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You obsessed over every pixel, crafted every word, and considered every call-to-action before launching a new ad campaign. And then, crickets. The scenario isn’t uncommon and every marketer has been through a period where they’ve been able to drive impressions but not action among viewers.
It’s time to add some new tools to your marketing tool belt. In this article, we’ll dive deep into Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) and highlight the benefits as well as the pitfalls of this ad type.
Unlike static advertisements, DCO automates the creation and delivery of hyper-targeted ad content so that each ad is tailored to every individual viewer, making sure it resonates with their unique interests and behaviors.
Dynamic creative optimization involves leveraging a data feed to create multiple variations of an advertisement that can be served programmatically rather than using one static ad at all times and for all people.
Dynamic creative optimization isn’t the easiest advertising technique to grasp so let’s go through a common example of a DCO ad.
Imagine you’re an athletic shoe brand and that it’s a rainy day in New York. With DCO, instead of showing an ad depicting someone running on a sunny day in an open field you can instead serve an ad that has a city background, an all weather shoe from your lineup, and a line of copy emphasizing how that specific shoe is waterproof.
When dynamic creative optimization is done well, we’re able to achieve the marketer’s dream of serving the right ad, in the right place, at the right time.
First, dynamic creative optimization requires a data feed whether that’s the weather, location, a feed of sports scores, or any other signal you have on your audience.
A quick aside, now that cookies are becoming increasingly obsolete, getting creative with third party data sources and creative personalization makes DCO more powerful than ever.
Based on that data input, creative elements for the ad base are generated or interchanged in real-time so that they're customized for each impression served to create a relevant ad.
These personalized elements drive increased attention, engagement, and ultimately conversions with the products and services you’re advertising.
If you want to set up a DCO campaign, follow this step-by-step process:
It's one thing having a vision for your DCO ads but it’s another thing to actually create them. Creative management platforms help you do the latter.
Creative management platforms (CMP) are cloud-based software tools that help you develop and publish your ads, so you don't have to do any of the hard work. They also provide a system where you can track each advertisement's performance so you can intervene where necessary.
You might be saying to yourself, 'I don't want to give away my power over my ads; I want full control,' but don't worry, they let you set the rules, so the output is always in your hands. They'll let you upload your own data feeds and select different versions of the elements so you can make every call; they just manage them and help you show them off in a fast and efficient manner.
If you need a creative management company to help you with your DCO ads, check out Adobe Advertising Cloud, Smartly, Celtra, or Google Marketing Platform. However, be aware that each company's services are different, so one company's features may be more advanced than the others.
DCO provides a wealth of benefits to ecommerce companies in all types of industries. Let's take a look at some of the reasons why we think you should use DCO as a marketer:
It's wrongly assumed that when you use DCO, you're giving up control of your ads; this isn't true. After registering with a creative management platform, they'll give you full input and control over the advertisements their system is pushing out for you. So, you'll be able to optimize each one for the different segments of your customer base when and how you want.
You'll know as a business owner that time is everything. DCO will free you up so many hours that it can be focused on other parts of your company while it automates everything for you. You don't have to keep making changes unless you want to, and the creative management platform manages everything for you.
Since DCO helps you develop personalized ads for different users, your campaigns will be more effective, and your profits will likely grow. Put yourself in the consumer's shoes; if you were to see an advertisement that connects with you, you'd be more likely to click it, wouldn't you?
After someone has seen the same type of ad a few times, they're less likely to click it; this is called ad fatigue. Unfortunately, ad fatigue is a big problem and can seriously impact your profits, but DCO helps prevent it because you're targeting people differently every time with a combination of creative features.
We’ve gone over a lot of the ins-and-outs of Dynamic Creative Optimization but we did warn you earlier that there are many pitfalls as well.
Although DCO has been around for over a decade in the digital marketing landscape you’ll find that there haven’t been significant creative breakthroughs in how advertisers have found meaningful use cases for these tailored data feeds. In other words, there are only a few creative approaches with DCO such as:
Geo-targeting: “The best ice cream in Houston!”
Weather-based: “It’s 90º outside - time for some ice cream!”
Time-of-Day based: “The sun went down, never too late for ice cream!”
This isn’t to say that dynamic creative won’t have an impact on your conversion rate but if you're a brand looking for the next ad type to unlock efficiency you’re more likely to get marginal gains versus step gains with DCO.
Dynamic Creative Ads are not easy for even designers to create. Yes, there are CMPs that make it simple but you still need to source data, structure it effectively, create numerous assets, and sometimes even custom code a DCO ad with HTML, Javascript, and other methods based on the placement of DCO.
Speaking of placements, over the years advertising has been consolidated to the most popular platforms such as Google and Meta. These platforms have created many more placements and ad types such as carousel ads, in-feed video, and more that have gained in popularity and have sophisticated algorithms that cast a wide net for audience and reach and are able to self-optimize your targeting using AI.
Platforms have taken some of the best ideas of DCO and created new and more powerful ad formats and placements that are easier to create and more effective.
Dynamic Product Ads are one such ad format that has unlocked growth and scale for ecommerce brands and retailers selling physical goods online.
Dynamic Product Ads take your entire catalog of products and creates advertising assets individualized to each SKU. DPA, similar to DCO, takes a data source and generates customized ads from it but the key differences are:
1. Product personalization: DPAs can handle more products and align more closely with user interest and behavior
2. Automated product/inventory updates: DPAs use the product feed generated by your ecommerce platform to ensure that all information is accurate and fresh
3. Easier to create: DPAs can be created in a few clicks and without any custom coding and configuration
4. Deeper platform integration: Most major platforms including Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more have made DPA core to their advertising offering
We’ve written the definitive guide to dynamic product ads and you can create your first DPA with Marpipe for free today!
