Joe Barrett - Jan. 8, 2017, 9:43 p.m.
A few years back at ABM, we used DoubleClick Studio to create rich media ads for some of our advertisers. It was pretty simple. They had templates for almost any type of ad you could think of. You would download the templates, load 'em up in Flash (when that was still a thing), build your ad, and upload the files back into Studio.
Part of the Studio process was to send the ads off to QA once they were published. They would QA these files to make sure the ad was working correctly, and abided by all rich media standards. Google’s team handled QA. Once they stopped offering QA services, you had to find a third party QA for your ads.
At this point, we moved to a different ad creation platform, where you would build the ads right in your browser, publish them, and generate the code all right there. We used that process for a few years, which helped to create a few new ads to offer our advertisers that we had never offered before. In short, it was game changing.
Well, that isn’t an option anymore. I started researching other ways to get these ads built again. I remembered a while back that I had downloaded Google Web Designer to mess around with stuff like this. So I hopped back in and started building some test ads. While I was in there I noticed that you could publish these ads locally on your computer, upload to your Google Drive, or upload straight to DoubleClick Studio. Once I saw that I thought, "Sweet! We can start using Studio again with our own templates!” But, I forgot about the whole third party QA issue we faced before.
I created an ad, published it, logged in to Studio, and published it there, which sent it to QA. I received an email from Google that they no longer QA and you need to find someone to QA yourself... blah blah blah. So, my research started again. I stumbled across a course from DoubleClick Studio to be able to take the QA test, and become certified. I read through the documentation to get myself prepared, really just to remember all of their standards of which an ad needs to have to pass QA.
I started the test, which at the beginning tells you that you need a score of 85% or better to pass. I didn't think I'd have an issue with that... 68%. Damn, I tried again. 86%. Awesome, I passed, but it still wasn't good enough for me. So I took it again and ended up with a 92%. That was good enough for me.
Now I am DoubleClick QA Certified, and can QA and approve the ads that are created by the company.