Jason Bigler is Director, Product Management at Google. In an interview with ExchangeWire, Bigler gives the full run down on the capabilities of the new DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) suite, and what it will mean for agencies and advertisers. He discusses how the DDM solution will offer multi-channel optimisation (except of course, for the moment, social) - as well as a unified buy-side stack that incorporates all of Google's buy-side features. The launch of DDM in Europe is expected throughout the year in what is likely to be a phased roll-out.

Just for the record, explain what encompasses the Doubleclick Digital Marketing (DDM) suite?

Put simply, it’s a new name for a new platform - a buy-side platform that will unify and fully integrate all digital media buying for marketers and agencies. It includes our upgraded ad server DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager, our latest bid management solution called DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Search, and DoubleClick Studio, which now includes Dynamic Creative. In addition, all of these solutions will be fully integrated into Google Analytics for holistic attribution modeling, deduplicated cross-channel conversion reports, and site traffic reporting all in a single UI.

How important is it to bring to market an end-to-end buyside stack?

It’s critical. Our clients have been asking for this solution. Having a platform with a single measurement currency that works across all screens is quickly becoming table stakes for effective digital marketing. Consumers don’t think about the time they spend digitally as discrete activities, so why should advertisers? In this new world of DDM, the consumer is the centerpiece of digital marketing. Further, the DDM platform will not only provide value to advertisers, it will benefit publishers as well. Anything that further simplifies the ad creation and buying process helps both sides of the ecosystem. Ultimately advertisers will more easily be able to allocate spend to digital and engage in smarter advertising, which ultimately translates into more revenue for publishers and a better experience for audiences.

What do you say to those that believe DDM will become a generalist stack versus specialist components? Can Doubleclick be market leading on every product front?

I would say that we’re not building a generalist stack, but instead a best-of-breed solution in each category. There will always be specialist/bespoke components in the digital marketing value chain, but in a world where the average consumer’s time is increasingly fragmenting across screens, specialist solutions inherently begin to lose their value. Platform solutions have always been super-important, but today they are requisite to giving an advertiser that holistic view of their digital marketing spend. We know that many of our partners may want to use point solutions which is why we’ve also built this to be plug and play.

What sort of timelines before DDM comes to UK and the rest of EMEA? What is the market rollout strategy?

What you can expect to see throughout the rest of this year is a series of releases that move toward this single unified experience. We’ve already rolled out the next generation of DoubleClick Search and we’re soon releasing the next generation of our bid management technology called DoubleClick Bid Manager. As for DDM Manager, our first customer starting using it back in May and we will continue to iterate the product throughout the year while adding more and more customers to it.

Does DDM now represent one UI and single sign on or is it an umbrella term for various products with their own unique UIs?

DDM will indeed be single UI with a universal login, however that doesn’t mean everyone will see the same set of functionality. Each module will be able to stand on its own, allowing for customers to utilize only what they need.

What upgrades will be coming to Bid Manager (ex Invite Media), what do you believe truly differentiates this?

So much to mention here, but I think there are a few key highlights. We think the integration with DDM Manager, which is what we now call DFA, is a game-changer simply because it enables holistic conversion tracking across both your reservation and programmatic display buys along with search if you’re using DoubleClick Search. It’s also built on the latest Google technology, which means the workflows have been simplified and the speed of the interface dramatically improved in addition to employing our latest innovations in machine learning algorithms. Finally, we think we have the best contextualization engine on the planet as judged by consumers every day when they choose Google to find the information they need on the Internet. DoubleClick Bid Manager will utilise Google’s best-in-class keyword contextual targeting expertise to target ads to the most relevant web pages and reach consumers at the precise moments they are reading related content on the web.

Describe if you can the concept of BYO (bring your own) and how that relates to DDM? What levels of customisation will be available to buyers and users of the platform?

Customers have been able to ‘roll their own’ since the late 90’s using our API. We’ve had customers build their own trafficking and media planning systems that are fully integrated into DDM Manager. We’ve had customers develop their own reporting solutions as well. Numerous third parties have built entire businesses on the back of the API. Our aim will always be to empower our customers with solutions that best meet their needs and sometimes that means working with proprietary solutions. We pioneered the concept of an open platform and will continue to do so.

Regarding the dynamic creative solution (ex Teracent), will a single piece of code be able to run across advertiser’s sites and will this be the same cookie tied to bid manager? (previously advertisers required separate Teracent and Invite pixels)

The legacy Teracent technology is being replaced by our Dynamic Creative solution and will be fully integrated into DDM and DoubleClick Studio using a single pixel.

What integrations will this enable between Search and other biddable media channels? Will users be able to retarget off of actual search queries or just the clicks?

Customers will only be able to retarget based on search clicks.

How will cookies be segmented by paid search campaign structures (ie, will each keyword become a unique segment or would it be grouped at a more macro level, ie ad groups or campaigns)?

All of the above. It’s important for our customers to have ultimate flexibility in how they define their segments.

What’s on the roadmap for Video and Mobile?

A key part of the vision for DDM is to bring all these different formats together to build a seamless platform that clients can use with all elements of their campaigns to better understand performance and optimise. We’re focused on operational features such as the ability for mobile to be ‘always on’ instead of having to explicitly set it as a targeting type so the ad server can deliver the right creative no matter what screen the consumer is using. We’re also building HTML5 creative types that can also be used as fallback creative for non-flash mobile environments. On the analytics front, seeing your mobile and video campaign performance side-by-side with your standard display campaigns is also a big focus. Video and mobile are key to the roadmap so stay tuned for continued updates on that front.

Will attribution modelling capabilities be natively tied into the platform? Will the models be off-the-shelf or enable advertisers to customise the logic?

At first the models will be off-the-shelf, but eventually we see a solution where customers can tweak elements of the models along with deploying their own. Quite frankly a lot of the attribution logic in the market fails because there is no experimentation. Attribution without experimentation is a fatally flawed concept and this is something we are looking to solve for in DDM.

Lastly, there was talk of DDM enabling campaigns to be tied to Google Analytics data? How do you fuse the 1st (Analytics) and 3rd (Doubleclick) party cookies? How do advertisers unify the separate cookie stores?

Google Analytics will be integrated into the UI and workflow so that advertisers and agencies using DoubleClick and analytics will be able to see access their mobile, video and display reporting all in one place.