For every online display campaign, advertisers must decide what ad formats to use for best results. To help, DoubleClick teamed up with Dynamic Logic to study the impact of ad format selection on branding goals. In the joint report titled "The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads," we compare the branding strengths of four common display advertising formats:

• Image - GIF or JPG ads
• Simple Flash - Ads with a short animation and single click-through link
• Rich Media with Video - Ads capable of responding to user interaction, such as mouseovers, keyboard inputs, or clicks without a click-through, that also contain video
• Rich Media without Video - Ads capable of responding to user interaction, such as mouseovers, keyboard inputs, or clicks without a click-through, that do not contain video

The report provides detailed information on how each of these formats impacts aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent. For example, study findings show that, on average:

• 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
• 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

The report concludes with a cheat sheet to help guide your ad format decisions and suggests best practices for achieving branding goals.

Download the PDF report here for free, no registration required.

Over the last several months, we've been working hard to develop a new tool for creative teams who build rich media ads and the media agencies and publishers they work with. The result of our efforts is DoubleClick Studio, a free rich media production and web-based workflow tool designed to streamline development processes for creative teams and to provide more control over turnaround times. We've designed DoubleClick Studio to significantly improve upon the existing Ad Kit, and pave the way for future innovation in rich media.

To learn more about DoubleClick Studio or to fill out a form showing your interest, please visit studio.doubleclick.com. As creative teams migrate to this new tool, users will also be able to log in here, download components for Flash, and access the web-based workflow.

Here are a few of the features we think creative teams will really like:

• Improved workflow that gets preview links into client's hands faster
• A fully searchable archive of work structured by clients, campaigns and creatives
• Integrated QA processes that get errors identified and fixed earlier in the process
• Full range of intuitive Flash components and full APIs in both AS2 and AS3
• Direct upload to DART for Advertisers ensures smooth transition to traffickers for approved creatives

Testimonials

Josh Race of Ogilvy RedWorks, a member of the DoubleClick Studio beta program, has this to say: "DoubleClick Studio has a clean interface and you will never get lost trying to figure out where you are, which is uncommon amongst ad-serving tools. Our developers are all now self-sufficient and not depending on the one guy who knows his way around some wonky interface."

Will Campbell, also a beta member and owner of ARC Media Group, a creative agency based in Southern California, says, "DoubleClick Studio can greatly improve the workflow for any interactive studio working with Flash. From development to getting creatives ready for publishing it has increased our productivity and decreased the amount of steps we take to accomplish different tasks. It really shows that DoubleClick has given a lot of thought into not only increasing productivity on the development side, but also improving the workflow on the administrative side."

Benefits for Media Agencies

Although not direct users of the authoring tool, media agencies will also benefit from DoubleClick Studio and its integration with DART for Advertisers (DFA), enabling agencies to streamline the process for getting rich media campaigns approved and live. With DoubleClick Studio rolling out on a global basis, it is now easier than ever to manage local, regional and global campaigns on a single authoring platform. Here are some of the benefits:

• Direct link between DoubleClick Studio and DART platforms for instant transfer of creative
• Automated creative checks reduce approval time for campaigns to go live
• Preview links include a view into all rich media events that can triggered by the ad for easy testing, review and sign-off

More Details

For a quick tour of DoubleClick Studio, take a look at this short video from Shamim Samadi, product manager for DoubleClick Rich Media.



For those of you who have used DoubleClick Rich Media tools in the past, we will continue to support the Ad Kit though we do not plan to make future upgrades. We also want to note that, while we intend for DoubleClick Studio to make rich media production more efficient for agencies, advertisers and publishers who would like to own the entire process themselves, we remain fully committed to the highest levels of customer service.

To learn more, visit studio.doubleclick.com or contact your DoubleClick representative.

Every year since 2003, the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards has recognized "the technologies, companies, and campaigns that made a positive difference in the online marketing industry." To win, a product or solution must be selected by a judging committee of industry practitioners, which includes contributors to ClickZ and Search Engine Watch. This year, DoubleClick was recognized as a winner in three categories: Ad Management, Mobile Marketing Tool, and Video Ad Format or Platform. We are very honored to receive these awards and would like to share the judges' thoughtful comments with you for each award.

On DART for Advertisers' win in the Ad Management category, Tessa Wegert, Interactive Media Strategist with Enlighten and ClickZ Media Buying columnist commented, "DFA remains the industry gold standard for ad serving and ad management. This is the technology that's behind the majority of the more notable and impressive campaigns we see and a sure bet for any advertiser on the fence about which company can offer the most seamless, streamlined campaign solutions."

On DoubleClick Mobile's win in the Mobile Marketing Tool category, Courtney Jane Acuff, VP and Director with Denuo and ClickZ Mobile Marketing columnist commented, "It is critically important for mobile advertising (buyable off-the-shelf solutions) to have a standard serving and reporting platform. The DoubleClick Mobile product enables digital buyers and planners to have consistency in reporting and publishers the ability to sell through integrated mobile packages."

On DoubleClick Rich Media's HD Video format win in the Video Ad Format or Platform category, Christine Beardsell, VP Creative Director with Digitas's Third Act and ClickZ Online Video Advertising columnist commented, "You want the creative and content you develop for your brands to look great. But, unfortunately, video placements in general have suffered from low-bandwidth specifications and site-publisher limitations. So any media partner that can make your content look its best, and that won't degrade your original vision, is a partner worth having. The new DoubleClick HD looks great. And if your content already has a compelling idea and creative execution behind it, HD quality is really the icing on top!"

Thank you Tessa Wegert, Courtney Jane Acuff and Christine Beardsell for your support and to all the other ClickZ judges.

Today we launched DFA 6, the new version of DART for Advertisers, which includes a completely revamped trafficking interface. Based on feedback from our agency and advertiser clients, we know that trafficking can be one of the most complicated and time-consuming activities. As a result, we focused this release on improving the speed and simplicity of the DFA trafficking workflow.

For example, we:

• Reduced the number of webpages required to perform the most common tasks.
• Built quick links to tasks via simple icons and menus.
• Developed inline editing to help you move through the workflow more quickly.
• Enabled Excel imports and exports to eliminate duplicate data entry and reduce potential errors.

Ready to start using the new workflow? Contact your account manager to upgrade to the new DFA (which will also ensure you can take advantage of upcoming feature releases). If you aren't already a DFA client, please contact us here.

We're confident that the new DFA, plus our proven services and support, will help you meet the increasing demands of the online advertising marketplace. We look forward to releasing even more features soon. Stay tuned for more information.

The evolution of digital advertising has grown from a tool for direct marketing and brand awareness initiatives into a vehicle for content distribution and delivery. Today, DoubleClick is introducing a new rich media format for interactive agencies and marketers, Widget Ads, which provide the perfect distribution channel for this strategy. This widget format is designed to extend media dollars and reach for marketers by allowing users to "grab" an ad and place it on their personalized homepage, blog or social network.

We've focused on making widget advertising easy for our clients. Using both the creative development process and ad serving tools your teams are familiar with, you can create interactive Flash widgets for distribution on Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, and many other social networks. With DoubleClick, widget advertising is executed by converting a new or existing rich media unit into a widget that can be shared virally, managing it in DART for Advertisers (DFA), and watching those widget impressions grow!!! Marketers will appreciate the built-in ability to keep the message fresh by updating widget creative in real-time across social networks.

Use Widget Ads to gain insight into viral distribution patterns, reach and frequency of widget display impressions, and the effect of widgets on conversion. We invite clients and online marketing professionals to incorporate widget advertising into their campaigns. Contact our sales team to get started and email us about your experiences with widget advertising.

Download the DoubleClick Rich Media Widget, which demonstrates the potential ROI and extended reach that Widget Ads can offer, or copy the embed code below and paste it onto your own website or favorite social networking page:

If nothing else, it's just fun to say the word 'widget' as often as possible and watch people's reactions...