How to Combine Direct Sales and Online Ad Networks

Three words: Double Click for Publishers. You might of heard of Google Ad Manager, DoubleClick for Publisher's previous name. Google has recently redesigned their ad serving technology by synergizing Google Ad Manager and DoubleClick for Publishers to make new features and to increase usability. DoubleClick for Publishers truly is a thing of beauty. Why? Well, why don't I tell you in a neatly organized list?

Simple Serving

With DoubleClick for Publishers, you're able to serve any direct sales ads and ad network ads with Google AdSense running in the background. You're probably thinking, oh what's the catch? You have to serve Google AdSense in the background no matter what, right? Nope! It is your choice whether you want to "optimize your network" with Google AdSense or not. Above all else, DoubleClick for Publishers is an effective and easy to use platform to serve ads from direct sales, ad networks and Google AdSense.

Real-time Reports

You can section off your inventory however you like to target ads and to create very acute reports. You can even use custom targeting to granularly target your users. These reports are updated by the hour and achieve an amazing amount of insight for your website.

Seamless Targeting

DoubleClick for Publishers is very easy to use especially with the recent changes they made. It is easy to target specific sections of your website, day/hour the ad is served, number of times a user sees your ad, geographic of the user and many other targetable traits you can assign to your ads. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you could target a Italian males who buys gum twice a week and has a pet cat named Fluffy. The potential of DoubleClick for Publishers's targeting is quite amazing.

Google Adsense changes are quite seamless as well. DoubleClick for Publishers has the feature to change the ad creative settings of all the Google AdSense ads in one spot. That'll save you a lot of time. What if you want to go with several different creatives? That's not a problem. All you have to do is go within the specific ad units and change the AdSense settings there.

Optimization

Remember, DoubleClick for Publishers is made for online companies that use Google AdSense to monetize their traffic in conjunction with a direct sales team that sells into the online inventory. Essentially, your sales teams are able to list the CPM's they have sold the online ads for. DoubleClick for Publishers takes these listed CPM's and compares them to the eCPM's that Google AdSense achieves and serves the higher paying ad. That way, you'll know that the highest paying ad is always being served. Don't think this is limited to direct sales either. You can attribute CPM's for other ad networks you serve and you can compete them against the Google AdSense inventory via DoubleClick for Publishers.

It's Free!

After reading all those features you're probably thinking, how would Google possibly offer DoubleClick for Publishers for free? Well, Google has taken a page out of their own book and still offers DoubleClick for Publishers for free. I can't say what they'll do in the future but I think Google is content on the increased use of Google AdSense as a result of websites adopting DoubleClick for Publishers as an ad platform and introducing Google AdSense as remnant inventory.

Remember, DoubleClick for Publishers still isn't perfect though. They still have their bottom line on the top of their minds. Before you go I'll pass on a little helpful piece of advice. You might want to inflate your CPM's a bit for your non-Google AdSense inventory because DoubleClick for Publishers does favour Google AdSense ads being shown. Well, that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise though, right? But none the less, those sneaky guys!