'You can't be everything to everybody but you can be something to someone'
- Andrew Davis
The above ubiquitous quote is a popular one that is emphasized in all marketing and advertising 101 classes. This means that you should send out a message that is relevant to your target segment. What this also means is that you will be excluding some from your target segment. But what if I told you that you could be relevant to everyone and not compromise? Hard to believe?
A relatively new technology,
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) will give you, as a marketer, the capability to generate dynamic versions of your online ads that are customized according to the preference of the consumer. This ensures that the ad is highly relevant and so, has increased chances that the viewer will make a purchase.
Following are three different ads for the same product that were shown to different viewers on Amazon:
The first Ad has a discount coupon and is targeted at the price sensitive consumers. The second one has product reviews and is targeted at consumers with low brand awareness and the last one has both – a discount coupon and ratings. It is targeted at consumers who are price sensitive and have low awareness.
How DCO works
- Identifying the key elements – The elements are placeholders for customizable content. Any ad that we come across is composed of many elements such as text, media, call to action button etc. as indicated in the below image. It is important to identify the key elements that should be dynamic. These are elements that will display the customized content.
In the above ad, we see that the product image, the text content, the call to action button and the blue background are customizable.
- Content –The media could be a video, gif, images, etc. The text could be customized messages such as “Hi <name of viewer>, we have a special offer just for you”. The content should be relevant to the target segment to your consumers, etc.
- Mapping the content to target segment – All Ecommerce websites collect information about their customers and have data that segments them. Once the content for the dynamic ad is ready, the content should be mapped to the target segment using a rules engine i.e., rules can be set to:
- display discounts to price sensitive customers,
- images with celebrities to customers with low brand awareness,
- USP of your brand/product to customers who have your product and the rival’s product in the consideration set, etc.
Can you think of more marketing rules that you can use to map the ad content with the target segments? Let me know in the comments below.
- Machine Learning - Once the ad is shown to a user, based on his response, ‘machine learning’ takes over and the system tweaks the ad to find the right combination that appeals to the user according to his preference. This way, the ad is customized and becomes relevant to the user.
Check out this video of Smart Versioning by MediaMind (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG_DmImeQoQ) that is based on Dynamic Creative Optimization to get a visual image of how DCO works in real life.
---------
About the Author:
Rinku Stephen pursued Computer Science and Engineering just because she was fascinated by the law of cartoons. But later during her course, she was smitten by the tech bug and went on to develop developed Peer to Peer Application for NFCs, automated healthcare claims and solutions to clinical trials. She also had a brief stint as the IT consultant for a Startup – Praise Foundation. She has interned at Flipkart as a Product Manager and looks forward to a long career in tech related roles. Setting the geek side aside, Rinku loves to trek, try new sports, read crazy, and of course.. GOT.