Market and technology overview of creative management platforms with DCO capabilities

Welcome to the second edition of Xenoss MadTech Digest, where we examine market trends and best practices in MarTech/AdTech software development. Here you can find insights from the Xenoss team, our friends, and partners on how to address the industry's most pressing challenges. Tune in for technology guides, market analytics, and expert roundups. Check out the first edition covering AdTech Trends in 2023 here.?

In light of the looming phase out of ad IDs, developing?creative management capabilities is becoming essential for AdTech platforms that work with omnichannel campaigns. Adding a creative optimization or publishing tool seems like a straight-forward task. Yet in practice, CMP development and customization are quite complicated and require in-depth AdTech expertise.?

Let’s check what challenges you can encounter when developing creative management capabilities and how to address them. We will explore how creative management platforms and digital creative optimization converge and support each other.?

Since the era of DCO is in full swing, I recommend exploring why CMPs are critically important right now in the guide by Xenoss CEO Dmitry Sverdlik. To find more information about CMP development, challenges and best practices, check my latest article on the Xenoss blog.??

CMP & DCO: Market overview

Digital creative optimization enables advertisers to update ad campaigns on the fly, reach better engagement by scaling personalization, and save costs. Brands and agencies that implemented DCO capabilities have already saved millions of dollars in creative production. Moreover, as retail media was the fastest-growing digital ad channel worldwide in Q3 2022, the need for native ads, blended with the search results and optimized for the audience, has increased, contributing to the growth of the DCO market.??????

Kenneth Research analyzed the digital creative optimization market and revealed that it generated $1 billion in revenue in 2022 and will generate $3 billion by the end of 2035, growing at a CAGR of ~10% over the forecast period between 2023 and 2035.?

In turn, the creative management platforms market will more than double between 2021 and 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 12.67% during the forecast period and reaching $1,770 million by 2027, according to MarketWatch.??

CMP and DCO markets look lucrative. Their intersection points may seem blurred, though. Let’s distinguish between these concepts and find out what factors boost their popularity.?

Key concepts behind creative management platforms and digital creative optimization

Although Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) and Creative Management Platform (CMP) are often used interchangeably, they are not the same.?

A DCO is an automated technology that helps create targeted and relevant ads for the audience while using the same master creative and customizing it according to the viewer, context, and past performance. It does this by testing different ad variations, such as copy and images, and optimizing them based on user data.?

A CMP is a cloud-based solution that offers a suite of tools to help marketing teams manage and organize all digital assets. A CMP’s functionality can run DCO campaigns from one dashboard while creating, designing, distributing, and scaling ad creatives according to performance results and ML-powered insights gained from ad platforms.?

How a CMP functions

The work flow of a creative management platform looks like this:

1. Uploading ad materials and designing a pixel-perfect master creative.
2. Leveraging computer vision to identify key elements.
3. Automating production by scaling a master creative to all ad sizes.
4. A/B testing to understand which creative assets work better.
5. Localization of ad campaigns to different markets.
6. Launching and managing multiple ad campaigns from one dashboard.
7. Retrieving data about the ad campaigns.
8. Leveraging AI tools to analyze performance.
9. Updating DCO campaigns.
10. Launching optimized campaigns using gathered insights.?????????

The functioning of creative management platforms differs depending on the features. For example, not all of them include translation management, a landing page builder, or a custom video analysis module, so the workflow for such platforms contains fewer steps.?

Top 5 creative management platforms and their notable features

In-house marketing teams and agencies use a CMP to

• automate ad campaigns,
• scale production and distribution of ads,
• reduce creative production costs and time, and
• streamline DCO campaigns through real-time performance analysis.

When opting for a CMP, check if its capabilities and features are aligned with your needs. We analyzed market offerings and functionality of the platforms to develop a list of best CMP vendors.??

Celtra?

Celtra helps brands and agencies to easily design, create, and distribute interactive and personalized ads across multiple channels. As partners with major brands like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola, Celtra is a trusted solution for those seeking to streamline their creative production process and drive business results through dynamic, creative optimization.?

Ad-Lib.io (part of Smartly.io) ????????

Ad-Lib.io is an omnichannel platform with DCO capabilities and AI-powered analytics designed to manage and personalize creative assets at scale. The Xenoss team developed this CMP with a cost-efficient, scalable infrastructure, integrated the platform with numerous ad channels, and implemented predictive algorithms, image cropper, and video analytics tools.?????

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VidMob?

VidMob is a leading creative intelligence platform that empowers businesses to create and manage high-quality video ads across multiple channels. VidMob's use of templates and actionable insights allows teams to scale their creative production and make data-driven decisions that increase their return on ad spend. As partners with top brands such as Google, Hulu, Reddit, and Meta, VidMob is a trusted by those seeking to optimize their creative performance.

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Adobe Advertising Cloud

Adobe Advertising Cloud is a CMP or a programmatic ad platform that can facilitate omnichannel campaigns. It allows brands and agencies to manage search, CTV, video, mobile, audio, and other ads, automating creatives across all screens and media channels. The prominent feature is Adobe Sensei, an AI component for data and patterns analysis.?

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Adzymic?

Adzymic is a CMP for running DCO campaigns, which provides users with 50 ready-to-use templates that can be easily leveraged to design rich media creatives and set up and run ad campaigns across different DSPs. Adzymic also utilizes ML algorithms to analyze impressions and optimize programmatic buys.?

Challenges of CMP development?

If you’re thinking about adopting creative management capabilities in the AdTech platforms, take a look at the must-have CMP features:

• Ad creator with DCO capabilities?
• Scaling module for building ads from the master creative
• Unified dashboard integrated with numerous ad platforms
• Cloud-based collaboration module for cohesive team work?
• AI-powered analytics to optimize creatives based on real-time metrics???????
• A/B testing for better ad performance and improved ROI
• Translation management to conduct localized market campaigns
• Landing page builder for personalized ad campaigns

Implementation of these features are associated with several bottlenecks, which we can group into three main categories:

Integrations

Connecting to digital ad platforms (Meta Business Manager, Ads Manager, YouTube Advertising, Google Campaign Manager, Amazon Ads) and different third-party services requires engineers with the relevant AdOps experience.???

Analytics?

Brands and agencies want to have ML-powered analytics at their disposal to perpetually optimize campaigns. Training models requires expertise in data science and leveraging cloud data warehouses.?

Load-tolerance?

Load fluctuations and the need to render thousands of creatives can torpedo the work of a CMP. If not addressed in time, this challenge escalates into issues that degrade the user experience.?

Wrapping up

To run DCO campaigns, brands and agencies leverage AI-powered CMPs, which streamline creative production and distribution. For ROI-driven omnichannel campaigns, CMPs need versatile functionality to smoothly integrate with numerous ad platforms. In 2023, the most tech-savvy solutions with the right set of features will be able to carve out a significant piece of the growing CMP market.??

What are the most in-demand features of a creative management platform in your opinion???????????