Ad Exchange

ANNOUNCEMENTS

[VIDEO] Changes for RTB Pre-targeting Campaigns

To ensure you receive all the available video inventory of a specific duration, we recommend updating your pre-targeting campaigns to include individual placeholder ads for each ad duration you are targeting. (e.g., create a :15s placeholder and a :30s placeholder to receive all :15s and :30s inventory) We recently added a new field to the video sub-message of the bid request to give publishers greater control of the length of ads accepted for their inventory. The new min_ad_duration field corresponds to the minimum duration allowed for a creative in a particular video ad slot and the existing max_ad_duration field corresponds to the maximum duration.

[REMINDER] Publisher semi-transparent inventory

In the past, publishers concerned with revealing their branded URL information on Ad Exchange would label their inventory anonymous or simply not sell their inventory at all. With semi-transparency, these top brand-conscious publishers now have the ability to sell their inventory without revealing their URL level data while providing buyers a valuable brand signal. This intermediate level of transparency between branded and anonymous will open up new inventory from sensitive publishers and provide buyers new, targetable, top quality brand inventory.

For full details on how to target semi-transparent inventory, see our help center documentation or read more about it in our previous newsletter.

RTB CHANGES - UPDATES FOR ENGINEERS

To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

[IMPORTANT] Update seller_network field to be deprecated on April 2, 2013

The seller_network field will be replaced with the new seller_network_id field, which contains an integer corresponding to a network found in the seller-network-ids.txt dictionary file. We will stop setting the seller_network field on April 2, 2013. Please update your bidder to use the new field, particularly to identify inventory from the Google Display Network, which now has a seller_network_id value of 1.

[IMPORTANT] Change to Pixel Match requirements

Starting in mid April, we will be updating our pixel matching specifications to increase the number of pixel match requests we send to your bidder. Previously AdX would append a google_push parameter (with no value) to any Pixel Match requests. Now, AdX will set a random URL-safe string value for the google_push parameter. This value must be returned in the subsequent redirect to Google in order for to complete the cookie matching process. Starting July 9, Pixel Match responses which do not respond with the specified google_push value will be dropped. This change will help us improve our latency troubleshooting efforts and improve our pixel match efficiency.

RTB Protocol UPDATE - New Agency Field in BidResponse

With the growth of programmatic buying, publishers are increasingly looking to sign programmatic deals directly with agencies. To enable buyers and sellers to create Preferred Deals and Private Auctions for a specific agency, a new field, agency_id, has been added to the BidResponse. To implement this new field, we have created a new dictionary file with accepted agencies.

Supporting this field will give buyers more flexibility in their programmatic offerings and help you negotiate more Preferred Deals with publishers looking for buyers with this capability. To find out more, see our Help Center documentation or reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

Google-hosted creatives can no longer be used for RTB

In the past, buyers were able to use Google-hosted creative files for both RTB and UI campaigns. Now RTB buyers can no longer respond with Google-hosted creatives and all Google-hosted creatives sent in the creative_id field via RTB will be discarded. Hosted creatives are still available to UI buyers.

RTB Real-time Feedback - BETA

To facilitate more dynamic bidder strategies, we can provide near real-time auction feedback on why your bid did not win, for example: publisher blocks, creative not approved, or a higher bid. The actual reason will be passed in the BidResponseFeedback sub-message in a subsequent BidRequest and there is a complete list of possible reasons on the developer site. For losing bids that exceeded the specified price floor and used creatives that were not filtered pre-auction, we will pass back the price needed to win the auction. Only buyers that opt-in to disclosing their winning bid data may participate in this limited beta. If you are interested in participating, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

[IMPORTANT REMINDER] Cookie Matching v1 to be deprecated on June 4,2013

Read more about this change in our Cookie Matching documentation or in the previous newsletter.

[IMPORTANT REMINDER] Geo fields replaced by geo_criteria_id Starting on April 17, 2013, the {country, region, city, metro} fields in the RTB Protocol will no longer be passed in BidRequests. These fields have been replaced with the new geo_criteria_id field. Read more about this important change in our previous newsletter or on our developer site.

[REMINDER] Impressions eligible for multiple ad sizes must include Ad Width and Height in the BidResponse

BidResponses returned for multiple ad size requests must include both the BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields or they will be filtered from the auction. Read more about this important change in our previous newsletter.

[REMINDER] New Formatting for Publisher Settings Files

On April 2, 2013 we will be transitioning from an id field of type bytes to an id field of type fixed64. Find out more by referring to our developer site or the previous newsletter.

MOBILE CHANGES

Mobile Optimized Website Signal

The Mobile optimized website signal is now available and specifies whether the requesting ad unit is located on a page optimized for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. A new boolean field is available in the RTB protocol, defined is_mobile_web_optimized. If you have any questions, contact your Technical Account Manager.

Geo Targeting for Carrier IP requests - coming soon

In April, we will begin populating Geo fields for Carrier IP ad requests. Previously, Geo data for Carrier IP requests only included country level information. Now, we will be sending some or all of the same Geo data, available for wifi connected device requests, for Carrier IP requests. Depending on our confidence of the device IP location, we will send data for the following fields: region, city, metro, postal_code, and postal_code_prefix. This feature will also be available for UI pretargeting controls.

Please reach out to your Technical Account Manager if you have any questions about Carrier IP Geo targeting data.

300x50 Ad Size to be deprecated on May 29, 2013

Starting on May 29th, Ad Exchange will no longer support the 300x50 ad size. Google is in the process of removing all 300x50 mobile inventory from our network (including AdMob and Google Display Network inventory). Going forward the 320x50 ad size will become the mobile optimized banner size available on Ad Exchange.

[REMINDER] Flashless Creative Declaration for Flashless In-App Inventory

On May 29th, mobile in-app RTB certified buyers who are not participating in the mobile web flash-less beta but who want to continue to access flash-less app inventory must indicate that an ad is flash-less in their bid response. Check out our previous newsletter for more details.

[REMINDER] carrier_name and carrier_country to be removed from bid requests

On June 4, 2013, we will be ending support of the carrier_name and carrier_country fields in the BidRequest. Buyers should adopt the new carrier_id field. Find out more by referring to the previous newsletter.

UI CHANGES

[IMPORTANT] - NEW BUYER UI CONTROL

As stated in the AdX Buyer Guidelines, buyers may consent to disclose their bid data to sellers. To facilitate this, Buyers now have the ability to opt-out of revealing their bid data to publishers as well as other buyers from within the UI. The opt-out setting is available in the UI by visiting this URL: https://www.google.com/adxbuyer/uploader/ and:

1. Select the Deal tab.
2. Once inside the Deals tab, click on the "gear" icon on the far right to access your account settings.
3. Uncheck (or check) the Disclose bid data to publishers and other buyers on AdX box to opt-out or in of revealing your bid data to publishers.
4. Click Save. Changes to this setting will take effect almost immediately.

Enhanced Campaigns - BETA

As smartphones and tablets continue to grow in popularity and consumers are seamlessly switching between devices, a new, multi-device world is developing. To help buyers address this shift, AdX is adapting and simplifying our buying process for UI buyers to support Enhanced Campaigns (Beta). Enhanced campaigns allow buyers to set up one campaign to buy across all screens and provide the ability to modify bids based on location or mobile specific targeting. Instead of creating multiple campaigns to target different mobile devices, now one campaign will be able to show the right creative based on user context and device capabilities.

Over the next few weeks, AdX will begin rolling out enhanced campaigns to our buyers. During the Beta period, buyers will be able to create new campaigns as enhanced campaigns, and we’ll provide a tool to migrate existing campaigns to enhanced campaigns. At the end of Q2, all existing campaigns will be automatically migrated to enhanced campaigns. We strongly encourage you to begin using enhanced campaigns to familiarize yourself with the new bidding controls on your new and existing campaigns. To find out more, see our Help Center documentation or reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

TRAINING UPDATES

Please click on the title to register and note the event time zones are country specific.

Private Auctions & First Party Data: Come learn about AdX's new private auction offering and the availability of first party data in the exchange. The product management team will walk you through these updates and how you can take advantage of them.

Private Auctions & First Party Data (Europe-Friendly) Tuesday April 16 | 2PM LON | 3PM PAR | 9AM EST

Private Auctions & First Party Data (NA-Friendly) Tuesday April 16 | 11AM PST | 1PM CST | 2PM EST

What’s New with AdX? - Mobile & Video Webinar Come learn about what new updates have been made to AdX, as well as the great features that are coming out. The product management and other cross functional teams will walk you through Mobile and Video and how you can take advantage of them to improve your use of AdX. Thursday April 25 | 9AM PST | 12PM EST | 5PM LON

[Reminder]

AdX Fundamentals Webinar Wednesday May 1 | 10AM PST | 12PM CST | 1PM EST

Third-Party Ad Serving Certification Overview Wednesday May 15 | 9AM PST | 12PM EST | 5PM LON

ANNOUNCEMENTS

DoubleClick Ad Exchange Optimization Series – Disapproved Ads

Check out the newest post in our Optimization Series on the Ads Developer blog covering everything you need to know about handling disapproved ads. Remember to subscribe to the ad_exchange feed to find out the latest developer news.

[NEW] Market View inventory tool

Market View is an analytics tool that provides unprecedented visibility into the billions of transactions occurring across the Ad Exchange platform on a daily basis. Unlike your account’s core reporting functions, Market View covers the entire exchange to provide you a snapshot of volume and relative pricing by geography, ad size, content categories, and other valuable dimensions.

To start using the market view tool, log in to the marketplace UI at https://www.google.com/adxbuyer/uploader. If you have any questions about this new analytics tool, visit our help center, sign up for our upcoming training session below, or contact your Account Manager.

[NEW] Publisher semi-transparent inventory

In the past, publishers concerned with revealing their branded URL information on Ad Exchange would label their inventory anonymous or simply not sell their inventory at all. With semi-transparency, these top brand-conscious publishers now have the ability to sell their inventory without revealing their URL level data while providing buyers a valuable brand signal.

Semi-transparency allows publishers to send brand signals such as publisher name, publisher ID, and channel without including the landing page URL. This intermediate level of transparency between branded and anonymous will open up new inventory from sensitive publishers and provide buyers new, targetable, top quality brand inventory. Brand conscious publishers are starting to adjust their inventory classifications from anonymous to semi-transparent and we’ll let you know when new semi-transparent inventory becomes available on AdX.

RTB buyers may find this new higher-quality inventory on AdX by targeting the branding information publishers provide in the existing targetable_channel field. In the past, this field displayed simple channel information such as sports. Now the targetable_channel field will be passed in the following format: pack-semi-<pub name>::<channel name> where publishers can include additional branding information. The same sports channel can now appear as pack-semi-XYZ::Sports where XYZ is the publisher’s brand name. UI Buyers can find semi-transparent inventory via the Placement Tool and should adjust their campaign targeting settings to include the targetable_channel field.

For full details on how to target semi-transparent inventory, see our help center documentation and if you have any questions contact your Account Manager.

RTB CHANGES - UPDATES FOR ENGINEERS

To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

[IMPORTANT] Cookie Matching v1 to be deprecated

Starting June 4, 2013, we will no longer support Cookie Matching V1. To better serve our buyers, we built more advanced features, such as Hosted Match Tables, into our Cookie Matching v2 API. If you have not done so already, we strongly recommend that all buyers upgrade to the new version of Cookie Matching as soon as possible.

To help you make the switch to v2, we’ve created a well documented process available in our help center and your Technical Account Manager can answer any questions.

[IMPORTANT] Update seller_network_id change

If you buy inventory by targeting using the seller_network_id field, please note that we have made changes to some of the IDs in the seller-network-ids.txt file. These changes were the result of a one time re-indexing of the IDs and the existing mappings will be persistent and subsequent publisher additions will be appended to the end of the file. Please note that the Google Display Network (GDN) seller_network_id has changed from 0 to 1.

Please download the most recent dictionary file of seller network id’s to ensure that you are properly targeting GDN and other publisher networks on AdX. If you have any questions, please contact your Account Manager.

[IMPORTANT] Impressions eligible for multiple ad sizes must include Ad Width and Height in the BidResponse

Publishers are increasingly accepting multiple ad sizes for individual ad slots. These impressions include multiple sizes in the BidRequest.AdSlot field and require the BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields to be returned in corresponding BidResponses. Bid Responses made in response to requests containing multiple Ad sizes must include these fields or else they will be automatically filtered from the auction.

Currently multiple ad size bid requests are only available to buyers passing the BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields in their BidResponse. This accounts for 3% of available impressions and will increase in Q2 as more inventory becomes available from our DoubleClick for Publishers clients. We will soon be creating a whitelist to make this inventory available only to buyers who set the ad size in response to multiple ad size bid requests. If your bidder is not currently returning BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields in your BidResponses, you are encouraged to start doing so to be eligible for such inventory. Please contact your Account Manager for more details on how to join the white list.

[IMPORTANT REMINDER] SSL - Upcoming Change for 3rd Party Ad Serving

We are excited to start support for Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encrypted traffic, which will allow DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) to start offering additional inventory types to our clients, including webmail and other inventory from logged-in users. SSL inventory is unique in that all subsequent calls to 3rd parties after the initial ad request must also be SSL-based or the browser will display a warning to the user. In order to ensure a seamless consumer experience across AdX, we are introducing a new SSL certification to confirm all buyer technologies are SSL compliant.

As we mentioned at the end of October last year, the first source of SSL inventory on AdX will come from signed-in users of Google owned and operated properties such as YouTube. Currently, only a small percentage of YouTube inventory is SSL-enabled, but in May 2013 this volume will ramp up to all signed-in YouTube users, totalling about 40% of YouTube traffic. The supply of SSL inventory on AdX will continue to grow this year as we add new inventory from webmail and other secure environments.

SSL inventory will only be available to buyers certified as SSL compliant by the Google certification team. Don’t miss out on this opportunity--start implementing SSL on your RTB and 3rd party ad serving platform as soon as possible.

RTB buyers do not need to use separate buyer_creative_id for the SSL and non-SSL snippets. See our help center documentation for additional details.

[REMINDER] New Formatting for Publisher Settings Files

We recently made a change to the format of our Publisher Settings Files (PSF’s) to make processing them easier. The new format splits the PSF into two 9MB files and reduces the overall file size by 60%.

In addition, we will be transitioning from an id field of type bytes to an id field of type fixed64. Currently both fields are being provided but as of April 2, 2013 only the fixed64 id field will be filled.

PSF’s provide buyers with information about individual publisher inventory requirements to help their bidders make better decisions. The PSF’s include data such as: allowed ad technologies, excluded categories, and blocked landing pages. Please contact your Technical Account Manager with questions or refer to our help center documentation.

[RTB Protocol] ROADMAP PLANNING - New Agency Field in BidResponse coming in March

With the growth of programmatic buying, publishers are increasingly looking to sign programmatic deals directly with agencies. To enable buyers and sellers to create Preferred Deals segmented by specific buyer/agency/advertiser, a new Agency field will be added to the BidResponse. The ability to create Agency specific deals gives buyers more flexibility with programmatic buying on AdX by reducing spending conflicts with other advertisers and agencies on their account.

We believe that this is an important change and one that requires some development work so we’re making this announcement to give you sufficient time to plan for the necessary modifications to your bidders. We will begin accepting this field at the end of March and it will be available in Preferred Deals later in Q2. Supporting this field will give buyers more flexibility in their programmatic offerings and help you negotiate more Preferred Deals with publishers looking for buyers with this capability.

Once available, you’ll be able to fill in the Agency field at the time of creative submission or in the BidResponse. Stay tuned for more details on how to implement the new Agency field and reach out to your Account Manager if you have any questions.

Cookie matching macros now available

Now you have the option to configure your cookie matching URLs with one or more macros to determine the order and location in which cookie matching parameters are added to the URL. By using these macros you have more flexibility and control for cookie matching. Please read our developers page to learn more about the new macros and how to use them.

MOBILE CHANGES

[MOBILE] Javascript Snippet Support for In-App Inventory

As of today, certified buyers who are opted in to the In-App Mobile Beta can traffic Javascript snippets for in-application callouts. To be accepted, Javascript snippets can only return static image creatives. MRAID rich media ads in this format are permitted only if the buyer is concurrently participating in the AdX MRAID Beta. If you are trafficking Javascript MRAID ads please follow the guidelines in our help center. No other creative formats are allowed at this time.

[MOBILE] Mobile Optimized Website Signal

Launching in the next couple weeks, we are extremely excited to announce the inclusion of a Mobile Optimized Website indicator in our bid requests. This signal will specify whether the requesting ad unit is located on a page optimized for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. Starting today, a new boolean field is available in the RTB protocol, defined is_mobile_web_optimized. If you have any questions contact your Technical Account Manager.

[MOBILE] Flash-less Creative Declaration for Flash-less In-App Inventory

Starting in April, mobile in-app RTB certified buyers who are not participating in the mobile web flash-less beta but who want to continue to access flash-less app inventory must indicate that an ad is flash-less by adding the creative attribute RichMediaCapabilityType: RichMediaCapabilityNonFlash to their bid response. This means, creatives targeting mobile devices must include the flash-less attribute to be accepted for flash-less in-app inventory. Please see line 6 on our targeting flash-less inventory help center article for more details.

[MOBILE] carrier_name and carrier_country to be removed from bid requests

Starting in April, we will be ending support of the carrier_name and carrier_country fields in the BidRequest and introducing a new carrier_id field. This new field will be a more reliable and accurate representation of Carrier Names and will remain persistent even if the carrier changes their name through a rebranding, acquisition or other events. RTB customers currently depending on these fields are strongly encouraged to update their RTB logic to rely on carrier ID instead. If you have any questions contact your Technical Account Manager.

[MOBILE] New App Category Targeting BETA

Starting on March 12, select RTB buyers will be able to target Mobile App inventory based upon marketplace (Play, iTunes) specified categories. This will allow buyers to bulk target specific genres of applications more efficiently using pre-targeting RTB campaigns.

Read more details in our help center article and let your Technical Account Manager know if you would like to be considered for the beta trial.

[UPDATE, MOBILE] MRAID Creatives BETA

We’re excited to announce a limited beta for MRAID 1.0 creatives including banners, expandables and interstitials for in-application traffic. This is an exciting opportunity as it provides buyers the opportunity to create and deploy more engaging ads to all mobile users on Ad Exchange. Read more details in our help center article and let your Technical Account Manager know if you would like to be considered for the beta trial.

UI CHANGES

[MOBILE] New App Category Targeting BETA

Starting on March 12, buyers opted into the In-App Mobile beta will be able to pre-target Mobile App inventory based upon marketplace (Play, iTunes) specified categories. This will allow buyers to bulk target specific genres of applications more efficiently.

Visit our help center article for full details.

TRAINING UPDATES

Please note the event time zones are country specific.

AdX Market View for Buyers: In this webinar we will present our new Ad Exchange Market View analytics tool. This tool gives buyers an aggregated view of inventory data across AdX publishers. We’ll go over what data sets you are able to see and do a demo of the new functionality.

Wednesday, March 13 | 9AM PST | 12PM EST | 5PM GMT Click to register for “AdX Market View for Buyers”

AdX Fundamentals for Buyers: During this webinar, we'll review: what the Ad Exchange is and how it works, how to navigate the user interface and create campaigns and ad groups and basic media planning.

Wednesday, May 1 | 10AM PST | 12PM CST | 1PM EST Click to register for “AdX Fundamentals Webinar for Buyers”

AdX Third-Party Ad Serving Certification Overview: During this webinar, we'll review: what is third-party ad serving certification, why it is required on Ad Exchange and how it works. Will also review what the process and requirements are to become certified.

Wednesday, May 15 | 9AM PST | 12PM EST | 5PM GMT Click to register for “AdX Third-Party Ad Serving Certification Overview

ANNOUNCEMENTS

[LAUNCH] DoubleClick Ad Exchange Optimization Series
Maintaining a healthy, successful Real-time bidder is a challenging task. So, to support the AdX developer community, we’re launching the DoubleClick Ad Exchange Optimization Series on the Google Ads Developer blog. In the series, we’ll be sharing updates, best practices and optimization tips to support engineering teams as they maintain and continue to evolve their proprietary bidding technologies.

Check out the first post in the series covering post-filtered bids and subscribe to the ad_exchange feed to find out the latest developer news.

Holiday Service Coverage
With the upcoming holiday season please be aware of the following Google holiday schedule. The U.S. Google offices will be closed on the following days:

• Monday December 24th
• Tuesday December 25th
• Monday December 31st
• Tuesday January 1st

Please note that as with all holidays and weekends, our U.S. support teams will continue to provide service for emergencies like UI outages or major drops in RTB traffic.

RTB CHANGES - UPDATES FOR ENGINEERS
To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

New Formatting for Publisher Settings Files
We recently made a change to the format of our Publisher Settings Files (PSF’s) to make processing them easier. The new format splits the PSF into two 9MB files and reduces the overall file size by 60%.

PSF’s provide buyers information about individual publisher inventory requirements such as: allowed ad technologies, excluded categories, and blocked landing pages enabling your bidder to make better decisions. Please contact your Technical Account Manager with questions or refer to our help center documentation.

CSV Reports Now Organized by Trading Location
To align reporting with our fixed trading location architecture, the CSV Performance Reports are now available, organized by Trading Location instead of by data center. The old CSV Performance Reports (organized by data center) will be available until the end of Q1 2013, after which only the Trading Location organized CSV Performance Reports will be provided.

[IMPORTANT] Ad Width and Height must be included for multiple ad size bid requests
For all bid requests that contain multiple ad sizes, your BidResponse must include the BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields. Bid responses to requests with multiple Ad sizes that do not include these fields will be dropped from the auction.

Although bid requests with a single ad size in the BidRequest.AdSlot do not need to include the Ad.width and Ad.height fields, we suggest always declaring the Ad Size as a best practice. In 2013, there will be an increasing volume of multi-size BidRequests, including inventory that is currently single-sized.

[IMPORTANT REMINDER] SSL - Upcoming Change for 3rd Party Ad Serving
We value our partnership and want to notify you of an important upcoming change for third party ad serving (3PAS) to Google’s owned and operated properties, including YouTube.

To ensure stronger security and privacy for our users, all ads, whether display or in-stream video, that are served to signed-in Google users must be Secure Socket Layer (SSL) compliant no later than January 15, 2013. After this date, the amount of inventory available on Google properties to non-SSL compliant buyers will be limited.

Visit the Google Ads Developer Blog for a detailed summary of this change.

[RTB Protocol] ROADMAP PLANNING - New Agency Field in BidResponse coming in Q1
With the growth of programmatic buying, publishers are increasingly looking to sign deals directly with agencies. To allow buyers and sellers to create Preferred deals with specific buyer/agency/advertiser segmentation a new Agency field will be added to the BidResponse. The ability to create Agency specific deals, gives buyers more flexibility with programmatic buying on AdX by reducing spending conflicts with other advertisers and agencies on their account.

We believe that this is an important change and one that requires some development work, so we’re making this announcement to give your engineering teams significant time to make the necessary modifications to your bidders. We will begin accepting this new field starting in January 2013 and will require the Agency classification starting in Q2 2013.

More details about this change can be found in our recent RTB webinar. Stay tuned for additional details coming soon.

[CREATIVE API] New List Functionality
To make checking the status of your creatives more efficient, we’ve added a list function to the Creative API. Now you can pull the status of multiple creatives at once to ensure you are bidding with approved ads. For implementation details, see our documentation here.

[MOBILE] New Device description fields in BidRequest
AdX Mobile now provides a set of fields in the BidRequest to better describe mobile handset information. These new fields include OS Version, Brand and Model and make it easier for buyers to identify mobile attributes in the BidRequest and target specific impressions that fit their campaign criteria. Please see the latest realtime-bidder-protocol file for these changes. OS, Brand and Model targeting tools for User Interface buyers are under development and will be released in Q1 2013.

[MOBILE] New App Category IDs in BidRequest
AdX Mobile now passes the application category ID for all in-app traffic. This new field corresponds to the marketplace (Play, iTunes) specified categories to help buyers bulk target specific genre’s of applications more efficiently. Please see the latest realtime-bidder-protocol file for this update.

[MOBILE] MRAID Creatives Beta
In early Q1 2013, we will launch a limited beta for MRAID 1.0 creatives including banners, expandables and interstitials for in-application traffic. This is an exciting opportunity as it provides buyers the opportunity to create and deploy more engaging ads to all mobile users on Ad Exchange. Please let your Technical Account Manager know if you would like to be considered for the beta trial.

UI CHANGES

[NEW] Preferred Deal Reporting
To help buyers understand the performance of their Preferred Deals, we’ve added a reporting tool to the Preferred Deals UI. This report displays the metrics about offers, negotiations, deals, and deal-specific performance, such as daily impressions and spend over a selected date range. Read the help center article to learn more about these new reports.

[NEW] Reach Estimation Widget
User interface buyers can now access a new reach estimation widget on the Display Network Tab. The widget shows an estimate of the number of potential impressions available based on the targeting criteria the buyer entered on the page.

Please note: this tool provides an estimate of the amount of traffic available for bidding, and does not guarantee the buyer will win all the impressions shown. Impression volume is based on all available inventory from Google Display Network and AdX publishers.

Estimates include the following but are not limited to: campaign and adgroup level targeting, such as location, language, devices, ad scheduling, placements, topics, and audiences (e.g., age, gender, remarketing for lists of ~3000+, interest categories, and custom combinations).

Estimates do not include: budget, bid, quality score, keywords, ad formats & sizes, category exclusions, advanced location targeting by radius.

[MOBILE] New App Category targeting
Mobile App Category targeting based upon marketplace (Play, iTunes) specified categories to help buyers bulk target specific genre’s of applications more efficiently, will also be rolling out soon. These categories will be targetable for UI buys as well as for pre-targeting for RTB campaigns. We will be doing a limited beta launch next week followed by a full launch early Q1 2013.

Visit our help center article for full details.

[MOBILE] 320x50 Mobile Web Creatives
As of today, AdX user interface and RTB buyers can traffic 320x50 Mobile Web creatives. All the features and functionality for Display Ad Units are available for this new Mobile ad size and can be used to create 320x50 leaderboards for high end devices.

Please note: this feature only applies to Mobile Web inventory. To access AdX Mobile In-App inventory, please reach out to your salesperson for more information on the certification process.

For more details about this new ad size, read our help center article. If you have issues setting up this new Ad Size or have any other questions, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

TRAINING UPDATES

We hosted several webinar trainings over the last couple of months. If you missed any of them and want to catch up on the latest info, you can access the pre-recorded versions below.

AdX Fundamentals webinar: This is for buyers new to Ad Exchange. We review how the exchange works, including how to navigate the user interface, create campaigns and manage ad groups, as well as basic media planning, policy, and optimization tips.

AdX Policy webinar: In this webinar, we provide a general overview of Ad Exchange policies, the enforcement process, and do a Q&A session.

What’s New with RTB? webinar: Here we discuss what's changed in the past six months with Real-time bidder, as well as some great new features that are coming soon. The product management team walks through all the changes and how you can take advantage of them to improve your use of RTB.

RTB CHANGES - UPDATES FOR ENGINEERS

To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

RTB Protocol Change
Starting on April 2, 2013, the {country, region, city, metro} fields in the RTB Protocol will no longer be passed in BidRequests. These fields will replaced with the new geo_criteria_id field, which is a persistent ID representing geographic locations that can be found in the Targets Table at our developers site here. If you have any questions, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

[UPDATE] Video BETA: AdSense for Games inventory
Video inventory from AdSense for Games publishers is available on Ad Exchange. For AdSense for Games inventory, the Video.inventory_type field in the BidRequest will be set to the following values each of the three supported types of video inventory: web_video, games, and mobile_interstitial. Full details can be found in the RTB protocol.

[ACTION REQUIRED] Migration from seller_network to seller_network_id
The seller_network field will be replaced with the new seller_network_id field, which contains an integer corresponding to a network found in the seller-network-ids.txt dictionary file here. We will stop setting the seller_network field on April 2, 2013.

Please update your bidder to use the new field, particularly to identify inventory from the Google Display Network.

[Action Required] Respond with ad size to BidRequests with multiple ad sizes
Ad Exchange now allows publishers to enable ad units that support multiple ad sizes (such as both 300x250 and 300x600). Going forward, responses to multiple ad size BidRequests that omit the ad_width and ad_height fields will be dropped from the auction. Depending on the current state of your implementation this may require bidder modification to ensure that the ad_width and ad_height fields are included when responding to multiple ad size BidRequests.

[UPDATE] Mobile BETA - Flashless ad groups for Mobile Web
If you are currently buying Mobile inventory from Ad Exchange with third-party ad serving (3PAS), you can now access valuable additional inventory, including tablet and smartphone inventory, by using Flashless ad groups. To access this inventory, you must declare that your ad unit does not require Flash support (note: all new 3PAS Ad Units will be marked by default as requiring Flash). If our automated checks find that ad units marked as Flashless are returning flash formats, the snippets will be disabled and you will receive violation notices.

Technical Notes
How can your bidder detect if an impression allows Flash?

• Flashless inventory will only be sent to flashless ad groups, and the ad group ID will be included in the BidRequest
• In the BidRequest, you should examine the repeated excluded_attribute field.
  • A Flashless impression will have a value of 34 = RichMediaCapabilityType: RichMediaCapabilityFlash
  • potential excluded_attribute values are listed in creative-attributes.txt

How can I set my 3PAS Ad Unit to Flashless in the UI?

• In the Ad Creation process (see Campaigns Tab > Ads > create new Third party ad), please uncheck the box next to the Flash requirement (it will be checked by default).

This functionality is currently in limited beta. If you are interested or have any questions, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

UPCOMING TRAINING EVENTS

We are excited to announce webinars to kickstart Q4. Please note the event time since both U.S. and Europe time zones are listed.

Webinar: AdX Fundamentals
For those new to Ad Exchange, we will review how the exchange works, including how to navigate the user interface, create campaigns and manage ad groups, as well as basic media planning, policy, and optimization tips.

Wednesday, October 24 | 10-12 PST / 1-2 EST
Click to register for “AdX Fundamentals”

Webinar: AdX Policy
In this webinar, we'll provide a general overview of Ad Exchange policies, the enforcement process, and do a Q&A. We'll also provide a list of policy resources to reference after the event.

Thursday, November 1 | 11-12 PST / 2-3 EST
Click to register for “AdX - Policy Webinar” (US)

Thursday, November 1 | 11-12 EST / 3-4 GMT
Click to register for “AdX - Policy Webinar” (Europe)

Webinar: What’s new with Real-time bidding?
Come learn about what's changed in the past six months with Real-time bidder, as well as the great features that are coming out. The product management and engineering team will walk you through all the changes and how you can take advantage of them to improve your use of RTB. They will be fielding questions, so be sure to come and learn more about RTB.

Monday, November 5 | 11-12 PST / 2-3 EST
Click to register for “What’s new with Real-time bidding?” (US)

Monday, November 5 | 9-10 EST / 2-3 GMT
Click to register for “What’s new with Real-time bidding?” (Europe)

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Four New Ad Sizes
The following four ad sizes are now available for display ads on Ad Exchange.

• 234x60 - Half Banner
• 180x150 - Small Rectangle
• 120x240 - Vertical Banner
• 125x125 - Button

If you have any questions about these new sizes, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

Changes to the Snippet Status Report
Reasons for disapproval of creatives (“Disapproval Reasons”) are now set as a sub-message in the SnippetStatusitem message. When possible, we will provide a Disapproval Reason in the sub-message for additional detail. For example, if a snippet was disapproved for DESTINATION_URLS_UNDECLARED, the detail may list the urls that were not declared.

There are three new Disapproval Reasons:

• INACCURATE_AD_TEXT: Ad contains text that is unclear or inaccurate
• COUNTERFEIT_DESIGNER_GOODS: Ad promotes counterfeit designer goods
• POP_UP: Ad causes a popup window to appear

To see the mappings for these new reasons, please review the proto here.

[MOBILE Beta] Application Download Tracking for Android Devices
With the release of Android 1.6 OS, you can now use the referrer URL parameter in download links to the Android Market to track application downloads. The Google Analytics SDK for Android uses this parameter to automatically populate referral/campaign information in Google Analytics for your application. This enables the source of the application install to be recorded and associated with future pageviews and events.

Find out more about application download tracking for Android Devices at:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/#referrals

[IMPORTANT] System Maintenance on September 22, 2012
On Saturday, September 22, the Ad Exchange user interface will be unavailable from approximately 10:00 am to 8:00 pm Pacific Time (17:00 Saturday to 03:00 Sunday GMT) due to system maintenance.

During this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual and you will continue to receive RTB bid requests, but you won’t be able to sign into your account or make changes. Please also keep in mind that the SOAP API and part of the REST API (Direct Deals) will also be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as our engineers work to keep Ad Exchange running smoothly.

RTB CHANGES

To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

[NEW] DoubleClick Ad Exchange REST API Version 1.1
We recently updated our REST API and would like to raise the following changes to your attention:

• A new list method has been added to the Creative resource to retrieve a list of all active creatives for the current authenticated user with optional filtering by creative status
• The adgroupID field has been removed from the Creatives resource
• The bidderLocation[ ] list in the Account resource now includes the region field to identify the bidder location

Please review these changes on our developers site or the Google Ads Developer Blog. If you have any questions about these changes, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

[IMPORTANT] Ad Width and Height must be included for multiple ad size bid requests
For all bid requests that contain multiple ad sizes, your BidResponse must include the BidResponse.Ad.width and BidResponse.Ad.height fields. Bid responses to requests with multiple Ad sizes that do not include these fields will be dropped from the auction.

Although bid requests with a single ad size in the BidRequest.AdSlot need not include the Ad.width and Ad.height fields, we suggest always declaring the Ad Size as a best practice.

UPCOMING EVENTS

[REMINDER] West Coast Ad Exchange Developer Day - Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 12th, 2012
On Wednesday, September 12th, we are hosting a Developer Day at Google’s Mountain View Campus for Ad Exchange real-time bidding developers. Our engineers and Technical Account Managers will cover ways to build a reliable bidder infrastructure, boost bidder intelligence, improve auction win rate, and much more. We will also highlight upcoming changes to the RTB protocol, and take feedback on product direction.

This event is intended for technical developers at buyers already doing real-time bidding. If you or someone at your company is interested, please sign up HERE.

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Video Beta Update - VAST Skippable Format Now Available
Skippable in-stream video ads are now available on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Find additional :30s inventory across Ad Exchange’s inventory including YouTube, Video on the Google Display Network, and participating DoubleClick for Publisher clients. Please be aware that skippable video ads are different from TrueView video ads and should not be marketed as such to your customers. Read about skippable ads in our help center.

If you would like to buy Video from DoubleClick Ad Exchange or have questions regarding skippable ads on Ad Exchange, please reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

[ACTION NEEDED] New Automated Creative Reviews
In the coming months, Ad Exchange will implement new automated creative reviews to maintain the quality of ads on the exchange. Creatives that do not meet our policies will not be served until corrected. Common issues include: flash cookies, raw IP addresses, missing or broken click macros, invalid 4th party calls, undeclared or incorrect landing page, customer creative ID misuse, non certified vendors, and creative download sizes that exceed the maximum load. Please review the automated creative review help center article here.

If issues are identified, please respond as quickly as possible to prevent interruptions to your campaigns.

[POLICY] Raw IP’s Not Allowed in Snippets
Starting August 9th, snippets containing a raw IP address will be dropped from the auction. Ad Exchange requires that your 3rd party ads use qualified domains, and not raw IP addresses. Please refer to our help center for more details and reach out to your Technical Account Manager if you have any questions.

Account Security Resources
The Ad Exchange team takes account security very seriously. To help our clients learn about and prevent account hijacking, we’ve created an account security guide available in the Ad Exchange help center. Hijacking (also known as Account Takeover / Account Compromise) occurs when there is unauthorized access of an account and/or when unauthorized changes are made to an account by someone unknown to the advertiser.

There are two types of hijacked accounts:

1. Unauthorized Access: Where there are no campaign changes
2. Confirmed Hijacking: Where there are campaign and/or account level changes

While hijacking of Ad Exchange accounts is rare, it is important for your customer response teams to be aware of what hijacking is and know how to escalate such issues. For more information, please visit our help center guide on account security.

RTB CHANGES

To keep up with real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

New RTB Protocol Field
As of today, the BidRequest.AdSlot.ad_block_key field in the RTB protocol contains a 64-bit integer that is a stable identifier for (web_property, slot, page) combinations. This new field allows you to track the performance of specific adslot-ad combinations to make better bidding decisions.

If you have any questions about the new BidRequest.AdSlot.ad_block_key field, contact your Technical Account Manager or refer to the RTB protocol developer documentation here.

Cookie Refresh Period Reduced to 14 Days
Cookie Matching tags can now be served to unique users after 14 days. Previously, Ad Exchange buyers had to wait 30 days before refreshing user cookies. By enabling a shorter refresh period, buyers will be able to maintain a more up-to-date and accurate match table.

Read more about refreshing your match tables here.

UI CHANGES

New Remarketing Tag
With the new Remarketing Tag, building and managing your remarketing lists is now easier and more powerful than before. To start remarketing, advertisers only need create and place one tag across all pages they want to target. Based on the information passed through the URL of the tag, advertisers can then choose targeting categories to generate lists. To modify or create a new list, an advertiser creates new rules, and does not need to retag.

While your existing tags will continue to work, we encourage you to try the new Remarketing Tag. To find more details, visit the Ad Exchange help center article, or contact your Technical Account Manager.

Please be aware, if you plan to use the Remarketing Tag within a non-HTML environment, such as a container tag or Flash creative, the <img> portion of the tag will require additional formatting. Review this help center article to ensure your lists are populated correctly.

UPCOMING EVENTS

West Coast Ad Exchange Developer Day - WEDNESDAY, September 12th
On WEDNESDAY, September 12th, we will be hosting a Developer Day at Google’s Mountain View Campus for Ad Exchange real-time bidding developers. Our engineers and Technical Account Managers will cover ways to build a reliable bidder infrastructure, boost bidder intelligence, improve auction win rate, and much more. We’ll also be highlighting upcoming changes to the RTB protocol, and taking feedback on product direction.

This event is intended for technical developers at buyers already doing real-time bidding. If you or someone at your company is interested, please sign up HERE, RSVP closes on August 31st.

PUSHED

Four New Ad Sizes

The following four ad sizes are now available for display ads on Ad Exchange.

• 234x60 - Half Banner
• 180x150 - Small Rectangle
• 120x240 - Vertical Banner
• 125x125 - Button

If you have any questions about these new sizes, please reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Ad Exchange Developer Day - THURSDAY, JUNE 21
On Thursday, June 21 , we'll be hosting our FIRST on-site Developer Day at the Google New York office for Ad Exchange real-time bidding developers. Our engineers and Technical Account Managers will cover ways to build a reliable bidder infrastructure, boost bidder intelligence, improve auction win rate, and much more. We'll also be highlighting upcoming changes to the RTB protocol, and taking feedback on product direction.

This event is intended for technical developers at buyers already doing real-time bidding. If you or someone at your company is interested, please sign up HERE , RSVP Closes on June 13th.

NEW TRAININGS AND WEBINARS

We're excited to announce a new set of webinars to be held over the next six weeks touching on a wide variety of Ad Exchange topics. Some of these events will be held at both a U.S. time and a Europe time, so be sure to sign up for the time that's most convenient for you.

For those new to AdX and real-time bidding (RTB):

Building a real-time bidder
Want to see how easy it is to get started with RTB? Join this webinar to see a live coding demo of a simple bidder with Q and A after. Learn the technical details to build a bidder, process bid request in real-time, and how to match users. We'll also talk about how to use RTB more effectively and what to consider in your bidder's algorithm. Europe: Wednesday, 6th June | 14:00 GMT Summer Time (London)
Click to register for "Building a real-time bidder"

For those looking for a review of AdX policy, an oft-asked about topic:

Ad Exchange Policy Webinar
Learn about all the AdX policies and what happens when a violation is found.
US: Thursday, June 7 | 11-12:30 PT / 2-3:30 ET
Click to register for "US - Ad Exchange Policy"
Europe: Tuesday, June 12 | 14-16:00 GMT
Click to register for "EMEA - Ad Exchange Policy"

Ad Exchange Vendor Technologies & Certification
Learn about our certification process and what it means to be GDN-certified. Find out the steps to get a technology certified and which technologies need to be declared in the auction.
US: Tuesday, June 12 | 12-1:30 PT / 3-4:30 ET
Click to register for "US- Vendor Technologies & Certification"
Europe: A general policy webinar will be held on Tuesday, 12 June

For anyone looking to learn more about the AdX video ads offering:

Why AdX Video?
Learn about the online video market and why you should get started buying video. We'll also let you know what AdX has to offer and how you can quickly ramp up your video offering with AdX.
US: Thursday, June 14 | 10:30-11 PT / 1:30-2 ET
Click to register for "Why ADX Video"

AdX Video Step-by-Step
Learn how easy it is to set up and deliver video ads in the AdX UI. Or if you have a bidder, learn everything you need to know to start processing and responding to video ad requests.
US: Wednesday, June 20 | 11:30-12 PT / 2:30-3 ET
Click to register for "AdX Video Step-by-Step"

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Video Beta Update - VPAID now accepted on AdX
DoubleClick Ad Exchange now supports the serving of interactive in-stream video ads using the Video Player - Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) v1.0 technology standard. Currently, inventory is available from select Google Display Network and Ad Exchange publishers (YouTube inventory does not support VPAID) and we are working to quickly ramp up available impressions. To get started, contact your account manager or read our help center article found here.

Expandables - Now Open to All
DoubleClick Ad Exchange now allows all buyers to serve expandable creatives to over 1BN eligible publisher impressions daily. Start delivering user-initiated (click to expand) and rollover expandable creatives by declaring an approved expandable ad technology vendor, creating an expandable creative, and indicating the expandable directions that apply to your creative in the UI or via your RTB response.

Available Expandable Creative Dimensions

Base Dimension	Expanded Dimension
120 x 600	420 x 600
160 x 600	320 x 600
300 x 250	600 x 300
468 x 60	468 x 210
728 x 90	728 x 300

It is the buyer's responsibility to follow the correct specifications and adhere to the Ad Exchange creative policy when delivering expandable creatives. To see full details on how to get started with expandables on DoubleClick Ad Exchange please refer to the help center article here and if you have any questions please contact your technical account manager.

[ACTION NEEDED] Effective JUNE 1st - CSV Reports are no longer available via email
To consolidate our reporting offerings and to make accessing performance reports more programmatic, CSV reports will no longer be sent via email. Instead, the reports will only be available via Google Storage for Developers. If you've been receiving CSV performance reports by email and do not yet have access to Google Storage for Developers, please speak to your Technical Account Manager as soon as possible.

New automated creative reviews
In the coming months AdX will be implementing new automated creative reviews to maintain the quality of ads on the exchange. While no policies are changing, creatives that do not meet our policies will be paused until corrected. The most common issues are: flash cookies, raw IP addresses, missing or broken click macros, invalid 4th party calls, undeclared or incorrect landing page, customer creative ID misuse, non certified vendors, and creative download sizes.

If issues are identified, your Technical Account Manager will reach out to you. Please respond as quickly as possible to prevent interruptions to your campaigns.

[ACTION NEEDED] Click Macros required after JULY 9th
To maintain the accuracy of our reporting, on July 9th a new automated review will begin screening creatives for the appropriate Google click macro. All third party ad-serving ads must contain the correct macros or they will be excluded from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. For more information on macros, please read our Help Center article here and review the policy here, or contact your technical account manager.

RTB CHANGES
To keep up with Ad Exchange real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog .

[ACTION NEEDED] RTB Protocol Change - seller_network changing from GCN to GDN
The name sent in the seller_network field identifying the Google Display Network (GDN) will change from GCN to GDN. This change is only a name change and does not reflect any change in inventory source or quality.

If your bidder pays attention to the seller_network field and looks for the string "GCN" to inform your bidding, your system will not perform as intended. To ensure your bidder responds correctly, please review your bidder logic everywhere the seller_network field is used.

[ACTION NEEDED] AdGroup ID required for callouts with multiple ad groups
On July 2, 2012, we will start requiring that the adgroup_id be specified whenever there is more than one matching_ad_data in the BidRequest. Previously, bidders only needed to specify the adgroup_id in the Bid Response if using hosted creatives or merged streams. If you have any questions about adgroup_id requirements, please contact your Account Manager.

New RTB Protocol Field
Available today, in the RTB protocol, is the new BidRequest.Mobile.mobile_device_type field. This field indicates if a mobile impression is from a tablet or highend phone allowing advertisers to target campaigns to an even deeper level.

If you have any questions about the new BidRequest.Mobile.mobile_device_type field, contact your Technical Account Manager or refer to the RTB protocol developer documentation here.

UI CHANGES

Bulk Upload Now Available for Location Targeting
Bulk location targeting is now available via the Ad Exchange user interface. Implement sophisticated location targeting strategies by uploading up to 1,000 locations per campaign at a time. Use the new bulk upload tool for locations found on the 'Campaign Settings' page by selecting the 'Advanced Search' controls and then 'Bulk Locations'.

If you have any questions about how to use this tool please visit the help center article found here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

DoubleClick Insights, TUESDAY, JUNE 5th
Google and DoubleClick invite you to join us June 5th for DoubleClick Insights -- a series of thought-provoking conversations about the future of digital marketing with leaders from top advertisers, agencies and publishers. Please register and tune in to the DoubleClick Insights live stream on June 5, 2012 from 9am to 1pm PST-- here.

Google’s Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising, will be joined by industry luminaries to explore topics such as:

• How technology is reshaping both the business of advertising, and the consumers’ experience with advertising
• The opportunities advertisers and publishers have to work better together to unlock the full potential of digital

Ad Exchange Developer Day - THURSDAY, JUNE 21
On Thursday, June 21, we’ll be hosting our FIRST on-site Developer Day at the Google New York office for Ad Exchange real-time bidding developers. Our engineers and Technical Account Managers will cover ways to build a reliable bidder infrastructure, boost bidder intelligence, improve auction win rate, and much more. We’ll also be highlighting upcoming changes to the RTB protocol, and taking feedback on product direction.

This event is intended for technical developers at buyers already doing real-time bidding. If you or someone at your company is interested, please sign up HERE. An official invitation will be sent next week.

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Video Beta Update: AdSense In-Game video inventory available in the Ad Exchange
On May 1st we made a new source of video inventory available to DoubleClick Ad Exchange Video buyers. Now you can serve in-game video ads to the publishers of Google In-Game Advertising. Initially this will provide over 13 million additional US impressions per month of 30 second inventory and quickly scale to 240 million impressions per month globally.

If you would like to access AdSense for Games in-game video inventory, just continue buying Video ads on AdX. There’s nothing to change. But, if you do not want to buy in-game placements, please add the “in-game” category exclusion to your campaigns. You can do so by navigating to the “Campaigns” tab, then the “Networks” tab, and expanding Exclusions.

Updated Buy-side Policies
In order to ensure the best possible service to our clients and ensure that our guidelines accurately reflect current product functionality, Google periodically updates its program policies. We wanted to share with you an overview of the changes we have made. For specific policies, please refer to the Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange Buyer Program Guidelines, located here.

Policies have been updated as follows:

1. Clarified the scope of the prohibition on passing personally identifiable information
2. Removed API terms because there is now a separate set of Google API terms and conditions
3. Enabled support for multi-directional expanding creatives
4. Clarified the process and location of the list of 3rd party vendors that need to be declared when booking a tag
5. Revised wording to ensure consistency in terminology within the policies

[REMINDER] New Display Network Tab and AdGroup Targeting Logic Change
We rolled out the new “Display Network” tab to all Ad Exchange accounts. The new tab combines the placement and topic targeting controls from the Network and Topics tabs to help you make better targeting decisions.

During the month of April we rolled out new targeting logic for the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Previously targeting was handled on an “OR” basis (i.e., ads appear on sites that match either topic OR placement targeting). Now, targeting is handled on an “AND” basis (i.e., ads only appear on sites that match both topic AND placement targeting). To ensure your current campaigns are not adversely affected, please revisit them to adjust your targeting settings as needed. If you need help or have any questions about this change please reach out to your technical account manager.

Active View - Availability Clarification
You may have seen our blog post about Active view or read about it on our innovations page. Active View provides an actionable metric that advertisers can use to target and measure only ads that were at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second. This measurement solution is currently only available on the Google Display Network Reserve and will eventually be a universal metric across DoubleClick solutions.

RTB CHANGES

To keep up with Ad Exchange real-time bidding changes, you can also subscribe to the ad_exchange feed on the Google Ads Developer Blog.

[ACTION NEEDED] RTB Protocol Change - seller_network changing from GCN to GDN
On June 1, 2012, the name sent in the seller_network field identifying the Google Display Network (GDN) will change from GCN to GDN. This change is only a name change and does not reflect any change in inventory source or quality.

If your bidder pays attention to the seller_network field and looks for the string “GCN” to inform your bidding, your system will not perform as intended after Ad Exchange begins passing the new “GDN” name. To ensure your bidder responds correctly, please review your bidder logic everywhere the seller_network field is used. If you have any questions about this change please reach out to your technical account manager.

[ACTION NEEDED] AdGroup ID required for callouts with multiple ad groups
On July 2, 2012, we will start requiring that the adgroup_id be specified whenever there is more than one matching_ad_data in the BidRequest. Previously, bidders only needed to specify the adgroup_id in the Bid Response if using hosted creatives or merged streams. If you have any questions about adgroup_id requirements, please contact your Account Manager.

Video Beta Update: Player Size Included in RTB Callout
To improve the transparency of Video inventory in the Ad Exchange we’ve added the ability to target video impressions by player size. Player size is an additional targetable signal that buyers can use to identify inventory that is more likely to produce engaged views. If you have any questions about how to use this new targeting feature, please reach out to your Account Manager.

Maximum Length of buyer_creative_id
Starting on May 1st, we began enforcing a 64 byte limit on the buyer_creative_id field. Going forward, bids with a buyer_creative_id greater than 64 bytes will not be considered in the auction.

UI CHANGES

Bulk Location Targeting
Soon, you’ll be able to implement sophisticated location targeting strategies for your campaigns via the Ad Exchange user interface. Over the next few weeks, we will gradually roll out access to a new bulk upload tool for locations. To upload up to 1,000 locations per campaign go to the ‘Campaign Settings’ page, select the ‘Advanced Search’ controls and then ‘Bulk Locations’.

If you have any questions about how to use this tool please visit the help center article found here.

New Campaign Settings Page
We have redesigned the Campaign Settings page in the Ad Exchange UI to make it easier for you to configure your campaigns. By both grouping similar controls and hiding unnecessary ones, the workflow is now more streamlined and intuitive. The overhaul is an immediate enhancement for you -- with no loss of functionality -- and will enable us to continue to improve your user experience in the future.

TRAINING/COMMUNICATION UPDATE

We’re still in the process of scheduling our webinars for this quarter. Be on the lookout for a separate email with a list of upcoming trainings!

Ad Group Targeting is Changing [ACTION NEEDED]
Starting April 2, 2012 your ads groups will serve on the intersection of the placements and topics you’re targeting. Read the February 2012 Newsletter for more detail on this change, or watch or download the webinar here.

Trading Locations [ACTION NEEDED]
Our four new fixed “Trading Locations” are now live and starting April 2, 2012, the new response time requirement will be 100ms. More detail found below in the February 2012 Newsletter.

RTB Protocol Change - No Longer Sending Whitelisted Vendors in Bid Requests
Starting April 2, 2012, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange Real Time Bidding (RTB) protocol will reduce the number of vendor type entries it sends in the allowed_vendor_type field within the BidRequest protocol buffer. More detail found below in the February 2012 Newsletter.

RTB Protocol Change - Notation Change for Field Deprecations
The following fields in BidRequest have been deprecated and will no longer be filled starting April 2, 2012: protocol_version, campaign_id, excluded_click_through_url, company_name.

The MobileApp submessage has been renamed to Mobile. The following fields that are part of the newly renamed Mobile submessage have been deprecated and will no longer be filled starting April 2, 2012: app_name, company_name.

More detail found below in the February 2012 Newsletter.

Buyer Creative ID Mandatory
The buyer_creative_id field is fully supported today and starting April 2, 2012, will be mandatory in the bid response. More detail found below in the February 2012 Newsletter.

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Maximum Campaign Limit Now 10,000 Per Ad Exchange Account
With Ad Exchange continuing to grow in leaps and bounds, some of our clients have reached the maximum number of campaigns allowed for a single account. To alleviate this problem and to assist our clients’ continued growth, we’ve increased the maximum number of campaigns per AdX account to 10,000. If you have any questions about what this may mean for you please contact your account manager.

RTB CHANGES

RTB Protocol Change - seller_network changing from GCN to GDN [ACTION NEEDED]
On June 1, 2012, the name sent in the seller_network field identifying the Google Display Network (GDN) will change from GCN to GDN. This change is only a name change and does not reflect any change in inventory source or quality.

If your bidder pays attention to the seller_network field and looks for the string “GCN” to inform your bidding, your system will not perform as intended after Ad Exchange begins passing the new “GDN” name. To ensure your bidder responds correctly, please review your bidder logic everywhere the seller_network field is used. If you have any questions about this change please reach out to your technical account manager.

UI CHANGES

Update to the Campaign Settings Page
The campaign settings page has been redesigned to make it easier for you to manage campaign settings from the UI. We’ve rearranged the controls to match the look and feel of the campaign construction page and removed the controls not compatible with Ad Exchange.

If you have any questions about the changes we’ve made to the Campaign Settings Page please reach out to your technical account manager.

New - Display Network Tab and AdGroup Targeting Logic Change
During the month of April, we’ll be rolling out the new “Display Network” tab to all Ad Exchange accounts. The new tab will combine the placement and topic targeting controls from the Network and Topics tabs and provide a new “Reach Estimation” widget to help you make better targeting decisions. As you add or remove topics and audiences from your targeting, the “Reach Estimation” widget will provide an estimate of how many impressions and users could be available to match your selections. Of course the widget cannot tell you how many impressions your client will receive, but rather only an estimate of the targeted available inventory from the Ad Exchange.

In addition to combining the placement and topic controls, the new “Display Network” tab will bring with it a change to the adgroup targeting logic. Previously targeting was handled on an “OR” basis, i.e. ads appear on sites that match either topic OR placement targeting. Starting on April 2, 2012, targeting will be handled on an “AND” basis, i.e. ads only appear on sites that match both topic AND placement targeting. To ensure your current campaigns are not adversely affected, please revisit them to adjust your targeting settings as needed. If you need help or have any questions about this change please reach out to your technical account manager.

New - Zip Code Targeting in the UI
Zip code targeting is now available in the Ad Exchange UI. To add zip code targeting to your campaign, go to the “Settings” tab and select edit next to “Locations” to add or exclude specific zip codes or explore custom area targeting such as radius or custom shape targeting.

To find out how to use Zip Code targeting in the UI, please visit the Help Center articles here.

TRAINING/COMMUNICATION UPDATE - AD EXCHANGE DEVELOPERS

Announcing - New DoubleClick Ad Exchange Developers Website
We’re excited to announce a new website for Ad Exchange Developers that can found at developers.google.com/ad-exchange. This replaces the old code.google.com/apis/adx-rtb site and gives our developer community a dedicated place to get information about the Ad Exchange.

Included in the release of our new developers site is the public release of the DoubleClick Ad Exchange Buyer REST API and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange RTB Protocol. If you’re working on developing your own RTB Bidder and want to access Ad Exchange inventory, head over to developers.google.com/ad-exchange to learn more.

Update to the Ad Exchange Buyer APIs and Protocol Terms of Service
If you use one of the Ad Exchange Buyer APIs or the RTB Protocol, we’d like to let you know about a recent change to our Ad Exchange Buyer APIs and Protocol Terms of Service. If you have any questions about this change please reach out to your account manager. To review the new language head over to the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange Developers Website at https://developers.google.com/ad-exchange/terms.

Real-Time Bidding and API News on the Google Ads Developer blog
To improve communication with our Ad Exchange developer community - that is, those using real-time bidding and our APIs - the DoubleClick Ad Exchange team will now be posting to the Google Ads Developer blog. We’ll be using the blog regularly to update the community on news, best practices, and beta features. We’ll also highlight upcoming events like webinars, Google+ Hangouts, and on-site Developer Day workshops.

To make sure you get the latest news from the Ad Exchange, subscribe to our ad_exchange feed.

GENERAL PRODUCT UPDATES

Ad Group Targeting is Changing on April 1, 2012 [ACTION NEEDED]
In order to give you more precise control over your Ad Exchange campaigns, we'll be changing to the way your ads are targeted if you use both topic and placement targeting in the same ad group. Starting April 1, your ads groups will serve on the intersection  of the placements and topics you're targeting - so you can use topics to hone in on specific inventory on large publisher sites. For example, if you target the topic "Sports" and the placement youtube.com, your ads will appear on sports content on YouTube.

As a result, this change will likely cause a significant drop in impressions and clicks for existing ad groups that target both placements and topics.  Unless the new targeting behavior is preferable, we recommend that you create separate ad groups for the placements and topics that you're targeting.

If you are affected by this, you should have received a separate email with instructions for preserving your current targeting.

We recently held a webinar to review the change, and walk through the process of preserving your current targeting methods. You can watch or download the recording here.

YouTube Content Labels
YouTube Content Labels offer even more control to advertisers who are concerned about the type of content alongside which their ads might serve.  Similar to TV ratings, YouTube content labels indicate to our ad servers whether a video is suitable for all audiences, audiences aged teen+, or mature audiences only.  

Buyers with UI advertising campaigns for YouTube content may apply filters to restrict their ads from showing next to one or more of the content categories.  Buyers with RTB campaigns for YouTube content will have the corresponding content label of the video in the detected_content_label  field and can bid accordingly.  You can learn more about it in the Help Center.

Direct Deal ID API - in Alpha
We've enhanced our API to simplify direct deal management by giving you access to all information for a specific deal ID.   The API enables easy access to the deal information when a bid request comes in for a fixed price deal and will facilitate integration of AdX Direct Deals into your own tools.

Ad Exchange on the Ads Developer blog
The Google Ads Developer blog now features posts for Ad Exchange developers: anyone using real-time bidding or the Ad Exchange APIs. On the blog, we'll be covering changes and new features, best practices, and highlighting upcoming events. We encourage you to subscribe to stay up-to-date on developer-related news.

RTB CHANGES

Trading Locations
As you may know, your bid requests have been coming from a variety of datacenters throughout the world. When we are occasionally forced to re-route traffic from datacenter to another, this may have been a headache for your bidder.   To increase predictability, we're announcing a set of four new, fixed "Trading Locations": West Coast US, East Coast US, Europe, and Asia.  Your bid requests will consistently originate from these trading locations will remain consistent, independent of our datacenter.

We are also announcing a second change related to bid response time. Up until now, we've required bid responses to return in 120ms, which is comprised of 80ms think time and 40ms network time. Because our new schema significantly reduces the variability of network time by consolidating and stabilizing the origin of callouts, bidders should be able to more consistently meet the response window.  Starting on April 1, 2012, the new response time requirement will be 100ms. Please note: with the reduced network time, if you strategically locate your data centers near our fixed trading locations, your bidder's think time will actually increase.

Key Advantages

• Network transit times will be much more predictable. You no longer need to worry about Google adding or removing data centers, and routine data center maintenance will be much more transparent
• The trading locations are fixed.  We intend to stay in them for many years. We hope this consistency will make planning and provisioning easier.

Creative Submission API Beta
We have enhanced our API to allow you to submit new creatives into our verification pipeline and to query the status of existing creatives.  Please talk to your Technical Account Manager if you would like to sign up for the API. More information can be found at our reference guide.

Before using the API, you must be able to set the buyer_creative_id  field in your bid responses so we can match up the creatives in the bid response with the uploaded creatives. After submitting a new creative, it can take up to 30 minutes before its status can be queried via the API, although approval will generally take longer.

RTB Protocol Change - Sending Whitelisted Vendors in Bid Requests
Starting April 1, 2012, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange Real Time Bidding (RTB) protocol will reduce the number of vendor type entries it sends in the allowed_vendor_type field within the BidRequest protocol buffer. This is not a change in policy and represents only the removal of redundant data. There are two changes occurring:

1. For requests from Ad Exchange publishers, many vendor types will no longer be sent in the allowed_vendor_type field because they have been whitelisted across the exchange. This means that these vendors are still allowed for use, but should no longer be declared when returning a BidResponse. Vendors.txt  has already been updated to only list vendors that should be declared.
2. For requests for Google Display Network (GDN) sites, we will stop sending all allowed vendors because every GDN site has the same set of allowed vendors, listed in gdn_vendors.tx.  You should declare vendor use only from the vendors listed in gdn_vendors.txt.  You may determine if a BidRequest is from GDN by examining the seller_network field of the BidRequest.

RTB Protocol Change - Notation Change for Field Deprecations
We make changes to the RTB protocol  to expose new features and streamline the specification.  To reduce the impact on your business we are providing longer notification periods for any protocol changes.  When we deprecate fields in the RTB protocol, we first prefix the field with "DEPRECATED_" and continue to fill the field so that buyers can continue to use the data while making any necessary system updates to remove any dependencies on the deprecated fields.  During this period, changes to field names will be transparent to buyers until they update their protocol version.  After a specified period of time, we remove the field entirely.

The following fields in BidRequest have been deprecated and will no longer being filled starting April 1, 2012:

• protocol_version
• campaign_id
• excluded_click_through_url
• company_name

The MobileApp submessage has been renamed to Mobile. The following fields that are part of the newly renamed Mobile submessage have been deprecated and will no longer be filled starting April 1, 2012:

• app_name
• company_name

Buyer Creative ID Mandatory on April 1, 2012 
The buyer_creative_id  field has been added to the BidResponse protocol in order to streamline the identification of specific ads and enable new features like the snippet status report.  It is fully supported today and will be mandatory in the bid response on April 1, 2012.

With the new schema, you can choose a unique identifier for each ad and pass it in bid responses in the buyer_creative_id  field.  This allows us to report on the status of creatives using your IDs, which will simplify communication and debugging.  To make use of this feature, you must declare the buyer_creative_id  field for all bids then notify your TAM.  Once enabled, any bid that is missing this declaration will be rejected.

UI CHANGES

Direct Ad Serving from DFA with InRed URL
In order to reduce ad serving latency and minimize reporting discrepancies with DFA, Ad Exchange can directly serve your DFA ads.   An "InRed," or internal redirect, allows Google to serve your ad directly from DFA's ad server, avoiding a call back to the browser. When our system sees that your third-party redirect points to the DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) ad server, we add a checkbox to the UI declaring an InRed url.  Note that you should clear the checkbox if the HTML snippet is an impression beacon.

TRAINING

Webinars added to Help Center
We've updated the list of upcoming training webinars in our Help Center. Take a look, and register if any of the topics interest you!

THANK YOU

Thank you for buying on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. We hope you find these updates useful. If there's something you'd like to see highlighted in next month's update, feel free to reply to this email to let us know.

-- The DoubleClick Ad Exchange Team

TRAINING/DOCUMENTATION UPDATES

Ad Exchange Training Guide

We’re pleased to announce a new one-stop shop for Ad Exchange training resources, the Ad Exchange Training Guide. The guide provides articles, videos, and webinar recordings across a variety of topics - ranging from Campaigns to Policies to Optimization. So take a look, whether you’re a newbie who needs to learn it all, or you’d just like a refresher on one or two topics.

New Real-Time Bidding Videos

As most real-time bidding buyers know, the UI pre-targeting campaign can have a major effect on bidder performance. We know, though, that there are a lot of settings to keep straight. To help you set up the campaign properly every time, we’ve just launched a step-by-step “Creating a Real-Time Bidding Campaign” video. You can find it on the RTB Microsite, or watch the video here. (Watch for more RTB videos and webinars soon!)

PRODUCT UPDATES

Mobile App Inventory
Earlier this month, we started testing the ability for a few select AdX buyers to buy AdMob in-app inventory on AdX.  This will allow marketers on AdX to buy, in real time, ads that run inside people’s favorite mobile games, news apps and more.  Most of this inventory is of the 320x50 ad size.  We also recently started testing allowing AdX sellers to opt in inventory from mobile-optimized sites in the 320x50 ad size. While inventory of this size is limited today, we expect it to ramp up over the next few months. See our blogpost for more details.  We hope to start adding more buyers in Q1, so if you are interested in buying in-app inventory or inventory in the 320x50 size, please contact your account executive.

Hosted Cookie Match Tables in Beta
Google is now able to host a buyer’s match table between the buyer’s ids and Google’s cookie ids.  This both reduces the infrastructure requirements for our buyers as well as lays the groundwork for further cookie matching enhancements.  We will be opening up the beta to all buyers in January.  Please contact your TAM to join the beta.

Cookie Matching Enhancements
Earlier this year we increased the options buyers had when matching cookies.  Buyers are now able to, in one call, add the user to one or more user lists and set the DoubleClick cookie if its missing.  The new V2 API also set the groundwork for future cookie matching enhancements.  You can learn more about V2 as its required for hosted cookie tables at:
https://code.google.com/apis/adx-rtb/docs/cookie.html

New webinar on cookie best practices: Cookie Matching: Hosted Tables & Best Practices

Snippet Status Report
Buyers often don't know if a creative is successfully serving on AdX or if it has been rejected. To simplify the management and review of creative status, a new snippet status report will be available. This report will list the status of all of a buyer’s snippets (a creative on AdX), as well as additional information such as whether they have now been classified by advertiser. The report will be updated every 4 hours and the old copy of the report stored by Google will be available for 7 days. The report can be downloaded using Google Storage for Developers, similar to how the publisher settings file is made available.

Please work with your AdX Technical Account Manager if you do not have access to the file or if you do not have a Google Storage for Developers account set up.

Please note: In order to use the report a buyer must use the optional buyer_creative_id string field in a bid response. This field allows buyers to provide their own name for the creative, which makes reviewing snippet statuses much simpler.  For example, seeing that ad ‘24523654562aedf35’ is rejected is not as clear as ‘300x250 coke ad for social campaign’ is approved. The buyer_creative_id field will be used heavily going forward in AdX, so please start using this field so that you can take advantage of improvements in creative reporting and reviews.

CSV Reports
In March 2012 the CSV performance reports will no longer be sent by email. The same reports are currently available via Google Storage for Developers, which is the preferred method for accessing them. We are making the switch to make programmatic access easier, and to consolidate our reporting offerings. The CSV performance reports will be available using the same system as publisher settings files and snippet status reports.

If you are currently receiving CSV performance reports by email, please speak to your TAM to enable access to Google Storage for Developers for your account if you haven't already done so.

Reach and Frequency Reporting
The Reach and Frequency report shows how many people saw your ads and how many times they saw them over a certain period of time: reach is the number of unique users exposed to a particular advertisement during a specified period of time; frequency is the average number of times a user is exposed to an advertisement.  Stats are available for daily, weekly, and monthly time periods. These metrics should be used in conjunction with a campaign's other reported metrics for an overall picture of performance.  Reporting is available from September 1, 2011 to the present.

Approved Technology Vendors
We frequently update the list of certified vendors in our documentation as we continue to broaden the pool of allowed ad technologies for Ad Exchange publisher and Google Display Network inventory.  Certified vendor technologies fall under two categories: those that need to be declared when creating an ad, and those that do not.   Please continue to check the vendor lists to stay abreast of changes. For example, ‘BlueKai’ and ‘Flashtalking - Expandable Unit’ have recently been added. Note that both of these ad technologies can be used only on AdX publisher inventory, and do not have access to the Google Display Network  

If your proprietary ad technology, or a technology that you use is not listed, and you would like to submit it for certification, please use the contact us form and select "Vendor certification."

Buyer/Advertiser Level Direct Deals - in Beta
Publishers and buyers can now have direct deals restricted to a specific advertiser.  The new deal type allows publishers to ensure that deals through AdX for their premium inventory will not create any conflicts with their existing direct sales.

Direct Deal ID API - in Alpha
An API is now available for testing by buyers allowing them to access all the information for a specific deal id.  Giving a buyer API access simplifies determining the deal information when a bid request comes in for a fixed price deal.  It has been a key request by DSPs to better integrate AdX Direct Deals into their own tools.

RTB CHANGES

Buyer Creative ID
The buyer_creative_id field has been added to the BidResponse protocol in order to streamline the identification of specific ads and enable new features like the snippet status report.  It is fully supported today and will be mandatory in the bid response on April 1, 2012.

With the new schema, you can choose a unique identifier for each ad and pass it in bid responses in the buyer_creative_id field.  This allows us to report on the status of creatives using your IDs, which will simplify communication and debugging.  To make use of this feature, you must declare the buyer_creative_id field for all bids then notify your TAM.  Once enabled, any bid that is missing this declaration will be rejected.

RTB Protocol Field Deprecations
We make changes to the RTB protocol to both expose new features and streamline the specification.  To reduce the impact on your business we are providing longer notification periods for any protocol changes.  When we deprecate fields in the RTB protocol, we first prefix the field with “DEPRECATED_” and continue to fill the field so that buyers can continue to use the data while making any necessary system updates to remove any dependencies on the deprecated fields.  During this period, changes to field names will be transparent to buyers until they update their protocol version.  After a specified period of time, we remove the field entirely.

The following fields in BidRequest have been deprecated and will no longer being filled starting April 1, 2012:

• protocol_version
• campaign_id
• excluded_click_through_url
• company_name

The MobileApp submessage has been renamed to Mobile.  The following fields that are part of the newly renamed Mobile submessage have been deprecated and will no longer be filled starting April 1, 2012:

• app_name
• company_name

Brand Safety Signals
Brand safety signals allow large brand advertisers to find and buy configurable subsets of non-premium inventory that they can be confident are safe for their brand to show on.  The recently added signals are of two types: sensitive content labels and site lists. The former are listed in the detected_content_labels field of the BidRequest, and they indicate the content category of the publisher's site. Given the content information, the advertiser can decide which if any ads to show on the pages with sensitive content.

The site lists currently available are Ad Planner 1000 and Brand Select. They will be specified in the site_list_id field.  Ad Planner 1000 is a list of 1000 most visited sites on the web, you can find more information here. Brand Select is a list of publishers generated based on Google internal ranking, and is only specified for anonymous inventory. It provides advertisers with some guarantee on the quality of the anonymous site they are bidding on.

Creative Rotation
AdX policy has been updated such that creative rotation is no longer allowed.  Each buyer_creative_id you return must always be associated with the same creative, and the same creative must be used each time the tag is rendered. We will be enforcing this via spot checks and automated processes going forward. Please contact your TAM if you have questions.

RTB API
AdX has introduced a new API allowing buyers to query and change their account configuration settings such as bidder URL, cookie matcher URL and other fields.  The API will simplify and speed up account changes without requiring a back and forth with a buyer’s AdX account team, reducing the time required for these tasks from days or hours to only seconds.  The API will also allow secure retrieval of small pieces of information like winning price encryption keys and mapping of AdGroup IDs to accounts.  This API will also be used for future buyer account controls in AdX.  More information can be found at our reference guide.

Note: the API does allow changes to the QPS for a particular data center location but the total overall QPS for a buyer across all data centers still can only be altered by Google.  To avoid possible performance issues please do not make any QPS changes without working with your Technical Account Manager.

Dictionary File Freshness
The dictionary files currently available on the AdX RTB documentation site are now automatically updated to ensure that information is up-to-date.

UI CHANGES

Updated Location Targeting Interface
To provide an even better experience for our UI buyers, we've connected the location targeting feature within Ad Exchange to Google Maps. This will allow us to provide more information about locations, make relevant location suggestions, and improve the level of accuracy of our location targeting.  We’ve just released  the first of these changes: a makeover to the location targeting interface to make it easier to discover and obtain more detail on potential target locations.

As you type into the search box in the location targeting section, you'll instantly see helpful search suggestions.  If you were to enter a city name, the suggestions include (1) city name matches, (2) locations that enclose the city (e.g., a state), and (3) related locations that may be near the location that you've entered, have a similar name, or enclose a location that has a similar name. You can then pick the options that make the most sense for your business and quickly make the appropriate selection.

We also offer reach numbers to help you estimate the audience within your selected target. These reach numbers are based on the number of users seen on Google properties and may differ significantly from census numbers. Reach should be used only as general guidance to help you determine the relative number of users in a location target compared to other locations.

Retiring Support for Internet Explorer 6
By the end of this year, you will be required to use Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or any other compatible browser to log in into your account.  For optimal performance and a faster experience, we recommend you use the latest version of your preferred browser to access AdX.

Demographic Bidding
AdX previously let UI buyers filter audiences by age and gender, but the value of this feature was hampered by the quality of data provided by the publishers.  As previously announced, we decided to remove this feature from the UI.  In the meantime, we are working on integrating other demographic data sources and will resurface the feature when it becomes available again. If you have any questions, please contact your account representative.

SUPPORT UPDATE

Holiday Creative Review Schedule
The Ad Exchange creative review team in Hyderabad, India, has the following days off this holiday season: Friday December 23, Monday December 26, and Friday December 30. To ensure that your creatives will be be reviewed before the Christmas and New Year's eve weekends, please submit all creatives by EOD on Wednesday December 21, and EOD on Wednesday December 28 for the respective holidays.  During this holiday period, please continue to submit creatives via the standard methodology, as opposed to any emergency channels, as this will ensure the fastest response time.

THANK YOU

Thank you for buying on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. We hope you find these updates useful. If there’s something you’d like to see highlighted in next month’s update, feel free to reply to this email to let us know.

-- The DoubleClick Ad Exchange Team

Run of Exchange

We recently announced the launch of Run of Exchange targeting to all buyers on Ad Exchange.

Previously, in order to get the broadest coverage for your campaign, you would need to select all categories in the Topics widget. Since 10% of the inventory is not categorizable for various reasons, including some YouTube inventory, we added this feature to allow you to reach even the uncategorized inventory. With this feature, it will be possible to target all impressions on the exchange with a single setting in the UI - the new "All Topics" category in the Topics targeting widget. Other filters, such as geo and language filtering for a campaign, will continue to work with this setting.

Learn more about Run-of-exchange targeting, including examples and FAQs. Please contact your account manager in case you have further questions or need help setting up the feature.

Direct Deal ID

A new field has been added to the RTB protocol indicating which direct deal a particular bid request is associated with. The direct_deal_id field will be sent as part of the bid request for any direct deals and will be a unique integer representing a particular deal between a buyer and a publisher. The deal ID will greatly simplify buyers responding to direct deals and also make revenue tracking easier as the number of impressions can be broken up for each deal by its ID. Initially the deal ID will be provided to a buyer by the publisher when a deal is set up. In Q4 an AdX Direct Deal marketplace will be launched which will automate deal creation and tracking. The change to the protocol will be live on Wednesday October 5th.

Here is an example of what the new field will look like in the RTB protocol.

// Information about any direct deals you matched for this inventory.
message DirectDeal {
        // A deal id identifying this exact direct deal and its specifics.
        optional int64 direct_deal_id = 1;

        // The fixed CPM deal that applies to your account for this adslot.  To
        // be considered, you must bid at least the value of fixed_cpm_micros,
        // and if you win, you will always be charged fixed_cpm_micros.  The
        // value is in micros of your account currency.  For example, if the
        // fixed cpm is 1290000 (1.29 in your account currency), you need to bid
        // at least this amount to be considered for this request.  If you win,
        // you will be charged a CPM of 1.29 in your account currency.
        optional int64 fixed_cpm_micros = 2;
}
repeated DirectDeal direct_deal = 6;

Impression Share

Often buyers may not achieve the reach or success of a campaign that they expected. With many different factors affecting campaign performance it can be difficult to pinpoint the cause.  This uncertainty may make buyers hesitant to increase their campaign budget or bid higher. In order to help you get around this uncertainty, we recently released a new feature that gives you insight at the campaign level into the percentage of impressions lost due to insufficient budget or due to insufficiently bids.

You can find this feature by going into the Dimensions tab of your campaign, and by following the instructions on viewing impression share metrics.

Expandables - Rollover

Last quarter, we launched the expandable ads beta program with click-to-expand ads only. Since then we’ve received feedback from both buyers and sellers on wanting to run rollover expandable ads as well. As a result of that feedback, we have decided to allow rollover expandable ads on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. We are currently in the process of modifying our program to support it and will be testing this with a few buyers and sellers. If you are interested in participating in the rollover expandables beta, please get in touch with your account representative.

Advertiser Classification

AdX is now classifying all creatives by advertiser using a variety of automated methods.  The advertiser list is initially restricted to 50 of the largest advertisers at Google but the number of advertisers will be ramping up rapidly across Q4. A webcast is planned for October which will cover more details on what Google sees as an ‘advertiser’, how to check if your creatives were classified properly, and how this information will be used by publishers.

Snippet Status Report

Buyers often don't know if a creative is successfully serving on AdX or if it has been rejected. To simplify the management and review of creative status, a new snippet status report will be available. This report will list all of a buyer’s snippets (a creative on AdX), their status as well as additional information such as whether they have now been classified by advertiser. The report will be updated every 4 hours and the old copy of the report stored by Google will be over-written. The report can be downloaded using Google Storage for Developers, similar to how the Publisher settings file is made available.

http://code.google.com/apis/storage/

Please work with your AdX Technical Account Manager if you do not have access to the file or if you do not have a Google Storage for Developers account set up.

 

RTB API

AdX has introduced a new API allowing buyers to query and change their account configuration settings such as bidder URL, cookie matcher URL and other fields. The API will simplify and speed up account changes without requiring a back and forth with a buyer’s AdX account team, reducing the time required for these tasks from days or hours to only seconds. The API will also allow secure retrieval of small pieces of information like winning price encryption keys and mapping of AdGroup IDs to accounts. This API will also be used for future buyer account controls in AdX. More information can be found at: https://code.google.com/apis/adexchangebuyer/reference.html.

 

Zip Code Followup

The fields for zip code and postal code data have been added to the real-time bidding (RTB) protocol. The new zip code and postal code fields, described below, are available now in the RTB protocol and fully populated with data.

// Detected postal code of the appropriate type for the country (e.g. zip code
  // if the country is "US").  The postal_code_prefix field is set when accuracy
  // is too low to imply a full code, otherwise the postal_code field is set.
  optional string postal_code = 33;
  optional string postal_code_prefix = 34;

The countries supported for zip code / postal code data are {AT, AU, BE, CA, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE,ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, IT, LT, LV, NL, NO, NZ, PR, PT, SA, SI, SG, TH, TW, US, ZA}.

Japan is not currently populated due to the granularity of postal codes in that country.  Your AdX Technical Account Manager will keep you posted of changes to postal code support worldwide.

Data Center followup

1. JAPAC
We have 2 clusters supporting the JAPAC region (Hong Kong, Taiwan). We repleaced a cluster in Hong Kong. You should not experience any traffic/performance changes during this swap. And to be clear, after the change, we will still have 2 clusters in JAPAC.

2. EMEA
We have 4 clusters in the EMEA region (Belgium 1 & 2, Germany, Netherlands). The cluster in Finland will be replacing Germany. You may experience changes in traffic/performance during this swap. Please note the geographical location change -- they are about 35ms apart on the wire. After this change, we will still have 4 clusters in EMEA.

Things to consider after the EMEA cluster change:

• There will be no cluster in Germany until early next year (~Feb 2012) when the replacement is in place.
• Most traffic served through Germany should be going to Belgium.
• Some traffic for northern Europe will start to be served from Finland. This is going to be available long-term -- it will continue to be true after we bring up a cluster in Germany again.
• Finland will be reported as CENTRAL_EURO in the hourly RTB reports

Please contact your account manager for any questions.

Deprecating Demographic targeting

Today, the AdX frontend UI gives you the ability to filter audiences by age and gender.  However, since the demographic data provided to us by publishers is currently very limited, the filtering is not too effective.  As a result, we’ve decided to remove this feature from the UI for now.  The change will go into effect in October.  We will look into alternative sources for demographic data and resurface the feature once the data becomes available again.  If you have any questions, please contact your account representative.

To keep you abreast on the latest news from DoubleClick Ad Exchange, we’ve assembled the highlights in product and training.

Product highlights

Zip and postal code data in real-time bidding requests

The fields for zip code and postal code data have been added to the real-time bidding (RTB) protocol. As communicated in a previous Ad Exchange release note, the last octet of the IP field passed in the RTB protocol will no longer be included. Some buyers used the full IP address for campaign geo-targeting. To simplify future geo-targeting, postal code data for Canada and zip code data for the United States will be included shortly in RTB bid requests.

The new zip code and postal code fields, described below, are available now in the RTB protocol. The fields do not currently have any data in them. A note will be sent to buyers giving one week's notice as to when the fields will be populated. When the fields are populated, the last octet of the IP address will be truncated.

// Detected postal code of the appropriate type for the country (e.g. zip code

// if the country is "US"). The postal_code_prefix field is set when accuracy

// is too low to imply a full code, otherwise the postal_code field is set.

optional string postal_code = 33;

optional string postal_code_prefix = 34;

A webcast with the Google geo team is being set up for early August. A product manager from the Google geo team will give an overview of how the data is generated and how it is used across Google. A member of the Ad Exchange engineering team will also be available to answer any questions on the new fields.

Run of Exchange

Run of Exchange targeting will allow buyers to easily set up campaigns that listen to all impressions on the exchange. Previously, a buyer would have had to manually select all categories individually in order to ensure a campaign was targeted. With this feature, it will be possible to target all impressions on the exchange with a single setting in the UI - that is All Topics category in the Topics targeting widget. Other filters, such as geo and language filtering for a campaign, will work with this setting. Run of Exchange targeting will launch in August to a few buyers. Please contact your account manager in case you are interested in getting access to this feature.

Removing the Impression beacon URL field

Currently, while creating a third-party ad, it is possible to specify an Impression beacon URL that is pinged every time the third-party ad is returned in Ad Exchange for an impression. This field was intended to be used to track view-through conversions. Based upon your feedback, we've determined that this field is somewhat redundant since the buyer already gets pinged for every third-party ad request. As a result, we will be removing this field. We expect this change to go into effect sometime this quarter.

Cookie matching enhancements

We have enhanced the cookie matching capabilities of Real-time bidder. Previously, buyers could only perform a match operation on the Google cookie. Two new functions have been added:

Add a user to a user list

In addition to performing the cookie match operation, the user can now be added to one or more user lists. This allows buyers to expand their user lists with new users when matches do not occur, or easily add users to new lists all from within a single cookie matching call.

Set a cookie if missing

Normally, the cookie matching service will not set a doubleclick.net cookie on the user's browser if one is not already present. With this new option, the doubleclick.net cookie will be set. This option can be combined with adding the user to one or more user lists.

You can find more information on Ad Exchange's cookie matching capabilities, including extensive examples, at https://code.google.com/apis/adx-rtb/, which is the new repository for RTB documentation.

Sending whitelisted vendors in bid requests

Vendors already whitelisted by Google will no longer be passed in the bid request and will automatically be approved for usage. Previously, all vendors allowed by the publisher were passed in the bid request, and the list included vendors that were already whitelisted by GDN. You can find the list of approved whitelisted vendors here.

Change in Latency reports

Previously, buyers received hourly reports on bid response latency, on the 99th, 80th, and 50th percentiles. This could cause confusion as throttling occurred when latency crossed the 85th percentile, and the internal reports used by the Ad Exchange Technical Account Managers reported on the 99th, 80th, and 50th percentiles. Buyers were not able to see from the report what the 85th percentile for latency was. To simplify understanding when a latency issue has occurred, the hourly reports sent to buyers will now be on the 99th, 85th, and 50th percentiles.

Tablet targeting

Tablet targeting is a new campaign targeting option that allows advertisers more precise control to target tablets and effectively reach the growing number of users of these devices. As part of the launch, we automatically opted customers into tablets (including customers who opted out of mobile and did not specifically opt out of iPads). You can check out the blog post [http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/07/tablet-targeting-options-now-available.html] to learn more about this launch. In the coming months you are going to see more targeting options for mobile advertisers as we add wi-fi targeting, os version targeting and specific device targeting abilities.

Expandable ads beta

We are currently running a limited beta program for Ad Exchange buyers to access select expandable ads inventory through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. We will be expanding the beta over the next couple of months. If you are interested in participating in the beta, please contact your account executive.

Training webinars

We will be holding a webinar in September that covers all recently launched features. Date is TBD, but look out for an email from your account team.

To keep you abreast on the latest news from DoubleClick Ad Exchange, we’ve assembled the highlights in four key areas: product, policy, training, and industry events.

Product highlights

New Topics Tab: Topics targeting is a powerful type of contextual targeting whereby you can target or exclude topics relevant to your campaign. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange UI has a new Topics tab where you can select from among 1750 fine-grained topics. To access the new Topics tab, click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the other tabs (Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, etc.). Then, select the check box next to "Topics." For more information, please refer to the help center here.

New Campaign Workflow: We’ve streamlined the workflow for creating new display campaigns in the Ad Exchange UI. With the new revisions, we’ve removed settings that were not relevant to running ads on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This improved design offers an easier trafficking experience and reduces the risk of incorrect campaign setup. For steps to use this feature, please refer to the help center here.

Limited Beta for Video: We’re working to combine the sight, sound, and motion that makes digital video so engaging with the scale, reach and audience of exchange-based buying. To start, we’ve aggregated video inventory across YouTube and select publishers on Google Display Network. All video inventory on Ad Exchange complies with the Video Ad Serving Template 2.0 (VAST 2.0) standard. While we are not ready to open the beta to all buyers, Ad Exchange customers can prepare to buy video on Ad Exchange by ensuring your video technology complies with the VAST 2.0 standards and by discussing your video buying needs with your account manager.

Reporting Enhancement: In the past, the summary data that’s visible in reports viewed within the UI was not available in downloadable reports. We have enhanced downloadable reports so that they now also contain summary data. This improvement gives you more consistent reports between what you see in the UI and what you download.

Real-time bidding (advanced) Campaign Setting: When creating real-time bidding (RTB) campaigns, please ensure that the Real-time bidding (advanced) setting is set to "On: Send me requests for bids using real-time bidding" within the Campaign settings section of the Ad Exchange buyer interface. It is optional to set http://adxrtb.com as the Destination URL for the ads underneath your RTB pre-targeted ad groups, but is still recommended.

Upcoming RTB Changes: On June 1st, we will be rolling out the following changes to the RTB protocol:

• IP truncation (IPv4 to 3 bytes, IPv6 to 6 bytes)
• DEPRECATED_hashed_cookie will be removed (the google_user_id field should be used instead)

We will also be holding a Real-Time Bidding webinar on May 25th where we will go over these changes.

Policy updates

We have three important policy updates to share with you:

• Buyers may retain information from real-time bidder call-outs for the purpose of forecasting.
• Google reserves the right to audit the usage of RTB.
• The user-list targeting notice requirement for privacy policy has been updated to include notification of remarketing usage or data collection.

To access frequently asked questions about these policy updates, visit the help center here.

Training webinars

We have two upcoming webinars for Ad Exchange buyers:

Webinar: Real-time bidding: What’s New?

Come learn about what's changed in the past six months with Real-time bidder, as well as the great features that are coming out in Q2. Drew Bradstock, Product Manager for RTB, and Matthew Young-Lai, Technical Engineering Lead, will walk you through all the protocol changes that have occurred and how you can take advantage of them to improve your use of RTB. They’ll be taking questions throughout, so be sure to come and learn more about RTB.

Intended audience: Technical RTB users and business roles who need to know the recent RTB policy changes

Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Time: 12pm PST / 2 pm CST /  3 pm EST

Register here.

Webinar: Ad Exchange Policy Deep Dive

Confused by Ad Exchange policies? You’re not alone. Policy represents the number one most-asked about topic among Ad Exchange buyers. In this webinar, we’ll have Group Product Manager Scott Spencer on hand to discuss some of the key Ad Exchange policies: Flash Cookies/LSOs, 4th Party Calls, Malware, and more. We’ll go over examples of what complies and what doesn’t, and also outline the enforcement of these policies.

Intended audience: All Ad Exchange buyers; Ad Exchange publishers welcome, too

Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Time: 12:30pm PST / 2:30pm CST / 3:30pm EST

Register here.

Industry events

DoubleClick Ad Exchange will be sponsoring the following events. We hope to see you there.

• IAB Marketplace: Networks and Exchanges, 5/16/2011 in New York City
• OMMA AdNets, 7/18/2011 in Los Angeles

The DoubleClick Ad Exchange team is pleased to announce new features that are now available to clients. With these features, we aim to deepen the tools we provide you to ensure scalability and efficiency. We have also made some important changes to the vendor declaration policy which should help reduce overhead in your operations.

Spreadsheet Uploader BETA

The spreadsheet uploader tool allows you to download a spreadsheet of campaign data and make batch changes across multiple campaigns and ads. Changes can be made to ad attributes including: ad name, ad size, ad technology, HTML snippet, and landing page URL. New ads can also be created quickly and easily. Once batch changes have been made, the spreadsheet is uploaded back through the tool and the changes are made to your account. This tool also provides a feature to view a list of ads that were not able to be served for one reason or another and will help you troubleshoot settings.

How to access: The Spreadsheet Uploader is currently in beta only; if you'd like to register for the beta, you can do so by sending an email to adxsupport@google.com. To learn more about using Spreadsheet Uploader, please refer to the help center.

Support for consolidated RTB callouts when bidding on behalf of multiple AdX clients BETA

We've recently made changes to the RTB callouts to improve reporting and efficiency for RTB clients. Demand Side Platforms and other RTB clients can now receive impression calls for multiple clients in one aggregated call, and then return bids individually for each client or together in one bid response. Clients who are using technology providers for RTB can then receive reporting information in their Ad Exchange accounts to gain full transparency in ad performance.

How to access: If you would like to learn more about using the new RTB callout, please contact your technical account manager for details.

Hosted creatives

With the launch of hosted RTB creatives, you are no longer required to return a creative with your bid response. Instead, you can return a creative_id in the bid response that corresponds to a creative already uploaded via the UI. Please note that hosted creatives should not have "http://adxrtb.com" as the destination url; instead, a valid destination url must be specified. If you prefer to return an html snippet in your bid response, you can still continue to do so. The bid response must contain either a snippet or a creative_id, but not both. Filling in both will lead to the bid response being dropped.

Vendor declaration policy update

After speaking with many of you, it has come to our attention that, due to the size and dynamic nature of the vendor technologies list, many buyers had difficulty managing vendor declarations.

To limit overhead, we have reduced the number of ad technologies required to be declared. Based on analysis of publisher blocking patterns, and discussions with partners, we have devised a list of ad technologies that must continue to be declared in both the user interface and/or through the Real Time Bidding bid response protocol. All other ad technologies are generic and now standard to run display ads at scale, and thus no longer need to be declared.

To view the list of vendors that need to be declared, and those allowed to run without declaration, please visit our Help Center article on our vendor policy. This list will be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

Any vendors not on either of these lists CANNOT be used in Ad Exchange, and you should contact your sales representative to inquire about approval for new technology vendors.