DoubleClick was an internet advertising technology company founded in 1995 by Kevin O’Connor and Dwight Merriman, and its visual identity evolved through several distinct phases before Google retired the brand in 2018. The logo is best remembered for its green overlapping circles, introduced during a 2007 corporate rebranding that repositioned the company as the “nerve center of digital marketing.”
Design and History
DoubleClick’s original logo, used from the company’s 1996 launch until 2007, was a simple wordmark featuring the name in a heavy serif typeface. The design included a visual play on the name: the word “click” appeared in black with a smaller brown repetition of the same word above it, reinforcing the double-click concept.[1]
In May 2007, DoubleClick unveiled a new corporate identity at the Insight 2007 conference in London.[2] The rebranding was created by Ogilvy Advertising and Ogilvy Brand Integration Group.[2] The new identity introduced green as the company’s color and featured overlapping circles that expressed DoubleClick’s new positioning.[3] The campaign, which had been in development for more than nine months, was part of a corporate rebranding exercise that predated and was separate from the Google acquisition.[4]
Following Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008, the logo received another update in February 2010. Google announced changes to the DoubleClick logos, including typeset changes, the incorporation of a new “by Google” theme, and the retirement of the “DART” brand.[5] In this version, the two circles were moved out of the wordmark and placed to the left of it, with the “by Google” lettering appearing to the right.[1]
In June 2018, Google announced it was sunsetting the DoubleClick brand as part of a broader restructuring of its advertising products.[6] DoubleClick Digital Marketing products were unified with the Google Analytics 360 Suite under the new Google Marketing Platform brand, while DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange were consolidated into Google Ad Manager.[7]
Meaning and Symbolism
The 2007 rebrand introduced overlapping circles in two shades of green as the company’s emblem.[1] DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt explained the choice of green in a video accompanying the campaign, stating that green “represents springtime, obviously, growth, potential, freshness, originality and creativity.”[4] The overlapping circles were described in the company’s own communications as expressing DoubleClick’s new positioning as “the nerve center of digital marketing.”[3]
Typography and Design
The 2007 logo replaced the original heavy serif lettering with a lighter sans-serif wordmark in lowercase letters.[1] In the 2010 update, the wordmark became even lighter in weight, and the “by Google” tagline appeared in a smaller, lighter gray type that balanced the two green tones of the emblem.[1]
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