Dynamic Creative Optimization?(DCO)

To put it simply, it's a display Ad technology that creates personalized ads based on data about the viewer at the moment of ad serving.

With combination of multiple technologies, the Ad server displays relevant Ads to right audience at right time. The Ads are personalized on the basis of location, taste, preference, demographic, device type etc and served in real time.

Benefits

Dynamic Creatives give you the power to..

• Personalize: Create tailored Ads for each user based on their profile, historical and behavioral data attributes. Served across all devices throughout the user journey.
• Real time: Generate and optimize Ads on the fly in milliseconds. Built from the ground up to support the speed and targeting capabilities of programmatic platforms on mobile, desktop, connected TV and OTT (Over the Top).
• Scale & Reach: Offers instant unlimited scaling with unprecedented reach and targeting due to delivery capabilities across all paid media channels and social platforms, on any device.
• Measure & Optimize: User actions and behavior are tracked and analyzed in real time to continually optimize performance and deliver high return on ad spend (ROAS) based on advertiser-specified KPIs with full transparency.

The Platform

Like I said initially, the term DCO is actually a combination of different underpinning technologies that when comes together results in mass scale of banner production that are context aware. This include a Creative Management Platform (CMP), Data Management Platform (DMP) and Demand-Side Platform (DSP).

Though there are different DCO service providers out there in the market such as Sizmek, Thunder, BannerFlow but I have chosen Google's Marketing Platform (GMP) for explaining the terms CMP, DMP and DSP.

If you refer to the diagram below, Google's DoubleClick Studio is a CMP and Display & Video 360 here serves as both DMP and DSP.

DCO take inputs from the Creative Management Platform (CMP), identify customer behavior on the basis of historical data received from Data Management platform (DMP), and serves the right Ad to the audience through Demand-side Platforms (DSPs).

Process Diagram

Role and Responsibilities

Let's take a closer look at the roles and responsibilities of different parties associated with a DCO campaign.

Advertiser: Also knows as Client, who is looking to promote their services or products via digital Ads.

Creative Agency: A creative agency or studio build the Ad creative and upload them on the Google's DoubleClick Studio account of the Media Agency or Advertiser (the client).

Media Agency: Who setup and manages the digital Ad campaign for Advertiser. Understands the business idea and creates a campaign strategy around it. Liaison with Creative studio and get the Ads build. This also includes creation of data feed which will serve as base of running an Dynamic Ad campaign.

Pushes the approved creatives to DCM (DoubleClick Campaign Manager). Define target audience based on parameters such as Geo Location, Time, Device (Mobile/Desktop/Tablet/Connected TV), Ad placement etc.

DCO Stages

The overall DCO campaign can be divided into 3 stages (from conceptualization, setup to execution to reporting) as below:

Pre-launch

• Gather insights from available data
• Design creative concepts
• Choose a strategy that works best of your Ad campaign

Launch

• Create a Studio profile and set content rules
• Create and setup dynamic feed in CMP
• Upload creative assets to Studio
• Preview dynamic creatives
• Publish dynamic creatives
• QA dynamic creative assets 
• Push creatives to Campaign Manager (also known as Trafficking)

Post-launch

• Update dynamic feed (If needed)
• Generate reports on creative performance
• Troubleshoot dynamic creative issues (If needed) 

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