Creative Optimization - A Method (also you're welcome)

According to Statista, in 2014, in the US alone, more than 171 Billion dollars was spent in advertising. Every single dollar that was spent had one objective, notice this thing.

Now I’m not here to talk about that reasons behind advertising, I’m here to talk about how to ensure that the money you spend has a high chance for success. While the ramifications for messing up a creative in the digital world are minimal, put out the wrong OOH creative and you could end up wasting some serious money.

The great irony, of course, is that most digital companies simply don’t have a process to evaluate creative material in a simple and effective manor geared towards improving results on the fly. They let the market decide if the creative will be successful or not and that means wasting lots of money on crappy banners that will never work.

I am here to offer my method for both minimizing the risk of wasted dollars and increasing the likely hood that your creative artist’s time and the money you spend will produce consistent results. 

Here is how to do it:

The process has two steps:

Step 1: New quality guidelines

Take 5 or 6 of your best performing creatives line them up side by side. With a group consisting of artists AND media buyers start listing elements which are consistent within each image group. By then end, you should have a long list of around 10 to 15 elements. This list will now become you creative quality guide. From now on when ever a banner is created you should be using the newly created guide to asses its probability for success. The general rule is: “The more quality elements, the better chance for success.” Over time new elements will be added, but your core list should remain fairly consistent. This will also give you the ability to question without offense the omission quality elements in a specific banner.

1. Banner Creation Loop

Once you have the creative quality guide you now need to let your artist(s) work. No longer will the media buyer or UA manager request banners. It will now be up to the artist to build and maintain the creative lines.

This process is not long or painful and bringing the artist into the mix you will generate results faster and more effectively, while simultaneously improving the motivation of your artists, as they will now feel like they are part of the team.