Gather insights from data sourcesCollect all the data available about your audience and what they care about to narrow down which insights to use as the basis for your campaign.

The creative process for programmatic: A guide for marketers

Programmatic campaigns require a new way of thinking and doing. This 5-step framework provides a collaborative, agile process to help marketers

and agencies successfully execute data-driven creative for their campaigns.

Collaborate on a digital brief

• Defines high-level campaign objectives

• Identifies 1st-party data and insights

Brand

Brand

Media Agency

Production Agency

Media Agency

Production Agency

Creative Agency

Brand

Brand

Media Agency

Production Agency

Production Agency

Creative Agency

Media AgencyCreative Agency

• Provides campaign objectives, and KPI’s• Provides audience segmentation and customer insights • Identifies creative mandatories and chain of approvals

• Provides relevant previous campaign metrics• Identifies potential sources of 3rd-party data• Identifies potential contextual signals

• Approves dynamic feed content (copy, images, etc.) • Reviews and approves final creative

• Identifies reporting metrics needed for the creative• Delivers naming conventions and final ad specs

• Builds dynamic feed based on messaging matrix from creative agency• Develops all copy, design, and animation• Builds ads in HTML5• Ensures correct reporting metrics are coded into creative• Determines specs for dynamic copy and images (character counts and image sizes)

• Creates a messaging and asset matrix to show which content is delivered based on which rules.

• Provides insights on relevant content development to ensure there will be sufficient assets available for the insights identified

• Identifies data signals for media targeting• Provides learnings from previous and/or similar campaigns• Pulls inventory availability report• Provides media specs, site type and ad exchanges

• Identifies signals that will be leveraged as creative triggers• Provides visual identity and voice and tone guidelines• Provides storytelling elements and emotional hook

Creative Agency• Provides creative insights relating to consumer behavior online or on mobile devices

• Identifies technical and creative considerations• Assesses complexity to determine need for dynamic creative• Provides creative development timeline

• Approves campaign to go live • Reviews campaign platforms to confirm that set-up is complete and optimal for measuring campaign KPIs• Sets up scheduled reporting for stakeholders• Traffics creative

• Creates previews of the creative tear sheets and back-up images • QAs creative fields in dynamic feed to confirm that API content is rendering correctly• Approves QA from other agencies and submits final creative to trafficker at the media agency

• Approves campaign to go live

• Monitors campaign performance against defined KPIs• Provides analytics reporting• Performs media optimizations

• Reviews reporting and provides input for optimizations • Decides which results to cycle into next campaign

• Troubleshoots and implements revisions• Reviews reporting and provides input for optimizations• Performs creative optimizations if necessary

• Reviews reporting and provides input for optimizations• Approves on-the-fly changes

Design and develop creative

Learn and optimize

Conduct an all-hands kick-off to go over project goals and start building the digital brief.

The production agency will take the lead in this stage, but the rest of the team should remain involved.

As your campaign runs, begin optimizing the creative and targeting based on performance. For your next campaign, start the process over and use these learnings to inform your strategy.

MOST POPULAR CREATIVE ELEMENTS YOU CAN MAKE DYNAMIC

PHASE

1

PHASE

2

PHASE

5

PHASE

4QA, traffic and launchUpload creative executions and set up targeting tactics and reporting. Then run a cross-team QA and launch the campaign.

Creative AgencyMedia Agency

Brand

Production Agency

PHASE

3

When you first set your campaign live, run it for a couple days at a low daily budget (some experts recommend as little as $10 a day) to make sure everything works properly. Take the time to review the creative in context and pull reports to ensure the correct metrics are tracking. Once you’ve evaluated your campaign in a real-world environment, you can ratchet up the daily budget to your desired spend.

IMPORTANT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE KICK-OFF INCLUDE

KEY

AudienceDemographic information such as gender, interests, and hobbies, as well as previous interactions on your site and through paid search.

MediaInformation about the media on which your campaign might run including website categorymedia placement, andkeyword context.

EnvironmentalExternal factors that may influence the mindset of your customers when they’re exposed to your marketing, such as location, device type, OS, and weather.

CONSIDER THESE THREE TYPES OF DATA SIGNALS

Animation ButtonImagery Video ColorCopy

THE SOFT LAUNCH

GO BEYOND CTR

Distributionof Duties

• What are your brand’s overall goals for the campaign?

• How do you segment your target audience, and what does each segment care about?

• What data signals can be used to reach each audience segment? • What creative might your audience respond to? How can your audience insights and targeting strategy inform the creative strategy?

CTR is not a primary metric when measuring campaign success. The metrics below can give you a clearer view of the impact of your creative strategy.

• In-banner engagement• View-through activity (what users did after seeing the ad)• Post click activity (what users did after clicking)• Cross-device conversions• Path to conversion

Distributionof Duties

Distributionof Duties

Distributionof Duties

Distributionof Duties

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