Bringing programmatic buying to reservation deals everywhere

At DoubleClick, we’ve always focused on building solutions that help publishers and advertisers connect in better ways. Today, delivering on that goal means giving advertisers the programmatic tools to find and reach their audiences across their preferred publisher partners. It also means giving publishers the flexibility to negotiate a variety of different types of deals that can be delivered programmatically, including direct deals that were historically transacted via paper insertion orders and tags. 

This was the premise for Programmatic Guaranteed. Advertisers gain guaranteed access to premium inventory on brand-safe publisher sites with the ability to optimize their campaigns programmatically. Publishers benefit from locking in revenue from preferred advertisers with greater efficiency.

With these benefits, it’s no surprise that Programmatic Guaranteed impressions served on DoubleClick grew at a monthly rate of 20% in 2016¹, making it the fastest growing transaction type on our platform. We’ve seen adoption from global advertisers like Turkish Airlines and Mercedes-Benz, and premium publishers like Condé Nast, Vox and MercadoLibre. 

Building on our initial announcement last year, today we’re excited to share that Programmatic Guaranteed is now available to all DoubleClick for Publishers users globally with two new key features—support for buyer audience lists and sponsorships.

Reach the right user with audience lists

Using Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists, advertisers can target (or exclude) their own audience lists and secure guaranteed access to preferred publisher inventory while minimizing media waste. Publishers can forecast the inventory available against advertisers’ lists and guarantee they’re only serving ads to the buyer’s target audience. Since we announced this feature, advertisers and agencies such as i360 have used Programmatic Guaranteed with audience lists to meet their reach goals while targeting only their desired consumers on premium publishers. The net result: a 25% uplift in viewability and a 72% completion rate for their video ads.

Greater flexibility to transact fixed fee deals programmatically

Programmatic Guaranteed with sponsorships allows publishers to sell high-value inventory on a flat-fee sponsorship basis—a common practice among publishers transacting via traditional reservations. With this new capability, advertisers and publishers can maintain the control of a sponsorship transaction, while reaping the efficiency benefits of programmatic. 

“Being able to sell sponsorships through Programmatic Guaranteed really benefits us. On one hand, we are able to transact high value placements through a new channel generating new business to Universo Online. On the other, we also see a lot of operational benefits for us and for our buyers. With this new feature, it is possible to bring agility to the entire workflow of booking, trafficking, credit checking and invoicing. Consequently, we have a more agile and efficient implementation process to run campaigns.”

-Adriano Marques, Head of Adtech at Universo Online (UOL)

Connect faster with Marketplace and Programmatic Guaranteed

Media buyers who use DoubleClick can discover and request to reserve premium inventory from any publisher participating in DoubleClick Marketplace. With the recent release of the new RFP workflow in Bid Manager, advertisers now have a simple solution to create a media plan. And with a single click, they can request quotes from publishers who they already know or from publishers whose inventory matches their campaign goals or their first party audience data.

Extending Programmatic Guaranteed to even more DSPs

Last year, we expanded Programmatic Guaranteed deals to more third party DSPs, giving publishers on DoubleClick access to even more advertisers looking to reserve inventory programmatically. Since then, we’ve seen successful campaigns executed by partners like Adobe Advertising Cloud, MediaMath and The Trade Desk. Given the benefits our publishers and DSP partners are seeing, we’re excited to share that we’ve continued to extend the program to new DSPs like DataXu. 

"The days of programmatic buying being perceived as a niche tactic to build cheap reach are over. Brands are embracing automated, data-driven buying on their private and direct buys of the most premium inventory out there. Google’s expansion of Programmatic Guaranteed is part of what’s making that possible on the supply-side, and we’re proud to offer that inventory for cross-screen buying in Adobe Advertising Cloud."

-Keith Eadie, VP of Revenue & Partnerships at Adobe Advertising Cloud 

“Providing programmatic access points to high quality, brand-safe inventory with guaranteed volumes is exactly what top advertisers want from their media buying platform. Expanding our integration with DoubleClick to strike Programmatic Guaranteed deals with premium publishers allows for just that and is a natural strategic progression of our partnership. Collaborations like these are a positive sign for the industry. We’re all trying to deliver great storytelling opportunities for brands and better ad experiences for consumers; it starts with quality inventory and data-driven decisioning. Programmatic Guaranteed offers both.”

-Tim Sims, VP of Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk 

With the launch of these new features, we’re excited to prove the value Programmatic Direct can bring to every deal and all tiers of publisher inventory. Advertisers are reaching their audiences with more efficiency and accuracy on the publisher brands they care about, and publishers are making new connections to grow their businesses. 

Stay tuned as we continue to expand the capabilities of our programmatic platforms to bring the full power of automation and machine learning to improve advertising performance for our partners. 

Check out the latest Programmatic Direct trends in our newly updated report “The State of Programmatic Direct” or g.co/ProgrammaticDirect.