A 2016 survey found that 78% of consumers prefer personalized ads, but in reality only 28% think the ads they are served are actually relevant. The question for advertisers is how to close that gap without cumbersome creative and analytic work, while still being able to focus on consumers at all stages of the funnel. The solution: Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO).
Dynamic Creative Optimization is technology designed to power campaigns by creating a wide variety of ads to fit any circumstance. When done correctly, DCO personalizes ad content automatically leading to higher conversion rates, higher revenue, and higher return on ad spend.
There are three core components of DCO:
- Ad Layout, which is the template or shell of the ad. Dynamic ad templates must be custom built so that the advertiser or ad agency can replace each element without individually reformatting each iteration of the ad.
- Dynamic Attributes that contain the content that is used to tailor aspects of the ad for specific audiences.
- Data Feed or Audience Segments that know for whom to personalize the ad.
Dynamic creative is most effective for driving traffic and conversions in order to improve retention rates. It can be used to implement audience-targeted creative ads across all digital formats including display, mobile, social and video.
Dynamic creative was originally used primarily for retargeting high-value consumers at the bottom of the funnel. This was especially popular in the retail and travel industries where there are large volumes of possible permutations. Now advertisers are expanding their use of dynamic creative and putting it to use at all stages of the funnel.
Innovative advertisers who are prospecting and building awareness are moving away from creating a generic ad that is shown to all users. Instead, these forward thinking companies are utilizing users’ data to make offers more relevant to their consumers.
For example, a clothing retailer could advertise rain boots and an umbrella to someone on a rainy day in Boston, while at the same time serving an ad for sunglasses and a summer dress to a woman in Los Angeles. Ads that are more pertinent to the consumer increase conversion rates over untargeted offers.
Dynamic Creative Optimization can allow automatic multi-variate testing. Experiments can take place on all aspects such as background color/image, call to action, promotional offer, button color, text, and more.
Historically, DCO has been thought of as when the creative team creates a single template for an ad and sets up a rule that says, “show everyone in my retargeting pool the product they looked at while on my website.” Or when they ask for “hundreds of ads built using different combinations of these 20 backgrounds, headlines, and calls to action.”
While you can serve many elements (e.g. text, images, offers) within an ad, you’re still working within the framework of a single ad template or concept. DCO answers the question: “How can I get the right product in front of the right person?” but doesn’t consider the best ad concept, or best way to present the product. Unless you are experimenting to determine what are the optimal ads for your users, you won’t know which presentation and layout is best.
Working on RevJet’s Ad Creative Operating System is different. RevJet’s proprietary creative experimentation methodology identifies the statistically significant best-performing ads based on actual performance data. Instead of guessing which ad creatives are likely to succeed, RevJet lets your audience decide and lets you reap the benefits.
Download the white paper, Radically Simple Personalization - Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to learn more about how Dynamic Creative Optimization will benefit your business.
