We all know that copy is an important element in managing paid search campaigns. It’s no longer just about getting your keywords in the top positions or having 20 different bid strategies. It’s important to make smart decisions on your messaging to get the right customers and create a positive experience after the click happens. Wouldn’t it be great to see the performance of a keyword along with the ad that actually contributed to the conversion? Well now with our new Ad/Keyword Segmentation Report you can understand which pairing of keyword and copy returns the best results and further refine your ad groups.

Speak to your DART Search TAM to learn more about this report. You can find it by navigating to Search Related reports in DART Search and then choose Ad/Keyword Segmentation Report. Now that you know it’s available, be sure to look out for upcoming tips and tricks on how to better take advantage of this report.

Wondering how you can be more efficient in managing your paid search campaigns? Are there features in DART Search that you just don’t know how to take advantage of? Well look no further than the weekly Dish on DART Search. We’ll be bringing you tips and tricks from our very own Technical Account Managers who are dedicated to assisting our customers on implementation of DART Search and managing search campaigns.

Did you know that every DART Search Technical Account Manager is certified on both the Google and Yahoo! Engines? Each individual is required to pass a test covering all areas of managing search campaigns to become an AdWords Qualified Individual and a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador. So tune in next week for the start of our series of tips and tricks on using DART Search.

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...

I am pleased to share the news that Google has acquired DoubleClick. Please go here to read Eric Schmidt's blog post.

David Rosenblatt

As part of a series of exciting announcements this week, we officially unveiled our DoubleClick Revenue Center positioning which highlights how our suite of publisher solutions can be used to help our clients generate revenue and reduce operational friction. The DoubleClick Revenue Center includes the DART platform at its core and can be expanded to include optimization, support for rich media, workflow tools, and a dynamic advertising exchange. As part of this announcement we highlighted some significant improvements to some of the Revenue Center's core components.

First, we profiled an expanded set of features for our DART Sales Manager (DSM) workflow and finance management tool that further reinforce DSM's position as a powerful "quote to cash" solution for media sellers of all sizes. We also announced Historical Basis forecasting capabilities for our DART for Publishers (DFP) ad serving platform which will help our publisher clients to better manage and monetize seasonal and repeating traffic patterns and account for recent traffic fluctuations. The innovative DART for Publishers Dashboard also entered full production with an expanded catalog of widgets that will further enhance campaign visibility for our DFP clients.

Moving further into 2008, we expect that audience fragmentation will become an increasing challenge for many of our publisher clients. To that end we made an announcement earlier this week regarding the formation of a team dedicated to providing the technology and services to address this issue. The group's initial solution, which we plan to launch in the second half of 2008, will provide a new partner management platform for publishers. This new product will combine tools for network management and financial reporting and a full-featured portal for partner sites. Most exciting for our publisher clients is the fact that we will offer seamless integration with our existing DART ad serving platform. ClickZ ran a great article on Monday highlighting this new initiative.

Yesterday I was excited to announce DoubleClick's support for the Silverlight 2.0 framework at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas. As I said at the conference, Microsoft and DoubleClick are competitors in many ways, but we share a commitment to enabling advertising in rich video experiences.

DoubleClick In-Stream is our framework for serving, targeting, forecasting and reporting on in-stream video advertisements. Over the past six months there's been a steady increase in publishers looking to move their legacy Windows Media video players over to Silverlight, and in the months prior to the announcement of the 2.0 framework's beta release we worked closely with Microsoft's team to port our technology to this new technology.

We expect to make Silverlight 2.0 support available to clients in Q2 2008.

Congratulations to our very own David Fall, vice president of product management, search technology, for his second term on SEMPO's Board of Directors! David will be serving as Treasurer and Co-Chair of the Metrics and Standards Committee this year, and plans to continue to play an active role over the next two years.

DoubleClick's participation on the Board provides opportunities to contribute in discussions about better advancement of search advertising, streamlining the process, and educating and informing the search community at-large.

Yesterday, we released a new feature called HD Video that makes it possible for a rich media ad to expand into a fullscreen video ad in HD quality. We worked with Adobe on this release to incorporate their latest Flash technology into our fullscreen capabilities.

Epson is the first advertiser to use this feature. A special thanks goes out to them and their creative agency, Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) for being innovative clients. Jordan Kretchmer, BSSP's associate creative director, shared with us why HD Video made such a good fit for the campaign. He said, “Throughout this campaign, we aimed to present Epson printers with a human touch and personality. DoubleClick Rich Media with HD Video was exactly the type of solution that helped us achieve our goal. HD Video lets us deliver our creative in a way that reflects the high quality of Epson products. Consumers aren’t used to seeing such pristine video online, so we expect the new HD technology to capture peoples’ attention like a standard video unit never could.”

To learn more about HD Video and to watch Epson's ads, visit our HD Video Page. Also, read more about it in the Adotas article titled, “DoubleClick Goes High-Def in Bid for Consumers’ Attention.”

As of today, members of the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since Nov. 5, 2007, are going back to work. The guild voted late yesterday to end the walkout after agreeing with Hollywood's producers on compensation for TV shows and movies streamed on the Web.

Previously on DoubleClick's Web site, we asked visitors, "What month will the writer's strike end?" Almost 150 people responded.

Here's how you replied:

January: 5.63%
February: 28.17%
March: 27.46%
April: 9.86%
May: 13.38%
June or later: 15.49%

Congratulations to the 28.17% of you that accurately predicted the future!