Staying creative in a data driven world

Traditionally in the bygone era of Madison Avenue style advertising, the “big idea” has always sat the heart of campaigns, with the emphasis being on the mass audiences without any real way of achieving granular targeting. Since then, Algorithms, machine learning and data targeting within digital advertising opened up huge efficiencies for digital marketers and revolutionised the media buying process. As ad technology advanced media buying moved towards an audience first approach as opposed to purely environment based media. With so much technology available at the fingertips of marketers, it’s begs the question – “why can’t the creative process adapt similar efficiencies as media buying?”

Technology is a key factor as it relieves the stresses associated with heavy lifting and allowing humans to focus on more strategic tasks, but marketers often over look the fact that the creative messaging cannot follow a one size fits all approach and requires a tailoring for the user. In order to achieve maximum success in running online campaigns, all parts of the campaign especially the creative the user is exposed to need to be able to be optimised a moment’s notice.

In order to achieve the best possible results from creatives within display advertising, Dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) platforms are now being used as they allow for marketers to update, adjust and optimise the creative messaging that a user sees in real time, allowing for a data driven creative approach. Not only do these platforms open up a plethora of targeting capabilities at a creative level but they also allow for granular “version” level reporting, allowing for marketer to gain real time insight on A/B tests and how creatives are performing as a whole.

As ad technology progresses we shall start to see focus move away from the “big idea” and more towards “big data” allowing for more effective creative delivery and a more audience driven approach.