• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, November 15, 2016

Google on Monday issued a few notable announcements. They include the addition of video to native ads in DoubleClick and Dynamic Ad Insertions to video on demand (VOD). Google also expanded its beta test of Exchange Bidding, which was announced earlier this year, to include mobile apps.

The new offering of video in native ads gives publishers the ability to run the advertising without embedding players—which means they can insert personalized, targeted ads into long- and short-form VOD content across all devices. The feature also supports ads sold direct and through programmatic ad channels.

In a blog post entitled “Publisher sustainability in a mobile and video world,” Jonathan Bellack, Google’s director of  product management, publisher platforms, said he believes in the value of the open Web, where “users get access to information, and publishers are able to create and earn money from their content.” He re-iterated DoubleClick’s mission: “to help publishers thrive and create sustainable businesses with advertising.”  Because people expect “great experiences wherever they’re consuming content,” Bellack said Google has built a flexible native ad solution designed to help publishers deliver better ads that are attuned to  a user’s context.

Bellack noted in the post that since May 2016, the number of native ad impressions served through DoubleClick has more than doubled, with publishers including The New York Times, Vogue, Zillow Group, Slate and eBay adopting its solution.

Google’s moves seem to underscore the efficacy of native advertising, or at least its popularity. Also notable, Google said that more than half of all ad queries on its DoubleClick’s publisher platform serve on mobile devices.

Google also announced that it expanded its beta test of Exchange Bidding to include mobile apps with Smaato, a mobile-focused real-time bidding ad exchange. Exchange Bidding enables publishers to put multiple exchanges into competition in real time without adding any new client-side code. The move to Exchange Bidding took Google a while, but it finally entered the fray in the spring.

Garrett McGrath, VP of product Strategy at Smaato, discussed the Google announcement in an email to RTBlog: “In order to drive maximum value in a mobile advertising environment, speed is of the utmost importance. Client-side solutions for increasing or diversifying demand—like header bidding— simply can't be used effectively here. They also do not address the most important aspect of mobile: apps, which unlike the mobile web, have no headers to hack.”

McGrath went to say that in order to compete in mobile advertising, publishers need a fast solution that addresses the in-app market. “This means you need server-side transactions, which is clearly what led Google to develop Exchange Bidding. …We are proud to be one of Google's first mobile app Exchange Bidding partners, as this gives publishers server-side access to our mobile demand stack, which in turn will drive increased mobile yield and eCPMs."