The digital landscape has changed the way people shop for the holidays. With the ability to instantly discover, research and purchase, people around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before — transforming into supershoppers, seemingly overnight.

Supershoppers are a new breed of buyers, keeping their options open and relying heavily on mobile for inspiration, research and e-commerce. They learn the latest brands and the top gifts of the season, and they know where to find the best deals. Where do they gather their knowledge? From you, if you know how to reach them.

DoubleClick Ad Exchange offers access to the broadest reach of premium, clean and brand-safe inventory across screens. We've created a new guide to help you get the right message to these supershoppers and to provide some tips to help set your campaigns up for success this holiday season.

Native advertising is fast becoming the chosen method for advertisers looking to reach mobile consumers. Native ads allow advertisers to build better brand experiences, particularly on mobile, by matching the ad to the form and function of the surrounding publisher content. According to eMarketer, native advertising is already a $16B business and is expected to more than double to $33.5B by 2020.¹

However, while users find this type of ad format useful, the process of building and scaling native ads is largely still manual, with varying standards and formats across publishers.

Over the past year, Google has been working with publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post to help them adopt native ads. And in July, we announced an expanded offering for both publishers and advertisers to help accelerate adoption of this user-friendly format with programmatic. Advertisers can now easily build and buy native ads that run scalably across all publishers with Doubleclick Bid Manager.

The results are starting to come in...

Since launch, we’ve seen a lot of excitement amongst advertisers who want to get started with the solution, and initial campaigns are seeing success. For example, San Francisco Travel Association and their performance marketing platform, Sojern, used programmatic native in DoubleClick to easily create a campaign that successfully converted interested consumers into San Francisco-bound travellers.

See SF Travel’s components come to life as various native ad formats

The component-based nature of the ads allowed SF Travel to test different headlines and optimize the campaign to the best performers. Sojern was also able to integrate their own travel-based marketing platform with DoubleClick Bid Manager to help deliver a campaign that exceeded SF Travel’s goals.

The two-month campaign drove:

• A 1662% rise in hotel bookings: 16X their previous campaign
• A remarkable 92% drop in cost per acquisition

"Thanks to our work with the San Francisco Travel team and Google, programmatic native ads in DoubleClick are now a proven method for driving direct bookings," says Jackie Lamping, VP of Marketing at Sojern. "We’ve since expanded this opportunity and made it available to all of Sojern’s clients."

Read the full case study to learn more about San Francisco Travel’s campaign. If you’re interested in building a programmatic native campaign with DoubleClick, reach out to your DoubleClick sales rep for more information.

Posted by Jason Bigler Product Management Director, DoubleClick

^{1 eMarketer, “US Native Advertising Update: Focus on Video,” July 16, 2016}

In the coming quarters, all major browsers, including Chrome, are phasing out the use of Flash technologies in favor of HTML5. HTML5 is not only available on more devices, but also offers improved security, reduced power consumption and faster page load times for users.

We began our transition to HTML5 with display ads across Google and DoubleClick back in 2015. We are now continuing that transition by shifting video ads in DoubleClick Digital Marketing, DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google Display Network to HTML5 over the next few quarters as follows:

• Starting April 3rd, 2017, new Flash video ads will no longer be able to be uploaded into DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords.
• Starting July 3rd, 2017, Flash video ads will no longer be able to run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords. Additionally, our Active View and Verification tools for video will no longer use Flash.

Transition timeline for HTML5 Video

It’s important to begin updating your ads and websites to HTML5 technologies in preparation for these dates. We fully support HTML5 Video across DoubleClick and AdWords and provide the tools to ensure advertisers and publishers can easily migrate all video ads to HTML5.

For guidance and best practices to help your team with this transition, see this Chrome one-sheeter, visit the DoubleClick help center or contact your DoubleClick sales representative.

Posted by Peentoo Patel and Sunil Gupta