Time to Get Personal with Dynamic Creative

Guest Author: Erika Garbero, Senior Data Analyst

 
No two customer journeys are exactly alike so why do creative placements treat it as such? According to a recent Forbes article highlighting 2019 technology trends, “These days, customers expect brands to understand what they’re interested in, their position in the customer journey and their relationship with the brand.” Enter: Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO).

Utilizing Dynamic Creative (Optimization) elevates traditional programmatic display or video placements by delivering timely, relevant, and user-specific ads to those engaging with the media. Dynamic meets media viewers where they are in their customer journey, at each stage of the funnel. Meeting consumers or potential customers where they are instead of serving a generic message is key when attempting to maximize Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

 

How does Dynamic Creative work for those viewing my media?

A number of elements can go into a prospecting or retargeting Dynamic Creative strategy that trigger real time creative updates for a personalized experience – weather, geography, day part, audience targeting – to name a few. Retargeting power is heightened when you can pinpoint cart abandoners with a carousel of items that previously piqued their interest. Further, you may choose to customize pricing displayed to certain media viewers that previously had purchased on an incremental buy structure, rather than a one time lump sum.

Brian Francis, Director of Programmatic Advertising at Vehicle, describes engagement in two main phases, “On the engagement side the question would be what can we leverage from a programmatic perspective that can help grab the attention of the target by leveraging something familiar. This could be leveraging location, context, weather, time-of-day, group association etc. Second, is relevance. The question here is to align product or service benefits to the audience segment you are addressing. This can be leveraging demographic, psychographic, life-stage, presence of children or competitive insight.”

How do we set up Dynamic Creative?

Colton Dirksen, Head of Business Development at Adacado, offers advice for advertisers implementing Dynamic Creative for the first time stating, “advertisers starting out in Dynamic Creative don’t need to have to go all in at once…for instance, many of the advertisers using Adacado’s platform start by delivering simple efficiency gains and then post-launch, they’ll incorporate more creative targeting to increase message personalization, delivering higher ROAS.”

Setting up Dynamic Creative is an iterative process with multiple parties involved. According to Nicole Perrin from Emarketer, “Brands must take the lead, set expectations and manage the process to ensure success.” A data feed controls the triggers and logic laid out in the prospecting and retargeting strategies to enable these real time creative updates. Colton Dirksen describes a data feed as “a document that contains structured information around products, vehicles, flights, jobs or other list of items.  A data feed also includes attributes associated with each of the products / offer, such as images, titles, descriptions and URL. A feed is typically created to supply the content required to build websites in an automated fashion. These same data feeds may be used to automate the creation of digital display ads.” Collaboration between agencies, creative partners, and brands is key to get the creative up and running between the strategizing, technical, and testing/editing stages.

Through all the technical aspects of DCO, we cannot forget about the customer. Perrin comments on the importance of heeding the privacy of consumers and their data, “Consumer data is at the heart of much Dynamic Creative Optimization, and that means putting privacy and security issues at the center.”

We ran Dynamic Creative for our campaign. Now what?

Like traditional creative updating and testing, Dynamic Creative strategy is never fully complete. Dynamic Creative allows necessary creative testing and revamping in ways that traditional A/B testing cannot deliver. Not to mention, as Colton Dirksen confirms, that the creative process is much more efficient with advanced creative build technology which “decreases DCO creative build hours from 16 to 12 to 8 to 4” and in the case of the Adacado “new self-serve platform under an hour.” The efficiencies in the Dynamic Creative build process, like the service offered by Adacado, are essential to consider when calculating ROAS.

In addition to creating efficiencies in time and spend, running DCO for a given campaign opens a door to a robust data pool. Advertisers have a number of metrics at their fingertips: conversion or engagement performance by type of weather, time of day/day of week, creative messaging, creative images, and any other metrics an onsite pixel can pass back. As for advertisers, with more data comes more responsibility to our customers to deep dive into the information and consistently re-evaluate prospecting, retargeting strategies, and creative messaging to deliver the most personalized content possible.

Fortunately, partners like Digilant can help guide interested advertisers through the DCO process, including analyzing data to make appropriate optimizations or recommendations for maximum return. Please reach out to Digilant to chat strategy or mock up your creatives for your campaigns here.

Everything You Need to Know About Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is a popular business model that is predicted to grow at a 10% rate in 2020. An average 62% of a brand’s marketing budget already goes to performance marketing and this amount is expected to raise over time. To invest more energy and attention into the understanding of this model means seeing amplified results in a more promising, lower cost environment. If your company is tired of investing millions of dollars into campaigns without seeing any results, then this form of marketing is for you. And as it breaks down barriers, it builds up confidence, all while delivering incredible results for your brand.

What is Performance Marketing?

Performance Marketing is a mode of communication that occurs when advertisers pay agencies based on how well a campaign “performs.” Opposed to just paying for an advertisement here and there, advertisers are able to define desired outcomes in advance and pay for their ad’s success on a rolling basis. Performance marketers, therefore, are focused on measurable accomplishments in the form of leads, sign-ups, or conversions. It moves the focus away from impressions and clicks, (awareness), to genuine business results, (actions). This outlook strengthens partnerships, emphasizes consumer engagement, and limits fraud’s prevalence in today’s digital landscape.

What are the Benefits of Performance Marketing for Advertisers and Agencies?

  • Increased Flexibility: In performance marketing, outlines are established ahead of a campaign’s launch that are transparent and concise. Advertisers discuss what they want to happen – what their goals are, what numbers they’d like to see, how they’d like to see them, etc. – and agencies adjust campaigns as necessary to generate the strongest results possible. The flexibility in performance payment plans and optimization makes these goals more accessible and attainable in the long run.
    • Payment Plans: This is a mode of marketing that rebels against the traditional ‘pay beforehand in confidence’ model. As aforementioned, performance calls for advertisers to pay agencies based on the quality and number of results obtained over time. Payment, as a result, is based on a pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale, or pay-per-click basis, (but other campaigns may pay based on other actions). In the case of a lead, an agency would be compensated once a consumer performs a specific lead action, such as filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, etc. The opportunities are widespread and can be adjusted to best fit the campaign at hand.
    • Constant Optimization: Instead of launching a campaign in hopes of results, (without even seeing results), advertisers have constant snapshots of their ROI at any moment. This simplified access to data and trends allows brands to more efficiently monitor success and pay back agencies for their hard work. This also opens up opportunities to adjust campaigns as necessary, or to pour more energy into strategies that are working while simultaneously retreating from those that are not.
  • Greater Accountability: With both sides of the advertiser-agency partnership remaining vigilant of results, accountability is heightened. Everyone is paying attention and money is exchanged only when success occurs. Fraud, in this case, is reduced and the pressure to make money and remain in frequent communication with the other is on.
  • Less Costs, Quicker Launches: Advertisers only pay per result in performance marketing. If a certain campaign isn’t working despite adjustments, brands are able to save money and allocate funds toward profitable opportunities elsewhere. And, because the approval processes in performance marketing are less elaborate, campaigns are able to launch faster and, hopefully bring about timely results.

Why Align Performance With Programmatic?
The benefits of performance marketing are immense, and, when paired with programmatic, are strengthened. These two areas are inherently compatible due to their focus on results, collaboration, and transparency. When combined, the goal is not only focused on actionable outcomes, but also effective messaging and increased viewability. This combination emphasizes lift results with the addition of highly targeted ads that are paid on the basis of performance. It also grants the opportunity to alter programmatic campaigns based on progress; a major opportunity in today’s crowded, cluttered digital space.
To remain ahead, consider placing an emphasis on performance programmatic when launching future marketing campaigns. Rather than just accessing lackluster inventory, pursue quality placements that are backed in personalization and trust. By replacing awareness with action and dishonesty for accountability, your company becomes susceptible to greater results and a strengthened reputation.

Programmatic TV: Don’t Sit Back and Watch This Advertising Opportunity Pass You By

Last night while you were watching your favorite television show and that extremely relevant advertisement popped up was no coincidence. In fact, it’s just an occurrence that’s starting to pop up more and more across MVPDs, (multichannel video programming distributors,) and is all thanks to programmatic marketing techniques. Spending on programmatic television, or the data-driven mode of buying and supplying targeted TV advertisements, continues to grow and is expected to reach a record $4.7 billion in 2020. With it, advertisers spend less, increase accuracy, and enhance data results, thereby influencing digital advertisers to jump on this 2019 trend as soon as possible. These rewards continue to become even more advanced and worthwhile, making the future of television a promising one.

Programmatic TV is the act of buying TV spots or programs with viewers that match criteria set in place by the advertiser. It’s on the rise this year, and its newer subset, addressable TV, follows in suit with bringing about promising results. Unlike programmatic, addressable TV purchases audiences instead of programs and refrains from targeting at the individual level. Instead, matches are made on a household level and bid on in real-time to deliver targeted ads directly to applicable households. US addressable spend is expected to reach $3 billion this year as advertisers become more cognizant of the trend’s rewards. Targeting precision, means of measuring results, and the optimization of revenue are just a few of many to be sought.

Before delving into the realm of programmatic TV, it is important for marketers to understand how it works and how it continues to evolve. It all begins with advertisers using broadcaster’s STBs, (set-top boxes,) to identify specific subsets of consumers. From there, ads are sent via STBs to applicable audiences, (whether through purchased programs or households,) and data is sent back to MVPDs to analyze. This data is based on exposure and makes note of viewing times, viewing channels, and customer account numbers. In 2019, ad tech companies are hoping to standardize this household data as it derives from various live and on-demand programmings. The hope for standardization continues with MVPDs working together to create central organizations for selling addressable inventory. And the pressure is on as more than 70 million households in the US have addressable TV capabilities.

Adoption into programmatic TV means the growth of even more and more targeted videos during the ad breaks of early-morning news programs and late-night movies. This year, as illustrated in our 10 Top 2019 Programmatic Media Buying Trends infographic, programmatic TV ad spending will have a 236% increase from last year. Targeting consumers and reaching them across all platforms is necessary to influence action. Television is no exception as these new developments provide companies with ample opportunities to reach all the right households at all the right times.

2019 Programmatic Media Buying Trends

With a projected $3.8 billion spend on programmatic TV ads this year, there is great opportunity for advertisers to hone in on this trend and master techniques to increase their advertising ROI. US consumers spend nearly six hours a day watching video, television taking a huge chunk of this time. So, as advertisers, mastering the targeting techniques, measurements and optimization of programmatic TV is essential in 2019 and years to come.
Digilant has identified ten programmatic trends that will impact 2019. To read them all you can view our infographic here.

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