A lot of companies say they offer dynamic creative. It’s a loosely defined phrase, so it can be hard to know exactly what to expect from a company that offers it.
Before choosing a dynamic ad provider, my advice is to consider two sets of criteria so you know you’re getting a truly dynamic solution: 1.) degree of interactivity; and 2.) depth of customization.
Interactivity
Interactivity is measured by how much ability consumers have to play with content in the ad. There are three levels of commonly seen interactivity:
Highly Interactive Rich Media– Incorporates features like social-media feeds, videos, product scrolling, product catalog search functionality, tabs, etc.
Static Rich Media – May contain some animation, like a Flash introduction (think a car driving by, or automatically rotating offers), but are not controlled by the user.
Static Media – No interaction or animation. Like a print ad on the Internet.
Customization
Customization is measured by how tailored the ad experience is to individuals or audience segments. The three most common levels of interactivity are:
Real Time Customization– Personalized with content and creative assets that reflect information collected in real time when the ad call occurs. For example, information stored in the recipient’s cookies, or with contextual relevance to the environment in which the ad is served. This can include products the user looked at on a retail site, local offers based on the user’s location, or coupon codes based on a user’s historic behavior with a particular brand.
Templatized Customization – Features some level of personalization, but at a more basic demographic level or by behavioral segmentation (men vs. women, income level etc.). The personalization is limited to information known about the recipients when the ads are initially designed.
Conventional Media – Not personalized at all. Every recipient gets the same version of the ad.
It’s important to understand that interactivity and customization are not mutually exclusive. It helps to visualize them as two variables on a spectrum creating four quadrants in which an ad can fall.
They can be real-time and static, highly interactive and conventional, etc. But the only ads that are truly dynamic are the ones that fall in the upper right-hand quadrant – highly interactive with real-time customization.
I also recognize that truly dynamic creative may not be needed 100 percent of the time. It’s up to the marketer to determine the level of complexity needed to facilitate each campaign’s objectives.
So next time you sit down to plan a display campaign that calls for dynamic ads, ask yourself this question: “How dynamic are they?”
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