DoubleClick Search: Announcing the June 20 DS release!

DoubleClick Search: Announcing the June 20 DS release!: The latest DoubleClick Search (DS) release includes the following new features:

• Change history: Provides you with details on changes made to your account, including user changes, inbound sync updates, and automated changes from the DS bid strategy system. Auditing search campaigns is a crucial business need for many advertisers. This feature makes auditing easier with the ability to sort on changes by user for a specified date range. Look for a more detailed blog post on Change history in the coming days. Learn more.
• Bid strategy change history: Within Change History, you can gain insights into bid strategy changes with a summary of the bid rationale. Brought to you by the bid strategy team, this feature will let you know what target the change was intended to hit, how often bids are evaluated and, for target position strategies, details on why a change was made. You also receive guidance on how to improve bid strategy performance by discovering where settings like maximum keyword bid inhibit the bid changes. Learn more.

• Filter by specific table rows: You can now choose the specific rows you want to see in a UI reporting table. Just select the check boxes next to the rows and click the Filter to selected button above the table. This allows you to easily chart any campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.
• Reporting stats for labels: Labels are a great way to manage and report on keywords outside the traditional campaign structure. With this new feature, you can now see stats for these labels. Click the Labels tab in the left nav as you normally would to see a list of your labels, and you’ll now see reporting stats. You can also download label reports to make it easier to share with others. Learn more.

We also made an improvement to the way we bid on low-traffic keywords. For low-traffic keywords with no impression potential, we’ve reduced unnecessary bid increases. We now predict the correlation between bids and impressions. As a result, we differentiate keywords that don’t have impressions due to:

• Low bids
• No search traffic

For the keywords in the "no search traffic" group, we’re much less likely to increase bids in a futile attempt to get more impressions. This is beneficial because:

• Now there is a much smaller chance of reaching the max bid on low-traffic keywords, which reduces the risk of high CPCs if an impression and click do occur for these keywords.
• The bids of low-traffic keywords will be more stable, which will also result in better position control.

Note that this change applies to position bid strategies only.