2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

Programmatic buying coupled with data-driven creative can deliver more effective digital advertising campaigns. The use of data-driven creatives allows us to gather insights during the campaign that will allow us to make dynamic changes mid-flight and contribute to the campaign performance as well as the effectiveness of the media spend. Having a targeted creative for each audience segment enables the right insights that allow us to understand a brand's target audience behaviors and preferences better. This opens the door to tailor personalized creatives to them specifically, as a result minimizing or removing media ad spend.

Background

A large telecommunication brand wanted to find out who their most engaging audiences were across Display & Youtube. They ran a bilingual campaign across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in English & Arabic targeting five different audiences with dynamic messaging for the launch of their 5G product line. The goal was to increase CTR & VTR and gather data-driven insights to find out which were the best performing copies and imagery against each audience segment.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

The brand identified five main audiences and tailored each creative to match the audience segments: Movie Buffs, Avid Gamers, Motor Heads, Travel Buffs, and Sports Fanatics. For example, "sports fanatics" were served an ad showing a soccer player. The idea was to reach affinity-audiences through relevant messages therefore each audience segment had multiple creatives testing three different copies each. The headline copies were made dynamic and could be changed in real-time throughout the campaign, allowing us to utilize the data-driven insights and make changes mid-flight.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

With the launch of the new 5G product line, the brand selected five main audience segments to use as targeting: Movie Buffs, Avid Gamers, Motor Heads, Travel Buffs, and Sports Fanatics. These five audiences were selected from a larger group of previous historical campaign executions. The media channels and audience strategy was crafted by the media agency and put in place cross-channel on Display and Youtube. In collaboration with a DCO partner who personalized the creatives, the audiences set up on DV360 and Youtube were then connected through line items to each respective relevant creative. Once a particular consumer in these audience segments was reached, they would be served a relevant personalized ad promoting the product in relation to the consumers' interest (i.e. sports, cars, etc). As the campaign went on, each week data-driven insights were shared and discussed amongst all parties in order to action the best optimization approach.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The brand alongside its media and creative agencies, collaborated with a DCO technology partner to execute a dynamic creative strategy. A testing framework was put in place to measure the performance for each of the five audiences against different creative images and messaging. They produced a total of 286 creative variations that were later executed on Google Programmatic Display across 8 ad formats and Youtube across Truview and Bumper Ads. The DCO technology partner was integrated into both of these media channels allowing for a smooth alignment from dynamic creative to audiences set up on DV360 via Line Items. The campaign ran for the duration of one month. During this time, data-driven insights were surfaced allowing for real-time optimization, leading to effective campaign results.

List the results (30% of vote)

As a result of dynamic creative optimization, data-driven insights allowed the brand to understand who their most engaged audiences were and which message resonated with them most. Throughout the campaign, creative insights were surfaced showing the best and least performing creatives. This allowed for a decision to remove any low-performing creatives or test another message/copy to drive performance. This also allowed media budgets to be shifted from poor performing placements or creatives. By consistently monitoring the campaign performance across all parties and utilizing data-driven insights during the campaign, we saw a 103% increase in CTR from Display banners achieving a 1.43% CTR in comparison to the standard brand benchmark of 0.70%. Across Youtube, a 16% uplift was reflected achieving a 31.32% VTR compared to the brands' benchmark of 16% VTR.

Describe the use of data, or how the data enhanced the campaign output

Through the use of data-driven insights, the campaign was optimized consistently throughout its duration, allowing for the best media performance. Creative insights were reflected across the DCO technology partners' platform on their reporting dashboard and were also collectively shared with all parties on a weekly basis. Creative recommendations inspired media optimizations and as a result of both, the campaign delivered the highest CTR and VTR it had ever reached. These data-driven insights were taken post-campaign and will be applied to future targeting as well. The impact of this campaign has proven that personalized creatives not only help brands see an uplift in performance but also allows them to understand their audience better and cater to their consumers' interest.