DoubleClick Widget Platform Could Help Publishers Boost Yield

DoubleClick yesterday released a free ad campaign management platform that, in Web 2.0 fashion, can be customized to save time and meet individual needs. The platform also allows publishers to view previously inaccessible data to resolve delivery glitches more efficiently.

The new DART for Publishers Dashboard presents information in the form of customizable “widgets” that can be configured by users to present the information they want in a fashion they find most convenient, said Jonathan Bellack, DoubleClick’s vice president of Publisher Core Products. The dashboard is integrated with DFP and comes at no additional cost to all DFP users.

“We’ve been investing, for most of this year, to leverage a lot of the kinds of technology you see on things like My Yahoo or iGoogle or Netvibes to create a customizable homepage for our customers involved in the business of selling online media,” said Bellack. “Mostly you see these kinds of systems in the B-to-C world. It brings a lot of power around putting useful information about your media sales business directly at your fingertips at a customizable homepage. You can set things up the way you want to see them.”

The DFP Dashboard’s initial list of available widgets includes Ad Delivery, My Orders, Troubleshooting Tools and Deep Links. An RSS-based messaging platform is also included and it can be used by customers who want to stay abreast of ad serving news, events and DoubleClick system alerts.

Bellack noted the DFP Dashboard’s troubleshooting widget allows customers to use advanced diagnostic tools that were previously available only to DoubleClick’s internal engineering staff. The troubleshooting tools give DoubleClick’s customers direct connections to the DoubleClick ad servers, said Bellack. “They let you get a real-time update on an ad’s delivery status,” he explained. “You can also find all the ads that could potentially serve into a given ad slot.”

Bellack said this new functionality should bring to publishers improved yield “due to faster resolution of delivery problems that could have resulted in make-goods, due to under-delivery, or lost revenue due to over-delivery beyond the contracted amount.”

He said the company plans to use the DFP Dashboard as “platform for the future,” The company will be releasing new widgets, including tools for enhanced DART Adapt optimization reporting and one that will integrate DoubleClick�s DART Sales Manager workflow and finance management tool.

“Right now, the platform is just for use internally by publishers,” said Bellack. “However, we have built the platform to be highly flexible, so we could easily expand this to be visible to buying clients as well in the future, with an advertiser-centric set of widgets.”