Google is only letting a small number of pre-qualified buyers compete for the inventory at first, but it would be rolled out more broadly over time.

“Ultimately, this will give app developers and publishers access to a wider pool of buyers like demand-side platforms and agency trading desks, improving their potential returns, and helping grow the overall mobile web economy,” says DoubleClick Ad Exchange Director Chip Hall. “And marketers on our Exchange will be able to buy, in real time, ads that run inside people’s favorite mobile games, news apps and more. With this important addition, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange will be truly cross-format…and will become the first exchange to support this full range of ad formats.”

“A cross-format exchange is just one of the ways we’re looking to simplify the process of buying and selling display advertising, but one we think will create tremendous value for advertisers and publishers,” says Hall. “We will continue to work with our partners to help them get the most out of what the evolving display market has to offer — today, tomorrow, and in the years ahead.”

Clearly developing for mobile is becoming increasingly important between smartphone usage growth and the flooding of tablets into the market. This should be a good move to help developers better monetize their efforts. Of course, it’s going to still come down to creating quality apps that people want to use.

Today marks the third anniversary of Google’s completion of the DoubleClick purchase, by the way, so keep that in mind when viewing the data.  All the progress just occurred over 36 months (and 36 months in which the economy was not at all healthy, at that).

So on to the data.  Susan Wojcicki and Neal Mohan indicated on the Official Google Blog that the first number everyone should know is “5,400,000: A rough estimate of the hours our engineers have spent working on our display business since 2008 (that’s equivalent to 616 years without sleep or rest).”

Next, the second number is “33 billion: Our estimate of the number of potential customers that our clients’ display ads have driven immediately to marketers’ websites (to say nothing of the exposure, engagement and brand-building that these ads enable).”

Finally – and just wait for the explanation – the last figure is “5: On sites in the Google Display Network, the number of times larger that spending on display ads is today, compared to three years ago (that’s like a toddler growing to the size of a one-story house).”

It’s little wonder that Google’s stock is now about 33 percent higher than it was on March 11th, 2008, then.

One last note on a slightly different subject: Wojcicki and Mohan said that Google’s will soon test in-stream video ads on YouTube using real-time bidding tech.

The DoubleClick Ad Exchange was launched in September as a real-time marketplace where online publishers and ad networks/agencies can buy and sell ad space for prices set in a real-time auction.

One new feature is called "Site Packs" which the company describes as "manually crafted collections of like sites based on DoubleClick Ad Planner and internal classifications, vetted for quality."

Google is also making changes to its Real-time Bidder. "The biggest change here is for Ad Exchange clients who work with DSPs," says DoubleClick Ad Exchange Product Manager, Scott Spencer in an interview with AdExchanger.com (reposted to Google’s DoubleClick Advertiser Blog). "Historically, Ad Exchange buyers were hidden from publishers behind their DSP. By introducing a way to segment out each individual client’s ad calls, inventory can be sent exclusively to an Ad Exchange buyer even when that buyer uses a DSP. It increases transparency for publishers and potentially give buyers more access to the highest quality inventory, like ‘exclusive ad slots’ – high quality inventory offered to only a few, select buyers as determined by the publisher."

Google will also roll out a beta of a feature called "Data Transfer", which is a report of all transactions bought/sold by clients on the Ad Exchange.

Advertisers can serve mobile ads in DFA and  a variety of mobile platforms. "Trafficking mobile ads in DFA is easy," says Product Manager Alex Gawley. "You use the same process as you would for any campaign in DFA. Mobile is just another ad type and placement type that you would select within the DFA trafficking interface. You don’t even need to create a separate campaign for your mobile ads in DFA, you can include them in any existing campaign alongside the rest of your online creatives assets."

"DFA mobile ads are designed to be trafficked on inventory that is optimized for mobile browsers or within a mobile application,’ says Gawley. "Tailor your message to each of the major mobile platforms and automatically serve the appropriate Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) creative size to a broad array of mobile devices. You also have many of the existing DFA targeting features at your disposal such as day-parting, keywords and geo-targeting."

Advertisers have access to mobile impression and click data in the same place as the standard DFA reports, and there is a mobile-specific report focused on stats on mobile placement by wireless carrier, mobile platform and country. There are also mobile-optimized tags that run on a variety of mobile devices.

Finally, Google is releasing mobile browser targeting for standard ads. "As many mobile phones come with full Internet browsers, you’ll often find that your standard ads are being viewed on mobile devices too," notes Gawley.

Google promises more new features for mobile in DFA in the coming months. More on these features here.

"It’s important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products," says Katrina Kurnit of Google’s Inside AdSense Crew. "Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals."

"We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns," says Kurnit.

To activate the filter, advertisers should select "none Ad Planner 1000" in the category filters section of their AdWords account.

The new filter is only one of the new features Google has introduced, which integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google ad solutions. There is also a new Export to AdWords feature and a list creation tool, which lets you store sites and placements in lists for future use.

"To reflect our continued investment in DoubleClick’s products, as well as the central role of DoubleClick’s technology products within Google’s display advertising business, we’re also today unveiling some changes to the DoubleClick logos — including typeset changes, incorporating a new ‘by Google’ theme and retiring the ‘DART’ brand," explains Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan.

"This is the next generation of Google Ad Manager, bringing many requested features such as a new web services API, an improved user interface, and new reporting capabilities," says Google Ad Manager Product Manager Alex Vogenthaler. "We will be upgrading all Google Ad Manager accounts to DFP Small Business automatically. GAM users will see the new DFP Small Business name and logo within the product and related resources upon completion of the upgrade. Usernames, passwords, ad delivery data and account data will be unaffected by this change. New customers signing up for Google Ad Manager today will automatically be upgraded on the same schedule as current Ad Manager publishers."

The new DoubleClick for Publishers can be found here, complete with FAQs, support information, etc. Google has also set up a series of videos to give users a quick overview of the upcoming changes. In addition, Google offering webinars discussing the changes.

"For the past few years, we’ve been investing in a suite of solutions — AdSense, ad-serving technology and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange — to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both," says Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan. "For major online publishers — including social networks and online communities, entertainment sites, e-commerce sites and news sites — managing, delivering and measuring the performance of ads on their websites can be a hugely complicated process. A publisher’s ability to manage this process can have a significant impact on how much money they make from their online content."

The new release includes a new interface, redesigned to save users time and reduce errors, and more detailed reporting/forecasting data. Google says it has "sophisticated algorithms" that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.

DoubleClick for Publishers also comes with a new public API that publishers can use to build and integrate their own apps with the service. They can also integrate third-party apps created for the service into their own.

Doubleclick for Publishers comes in two different versions – one for large publishers, and one for small businesses. The latter is a simpler, free version.

All Google Ad Manager publisher accounts will soon be automatically upgraded to DFP Small Business.

Google says it has three principles for its approach to display advertising:

1. Simplify the system for buying and selling display ads: For example, our DoubleClick ad serving products help advertisers and publishers manage campaigns and ad formats across thousands of websites and from thousands of advertisers.

2. Deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure: We’re building a host of new features to help advertisers to run display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network (comprising hundreds of thousands of AdSense partner sites) and on YouTube. We’re also developing better measurement and reporting technology so they can figure out what’s working and what’s not.

3. Open up the ecosystem: We want to democratize access to display advertising and make it accessible and open, like search advertising. We recently launched the Display Ad Builder to help businesses easily set up and run display ad campaigns. 80% of advertisers who use that product have never run a display ad campaign before.

AdWords advertisers can run ads with the same AdWords interface through the exchange. Ad Exchange sites are considered part of the Google Content Network. Ad Exchange placements will appear like any other Conent Network Placement in AdWords reports. Users can still use the Placement Performance Report to see where their ads have run, and which ones performed best. Google does note, however, that Ad Exchange sites can choose to remain anonymous, and in cases like that, the site will appear in your reports with an anonymized label like "123456.anonymous.google." You have the power to exclude these placements though.
 

Google says AdSense publishers will also benefit from more advertisers coming through the exchange. The company recently announced plans to give AdSense publishers a new way to generate revenue by allowing multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on their sites. This is related to the Ad Exchange announcement. The Google-certified ad network capability is powered by the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

"Certified ad networks are Ad Exchange participants who have gone through an additional certification process in order to be able to bid for your ad space through AdSense," Google says. "We call this feature ‘yield management’, because it offers you the most revenue for each ad that shows on your site in real time, regardless of whether it’s Google or another certified party who can offer you the highest bid."

Publishers using the Ad Exchange can use real-time data and bids to allocate ad space that pays the most at any particular second. They get access to more advertisers, Google manages billing and payments from networks, so publishers get one monthly payment.

Ad networks and agencies get access to more publishers, more ad space, real-time bidding, and a new API, which lets them integrate their own functionality and systems when using the Ad Exchange.

Google’s move is largely seen as its way of cutting into Yahoo’s share of the display advertising pie. This is one area where Yahoo has been quite successful, as Google has dominated the text ad market.

"The study addresses challenges facing advertisers and agencies about which ad format to use, offering data to help them pick the ad formats that best match their branding goals," a representative for Google tells WebProNews. "All of this allows agencies and advertisers to extract the most brand value from their online display advertising campaign."

"This report is for advertisers, and the agencies that support them, who want to make informed decisions about the best ad formats to use for online branding campaigns," says the intro to DoubleClick’s report on the research. "In online advertising, you’re likely to hear goals defined as ‘branding,’ ‘brand response,’ or ‘direct response.’ We go a level deeper to explore he impact of ad format selection on specific branding goals in the upper and lower purchase funnel"

A few highlights from the research include:

- Rich Media formats are the most successful at driving purchase intent

- Rich Media without Video is unique among the formats in its ability to positively impact all five brand metrics (online ad awareness, aided brand awareness, message association, purchase intent, and brand favorability

- Simple Flash is the least effective of the ad formats studied

- For brand favorability, aided brand awareness and purchase intent metrics, Rich Media with Video provides a statistically significant improvement over Simple Flash at a 90% confidence level

While rich media may be the most successful format for purchase intent, only 6% of ad-serving volume last year was made up of rich media. It will be interesting to see what the percentage for 2009 turns out to be. Google has been offering rich media formats with its AdWords Display Ad Builder for a little while now. That is likely going to give the number a bit of a nudge. Yahoo just released a new Display Ads service, but it does not currently support rich media formats.

 Source: AdRelevance, 2008. Impressions by Technology for Simple Flash, GIF/JPG and Rich Media only.

I’m not going to get into every aspect of DoubleClick’s 22-page document, but here are a few interesting graphs that speak louder than words:

Source: Dynamic Logic MarketNorms®, 2008. Fixed frequency level of 1. Campaigns using GIF/JPG N=33-52, Rich Media with Video N=37-47, Rich . Media Non-Video N=193-275, Simple Flash N=262-344

A post on the Official Google Blog explained the benefits of this move by stating that the company hopes to "expand the number of advertisers that can make these useful formats part of their marketing strategy."  Which makes it seem like a smart venture from Google’s perspective.

The post then continued, "This is also a good thing for Internet users; rich media capabilities make advertising even more useful, letting a viewer interact with an ad and learn about a brand without having to leave the page they’re on.  And, advertisers have an expanded creative canvas within the ad itself, allowing for deeper, higher-quality content in the ad itself."

Indeed, a longish orientation video outlines all sorts of ideas and possibilities.